American History Through Literature 1870-1920, Volume 3

American History through Literature 1870–1920 Editorial Board EDITORS IN CHIEF Tom Quirk Professor of English Univer...

Author: Tom Quirk

40 downloads 1165 Views 26MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

American History through Literature

1870–1920

Editorial Board EDITORS IN CHIEF Tom Quirk

Professor of English University of Missouri–Columbia Gary Scharnhorst

Professor of English University of New Mexico ADVISORY EDITORS William L. Andrews

E. Maynard Adams Professor of English University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Louis J. Budd

James B. Duke Professor of English (Emeritus) Duke University Lawrence J. Buell

Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Harvard University Susan K. Harris

Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture University of Kansas Denise D. Knight

Professor of English State University of New York at Cortland William J. Scheick

J. R. Millikan Centennial Professor, Department of English University of Texas at Austin

American History through Literature

1870–1920

V O L U M E

3

PRAGMATISM to “THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER” INDEX

TOM QUIRK & GARY SCHARNHORST

Editors in Chief

American History through Literature, 1870–1920 Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst, Editors in Chief

© 2006 Thomson Gale, a part of The Thomson Corporation Thomson and Star logo are trademarks and Gale and Charles Scribner’s Sons are registered trademarks used herein under license. For more information, contact Thomson Gale 27500 Drake Road Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535 Or visit our Internet site at http://www.gale.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic,

or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution, or information storage retrieval systems— without the written permission of the publisher. For permission to use material from this product, submit your request via the Web at http://www.gale-edit.com/permissions, or you may download our Permissions Request form and submit your request by fax or mail to: Permissions Department Thomson Gale 27500 Drake Road Farmington Hills, MI 48331-3535 Permissions hotline: 248-699-8006 or 800-877-4253, ext. 8006 Fax: 248-688-8074 or 800-762-4058

Since this page cannot legibly accommodate all copyright notices, the acknowledgments constitute an extension of the copyright notice. While every effort has been made to ensure the reliability of the information presented in this publication, Thomson Gale does not guarantee the accuracy of the data contained herein. Thomson Gale accepts no payment for listing; and inclusion in the publication of any organization, agency, institution, publication, service, or individual does not imply endorsement of the editors or publisher. Errors brought to the attention of the publisher will be corrected in future editions.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA American History through Literature, 1870–1920 / Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst, editors-in-chief. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-684-31464-9 (set hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-684-31465-7 (v. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-684-31466-5 (v. 2 : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-684-31467-3 (v. 3 : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-684-31493-2 (e-book) 1. American literature—19th century—Encyclopedias. 2. Literature and history— United States—History—19th century—Encyclopedias. 3. Literature and history—United States—History—20th century—Encyclopedias. 4. United States—History—19th century— Historiography—Encyclopedias. 5. United States—History—20th century—Historiography— Encyclopedias. 6. American literature—20th century—Encyclopedias. 7. History in literature—Encyclopedias. I. Quirk, Tom, 1946– II. Scharnhorst, Gary. PS217.H57A843 2005 810.9’358’09034—dc22

2005023736

This title is also available as an e-book ISBN 0-684-31493-2 And may be purchased with its companion set, American History through Literature, 1820–1870 ISBN 0-684-31468-1 (6-vol. print set) Contact your Thomson Gale sales representative for ordering information Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Editorial and Production Staff Senior Editor:

Stephen Wasserstein

Project Editor:

Alja Kooistra Collar

Assisting Editors:

Joann Cerrito, Jennifer Wisinski

Editorial Assistant:

Angela Doolin

Susan Carol Barnett, Lisa Dixon, Gretchen Gordon, Jeffrey J. Hill, Teresa Jesionowski, Robert E. Jones, Jean Fortune Kaplan, Eric Lagergren, Maggie Paley, Janet Patterson, Linda Sanders, Jane Marie Todd, Julie Van Pelt

Manuscript Editors:

Proofreader: Indexer:

Carol Holmes

Katharyn Dunham

Senior Art Director:

Pamela Galbreath

Image Acquisitions:

Kelly Quin, Jillean McCommons

Imaging:

Lezlie Light, Michael Logusz

Cartographer:

XNR Productions

Manufacturing Buyer:

Wendy Blurton

Assistant Composition Manager: Publisher:

Frank Menchaca

Evi Seoud

Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . PREFACE .

.

.

.

.

.

. .

. .

. .

. .

. .

. .

. .

. .

. .

. .

. .

. .

xv xvii

Anarchism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Suzanne Clark

Anglo-Saxonism . . . . . . . . . . . 70 John N. Swift

Annexation and Expansion

. . . . . . .

74

Joseph L. Coulombe

Volume 1

Anti-Intellectualism . . . . . . . . . . 79

A

Tim Sougstad

Addiction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Appeal to Reason . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Nancy Morrow

Roger Forseth

Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Art and Architecture. . . . . . . . . . 86 Joseph J. Wydeven

Caren J. Town

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . . . . . .

13

Arts and Crafts

Louis J. Budd

Aestheticism . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Assimilation . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Lori Jirousek

Christian Berkemeier

Aging and Death . . . . . . . . . . . 27

The Atlantic Monthly . . . . . . . . . 106 Ellery Sedgwick

Virgil Mathes

Agnosticism and Atheism . . . . . . . . 31

Autobiography . . . . . . . . . . . 111 William Pannapacker

S. T. Joshi

The Ambassadors . . . . . . . . . . . 35

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

. . . . . . . . 43

120

The Awakening . . . . . . . . . . . 123 William Nelles

Rick Waters

The American Language

. .

Cristina L. Ruotolo

Richard A. Hocks

American Indian Stories

. . . . . . . . . . . 97

Nancy Morrow

. . . . . . . . 46

Connie Eble

American Literature . . . . . . . . . . 49 Joseph Csicsila

Americans Abroad . . . . . . . . . . 55 Horst Kruse

The American Scene . . . . . . . . . . 61 Mary Esteve

B Banking and Finance . . . . . . . . . 129 Roark Mulligan

Battle of the Little Bighorn . .

. . . . .

133

Caren J. Town

vii

CONTENTS

Best-Sellers . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Civil War Memoirs . . . . . . . . . . 258

John J. Han

Maurice S. Lee

The Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Civil War Memorials and Monuments

John J. Murphy

. . .

Billy Budd. . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

Clubs and Salons . . . . . . . . . . 267

Richard A. Hocks

Michael Smedshammer

Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

The Conjure Woman . . . . . . . . . 273

William Pannapacker

Henry B. Wonham

The Birth of a Nation . . . . . . . . . 158 Paul Young

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court . . . . . . . . . . . 278 Joe B. Fulton

Blacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Licia Morrow Calloway

Copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Bohemians and Vagabondia . . . . . . .

Martin T. Buinicki

171

Kevin J. Hayes

The Country of the Pointed Firs . . . . . .

Book Publishing

263

Timothy S. Sedore

Megan Benton

Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce . . . . .

292

Kimberly A. Freeman

Boston and Concord . . . . . . . . . 182 Len Gougeon

287

Sarah Way Sherman

. . . . . . . . . . 176

Cross-Dressing . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Mary P. Anderson

Boxing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 John Dudley

Business and Industry Novels . . . . . .

191

Richard Adams

D Daisy Miller . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Michael Anesko

C

The Damnation of Theron Ware . . . . . .

308

Fritz Oehlschlaeger

Capital Punishment

. . . . . . . . . 199

Nancy Morrow

Elizabeth Miller Lewis

Catholics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 John J. Han

Centennial

Darwinism

. . . . . . . . . . . . 317

Deirdre Ray

. . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Robert W. Rydell

Dime Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 J. Randolph Cox

Century Magazine . . . . . . . . . . 211 James Arthur Bond

Disasters . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 Nancy Morrow

Chicago . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Keith Gumery

Diseases and Epidemics . . . . . . . . 331 K. Patrick Ober

Children’s Literature . . . . . . . . . 220 J. D. Stahl

Chinese

Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Domestic and Sentimental Fiction . . . . .

338

Anne E. Boyd

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

Elizabeth Archuleta

Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . 230 Cole P. Dawson

Christianity and the Social Crisis . . . . .

236

E Editors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Susan Curtis

Ann Mauger Colbert

Christian Science

. . . . . . . . . . 238

Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350

Susan Albertine

Gary Scharnhorst

Circuses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

The Education of Henry Adams . . . . . .

William L. Slout

City Dwellers

. . . . . . . . . . . 246

The Emperor Jones . . . . . . . . . . 360

James R. Giles

Brenda Murphy

Civil Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Ethnology

Licia Morrow Calloway

viii

356

Len Gougeon

. . . . . . . . . . . . 363

Elizabeth Archuleta

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

L I T E R A T U R E ,

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

CONTENTS

F

I

Farmers and Ranchers . . . . . . . . . 371

Illustrations and Cartoons

Diane Dufva Quantic

Fashion

. . . . . . .

479

Henry B. Wonham

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 376

Imagism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483

Stephanie A. Smith

Timothy Materer

Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380

Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . 486

Kerry Driscoll

Lori Jirousek

Folklore and Oral Traditions

. . . . . .

386

Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism . . . . .

Ronald L. Baker

Food and Drink . . . . . . . . . . . 391

Impressionism . . . . . . . . . . . 504

Jennifer Cognard-Black

Sonja Froiland Lynch Robert Lee Lynch Jr.

Foreign Visitors . . . . . . . . . . . 395

Indians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508

Steven Goldleaf

The Four Million

496

Susan K. Harris

Maureen Konkle

. . . . . . . . . . 400

Indian Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . 518

Helen Killoran

Maureen Konkle

Free Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

In the Tennessee Mountains . . . . . . . 523

Paul Hadella

Grace Toney Edwards

Frontier . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

Iola Leroy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526

Richard W. Etulain Gary Topping

John Bird

Irish. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 Stacey L. Donohue

G Genteel Tradition . . . . . . . . . . 413 Matthew Teorey

Ghost Stories

J, K

. . . . . . . . . . . 417

S. T. Joshi

Jews

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535

Sanford E. Marovitz

Jim Crow . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543

Volume 2

Elizabeth Archuleta

Journalism

H

. . . . . . . . . . . . 546

Jean Marie Lutes

Harper & Brothers . . . . . . . . . . 425

The Jungle. . . . . . . . . . . . . 552

Gib Prettyman

Tim Sougstad

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine . . . . .

429

Jurisprudence

Ann Mauger Colbert

. . . . . . . . . . . 556

John N. Swift

Haymarket Square . . . . . . . . . . 432

Ku Klux Klan

Timothy Parrish

. . . . . . . . . . . 562

James S. Leonard

A Hazard of New Fortunes . . . . . . .

437

Gib Prettyman

Health and Medicine . . . . . . . . . 443 Jennifer S. Tuttle

Historical Romance

. . . . . . . . . 450

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 454

The Land of Little Rain . . . . . . . . 577 William J. Scheick

Ferenc M. Szasz

Houghton Mifflin . . . . . . . . . . 463

Law Enforcement . . . . . . . . . . 581 Matthew Teorey

Ellery Sedgwick

The House of Mirth . . . . . . . . . . 466

Lectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585 Gary Scharnhorst

Carol J. Singley

Humor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588 Mark Woodhouse

Louis J. Budd

A M E R I C A N

Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569 Andrew Rennick

George Dekker

History

L

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

ix

CONTENTS

Literary Colonies . . . . . . . . . . 593

Motion Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . 703

Richard S. Randolph

Paul Young

Literary Criticism . . . . . . . . . . 598

Mrs. Spring Fragrance . . . . . . . . . 709

Aaron Urbanczyk

Literary Friendships

Martha J. Cutter

. . . . . . . . . 603

Muckrakers and Yellow Journalism

Peter Messent

Literary Marketplace . . . . . . . . . 608

712

Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . . 717

Steven H. Jobe

Liza Ann Acosta

Little Magazines and Small Presses

. . . . 616

Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721

Kevin J. Hayes

Lochner v. New York

. . . .

Brian Black

Michael J. Budds

. . . . . . . . . 622

My Ántonia . . . . . . . . . . . . 730

John N. Swift

Janis P. Stout

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” . . .

625

My First Summer in the Sierra . . . . . .

Sanford Pinsker

734

Michael P. Branch

Lynching . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628

Mystery and Detective Fiction . . . . . .

Emmett H. Carroll

737

Laura L. Behling

Lyric Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . 632 Paul Crumbley

Lyrics of Lowly Life . . . . . . . . . . 638 John Bird

N The Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . 743 Louis J. Budd

M

Naturalism

McClure’s Magazine . . . . . . . . . 643 Charles Johanningsmeier

McTeague . . . . . . . . . . . . . 647 Joseph R. McElrath Jr.

Maggie, A Girl of the Streets . . . . . . .

651

Paul Sorrentino

Main Street . . . . . . . . . . . . 656 James M. Hutchisson

Main-Travelled Roads . . . . . . . . . 659 Joseph B. McCullough

The Man against the Sky . . . . . . . . 662 Tom Quirk

The Marrow of Tradition . . . . . . . . 666 William L. Andrews

. . . . . . . . . . . . 746

Donald Pizer

Nature Writing . . . . . . . . . . . 754 Michael P. Branch

A New England Nun and Other Stories . . .

760

Leah Blatt Glasser

New Orleans . . . . . . . . . . . . 765 Kris Lackey

New South . . . . . . . . . . . . 770 Martin Griffin

Newspaper Syndicates . . . . . . . . . 773 Charles Johanningsmeier

New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . 778 Susan K. Harris

North of Boston . . . . . . . . . . . 783 Helen Killoran

“The Marshes of Glynn” . . . . . . . . 670 Rosemary D. Cox

Mass Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . 674 June Johnson Bube

Mexican Revolution

. . . . . . . . . 683

Antonio C. Márquez

Migration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687

O Oratory

Kelvin Beliele

Miscegenation . . . . . . . . . . . 692

Orientalism . . . . . . . . . . . . 796

Joe B. Fulton

Moon-Calf

David A. Boxwell

. . . . . . . . . . . . 696

Other People’s Money . . . . . . . . . 801

Keith Gumery

Melvin I. Urofsky

Mormons . . . . . . . . . . . . . 699

Overland Monthly . . . . . . . . . . 803

William R. Handley

x

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 789

Wendy Dasler Johnson

Tara Penry

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

CONTENTS

Prostitution . . . . . . . . . . . . 914

P

Kevin J. Hayes

Parks and Wilderness Areas . . . . . . .

807

Seth Bovey

Martha D. Patton

Penitentiaries and Prisons

. . . . . . .

812

Mary P. Anderson

Periodicals

Pseudoscience . . . . . . . . . . . 916 Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . 923 Priscilla Perkins

. . . . . . . . . . . . 816

Martin Green

Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant

. . . . .

823

Maurice S. Lee

Philippine-American War . . . . . . . . 827

R

Terry Oggel

Philosophy

. . . . . . . . . . . . 832

Race Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . 929 Kenneth W. Warren

Michael Eldridge

Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . 839

Racial Uplift . . . . . . . . . . . . 933 Jeffrey R. Williams

Andrew Smith

“Plain Language from Truthful James” . . .

843

Ramona . . . . . . . . . . . . . 940 Stephen Brandon

Gary Scharnhorst

Plessy v. Ferguson. . . . . . . . . . . 847

Realism

Brook Thomas

Poetry: A Magazine of Verse . . . . . . .

850

Reconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . 953 Sharon Carson

Timothy Materer

Political Parties . . . . . . . . . . . 853

The Red Badge of Courage Reform

Resorts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 977 Carolyn L. Mathews

Resource Management

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 882

. . . . . . . . 980

Nicolas S. Witschi

Jonathan Freedman

Poverty

971

Donna M. Campbell

Joseph W. Slade

The Portrait of a Lady . . . . . . . . . 876

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 963

Regionalism and Local Color Fiction . . . .

David Cochran

Pornography . . . . . . . . . . . . 872

958

Bruce Levy

Christoph Irmscher

Populism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867

. . . . . . .

John Clendenning

Matthew Teorey

Popular Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . 859

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 943

James S. Leonard

The Rise of David Levinsky . . . . . . .

985

Sanford E. Marovitz

Chad Rohman

S

Volume 3

St. Louis World’s Fair . . . . . . . . . 991

P

Keith Gumery

Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . 889 Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . 894

San Francisco

. . . . . . . . . . . 999

David Fine

Jan Whitt

Presidential Elections . . . . . . . . . 896 Professionalism . . . . . . . . . . . 903 The Promised Land . . . . . . . . . . 908

Science and Technology. . . . . . . . 1007 Science Fiction. . . . . . . . . . . 1015 Steve Anderson

Timothy Parrish

. . . . . .

911

Scientific Materialism. . . . . . . . . 1018 Tom Quirk

David W. Levy

H I S T O R Y

1003

Klaus Benesch

Jennifer Cognard-Black

The Promise of American Life

Satire, Burlesque, and Parody . . . . . . Richard Fusco

Steven Goldleaf

A M E R I C A N

Same-Sex Love . . . . . . . . . . . 994 Christopher Looby

Patrick K. Dooley

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

xi

CONTENTS

Scribner’s Magazine . . . . . . . . . 1023

Tourism and Travel Writing

James Arthur Bond

The Sea-Wolf

. . . . . . . . . . . 1026

1131

Tramps and Hobos . . . . . . . . . 1135

Jeanne Campbell Reesman

Self-Help Manuals

. . . . . .

Jeffrey Melton Holger Kersten

. . . . . . . . . 1031

Transportation . . . . . . . . . . . 1141

Carolyn L. Mathews

Kevin J. Hayes

Sex Education . . . . . . . . . . . 1034 Paul Hadella

Short Story . . . . . . . . . . . . 1039 Kirk Curnutt

Sister Carrie

U . . . . . . . . . . . 1046 Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings

Leonard Cassuto

Slang, Dialect, and Other Types of Marked Language . . . . . . . . . 1051

. . 1147

R. Bruce Bickley Jr.

Up from Slavery

. . . . . . . . . . 1152

Keith E. Byerman

Matthew J. Gordon

Social Darwinism . . . . . . . . . . 1055

Utopias and Dystopias . . . . . . . . 1155 Carol A. Kolmerten

Deirdre Ray

Socialism. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1060 John Samson

“Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism” . . . . . . . . . . . 1064

V

Arthur Wrobel

. . . . . . . . 1067

Village Dwellers . . . . . . . . . . 1161

Spanish-American War . . . . . . . . 1070

Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1165

The Souls of Black Folk

Joe B. Fulton

Keith E. Byerman

Terry Oggel

Terry Oggel

Spiritualism . . . . . . . . . . . . 1075

The Voice of the People

. . . . . . . . 1173

Pamela R. Matthews

Martha D. Patton

Sports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079 Michael Oriard

The Squatter and the Don . . . . . . .

1086

Jesse Alemán

The Strenuous Life . . . . . . . . . . 1089 Michael L. Collins

Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1092 Carol Nackenoff

W, Y War Writing. . . . . . . . . . . . 1177 James Dawes

Wealth

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1180

John Samson

Weaponry . . . . . . . . . . . . 1186 Virgil Mathes

The Western

T Tales of Soldiers and Civilians . . . . . .

1101

Wild West Shows . . . . . . . . . . 1194

Lawrence I. Berkove

Paul Reddin

Tarzan of the Apes. . . . . . . . . . 1105

Winesburg, Ohio . . . . . . . . . . 1197

Phillip Howerton

Jan Whitt

Temperance. . . . . . . . . . . . 1108

Woman’s Journal . . . . . . . . . . 1200

Debra J. Rosenthal

Cynthia J. Davis

Theater . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1114

Women and Economics . . . . . . . . 1203

Roger A. Hall

Jennifer S. Tuttle

The Theory of the Leisure Class . . . . . .

1122

Women’s Suffrage. . . . . . . . . . 1207

Clare Eby

Joanne B. Karpinski

This Side of Paradise . . . . . . . . . 1127

World’s Columbian Exposition

Kirk Curnutt

xii

. . . . . . . . . . . 1190

Gary Scharnhorst

. . . . .

1214

Keith Gumery

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

CONTENTS

World War I

. . . . . . . . . . . 1218

Martin Griffin

Wounded Knee

. . . . . . . . . . 1224

Rick Waters

“The Yellow Wall-Paper” . . . . . . .

1227

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

1231

THEMATIC OUTLINE .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

1245

LIST OF ENTRIES TO COMPANION SET .

.

.

.

.

.

1249

.

.

.

1253

.

.

.

1255

.

.

.

.

PRIMARY SOURCES FOR FURTHER READING

Denise D. Knight INDEX .

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


.

.

.

.

.

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

xiii

PRAGMATISM

P

It is a commonplace to describe Americans as pragmatic—sometimes that tag is a compliment; more often it is a slur. However, the philosophy referred to as “pragmatic” involves stances on the nature of reality (metaphysics) and the nature of knowledge (epistemology) even as it embraces an agenda of psychological, social, and ethical positions. While philosophical pragmatism eventually evolved into a sophisticated and subtle body of doctrines, initially it was a response to a cultural endowment of concepts and problems. That is, a common matrix energized the intellectuals—the artists, jurists, clergy, journalists, scientists, philosophers, and novelists—of the turn of the nineteenth century in America even as the big three pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), William James (1842– 1910), and John Dewey (1859–1952) systematically worked out the details of philosophical pragmatism. Any treatment of classical American pragmatism must begin with C. S. Peirce’s seminal pair of articles, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878), both of which first appeared in Popular Science Monthly. Peirce’s approach repudiates the whole project of René Descartes (1596– 1650), the father of modern philosophy, who postulated methodic doubt to establish an indubitable foundation from which humans embark upon the project of achieving certitude. John Dewey echoes Peirce’s stance, explaining that postmodern philosophy had abandoned “the quest for certainty.” Peirce argued that Descartes’s goal of certitude was unrealistic, even impossible, and that his strategy of

C O N T I N U E D

manufactured doubt was, at best, a make-believe exercise and, at worst, could undermine confidence in one’s ability to understand and deal with the world. In his 1868 paper “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” describing Cartesian doubt as alternatively feigned and corrosive, Peirce states: We cannot begin with complete doubt. . . . Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up. . . . Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. (Collected Papers 5:265)

Instead, Peirce offers a triad of belief (defined as a habit of action), doubt (described as an irritation prompted by failure), and inquiry (characterized as the process of fixing a problematic situation by proposing a satisfactory plan of action in the form of a replacement belief). In place of wondering whether my hand is before my eyes, whether I am now dreaming, or whether I am being deceived by an evil genius, as Descartes urges us to do, the founder of pragmatism suggests that the paradigm for intellectual inquiry is real-life problem solving. When my car will not start I experience real doubt. The situation demands that I inquire in order to fix the problem so that when the solution is found I can drive down the road in a calm and satisfactory state of belief. In a masterfully compressed sketch of the intellectual development of individuals as well as the human race, Peirce argues that four strategies for fixing belief have evolved: first, tenacity, then authority,

889

P R A G M AT I S M

THE LITERARY NATURALISTS FRANK NORRIS AND JACK LONDON PRAGMATIZE The classical American pragmatic philosophers would be hard-pressed to improve upon Frank Norris’s account of pragmatic truth in his essay “The Need of a Literary Conscience,” which appeared in the December 1901 World’s Work. Norris explains that though unreflective persons may think truth is “an abstraction, a vague idea,” it has instead “to do with practical, tangible, concrete work-aday life. . . . [It is] as concrete as the lamp-post on the corner, as practical as a cable-car, as real and homely and work-a-day and commonplace as a boot-jack” (p. 1158). Also noteworthy in their nod to pragmatism are the last chapters of The Sea-Wolf and Jack London’s description of the wildly implausible success that Humphrey Van Weyden (society dandy recently become able-bodied sailor with minimal help from his fiancée, Maud) has in rehabilitating the wrecked and gutted sealing schooner the Ghost. When Humphrey tells Maud he is certain that the foremast he has heroically hoisted and refitted will work, she asks, “Do you know Dr. Jordan’s final test of truth?” And then she eloquently pragmaticizes, “‘Can we make it work? Can we trust our lives to it?’ is the test” (London, Novels and Stories, p. 755). Her source, Donald Pizer points out, was an article by David Starr Jordan, “The Stability of Truth,” which appeared in Popular Science Monthly in March 1897 (London, The Sea-Wolf, p. 1017). This was the journal that had, a decade earlier, published the seminal statements of pragmatism, “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” by C. S. Peirce.

then reasonableness, and finally the scientific method. The first three methods are infected with subjectivity and a full range of human biases. Only the fourth method allows reality itself to shape, objectively and systematically, one’s beliefs instead of vice versa. Moreover, the scientific method is self-corrective and is the only method that can use doubt as an opportunity (instead of a threat) as it turns difficulties into additional hypotheses waiting testing. Close at hand are redefinitions of both meaning and truth.

890

A M E R I C A N

If the hypothetical-deductive method is to become the strategy to fix beliefs, then all questions, problems, concepts, and issues will have to be translatable (without loss of content) into patterns of action. Thereby, the meaning of an idea is the behavior it prompts, and its fruitfulness (or failure) will measure its truth (or falsity) as a pattern of action. In the nearly seventy-five years between the publication of Peirce’s seminal articles and John Dewey’s death in 1952, American pragmatists worked out the profit of and the problems with this radical redefinition of truth and meaning and more generally proposed, as a consequence, a fundamental recasting of the nature of philosophy. (After Dewey’s death, classical American pragmatism’s influence declined precipitously only to experience a stunning renaissance triggered by the publication of critical editions of the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey in the early 1970s and the emergence of the high-energy, high-profile neopragmatism of Richard Rorty in the 1980s and 1990s.) Though there are many individual differences of detail and emphasis among even the big three pragmatists— Peirce, James, and Dewey—a cluster of six commonly shared commitments can be discerned. THE REPUDIATION OF THE PROJECT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

As noted above, the American pragmatists rejected the search for certain, timeless, universal answers to ultimate questions about Reality, Truth, God, and the Good. Rather than a theoretical pursuit, philosophy is seen as an instrument responding to concrete and tractable real problems. In his seminal essay, “The Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy”(1909), Dewey explains that “the bearing of Darwinian ideas upon philosophy” is that “the new logic outlaws, flanks, dismisses—what you will—one type of problems and substitutes for it another type. Philosophy forswears inquiry after absolute origins and absolute finalities in order to explore specific values and the specific conditions that generate them” (Collected Writings: Middle Works 4:10). Dewey further argued that all forms of intelligence are inherently critical; philosophy, because of its generality and fundamental nature, is “criticism of criticisms.” Accordingly, philosophy’s duty of cultural critique is in the service of social reconstruction and the amelioration of human suffering. “Philosophy,” he wrote in a 1917 paper (“The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy”), “recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men” (Collected Writings: Middle Works 10:46).

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

P R A G M AT I S M

PHILOSOPHY AS A PLURALISTIC AND HUMANISTIC ENTERPRISE

Pragmatists deem a comprehensive perspective and a total picture beyond the ken of humans. Philosophy’s claims are understood to be inherently partial, contextdependent, tentative, and transactional articulations of the human perspective. William James is especially keen on these characteristics. Note these comments from his highly influential Pragmatism (1907): first on pluralism and then on humanism: But as the sciences have developed farther, the notion has gained ground that most, perhaps all, of our laws are only approximations. The laws themselves, moreover, have grown so numerous that there is no counting them; and so many rival formulations are proposed in all the branches of science that investigators have become accustomed to the notion that no theory is absolutely a transcript of reality, but that any one of them may from some point of view be useful. Their great use is to summarize old facts and to lead to new ones. They are only a man-made language, a conceptual shorthand, as someone calls them, in which we write our reports of nature; and languages, as is well known, tolerate much choice of expression and many dialects. (Works: Pragmatism, p. 33) Laws and languages at any rate are thus seen to be man-made: things. Mr. Schiller [a contemporary European pragmatist] applies the analogy to beliefs, and proposes the name of “Humanism” to the doctrine that to an unascertainable extent our truths are man-made products too. Human motives sharpen all our questions, human satisfactions lurk in all our answers, all our formulas have a human twist. . . . You see how naturally one comes to the humanistic principle: you can’t weed out the human contribution. Our nouns and adjectives are all humanized heirlooms, and in the theories we build them into, the inner order and arrangement is wholly dictated by human considerations, intellectual consistency being one of them. Mathematics and logic are themselves fermenting with human rearrangements; physics, astronomy and biology follow massive cues of human preference. (Works: Pragmatism, pp. 116–117, 122)

Note how sweeping is James’s claim: not just philosophy, literature, and the humanities in general but also mathematics, logic, and the empirical sciences are humanistic enterprises. Humans, insists James, must continually acknowledge the irreducible plurality of experience and the inescapable lens of perspective. AN EXPERIENTIAL, EVOLUTIONARY, AND PROCESS ORIENTATION

Pragmatists see Experience, not Reality, as the subject matter for reflection and analysis. John Dewey, for A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

example, describes the project of metaphysics as the discovery of the generic traits of reality. Among the traits that Dewey examines are experience as stable, precarious, eventful, active, genuine, spurious, nurturing, hazardous, changing, continuous, practical and experimental, filled with initiations and consummations, funded with meanings, and social. Pragmatism replaces the spectator view of knowledge, including its assumption that one’s ideas “copy” a static universe, with the view that, as a knower, one is an involved participant who makes and remakes the universe. As part of pragmatism’s war campaign against all dualisms (subject/object, matter/spirit, appearance/reality, means/ends), James and Dewey looked for terms that would get behind (or under) the known/knower opposition. Dewey, in particular, was adamant that experience (not reality or things or consciousness) is problematic and in need of investigation. To further stress the active and interactive process involved in knowing, Dewey initially described knowledge as a “transaction”; later he preferred the term “negotiation.” “Experience,” he writes in “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy,” is primarily a process of undergoing: a process of standing something; of suffering and passion, of affection, in the literal sense of these words. The organism has to endure, to undergo, the consequences of its own actions. Experience is no slipping along in a path fixed by inner consciousness. . . . Undergoing, however, is never mere passivity. . . . Experience, in other words, is a matter of simultaneous doings and sufferings. Our undergoings are experiments in varying the course of events; our active tryings are trials and tests of ourselves. (Collected Writings: Middle Works 10:8–10)

The impact of Darwinian evolution is pervasive in pragmatic philosophy. If all of reality is in evolutionary flux, there are no immutable natures to anchor knowledge or to ground values. Given the ascent of Darwin, everything is in process. A SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM FOR PHILOSOPHY

As also noted above, if the scientific method is the only trustworthy and defensible method of inquiry, then ideas are best understood as tools. If every belief is corrigible, one’s standards for knowledge must be modestly downgraded to an expectation of high probability. Dewey offers “warranted assertability” (instead of certainty or Truth) as a realistic and assessable goal for true beliefs. Pragmatism’s antifoundational stance treats every belief as criticizable and revisable. Peirce writing in 1897 observed that “no man of self-respect ever now states his result without affixing to it its probable error” (Collected Papers 1:9)— a posture he


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

891

P R A G M AT I S M

dubbed “fallibilism.” He further urged that all dogmas be greeted with extreme skepticism. Peirce kept every issue open to reexamination, offering as “the first rule of reason. . . . ‘Do not block the road to inquiry’” (Collected Papers 1:136). In his famous “The Will to Believe” essay, James stresses the importance of sustaining a tension between trusting and questioning our beliefs. I live, to be sure, by the practical faith that we must go on experiencing and thinking over our experience, for only thus can our opinions grow more true; but to hold any one of them—I absolutely do not care which—as if it never could be re-interpretable or corrigible, I believe to be a tremendously mistaken attitude, and I think that the whole history of philosophy will bear me out. (Works: The Will to Believe, p. 22)

The pragmatic notion of ideas as trustworthy tools can be highlighted by a favorite paradigm: an idea as map. Ideas do not duplicate sensations or impressions nor do they picture reality; ideas guide. A map is an extraordinarily compact summary of past experience that literally leads us. A reliable map gets one to one’s destination (and a faulty one gets one lost). Note that one more naturally speaks of a reliable or good or useful map instead of a true one. In Pragmatism, James puts it this way: Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and coordinate with it. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons. . . . Her only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience’s demands, nothing being omitted. (Works: Pragmatism, pp. 42, 44)

In short, for the pragmatists reflective thought is a response to concrete, real-life problems, and truth is proximately measured by its effectiveness in accomplishing specific, practical goals and ultimately gauged by its ability to promote long-term human flourishing.

MELIORISM, HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY, AND A FINITE GOD

Pragmatists reject both pessimism and optimism in favor of the view that improvement is possible. Accordingly humans are responsible for designing workable, ongoing, revisable solutions to better the lot of their fellows. Lest human freedom, initiative, and responsibility be compromised, God is seen as a powerful, though finite, partner in improving the world. In the final chapter of

892

A M E R I C A N

Pragmatism, James asks his readers to imagine God, at the moment of creation, putting the following case to his human cocreators: I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own “level best.” I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust other agents enough to face the risk? (Works: Pragmatism, p. 139)

With regard to religion, the pragmatists are, predictably, more interested in assessing the valuable (and sometimes deleterious) effects of belief in God (rather than in engaging in debate about the perennial philosophical questions regarding the existence and attributes of God). In this connection, James argues that with no other reasons to believe in God, “men would postulate one simply as a pretext for living hard, and getting out of the game of existence its keenest possibilities of zest” (Works: The Will to Believe, p. 161). In other words, religion’s chief value is as a catalyst for the strenuous mood. AN EMERGENT, COMMUNAL, AND SOCIAL SELF

Because pragmatism sees the assessment of social and public policies as an essential task, concerns with individual insight and personal satisfaction are relegated to the periphery. Even more fundamentally, a preexistent, inner transcendental self is supplanted by a model of selfhood in which both self-awareness and selfconstitution are socially and behaviorally generated. The pragmatists’ interest in psychology is striking. Following the publication of his monumental and groundbreaking two-volume masterpiece The Principles of Psychology (1890), James turned in 1895 to applied psychology, giving summer school lectures in Boston, at the Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, and as far west as Colorado Springs. These lectures were published as Talks to Teachers in 1899. Dewey’s work followed the same pattern. Beginning with several volumes devoted to psychological issues, he then turned to pedagogy and related educational issues. His sustained critique of the American educational establishment’s misguided views of human development and its faulty emphasis on recitation and memorization in the curricula had a profound impact upon American society. With regard to human development, the contributions of a second-generation pragmatist, George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), are also noteworthy. Mead—who had been a disciple of John Dewey at the

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

P R A G M AT I S M

University of Chicago—was neither a prolific nor a popular philosopher, but his theories were revolutionary and influential. His approach to selfhood is explicitly developmental and behavioristic. The title of one of his influential essays asked: “Mind Approached through Behavior—Can Its Study Be Made Scientific?” Mead’s response to his own question was, of course, “yes”—as his study of the gestures of lower animals (concentrating on the growls and barks of dogs) led to his theories about human development: How can an individual get outside himself (experientially) in such a way as to become an object to himself? This is the essential psychological problem of selfhood or of self-consciousness; and its solution is to found by referring to the process of social conduct or activity in which the given person or individual is implicated. . . . The individual experiences himself as such, not directly, but only indirectly from the particular standpoints of other individual members of the same social group, or from the generalized standpoint of the social group as a whole to which he belongs. . . . in so far as he first becomes an object to himself just as other individuals are objects to him or in his experience; and he becomes an object to himself only by taking the attitudes of other individuals toward himself within a social environment or context of experience and behavior in which both he and they are involved. . . . It is impossible to conceive a self arising outside of social experience. (Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, pp. 138–140)

Most of Mead’s writings appeared from the mid1930s onward. There is, therefore, good reason to believe that, in this case, the clear vector of influence was from literature to philosophy (and psychology). That is, American literary realism and naturalism— the focus upon behavior, environment, materialism, and the human animal, found in the work of such authors as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser—were undoubtedly the decisive influences upon philosophers, not vice versa.

London, Jack. Novels and Stories. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1982. London, Jack. The Sea-Wolf. 1904. Edited by Donald Pizer. New York: Library of America, 1986. Mead, George Herbert. The Individual and the Social Self: Unpublished Work of George Herbert Mead. Edited by David L. Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Edited by Charles W. Morris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934. Norris, Frank. “The Need of a Literary Conscience.” In his Novels and Essays, pp. 1157–1160. New York: Library of American, 1986 Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers. 8 vols. Edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Wiess. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960. Includes “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities” (1868), “The Fixation of Belief” (1877), and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878). Peirce, Charles Sanders. Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. 6 vols. Edited by Max W. Fisch, Nathan Houser et al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982–2002. Thirty volumes are projected to complete this edition. Rorty, Richard. The Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972–1980. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Secondary Works

Dooley, Patrick. “William James on the Human Way of Being.” Personalist Forum 6 (1990): 75–85. McDermott, John J. Streams of Experience: Reflections on the History and Philosophy of American Culture. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986. Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Menand, Louis. “The Return of Pragmatism.” American Heritage 89 (October 1997): 48–63.

See also Philosophy; Pragmatism; Realism

Singer, Marcus G., ed. American Philosophy. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Dewey, John. The Collected Writings of John Dewey, 1882– 1953. 37 vols. Edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969–1991. James, William. The Correspondence of William James. 11 vols. Edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992–2003. Twelve volumes are projected.

A M E R I C A N

James, William. The Works of William James. 19 vols. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975–1988.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Stuhr, John J., ed. Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy: Essential Readings and Interpretative Essays. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Wilshire, Bruce. “But Where Are the Metaphysics?” Times Literary Supplement, 26 July 2002, pp. 28–29. Review of Menand’s The Metaphysical Club.


Patrick K. Dooley

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

893

PRAGMATISM

PRAGMATISM Pragmatism is a philosophical approach that measures the truth of an idea by experimentation and by examining its practical outcome. Pragmatists believe that truth can be modified; that human values are essential to academic inquiry; that truth is not absolute; that meaning and action are intimately connected; and that ideas are to be evaluated by whether they promote consistency and predictability. One of the staunchest advocates of pragmatism was William James (1842– 1910), whose ability to translate difficult philosophical principles for laypersons helped spread the tenets of pragmatism during the 1890s and the first quarter of the twentieth century, although James himself died in 1910. One of James’s most important contributions to the study of pragmatism is his concern with religion. According to James, truth should be evaluated based on its impact on human behavior; therefore, one’s religious faith can be justified if it makes a positive difference in one’s life. A professor in the Department of Humanistic Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, Bryan Vescio argues in his introduction to Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking that words such as “pragmatism” and “pragmatist” are used constantly in conversation, but the words have taken on a negative connotation; Vescio suggests that they have come to “denote merely a general willingness to compromise principles, even to the point of selfishness or irresponsibility, not the specific philosophical alternative to essentialism and foundationalism that James articulated” (p. ix). William James, the son of philosopher Henry James Sr. and brother of novelist Henry James, is considered one of the most influential American philosophers and an example of how theories of knowledge may be applied to contemporary questions. James turned from physiology to psychology when he began teaching at Harvard in 1875. Then he was drawn to the philosophy of Charles Renouvier, and during the 1890s he responded to Renouvier’s theories with a series of lectures, which were collected as Pragmatism. The book was James’s last major academic achievement: he retired from teaching in 1907 and died three years later. THE IMPORTANCE OF PRAGMATISM

In both Pragmatism (1907) and The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism (1909), James argues that the “need of an eternal moral order is one of the deepest needs of our breast” (Pragmatism, p. 47). Written to provide access to the ideals of one philosophical system for those interested in bettering their

894

A M E R I C A N

William James, c. 1900.

© BETTMANN/CORBIS

lives, Pragmatism acquired its subtitle, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, when James published the collection of eight essays some ten years after he had begun to compose them. James presented the lectures that constitute Pragmatism at the Lowell Institute in Boston in the winter of 1906 and again at Columbia University in the winter of 1907. According to Bryan Vescio’s introduction to the 2003 edition of Pragmatism, the “purpose of the lectures and the book they became was at once to popularize contemporary trends in philosophy and to offer a new position to mediate its disputes” (p. xi). Its publication sparked what Vescio calls “wild popularity among lay readers and resentment among professional philosophers” (p. xi). The book is essential to those interested in philosophy because James’s pragmatism suggests that the “foundations of ultimate beliefs are generally non-rational and demands that theory be answerable to concrete experience” (Vescio, p. xi). Darwinism and other scientific approaches, which held sway among philosophers in James’s time, suggested that human beings were controlled by laws of

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PRAGMATISM

nature. Such an approach left little room for free will. James, a follower of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a nineteenth-century transcendentalist who celebrated individual choice and intellectual inquiry, was concerned about the limitations of such scientific and philosophical theories. He was reassured by Renouvier’s argument that the capacity to hold a belief when others are available is proof of the existence of free will. This led to James’s famous declaration that his first act of free will would be to believe in free will. James also turned to the work of his friend Charles Sanders Peirce, who coined the term “pragmatism” during conversations at the Metaphysical Club, a group formed in the 1870s that included writers and thinkers such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “Pragmatism” was the view that a thought’s value lay in its practical consequences and it connected James to Socrates and Aristotle, both of whom used ordinary experience as a test for their theories. (Here, incidentally, lies one explanation for the subtitle. James’s book relies on ideas held by Peirce but it marks the first time anyone attempted consistently and thoroughly to consider the implications of pragmatist thought.) THE COLLECTED LECTURES

In “Lecture I: The Present Dilemma in Philosophy,” James puts pragmatism in the context of previous philosophical movements, arguing for its preeminence and suggesting similarities between it and other philosophical approaches. Most important, he addresses his lay audience directly, reassuring them and making them part of his quest for applicable knowledge. For example, James writes, “For the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos” (p. 1). He suggests that there is a “curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even though neither we nor the disputants understand them. We get the problematic thrill, we feel the presence of the vastness” (p. 2). It is this vastness that James’s essays address. For example, he writes: Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out the widest vistas. It “bakes no bread,” as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage; and repugnant as its manners, its doubting and challenging, its quibbling and dialectics, often are to common people, no one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world’s perspectives. (P. 2)

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

In his second lecture, “What Pragmatism Means,” James explains how pragmatism can provide real approaches to ideas that seem impenetrable, since “new truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions” (p. 27) and that “pragmatism may be a happy harmonizer of empiricist ways of thinking with the more religious demands of human beings” (p. 31). The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many?—fated or free?—material or spiritual—here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right. (P. 20)

In the third lecture, “Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered,” James addresses the difference between what he calls material and spiritual substance. The heart of his argument lies in the following paragraph: Imagine, in fact, the entire contents of the world to be once for all irrevocably given. Imagine it to end this very moment, and to have no future; and then let a theist and a materialist apply their rival explanations to its history. The theist shows how a God made it; the materialist shows, and we will suppose with equal success, how it resulted from blind physical forces. Then let the pragmatist be asked to choose between their theories. How can he apply his test if a world is already completed? Concepts for him are things to come back into experience with, things to make us look for differences. But by hypothesis there is to be no more experience and no possible differences can now be looked for: Both theories have shown all their consequences and, by the hypothesis we are adopting, these are identical. The pragmatist must consequently say that the two theories, in spite of their different-sounding names, mean exactly the same thing, and that the dispute is purely verbal. (P. 42)

In the fifth lecture, James explains “common sense,” a phrase that has a different meaning in philosophical discussions than in everyday conversations. “In practical talk, a man’s common sense means his good judgment, his freedom from eccentricity, his gumption, to use the vernacular word. In philosophy it


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

895

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

means something entirely different, it means his use of certain intellectual forms or categories of thought” (pp. 74–75). In the sixth lecture, James explains his definition of truth: “True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we can not. . . The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events” (p. 88). In lectures seven and eight, on humanism and religion respectively, James grapples with the human desire to find one truth—what he calls “all the great single-word answers to the world’s riddle, such as God, the One, Reason, Law, Spirit, Matter, Nature, Polarity, the Dialectic Process, the Idea, the Self, the Oversoul” (p. 105)—and suggests new ways of thinking about one’s humanity and one’s need for belief in a higher being or concept. Here again is evidence of James’s best and most distinctive quality as a philosopher and human being. He identifies with his audience and readers, and with vulnerability and wisdom acknowledges how difficult the concepts of pragmatism might be to embrace. “There are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick of self and tired of vainly striving. . . . There can be no doubt that when men are reduced to their last sick extremity absolutism is the only saving scheme” (pp. 129–30). In his final lectures, James argues that pragmatism can be called “religious” if one is willing to embrace a pluralistic faith. He suggests that by virtue of its central truths, it will draw followers who are willing to “postpone dogmatic answer” (p. 133). For those willing to live in the intellectual limbo he describes in Pragmatism, James’s philosophical system may be its own reassurance: “Between the two extremes of crude naturalism on the one hand and transcendental absolutism on the other, you may find that what I take the liberty of calling the pragmatistic or melioristic type of theism is exactly what you require” (p. 134). The impact of Pragmatism is undeniable. The philosophical perspective espoused in the landmark book bears similarities to the modern and postmodern ideas expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida. For many reasons, not the least its readability, the book remains central to those interested in philosophy. “The unmistakable personal style of William James is everywhere in the book,” says Vescio, “from its homey metaphors and examples drawn from ordinary experience to its pleas to its readers for indulgence to its often exultant celebration of human potential” (p. xv). See also Philosophy; Pragmatism

896

A M E R I C A N

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Work

James, William. Pragmatism. 1907. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2003. Secondary Works

Allen, Gay Wilson. William James. New York: Viking, 1967. Ayer, Alfred Jules. The Origins of Pragmatism: Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. San Francisco: Freeman and Cooper, 1968. Cooper, Wesley. The Unity of William James’s Thought. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002. Dooley, Patrick Kiaran. Pragmatism as Humanism: The Philosophy of William James. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1974. Gale, Richard M. The Divided Self of William James. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Knox, Howard Vicente. The Philosophy of William James. London: Constable, 1914. Moore, Edward Center. American Pragmatism: Peirce, James, and Dewey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Perry, Ralph Barton. The Thought and Character of William James. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996. Roth, John K. Freedom and the Moral Life: The Ethics of William James. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969. Scheffler, Israel. Four Pragmatists: A Critical Introduction to Peirce, James, Mead, and Dewey. New York: Humanities Press, 1974. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. Chaos and Context: A Study in William James. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978. Suckiel, Ellen Kappy. The Pragmatic Philosophy of William James. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982. Jan Whitt

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS Although the Civil War had been over for five years by 1870, its deathlock grip on electoral politics remained tight through the century, and perhaps beyond. Appointing two former Confederates to his first cabinet in 1885 was a controversial act for President Grover Cleveland (1837–1908), the only Democrat elected to the White House between the Civil War and 1912. The Republican Party depended on its base of pro-Union voters to respond loyally to its platform, which favored the interests of business over those of farmers, workers, debtors, former Confederates, immigrants, and other seemingly disparate single-issues groups, whom the Democratic

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Party found difficult to herd under a common banner throughout the period of 1870 to 1920. Often, those separate groups splintered into third parties. Both major parties, for example, supported some form of tariff on imported goods—the Democrats wanted a tariff high enough to bring in needed revenue, and the Republicans wanted the tariff even higher, to protect American business from foreign competition. Tariff policy remained a constant problem through the late nineteenth century, yet the eventual solution— raising revenue by a national income tax—was the program of neither major party. These third parties—such as the Greenback Party, the Socialist Party, the Prohibition Party, the Populist Party, the Progressive Party, and many others—drew millions of popular votes for presidential candidates whose positions, radical at the time, often came to be embraced by one or both major parties by the midtwentieth century. Men and women with prescient ideas (the Equal Rights Party nominated women for the presidency in 1884 and 1888) expressed their ideas in political campaigns and in their writing, some of which was remarkably popular: Edward Bellamy’s bestselling utopian novel of 1888, Looking Backward, 2000–1887, foresaw a twentieth century that abounded in equity, progressive thought, and peace. No major party, of course, came close to endorsing Bellamy’s vision, but the short-lived Nationalist Party did support his utopian views. The appeal of Bellamy’s ideas, as such, was due to their “fictive impact” (as Jay Martin argues in Harvests of Change), which allowed the ideas to reach a wider audience than an economist like Thorstein Veblen, for example, could hope to reach. Other visionaries tried projecting political ideas into literary forms—William Dean Howells wrote utopias, A Traveler from Altruria in 1894 and Through the Eye of the Needle in 1907, as did Charlotte Perkins Gilman in Moving the Mountain (1911), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916). Bellamy himself wrote a less successful sequel in Equality in 1897, but such imaginative thinking was decades ahead of the hardheaded, practical politics of this era. Writers of dystopias, too, flourished: Minnesota Congressman Ignatius Donnelly, author of the widely read novel Caesar’s Column (1889), foretelling a totalitarian twentieth century, also wrote the 1892 Populist Party platform denouncing the Democratic and Republican pursuit of “power and plunder” while masking their true venality behind “a sham battle over the tariff.” PASSIVE PRESIDENCIES

Between the Grant administration and the Harding administration, the American president generally occupied a less prominent place than the leading American A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Increase in electoral votes from 1872 to 1920 State California Colorado Illinois Kansas Louisiana Massachusetts Minnesota Nebraska New Jersey New York North Dakota Oklahoma Pennsylvania South Dakota Texas Washington

1872

1920

5 — 21 5 8 13 5 3 9 35 — — 29 — 8 —

13 6 29 10 10 18 12 8 14 45 5 10 38 5 20 7

Note: Included are those states where there was an increase in 5 or more electoral votes from 1872 to 1920. Colorado, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Washington were territories in 1872.

businessmen. As capitalists such as John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller invented new ways to make money, government considered carefully whether restraining that moneymaking urge could be in the public interest, and if so, what methods of restraint could be employed, both practically and legally. Some of the most powerful fiction of the period featured businessmen as protagonists devoting themselves to amassing great wealth and power, acts at which they prove far more successful than at finding ways to restrain themselves from immoral behavior: Theodore Dreiser’s Frank Cowperwood, Howells’s Silas Lapham, and Frank Norris’s Curtis Jadwin all exemplify this figure of the grasping, morally obtuse American businessman of the time. As the Gilded Age endured, fictional portraits of business leaders grew less and less admiring, but even at the outset astute observers saw the need to control big business’s appetite: “The depravity of the business classes,” Walt Whitman observed in 1871, “is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater” (p. 214). While big businesses prospered, presidents, starting with Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885), surrendered the active role to other branches of government: when legislators “visited the White House,” said a member of Congress during Grant’s administration, “it was to give, not to receive advice” (Nelson, p. 88). The scandals erupting from this lack of leadership—the gold crisis of 1869, the Crédit Mobilier scandal unearthed just before the 1872 election, the Whiskey Ring discovered after it, and numerous lesser scandals—inspired Mark Twain (and Charles Dudley Warner to dub the period (and their coauthored 1874 novel) “The Gilded Age,” in


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

897


honor of the superficial probity of the lackluster leaders whose policy of laissez-faire capitalism enabled the voracious and ethically dubious business practices of the late nineteenth century to dominate American culture. The efficiency of wealth and power concentrated into large corporations was not questioned by either major political party or the courts, as third parties and journalists loudly but fruitlessly decried their excesses, rarely even slowing their progress. Saddled with a hopelessly corrupt administration as he strove for re-election in 1872, Ulysses S. Grant ran against former fellow Republican Horace Greeley (1811–1872). Lacking an effective candidate of its own, the Democratic Party endorsed Greeley out of sheer desperation, although Supreme Court Justice Salmon B. Chase and diplomat Charles Francis Adams vied for the nomination. An ardent abolitionist, Greeley gained the support of Southern Democrats, who preferred his plans for the withdrawal of federal troops from southern soil to a second Grant administration enforcing radical reconstruction of the south. Former slaves continued to support the Grant administration with their votes, contributing heavily to Grant’s political success. An energetic campaigner against Grant’s ineffective intervention in the scandals of his appointees, Greeley was derided during the campaign as a do-gooder and too incompetent, according to Mark Twain’s 1872 volume Roughing It, to answer a farmer’s simple question about turnips. Greeley’s editorials in his New York Tribune had long advocated for unpopular positions, such as temperance and women’s rights, a record that now emerged in the increasingly vituperative campaign. Although the unkempt Greeley was a strong speaker who enjoyed enthusiastic support among his followers, he lacked the dignified, statesmanlike bearing that Grant projected. (Twain lampooned Greeley as a careful dresser who would spend hours searching through his discarded laundry for a suitably soiled shirt to wear on the campaign trail.) Grant’s record as a war hero, still overshadowing his appointees’ record for unprecedented corruption, won him a comfortable majority of popular votes, and 286 Electoral College votes. Greeley earned some 63 electoral votes but never lived to receive a single one: shortly after Election Day, Greeley suffered a massive breakdown, both physically and emotionally, and he died within a month of the election. Because of further scandal in the second Grant administration, such as the Whiskey Ring, and economic hard times caused by the panic of 1873, the Democrats took back the house of representatives in 1874 and looked to consolidate their gains in the upcoming presidential election. They nominated Samuel Tilden

898

A M E R I C A N

(1814–1886), who had been elected governor of New York on the basis of his exposure of the infamously corrupt Tammany Hall ring led by William “Boss” Tweed. As governor, Tilden then went on to the Canal Ring, a conspiracy to defraud the state budget, and seemed an ideal candidate to campaign against the Grant administration’s besmirched record. Also running as a reformer was Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893), a former Civil War general. After simmering for the past decade in national campaigns, the passions of the Civil War boiled over in the election of 1876, nearly causing a second Civil War. THE ELECTORAL CRISIS OF 1876

Hayes’s supporters, like Grant’s, had waved “the bloody shirt” to rally Republican voters; Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899), campaigning for Hayes, reminded Union veterans that “every man that shot Union soldiers was a Democrat.” Republicans characterized their political opponents as traitors, creating a rancorous climate that grew only worse as the campaign continued. Tilden easily won the majority of popular votes. In the Electoral College, he stood only a single electoral vote shy of a majority, with fifteen electoral votes from Florida, South Carolina, Oregon, and Louisiana in dispute. To break the virtual deadlock, Congress appointed a fourteen-member commission, equally split between Democrats and Republicans: five senators, five congressmen, and four Supreme Court justices, who were then empowered to appoint a fifteenth member, ultimately a Republican replacement felt capable by Democrats of rendering a nonpartisan decision. In February, three months after the voting was concluded and one month before the new president would be inaugurated, the commission voted 8 to 7, in favor of Hayes, along party lines. Since the Republicans had demonized Southern Democrats in the “bloody shirt” campaign, the Democrats stood on the brink of rejecting the commission’s judgment. Had they done so, a second Civil War might have erupted, but Governor Tilden persuaded his supporters to abide by the commission’s ruling. In conceding defeat, Tilden told supporters, “I can retire to private life with the consciousness that I shall receive from posterity the credit of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people, without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office,” an expression of relief some found too convincing. But settling the election of 1876 also involved brokering a deal that would affect generations of Americans: over the course of reaching a compromise solution, the Republicans agreed to concessions that Southern Democrats particularly wanted: to withdraw federal

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


troops from the South and to allow Southern whites to control voting in their states. This last concession nullified the Southern black vote and, in effect, allowed the American South to practice segregation within its own borders while nominally subject to federal law. The betrayal felt by black Americans after the resolution of the 1876 election was voiced by such writers as Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Waddell Chesnutt, and James Weldon Johnson. Farmers, and other borrowers of money, were hoping for a softer money policy resulting in inflated dollars that would be easier to pay back, but they, too, were disappointed to have Hayes elected, in that his hard-money fiscal policies were aimed at shoring up the dollar, not at relieving the problem of debtors. Fiction writers, most notably Hamlin Garland (1860– 1940) in his 1891 collection Main-Travelled Roads, described “the endless drudgery” of farming, while chroniclers of urban misery, such as Henry Fuller (1857–1929), author of The Cliff-Dwellers (1892), described squelched lives as dreary as those of their rural counterparts. The Democratic Party would continue to be divided for at least another generation, as its constituencies, of big-city labor, rural farmers, immigrants, and blacks, had varied and often conflicting needs. The Republicans were also divided: deeply unpopular, President Hayes let it be known that he was unwilling to run for re-election in 1880. Hayes had virtually courted the disdain of Washington by applying his own rectitude to the office. He refused, for example, a presidential appointment to his own nominator at the 1876 convention, Robert G. Ingersoll, on moral and religious grounds. Praised in The Autobiography of Mark Twain (1956) as “the silver-tongued infidel,” Ingersoll, an effective and flamboyant orator, was famous for his denunciations of religion. (Ingersoll played a small but interesting role in the genesis of one of the most popular novels of the late nineteenth century, made even more popular on stage and on screen in the twentieth as well. After discussing religion with the notoriously nonbelieving Ingersoll, Lew Wallace came away determined to write a novel about his own personal beliefs, which turned out to be Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ [1880].) Ingersoll denounced Hayes for his cowardice in denying him political preference, and he was not alone in finding Hayes finally lacking in strong leadership. With Hayes out of the running, Ulysses S. Grant let it be known that he was willing to serve a third term as president. The conservative wing of the Republican Party, known as “Stalwarts,” supported the front-runner, Grant, while the more moderate wing, the “Half Breeds,” favored Senators James G. Blaine (1830– 1893) of Maine or John Sherman (1823–1900) of Ohio. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

In nominating Sherman for the presidency, Ohio Congressman James A. Garfield delivered a low-key reasoned address, and his manner impressed the delegates with his potential as a compromise candidate. They nominated the astounded Garfield on the thirtysixth ballot. A major issue of division in the party was that of patronage: the Stalwart wing of the party opposed large-scale civil service reform, regarding such appointments as the just reward for political services rendered. The Half Breeds sought to advance President Hayes’s tepid attempts to introduce merit into civil service appointments, and Garfield’s acceptance of a Stalwart, Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886) of New York, as his vice presidential candidate united the party for the general election. Now that Reconstruction of the South, a divisive point of contention in previous election campaigns, was over, the parties needed to find other issues by which to distinguish themselves for the electorate. Feeling cheated by the results of the previous election, Democrats attacked Garfield’s service on the election commission that had selected President Hayes as the winner in 1876, and they criticized Garfield’s involvement in the Credit Mobilier scandal during the Grant administration, in which Garfield received a small sum intended to influence his vote in Congress. A deciding factor may have been the still-lingering Greenback Party, which won over 300,000 votes on a platform of inflationary paper currency, aimed at relieving debtors. The Democrats, headed by former the Civil War general Winfield Scott Hancock, lost the popular vote by a smaller margin than the vote total of the Greenback Party, which siphoned votes away from the Democrats. Concentrating their strength in the South, the Democrats lost by fewer than 10,000 popular votes and by a 214 to 155 margin in the Electoral College. Garfield’s choice of Chester A. Arthur proved critical when four months into the new administration, Garfield was assassinated. Unlike Garfield, Arthur had achieved distinction prior to his vice presidency primarily at a patronage job. As Collector of the Port of New York City, Arthur had been responsible for collecting much of the nation’s tariff revenues. Although patronage had been the bane of presidents for decades, wasting much of their time and energy squabbling with local leaders over whose candidate got which petty job in repayment for political services rendered, it was so deeply entrenched that it remained in force as powerful as ever until, as president, Arthur surprisingly turned against it and was able to institute some mild Civil Service reforms, such as the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, which required candidates for federal positions to take competitive examinations. Garfield’s assassin, in publicly proclaiming his Stalwart


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

899


loyalties, may have created suspicion that Arthur was somehow involved in the assassination, so Arthur felt obliged to pursue reforms to clear his administration of partisan suspicions. ARTHUR AND CLEVELAND TRY REFORM

Unhappily for him, Arthur’s own political base, the Stalwart wing of the Republican Party, failed to appreciate the conciliatory strategy. Having no interest in nominating Arthur for a term of his own, the Republicans considered the Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman, whose lack of ambition for the presidency was expressed in his famously firm disavowal: “If nominated. I will not accept; If elected, I will not serve.” Thus squelched, they turned once more to James G. Blaine, who had served as Arthur’s own secretary of state. Along with the Stalwarts, the more liberal elements of the Republican Party also mistrusted Arthur, probably from a lack of familiarity with him, and they bolted the Republican Party. These disaffected Republican liberals, calling themselves “Mugwumps,” felt that Blaine represented corruption, having become wealthy in a life of public service positions. (The anonymously written 1880 novel Democracy—of which Henry Adams was posthumously revealed the author in 1918—was read as a titillating roman-à-clef, with its villainous political manueverer thought to be a thinly disguised James G. Blaine suavely arguing against what he termed a government “artificially” purer than the society it represented.) Refusing to explain whence his personal fortune had come, Blaine defended his record by claiming that no proof had been offered against him. When letters surfaced showing Blaine’s unethical practices (Blaine’s incriminating postscript asked its recipient to “Burn this letter”) the Mugwumps supported the Democratic candidate. That turned out to be Grover Cleveland, the effective reformist governor of New York State, and enemy of Tammany Hall. “We love him for the enemies he has made” was a Cleveland slogan of 1884, indicating the strong partisan nature of the campaign. When Cleveland admitted to fathering an illegitimate child, Republicans chanted “Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa?” (Democrats topped that with: “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha”). The election of 1884 also marked the first presidential election in twenty years not to have on the ballot at least one former Union general: neither Blaine nor Cleveland had served in the Civil War. But the “bloody shirt” was nonetheless again waved: a minister, in Blaine’s presence, characterized the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism and rebellion.” When Blaine did not repudiate that charge, he lost crucial Irish American support. For their part, Democrats referred to Blaine’s evasiveness about his

900

A M E R I C A N

own financial history by rhyming, “Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine, Monumental liar from the state of Maine!” (Nelson, p. 288). Cleveland’s margin of victory, 219 to 182, seems less narrow than it was, in that New York State, with thirty-six electoral votes, went Democratic by the slimmest of margins, barely over a thousand votes. Had six hundred New Yorkers voted Republican instead, New York and thus the nation would have elected Blaine. The only Democrat elected president in the late nineteenth century, Cleveland attempted to reform long-standing policies of his Republican predecessors he considered corrupt, with marginal success. He supported the ill-fated Dawes Act of 1887, which sought to give citizenship and land ownership to tribal Indians, passionately sought by Helen Hunt Jackson in her 1881 exposé Century of Dishonor and her 1884 novel Ramona. Cleveland also tried to stem the flow of pension moneys granted to Union veterans, a source of hardcore Republican support. He was less effective in reducing the tariff, which, coupled with his appointment of two former Confederates to his Cabinet, became an issue in Cleveland’s re-election campaign of 1888. Indiana Senator Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901), the Republican nominee in 1888, made the tariff into the main issue of the campaign, which was generally perceived as decorous and issues-oriented, following the raucous campaign of 1884. The election of 1888 was the first in which both parties’ candidates campaigned via written-out position papers arguing the merits of the issues. Lew Wallace, best-selling novelist, governor of the New Mexico territory, and (like Harrison) another former Union general in the Civil War, contributed a campaign biography of Harrison, whose stiff personality resisted all attempts to package him as the “Grandson of Tippecanoe.” In another close election, Harrison won both his home state of Indiana and Cleveland’s home state of New York by narrow margins, beating Cleveland in the electoral vote, although Cleveland gathered some 100,000 more popular votes than Harrison. Re-elected to a second (nonconsecutive) term in 1892, however, Cleveland saw the national economy almost immediately collapse. The depression emboldened Cleveland to act assertively. Backed up by the courts, this assertiveness allowed future presidents to take more active roles in leading the government. Cleveland’s method of combating the 1894 strike against Pullman workers, for example, was to call out federal troops, citing the “danger and public distress” caused by the strike. Hoping to draw conservative support to his bold policy, Cleveland instead drove

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Labor’s support from it. The Democratic Party turned to William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), a thirty-sixyear-old populist orator from Nebraska, as their candidate in 1896. Bryan electrified the 1896 convention with his powerful plea for monetary reform, charging his listeners not to “crucify Mankind on a cross of gold.” Ultimately as unsuccessful in running for the presidency as anyone has been (Bryan would be defeated in 1896, 1900, and 1908), the populist Bryan set an agenda for the Democratic Party that was sharply distinct from the Republican platform, and the 1896 election was deeply inspiring to many who had been disenchanted with the bland similarity of the two major parties’ policies. Bryan’s first evangelical campaign was characterized in a nostalgic 1919 poem that was perhaps Vachel Lindsay’s (1879–1931) most focused: “Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan” spoke of its hero’s losing effort as a triumph of American independence. He castigated Bryan’s Republican opponent, Ohio Governor William McKinley (1843–1901), hand-chosen by Republican Party boss Mark Hanna (1837–1904), asking “Where is McKinley, Mark Hanna’s McKinley, / His slave, his echo, his suit of clothes?” And, while attacking other enemies, like President Cleveland and future President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), Lindsay celebrated “that Heaven-born Bryan / That Homer Bryan, who sang from the West,” whose song Lindsay recalled as the “Defeat of my boyhood, defeat of my dream.” Charisma and eloquence were defeated, at least in 1896, by the force of money, as Hanna raised many times the money for McKinley’s campaign as Bryan was able to raise. The decidedly uncharismatic and ineloquent McKinley ran over Bryan like one of the railroads that underwrote the Republican campaign. In opposing the prevailing conservative fiscal policy, Bryan’s pro-silver forces distributed copies of William Hope Harvey’s popular 1893 tract Coin’s Financial School and his 1894 novel A Tale of Two Nations, both of which traced a conspiracy resisting conversion of the monetary standard to London-based Jewish financiers.

THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

This xenophobic vein of populism divided the left for years while McKinley pursued a foreign policy equally intolerant of foreigners. Somewhat reluctantly at first, McKinley seized from Spain the territories of Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, disappointing those who believed that the United States was liberating these oppressed lands from imperialism. Mark Twain, in his 1901 philippic “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” thundered against American hypocrisy in wresting the mantle of oppression from Spain’s shoulders only to place it on its own. What made the A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

hypocrisy particularly galling was the absurd claim that America would bring Christianity to the Spanish possessions, which had been Christian for longer than the United States had been a nation. Many prose writers, including William Dean Howells and W. E. B Du Bois, joined Mark Twain in denouncing U.S. imperialism, among other social ills of the day. Verse writers, too, spoke out: William Vaughn Moody (1869–1910) followed up his 1899 poem “On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines” with his “Ode in a Time of Hesitation” (1900), in which he juxtaposed long-standing American ideals with those of a country that has “stooped to cheat / And scramble in the marketplace of war” (p. 19). Like Twain, an early supporter of the Spanish-American War, Moody felt betrayed by the turn taken by the United States. The most widely read poet of the day, Edwin Markham (1852–1940), published his poem “The Man with the Hoe,” in 1899, arguing that American laborers in a system of laissezfaire capitalism were treated as disposable commodities. Markham’s poem was reviled by critics ranging from his former admirer Ambrose Bierce, who accused the poem of spreading the gospel of hate called “industrial brotherhood,” to Bierce’s adversary, the wealthy industrialist Collis P. Huntington, who sponsored a prize for a poem to argue against Markham. Shortly after McKinley again defeated Bryan, even more decisively than in the previous election, McKinley was assassinated. His vice president, former New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt, combined McKinley’s aggressive foreign policy with some of his own swashbuckling style (Roosevelt had been a much-celebrated hero of the campaign in Cuba) and with his own peculiar brand of domestic reformism, undercutting one of the Democrats’ main issues of contention. A ferocious yet highly selective critic of big business, Roosevelt turned his trust-busting and the general approval of U.S. foreign policy to his electoral advantage, soundly defeating the weak Democratic candidate, New York’s Alton B. Parker, in 1904, restricting Parker’s vote-getting to the Deep South. Outspoken on literary as well as social matters, Roosevelt actively encouraged men and women of letters, breaking racial precedent in inviting a black man (and author) Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House, and elevating the then-obscure Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) to renown by praising his work in print and placing him in a sinecure in the New York customs house. The enthusiastic Roosevelt wrote that he was not sure if he understood “Luke Havergal,” one of Robinson’s more cryptic poems, but he knew that he liked it. Roosevelt also invited to the White House such writers as Henry James, who thought Roosevelt a “dangerous and ominous jingo,”


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

901


and Edith Wharton, upon whose first novel (The Valley of Decision, 1902) the sitting president offered his editorial suggestions. Appreciative of artists, Roosevelt jostled against those writers who entered the political arena with him. Willa Cather, as editor of McClure’s magazine before embarking on her career as a fiction writer, was responsible for the publication of many articles whose “muckraking” particularly irritated Roosevelt. The most effective muckraker was the socialist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968), whose 1906 novel The Jungle described conditions in Chicago’s meatpacking industry that quickly compelled new legislation in the form of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, with Roosevelt’s approval. (When Sinclair had initially called on the president, however, to act on the evils exposed by The Jungle, Roosevelt wrote to Sinclair that he must keep his head.) Although Frank Norris (1870–1902) died young, early in Roosevelt’s first administration, his novels also dramatized forces that Roosevelt would soon seek to control: the railroads’ tyranny over the smaller landholders in The Octopus (1901) and the “malefactors of great wealth” (as Roosevelt would term financiers) in The Pit (1903). Whether in fiction or in journalism, muckraking exposed truths about American culture that Roosevelt preferred to expose himself or else to defend. When Roosevelt pledged not to seek the Republican nomination in 1908, that promise much amused Mark Twain, who was disinclined to credit Roosevelt much for simply keeping his word. Instead, Roosevelt threw his support behind his protégé William Howard Taft (1857–1930), the former governor of the Philippines, who easily defeated William Jennings Bryan in the 1908 election, marking the end of the Populist Party. Although Taft’s policies simply sought to continue Roosevelt’s, arguably more effectively in such areas as opposing trusts, the mercurial Roosevelt soon came to regret stepping aside and, in 1912, formed the Progressive Party in an attempt to unseat Taft. What he accomplished, however, was merely to divide the Republican majority, allowing New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) to win the presidency with only 42 percent of the popular vote (but a commanding 435 to 96 electoral edge over Roosevelt and Taft combined). Roosevelt rationalized his decision to run again by claiming that in disqualifying himself in 1908, he had only meant he would not serve a third consecutive term in the White House. Although Wilson campaigned for re-election in 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war,” he was not able to maintain American neutrality far past his second inauguration. When the United States emerged from the war in 1918, less brutalized than the European powers who had fought in it much longer and had their

902

A M E R I C A N

own countries ravaged by it, young Americans who had served in the war, such as Ernest Hemingway and E. E. Cummings, would feel alienated from the high-minded idealism Wilson professed. The country had become, almost by a process of elimination, a world power, and the relationship between its writers and its leaders would now change too. See also Centennial; Journalism; Political Parties; Populism; Reform BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Adams, Henry. Democracy: An American Novel. 1880. With an introduction by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. New York: Modern Library, 2003. Bellamy, Edward. Equality. 1897. New York: AMS Press, 1970. Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward, 2000–1887. 1888. Indianapolis: Cork Hill Press, 2003. Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. 1889. Edited by Walter B. Rideout. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960. Fuller, Henry. The Cliff-Dwellers. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893. Garland, Hamlin. Main-Travelled Roads. 1891. With an introduction by William Dean Howells. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. Garland, Hamlin. A Spoil of Office: A Story of the Modern West. Boston: Arena, 1892. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. 1915. Edited by Ann J. Lane. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Moving the Mountain.” 1911. In The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader, edited by Ann J. Lane. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. With Her in Ourland: Sequel to Herland. 1916. Edited by Mary Jo Deegan and Michael R. Hill. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997. Harvey, William Hope. Coin’s Financial School. Chicago: Coin, 1894. Harvey, William Hope. A Tale of Two Nations. Chicago: Coin, 1894. Hay, John. The Bread-Winners: A Social Study. 1883. Ridgewood, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1967. Howells, William Dean. My Mark Twain: Reminiscences and Criticisms. 1910. Edited by Marilyn Austin Baldwin. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967. Howells, William Dean. Through the Eye of the Needle: A Romance. 1907. New York: AMS Press, 1977. Howells, William Dean. A Traveler from Altruria. 1894. Edited by David W. Levy. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PROFESSIONALISM

Jackson, Helen Hunt. Century of Dishonor: The Classic Exposé of the Plight of the Native Americans. 1881. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2003. Jackson, Helen Hunt. Ramona. 1884. New York: Modern Library, 2005. Lindsay, Vachel. The Poetry of Vachel Lindsay: Complete & with Lindsay’s Drawings. Edited by Dennis Camp. Peoria, Ill.: Spoon River Poetry Press, 1985. Markham, Edwin. “The Man with the Hoe.” 1899. New York: Doubleday and McClure, 1900. Moody, William Vaughn. The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody. New York: AMS Press, 1969. Norris, Frank. The Octopus: A Story of California. 1901. Edited by Kenneth S. Lynn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. Norris, Frank The Pit: A Story of Chicago. 1903. Edited by Joseph R. McElrath Jr. and Gwendolyn Jones. New York: Penguin, 1994. Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle: An Authoritative Text, Contexts and Backgrounds, Criticism. 1906. Edited by Clare Virginia Eby. New York: Norton, 2003. Twain, Mark. The Autobiography of Mark Twain. 1959. Edited by Charles Neider. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Twain, Mark. Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages about Men and Events. Edited by Bernard DeVoto. New York: Harper, 1940. Twain, Mark. Roughing It. 1872. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Twain, Mark, and Charles Dudley Warner. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. 1874. Edited by Louis J. Budd. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. Wallace Lew. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. 1880. With an introduction by Blake Allmendinger. New York: Modern Library, 2002. Wharton, Edith. The Valley of Decision. 1902. New York: AMS Press, 1970. Whitman, Walt. “Democratic Vistas.” 1871. In The Complete Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, vol. 2, pp. 208–263. New York: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1948. Secondary Works

Blotner, Joseph. The Political Novel. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955. Boller, Paul F., Jr. Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Chace, James. 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs—The Election that Changed the Country. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Hofstader, Richard. The Age of Reform; from Bryan to F. D. R. New York: Knopf, 1955. Hofstader, Richard. The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It. New York: Knopf, 1973.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

McMath, Robert C. American Populism: A Social History, 1877–1898. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993. Martin, Jay. Harvests of Change: American Literature, 1865– 1914. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967. Nelson, Michael, ed. Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to the Presidency. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1989. Rosenstone, Steven J., Roy L. Behr, and Edward H. Lazarus. Third Parties in America: Citizen Response to Major Party Failure. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. “Henry Adams’s ‘Democracy.’” New York Review of Books, 27 March 2003. Weibe, Robert. The Search for Order, 1877–1920. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967. Steven Goldleaf

PROFESSIONALISM Spanning the Civil War to the First World War, the rise of American professionalism brought about the model of a modern career: a vocation that claims service, not moneymaking, as its aim; that privileges expertise; that defines and protects systems of education that confer such expertise; and that takes for granted the professional’s desire for upward mobility. For writers, the advent of professionalism meant a shift in literary taste from an amateur, romantic, and passively “feminized” style of authorship to one that was typified by training, realism, and traditional masculinity. In 1855 the poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) expressed his idea of artistic inspiration as “I loafe and invite my Soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass” (“Song of myself” ll. 4–5). By 1903, however, in “Getting into Print,” an article in the Editor magazine, the novelist and short story writer Jack London (1876–1916) responded, “Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it” (p. 57). Replacing Whitman’s reified muse with “something that looks remarkably like it,” London’s description of authorship reveals professionalism’s link to the seemingly unrelated nineteenthcentury developments of the steamship, railroad, telegraph, and telephone: technologies of mass communication that created and maintained the literary professions through the buying and selling of words as commodities. Thus, although the progressivist London and his contemporaries favored the reflection of “the real” in writing, at the turn of the twentieth century the profession of literature became increasingly aligned


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

903

PROFESSIONALISM

with commercialism—with the look of inspiration instead of its substance. This point is crucial to understanding a central tension for professional authors writing from 1870 to 1920: the tension between high art—intellectual work supposedly performed for social good—and texts that were marketed for individual or corporate profit through systems of mass media. THE CULTURE OF PROFESSIONALISM

The historian Burton Bledstein identifies the late nineteenth century in America as a “culture of professionalism”—a culture stemming from the delimitation of clearly defined, service-oriented careers occupied by experts; sustained by schooling; restricted by gatekeeping; and made popular by the association with the traditional American values of radical individualism, productivity, progress, and universal education. Not surprisingly, the Franklinian ideal of the self-made man thrived under professionalism. In an 1889 North American Review essay titled “Wealth,” Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) claimed that self-made millionaires should and would become the professional arbiters of American life, advancing all citizens with their expert distribution of the nation’s resources. “Individualism, Private Property, the Law of the Accumulation of Wealth, and the Law of Competition,” Carnegie claimed, “are the highest results of human experience. . . . We shall have an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the many, because administered for the common good, and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves” (pp. 657, 660). In part, Carnegie’s vision of this ideal state resulted in his endowment of large public libraries throughout the 1880s and 1890s to assist the working and middle classes of industrial cities. His libraries are but one example of numerous professional institutions that claimed a kind of manifest destiny—in which the overall improvement of the nation’s citizens seemed inevitable—while simultaneously helping to shape and preserve class stratification in America. Professionalism’s inherent stratification was aided by the widespread industrialization that took place at the beginning of the century and the rapid increase of commodity manufacture and exchange that ensued. Commodity culture revolutionized jobs as disparate as bricklaying and city planning; representational systems as varied as novels, paintings, and clothes; and even the very language Americans used to talk about possessions—words such as “thingamajig,” “gadget,” and “jigger.” During these years world fairs abounded,

904

A M E R I C A N

dedicated to professionalizing commodity exchange. At the first of these, the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, a hundred thousand thingamajigs were on display; in 1876 Philadelphia hosted the Centennial Exhibition, where a massive Corliss engine was shown along with international works of art. In his Atlantic Monthly essay “A Sennight of the Centennial,” William Dean Howells (1837–1920) identified America’s elevation of the commodity over the objet d’art. “American art ha[s] made vast advances on the technical side, but . . . it lack[s] what English art has got from its intimate association with literature.” And yet, Howells admitted, the Centennial “would be a barren place without the American machinery” (p. 95). Though varied in focus, these exhibitions had a similar professional purpose: to display these commodities as marks of national value by making a show of the nation’s newly professionalized industries. In turn, in buying these products, citizens participated in professionalism by purchasing the moral and literal wealth of the nation. In this manner, middle-class consumerism created a new sphere of highbrow culture, presided over by professional highbrows; one accessed this sphere by shopping for the right goods and then displayed one’s familiarity with it by presenting those goods on one’s body and in one’s home: an 1880 Punch cartoon typifies this exchange, showing a bride holding up a decorative teapot to her husband, exclaiming, “Oh, Algernon, let us live up to it!” As such, the material relationships of buying and selling commodities were constantly remade as noneconomic, professional exchanges. Thus, the consumer took the advice of the professional aesthete in order to buy the perfect teapot to display her or his good taste—or, in the same vein, the reader took the advice of the professional author in order to better treat the poor and thereby improve his or her own morality. In either case, an economic interaction (buying a teapot, buying a book) was recast as the passing on of knowledge from an expert to an amateur. As such, knowledge became its own commodity, and this development spawned the establishment of a number of professional associations as well as the formation of the modern university. Prior to the 1870s, American men and women of means pursued the work of studying history, practicing politics, or writing poetry; vocations such as medicine, law, and teaching were deemed lesser insofar as they necessitated working with one’s hands or interacting with the great unwashed. After the Civil War, however, as areas of expertise from demography to American history began to garner respect and take on the form of discrete disciplines, professional organizations flourished. Largely due to class bias against their occupations as second-rate, medical

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PROFESSIONALISM

practitioners founded professional societies as early as the 1840s: psychiatry organized itself under the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutes for the Insane in 1844, while the American Medical Association was established in 1847. The latter half of the nineteenth century was the time of an unprecedented incorporation of professional associations. To name but a few, the American Bar Association was formed in 1878, the Modern Language Association in 1883, the American Historical Association in 1884, the American Folklore Society and American Economics Association in 1888, the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1898, the American Public Health Association in 1899, the Association of American Law Schools in 1900, and the American Political Science Association in 1903. These associations all had similar aims: to bring together as well as to regulate professors, teachers, and specialists through membership, annual meetings, and a hierarchical infrastructure; to spread the language and ideas of professionals through journals published by the associations; and to influence local and national policy making by publishing reports, building archives, and directly affecting the development of educational curricula as well as programs to improve social welfare. To achieve further cohesion and regulation among the new professions, the American university emerged as a primary locus of professional activity, indoctrinating its faculty, staff, and students under the twin principles of public service and individual ambition. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, universities began appointing the first professors of disciplines such as history, politics, and social work, and by the turn of the century nearly half of American college graduates were taking up service-oriented jobs in public administration, government, and teaching. These graduates were novitiates under an ideal professional system: they had been screened as applicants, followed a proscribed course of study, read standardized textbooks to take standardized tests, and assumed that their intellectual expertise would grant them a position of wealth and leadership in society. Contemptuous of attacks on their professional authority, they believed an entrepreneurial spirit was the key to an ever-improving society; a largely ignorant and even fearful clientele made up of women, the poor, ethnic minorities, and the uneducated justified their intervention into such social issues as poverty, hysteria, disease, intemperance, promiscuity, miscegenation, secularism, and sexual “deviance.” As the popular novelist and commentator Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911) explained in her 1897 memoir Chapters from a Life, “I wished to say something [in my novels] that would comfort some few . . . of the women whose misery crowded the land. . . . The women—the helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

women; they whom war trampled down, without a choice or protest; the patient, limited, domestic women, who thought little, but loved much, and, loving, had lost all, —to them I would have spoken” (p. 97–99). This rhetoric of reform cut across economic class, gender, and race, and yet professionals such as Phelps had to marginalize certain groups—in this case “helpless, outnumbering, unconsulted” women—at the same time that they “uplifted” them into the values and practices of the professional class.

LITERARY PROFESSIONALS

After the Civil War, the figure of the professional made its way into the pages of the American novel. Some writers idealized this figure: in 1871 Edward Eggleston’s (1837–1902) The Hoosier Schoolmaster popularized the idea of the professional teacher. No longer would the stereotypical schoolmaster be the incompetent and austere Mr. Creakle of David Copperfield fame; Eggleston fashioned his Mr. Hartsook as an educational hero, a man whose professional expertise led boys from ignorance to understanding. In turn, other writers sought to reflect various ideological struggles within the new professions. In The Story of Avis (1877), Phelps created Avis Dobell, a female painter who wrestled with professional objectivity against subjective passions, and in 1884 Howells published The Rise of Silas Lapham, a novel that warned against the perils of professional businesspeople seeking profit over spiritual worth. As its own profession, popular authorship had become fairly systematized and even lucrative by the 1850s as the literary marketplace sustained a period of major growth. For instance, the sales and distribution patterns of Uncle Tom’s Cabin invented the very category of the latter-day “best-seller.” After the 1851– 1852 serialization in the National Era, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) made roughly $10,000 from the first three months of sales, and in the first year Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold 300,000 American copies. The novel sold even better abroad; by the end of 1852 various legitimate and pirated editions made for 1.5 million sales in England, and the book had been translated into more than 40 languages. However, despite the advent of the professional as a worthy subject—and the clear potential for a thoroughly professional book trade—at mid-century the literary marketplace continued to operate under the dual ideas of the “amateur author” and the “gentleman publisher,” relegating authorship to an inspired side effect of leisure. The women writers who were most successful at mid-century—writers such as Stowe, Phelps, E. D. E. N. Southworth, and Gail Hamilton— persisted in sustaining an older model of amateur


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

905

PROFESSIONALISM

authorship by rejecting market value in favor of moral instruction and by insisting that a story was more important than mere information. Authors’ discontent over the growing preference for information over storytelling was prompted, in part, by the laying of the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable on 5 August 1858. As Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) had foreseen in his 1854 memoir Walden, “[Though we] are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new . . . perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough” (p. 307). Instead of sequential, coherent stories connected to an international, national, or local purpose, telegraphic news became a series of competing headlines from people and places both distant and strange. In everyday terms, the technology worked more to fracture and isolate than it did to unify. One of the primary reasons the telegraph encouraged nonlinear news was that its language traded in fact—disconnected dates, names, figures, and events. Fact gave a professional doctor, statesman, lawyer, or journalist scientific legitimacy; with the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man in 1871, sources of professional proof in all fields were increasingly built on fact over emotion, intuition, or faith. Yet for a number of American authors writing in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, the turn away from storytelling as the basis for human understanding was more than irritating or perplexing; they believed it was culturally lethal. Thus, this professional primacy of fact was met with a paradoxical fictionality, a revision of the professional languages of telegraphy, law, and science into emotionally driven novels of connection and unity. Even toward the end of the century, with the institution of realism (the faithful representation of the everyday in art and literature) as the primary high-art genre in America, professional fact was often remade into idealized fiction. A celebrated realist, Henry James (1843–1916) remarked in his notice of George Eliot’s 1876 Daniel Deronda, “The ‘sense of the universal’ [in the novel] is constant, omnipresent. . . . It gives us the feeling that the threads of the narrative, as we gather them into our hands, are not of the usual commercial measurement, but long electric wires capable of transmitting messages from mysterious regions” (p. 131). In utilizing this metaphor, James remakes the “commercial measurement” of telegraphic cable into a mystical experience, suggesting that the social progress of humanity is cumulative and

906

A M E R I C A N

inevitable and that hidden universal truths might be gained through reading novels. These self-consciously realist writers, however, distinguished between the feminized sentimental and sensational fictions that had become popular at mid-century and the kinds of expert, professional fictions they themselves wrote. Many successful authors writing in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s—including James, Howells, Mark Twain, and Theodore Dreiser as well as former sentimental writers such as Stowe and Phelps—worked to establish their work as “high art,” separate from the likes of Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins, and Mrs. Henry (Ellen) Wood. Though seemingly contradictory, Howells’s definition of literary realism in his 1897 preface to English Society by George du Maurier (1834–1896) encapsulated the new professional realist’s sense of purpose: “the very highest fiction is that which treats itself as fact” (p. 76). Within the larger culture of professionalism, then, the technical supplanted the moral; or, rather, the technical was the moral. Even though professional writing shunned subjectivity and held up data and method as the things that “spoke,” the new professional and realist authors alike provided images of and for their culture that were meant to excite an appropriate sympathy, a morality with qualities more culturally sustaining than what Howells once disparaged in his 1895 Literary Passions as the “artfully-wrought sensations” of the newspaper or sentimental novel. These professional discriminations between high and low culture coincided with similar trends in all avenues of art, from painting to music to theater. Because fiction was simultaneously popular and elite— as Lawrence Levine notes, much like nineteenth-century opera and Shakespearean drama—novels were read by large numbers of people, primarily made up of the new middle class in America as well as a much smaller cadre of the economically and socially privileged. Even the word “culture” itself became increasingly joined with “art” and “aesthetics.” “The new meanings,” notes Levine in his 1988 study Highbrow/ Lowbrow, “symbolized the consciousness that conceived of the fine, the worthy, and the beautiful as existing apart from ordinary society” (p. 225). In other words, as with “knowledge,” “culture” itself became its own professional commodity, and those who wielded words as—or in the service of— culture made writing a professional commodity as well. Paradoxically, however, once the word was professionalized (a product of elite training, a marker of expertise, chosen or created for precision, hoarded and protected as intellectual capital, and employed in the service of social reform), it was simultaneously commercialized. As a result, “lowbrow” wordsmith occupations such as muckraking, technical writing,

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PROFESSIONALISM

and political propagandizing embraced the same precepts of professionalism as late-century literary authors, thus making their labor increasingly more precise (fact-based or “scientific”), realistic (“true”), and socially aware—more “masculine.” Aided by new technologies that lowered production costs and virtually guaranteed the instantaneous transmittal of the word to a mass Anglo-American readership, modern features of mass professional discourse had been established by the turn of the twentieth century: literary agents, promotional campaigns for books and periodicals, headlines and bylines, and a full synergy of visual advertisements (goods) with text (ideas). Thus, by the early 1900s, a new cadre of professional writers came to the fore as popular and highly influential authors. Designated as “progressive,” writers such as Dreiser, Frank Norris, Jack London, Stephen Crane, and Upton Sinclair had once been journalists, a profession previously held in low esteem. Among these professional progressives, differences in region, politics, or class mattered less than a common language with which to engage concepts of efficiency, social progress, industrial deregulation, and a democratic, nonpartisan access to ideas. As such, the culture of professionalism radically shifted the popular image of an “author” from the previous century’s man or woman of leisure and learning to a “voice of the people” who continually had to convince the public of the validity of that voice. Ultimately, then, the legacy of professional authorship in America is a complex one. Professional authorship holds in perpetual tension high culture with low, timeless aesthetics with immediate commercialism, social reform with authorial ambition, sentimentality with realism, fiction with fact, and democratic access with elite gatekeeping. With seeming prescience of contemporary struggles with professionalism, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) commented in 1936 in The Crack-Up, “no decent career was ever founded on a public” (p. 89). Fitzgerald aptly articulates perhaps the keenest tension for the professional author: the tension between individual art and public celebrity. To succeed, professional authors had to found their own expert, reform-oriented careers on the amateur whims of their consuming public. In other words, such authors muckraked themselves, becoming their own commodities. See also American Literature; Health and Medicine; Jurisprudence BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Carnegie, Andrew. “Wealth.” North American Review, June 1889, pp. 653–664.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Crack-Up. New York: New Directions, 1956. Howells, William Dean. “Preface to English Society by George du Maurier.” 1897. In Prefaces to Contemporaries (1882– 1920), edited by George Arms, William M. Gibson, and Frederic C. Marston Jr., pp. 73–77. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1957. Howells, William Dean. “A Sennight of the Centennial.” Atlantic Monthly, July 1876, pp. 92–107. James, Henry. “Notice of Daniel Deronda.” Nation, 24 February 1876, p. 131. London, Jack. “Getting into Print.” 1903. In No Mentor but Myself: Jack London on Writers and Writing, edited by Dale L. Walker and Jeanne Campbell Reesman, pp. 54–57. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999. Phelps [Ward], Elizabeth Stuart. Chapters from a Life. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1897. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. 1854. In The Portable Thoreau, edited by Carl Bode, pp. 258–572. New York and London: Penguin Books, 1975. Secondary Works

Bledstein, Burton J. The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America. New York: Norton, 1976. Blumin, Stuart M. The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Charvat, William. The Profession of Authorship in America, 1800–1870. 1968. Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Coultrap-McQuin, Susan. Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Freedman, Jonathan. Professions of Taste: Henry James, British Aestheticism, and Commodity Culture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990. Geison, Gerald L., ed. Professions and Professional Ideologies in America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Glazener, Nancy. Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. Literary Institution, 1850–1910. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997. Larson, Magali Sarfatti. The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. Levine, Lawrence W. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

907

THE PROMISED LAND

Merish, Lori. Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000. Wilson, Christopher P. The Labor of Words: Literary Professionalism in the Progressive Era. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985. Jennifer Cognard-Black

PROGRESSIVISM See Political Parties; Reform

THE PROMISED LAND Mary Antin’s (1881–1949) autobiography, The Promised Land (1912), was published as American fears concerning masses of immigrants entering the country were reaching a climax. In 1911 the Dillingham Commission issued a report to Congress that argued that immigrants entering the country from southern and eastern Europe were not as racially or culturally desirable as ones who entered from northern and western Europe. Against the commission’s recommendation that immigration be restricted, Antin celebrated both the immigrant experience and the transformation being wrought in America by eastern European immigrants such as herself. Although she did not conceal the hardships of the immigrant experience, her example seemed to suggest that America could lift any willing person up and make him or her one with the country. Excerpts of The Promised Land had first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, and the book became something of a sensation when it was published. Readers responded enthusiastically to Antin’s assurance that the American dream did work and that even an immigrant Jewish girl from Poland could become a well-adjusted, patriotic American. Offering herself as an example of what was happening for millions of immigrants, Antin conveyed a hopeful message for the country’s future. Her story describes how a girl born in a small, backward Jewish village on the edge of Russia becomes a prize-winning American author. She presents herself as an exemplary, but still typical, product of the U.S. public school system, proof that American institutions were absorbing its millions of immigrants and transforming them to create a better nation. One contemporary reviewer said that Antin’s work “will do much to dissolve the gentle cynicism we take toward our so-called democracy,” providing “encouragement as to our inherent possibilities.”

908

A M E R I C A N

For many, her life became a perfect example of how democratic institutions, and especially the public school, were working to renew America without changing its essential character. For others, however, Antin’s story obscured the dark side of the immigrant’s American dream. According to this view, Antin is not the bold and optimistic immigrant who overcomes all obstacles to become a happy American but a Jew who had to sacrifice her cultural heritage in order to be accepted as an American. The educator Horace M. Kallen, who favored what he called cultural pluralism rather than melting-pot notions of American identity, describes The Promised Land “as the climax of the wave of gratulatory exhibition,” the work of a “successful and happy” product of “the melting pot,” who is more “self-consciously flatteringly American than the Americans” (p. 86). A NEW NOTION OF ASSIMILATION

Antin’s story is more complicated than Kallen’s formulation suggests—indeed its lesson was that she could be neither American nor Jewish without being both “American” and “Jewish.” The writer Randolph S. Bourne recognized the complexity of Antin’s story in his important 1916 essay “Trans-National America,” published in the Atlantic Monthly. Bourne argued that in The Promised Land Antin does not merely adapt herself to America but also absorbs the America who reads her into her story. By positioning her assimilated audience so that they would identify with her story, Antin challenged what the notion of “assimilation” is conventionally understood to mean. Indeed, to the mixed dismay and approval of her audience, Antin wanted to convey not merely that “she” was one of “you,” but that “you,” whomever that you in her audience may have been, were also one with “her.” Antin signals her audience to the complexity of her Americanization in her introduction to the book, where she announces that her story is one of discarded selves: I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to write my life’s story? I am just as much out of the way as if I were dead, for I am absolutely other than the person whose story I have to tell. . . . I could speak in the third person and not feel that I was masquerading. . . . for she, and not I, is my real heroine. My life I still have to live; her life ended when mine began. (P. 1)

Throughout her autobiography Antin’s narrative is driven by her recognition of her own “otherness,” and the discrepancy that exists between the self of the story and the self that tells it. She creates the distance between her authorial self and her third-person self, between her Americanization and her prior

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE PROMISED LAND

Photograph from the 1912 edition of The Promised Land. The original caption reads “Union Place (Boston) where my new home waited for me.” GRADUATE LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

“otherness,” only so that she may collapse it. Antin’s story of her Americanization is also the dramatization of her own otherness. Antin structures her autobiography so that its first half is concerned exclusively with her “as if” dead other, the little girl Mashke, who grew up in a Polish village called Polotzk in the outer Russian territories. During the time Antin lived there, “the Pale,” as this area was known, contained more than 90 percent of Russia’s Jews. Identity in Polotzk was rigidly either/or. As Antin says over and over, “one was a Jew, leading a righteous life; or one was a gentile, existing to harass the Jews, while making a living off Jewish enterprise” (p. 98). At once a Jew confined to the Pale and a woman constrained by the patriarchal Jewish law, Antin’s identity was defined only in terms of race and gender. Antin therefore occupied a sort of double identity, each one a form of repression to Mashke who knew in her heart that “a greater life [d]awned in me” (p. 72). “Can this be I?”Antin asks at the outset of her story (p. 65). As a Russian Jew, this question intimates the bewilderment with which her inner life confronts the A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

facts of her outer life; as an American, it reflects her ability to refashion the seemingly immutable principles of race and gender into an identity that embraces the self’s capacity to be transformed. Ultimately, the contrast between her experience in America and her life in the Pale enabled Antin to recognize and express the nearly buried inner conflicts she experienced in Polotzk. Her autobiography implies that were she an American-born child, she could simply deny her parents, their heritage, and run away from home. This is the action taken by the protagonist in Bread Givers: A Struggle between a Father of the Old World and a Daughter of the New (1925), a novel by the Polish immigrant writer Anzia Yezierska (c. 1883– 1970). To make this break in Polotzk, however, would have required Mashke to transgress a sacrosanct boundary: she would have to become gentile. Indulging such fantasies is futile since even escape from the Pale would still leave her to be known as a Jew and then either to be returned home or killed. If these thoughts are not available to the young Mashke, then they frame the perspective of the mature Antin who writes to transform her heroine into the American, Mary. Addressing her fellow Americans, Antin knows that her heroine requires a material host for her spiritual rebellion. In this respect, Antin encourages her audience to participate in the creation of herself as an American. Antin acknowledges that some readers might be skeptical of her transformation from Russian Jew into assimilated American. She writes: “it is doubtful that the conversion of the Jew to any alien belief is ever thoroughly accomplished” (p. 195). Here Antin is concerned with cultural rather than religious difference. As if to ally her audience, she divides Judaism into “kernel” and “husk,” suggesting that one may “drop” the kernel and retain the husk. In other words, cultural identity is voluntary: one can choose to be American. Antin never apologizes for her choice— indeed she celebrates it—but her joy in throwing off a repressive past to become American provokes some readers to wonder if she has betrayed her cultural identity. While some may argue that Antin sacrificed her Jewishness for a hollow Americanness, actually what she did was more complex. She rejected claims of pure cultural identity to reveal how malleable identity— even ethnic identity—is. Antin recognizes that the very existence of immigrants like her transformed the identity of those whom she had joined. More subtly, Antin invites her audience to accept her story and therefore partake of this recognition. Insofar as the audience accepts the American claims of this irreducibly “Jewish” woman, the American identity of both Antin and her audience has been complicated and altered.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

909

THE PROMISED LAND

The concluding lines to The Promised Land nicely express the manner in which Antin makes her identity one with that of America. Her language, appropriately, recalls Whitman. She suggests that not only is she the embodiment of America’s future but also the fulfillment of its past. In this way Antin is both the culmination of American history and its owner.

No! it is not that I belong to the past, but that the past belongs to me. America is the youngest of the nations, and inherits all that went before it in history. And I am the youngest of America’s children, and into my hands is given all her priceless heritage, to the last white star espied through the telescope, to the last great thought of the philosopher. Mine is the whole majestic past, and mine is the shining future. Antin, The Promised Land, p. 286.

REINTERPRETING AMERICAN VALUES

Antin suggests her story, and others like it, prove how the American commitment to freedom and equality is more than just words. She frequently refers to the awe with which she holds the Declaration of Independence because it applies not only to 1776 but to those like herself who revolt against their life’s circumstances and choose to embrace America. Praising the public school as a version of the declaration come to life, she tells her audience that “you born Americans” should be happy to hear her story because “it is the story of the growth of your country; of the flocking of your brothers and sister from the far ends of the earth to the flag you love” (p. 175). Antin frames her audience as her judge as she submits to them her fundamental situation of “otherness”: the immigrant who is no longer a foreigner but not yet an American. Yet she also undermines her audience’s authority by implying that their collaboration in her story reveals the extent to which they participate in the process that is her transformation. Antin’s shrewd manipulation of her audience so that they embrace their story as her story can be seen in the poem she writes for school about George Washington. This poem would eventually win her an award from the city of Boston—it would begin her career as a kind of public intellectual. She prefaces her account of the poem’s success by relating how as an immigrant child she fell in love with the tales of Washington that were written

910

A M E R I C A N

by Parson Mason Locke Weems (1759–1825). She gives this image of Washington the devotion she could never give a rabbi. “Never had I prayed, never had I chanted the songs of David, never had I called upon the Most Holy, in such utter reverence and worship as I repeated the simple sentences of my child’s story of the patriot.” Having her poem read aloud gives her the opportunity to tell her classmates “what George Washington had done for their country—for our country—for me” (p. 181). Here the situation remembered in the classroom predicts the relationship she creates in her autobiography: the poem that her assimilated classmates hear with rapture is a version of the life she now shares with her American audience. Her point is that Antin and her readers are united in that they are all fellow citizens bound by their commitment to a shared American history. As is true in The Promised Land itself, she has a double relationship with her audience. On the one hand, she acknowledges that “there ran a special note through my poem” that only the other Jewish students could fully understand since her poem expresses the grateful appreciation of the “weary Hebrew children” who have found a haven in America (p. 183). In other words, Antin cannot sing her American song without inflecting it with her Jewish history. On the other hand, Antin also knows that her poem’s performance is not complete until she impresses students such as Lizzie McDee, a native-born American. The knowledge of Lizzie’s approbation excites Antin because, as she says, her rival first “knew her as a vain boastful, curly-headed little Jew.” This recognition— from immigrant to American—is the point Antin wanted her “born Americans” to stumble upon when they joined her teachers and her classmates in praising her story, her Americanization. Accept my universal story as part of yours, she seems to say, and you must accept that your identity has been transformed too. The point is not that Antin renounces her Jewish identity, though she is free to do so. In becoming “American,” Antin nonetheless preserves and reinvents her Jewish identity within an American context. See also Assimilation; Immigration; Jews


Antin, Mary. From Plotzk to Boston. Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1899. Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. 1912. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Antin, Mary. They Who Knock at Our Gates: A Complete Gospel of Immigration. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE

Secondary Works

Avery, Evelyn. “Oh My ‘Mishpocha!’ Some Jewish Women Writers from Antin to Kaplan View the Family.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 5 (1986): 44–53. Boelhower, William. “The Making of Ethnic Autobiography in the United States.” In American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by John Paul Eakin, pp. 123– 141. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Bourne, Randolph. The Radical Will: Selected Writings, 1911–1918. New York: Urizen, 1977. Girgus, Sam B. The New Covenant: Jewish Writers and the American Idea. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Guttman, Allen. The Jewish Writer in America: Assimilation and the Crisis of Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Handlin, Oscar. Introduction to The Promised Land, by Mary Antin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969. Handlin, Oscar. The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1951. Harap, Louis. Creative Awakening: The Jewish Presence in Twentieth-century American Literature, 1900–1940s. New York: Greenwood Press, 1959. Higham, John. Send These to Me: Immigrants in Urban America. 1975. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. Howe, Irving. World of Our Fathers. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. Kallen, Horace. Culture and Democracy in the United States. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924. Kramer, Michael P. “Assimilation in The Promised Land: Mary Antin and the Jewish Origins of the American Self.” Prooftexts 18, no. 2 (1998): 121–148. Parrish, Timothy. “Whose Americanization?: Self and Other in Mary Antin’s The Promised Land.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 13 New Voices in an Old Tradition (1994): 27–38. Proefriedt, William A. “The Education of Mary Antin.” The Journal of Ethnic Studies 17, no. 4 (winter 1990): 81–100. Rubin, Steven J. “Style and Meaning in Mary Antin’s The Promised Land: A Reevaluation.” Studies in American Jewish Literature 5 (1986): 35–43. Sollors, Werner. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Sollors, Werner. Introduction to The Promised Land, by Mary Antin. New York: Penguin, 1997. Tuerk, Richard. “The Youngest of America’s Children in The Promised Land.” Studies in American Jewish Fiction 5 (1986): 29–34. Timothy Parrish

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE By the time of Herbert Croly’s death in 1930, his friends were certain that his book of 1909 had played an important part in transforming the political culture of the United States. “If I were attempting anything like an appraisal of Herbert Croly,” wrote the distinguished political journalist Walter Lippmann (1889–1974), I should say, I think, that he was the first important political philosopher who appeared in America in the twentieth century. I should say that The Promise of American Life was the political classic which announced the end of the Age of Innocence with its romantic faith in American destiny and inaugurated the process of self-examination. (P. 250)

Another of Croly’s friends, the Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, thought that “to omit Croly’s Promise from any list of half a dozen books on American politics since 1900 would be grotesque” (p. 248). Frankfurter thought that his friend’s book “became a reservoir for all political writing after its publication. [Theodore] Roosevelt’s New Nationalism was countered by Wilson’s New Freedom, but both derived from Croly” (p. 248). If more recent assessments have been somewhat less unrestrained, in general the book has retained its reputation as an influential work of political philosophy and one that shaped the course of twentieth-century American liberalism. THE AUTHOR

Herbert Croly was born on 23 January 1869 in New York City. His mother, Jane Cunningham Croly, who wrote under the name “Jennie June,” was a nationally known author on women’s topics and a pioneer in the creation of women’s clubs across the country. His father, David Goodman Croly, was a respected New York journalist, editor of the New York World, and a spirited evangelist in America for the positivist views of the French thinker Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Young Herbert, therefore, grew up in a home swirling with books and ideas and frequented by stimulating visitors, a home where conveying ideas through writing was practically a daily way of life. Croly was, from an early age, bookish and reserved. By the time he reached manhood he was abnormally shy and reserved. Social situations and small talk were painful to him, and speaking in public was an ordeal he attempted to avoid at all costs. Despite these traits, however, he was able to attract a group of close friends who valued his seriousness, his intelligence, and his character. His educational career was erratic: he entered Harvard in 1886 and left in


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

911


1899, still not the recipient of a bachelor’s degree. He had toyed with the idea of studying and teaching philosophy (taking classes with the illustrious philosophers William James, Josiah Royce, and George Santayana) but deemed himself unsuited for that vocation. From 1900 until 1906, Croly edited the Architectural Record, a professional periodical that had been started by his father, writing numerous articles on architecture, landscaping, and urban planning. But Croly’s thoughts were always on American politics. By 1905 he found himself absorbed by the growing political ferment that was about to erupt into progressive reform, and he came to believe that he had something of importance to contribute to the national discussion, a way of thinking about and bringing order and direction to the increasingly insistent calls for social change. He loosened his connection with the Architectural Record, and for four hours every morning he worked on the book that was to be his masterpiece. He completed a first draft in 1905, pored over revising it for the next two years, and in late 1908 and early 1909 rewrote it one last time. The Promise of American Life was published by Macmillan in early November 1909. THE ARGUMENT

In The Promise of American Life, Croly argued that the pioneer period of American history—roughly the time between the Revolution and the Civil War—bequeathed to the nation three formative legacies. The first was a persistent tension in political philosophy between the views of Thomas Jefferson (individual liberty and a small, noninterfering federal government) and those of Alexander Hamilton (distrust of unbridled democracy and a strong government capable of acting decisively in the national interest). Throughout most of the nation’s history, Croly asserted, the views of Jefferson prevailed, and the great majority of Americans placed their faith in free individualism and harbored grave suspicions about their government. The second inheritance from early American history was an iconic individual, who came to symbolize America: the western democrat. This “typical” and emblematic American possessed some commendable traits: energetic individualism, admirable informality and neighborliness, practicality. Yet this western democrat was also devoted almost exclusively to furthering private economic interests; was suspicious of expertise, specialization, and excellence; and had a very limited sense of the community’s needs or of personal responsibilities to the larger society. Finally, Americans also inherited an enduring belief in the promise of American life, an optimistic faith that their country’s future would be characterized by increasing prosperity, increasing freedom, and increasing democracy.

912

A M E R I C A N

In the past, according to Croly, these three legacies functioned in general harmony with one another. In America’s wide-open economic environment, private selfishness, operating under a minimum of government regulations, resulted in a steadily improving nation. Individual Americans wanted wealth, so they built farms and railroads and factories; because the country needed farms and railroads and factories, these ambitious and selfish men and women furthered the American promise while a weak central government stood passively aside. But in modern America—an America of huge corporations, crowded cities, sophisticated industrial processes, and reducing economic opportunities— the sort of individual and the sort of government that had once served the American promise so well now seemed likely to frustrate its achievement. An ambitious entrepreneur could grow wealthy by wrecking a railroad or by otherwise behaving detrimentally and unscrupulously. Croly suggested that the country now required a different sort of citizen from the pioneer democrat; it needed citizens schooled to look beyond their private interests, who could demonstrate loyalty to the community and the nation, who could play a part in fulfilling civic responsibilities, and who were not fearful of expertise and intellectual excellence. And (perhaps the best-known contention of his book), Croly proposed an active, interfering, powerful central government, one that could detect the difference between those private actions that furthered the national interest and those that threatened it, a government that stood ready to further the former and prevent the latter. In short, he said, from now on Jeffersonian ends will have to be attained by Hamiltonian means. Within this overarching historical framework, Croly considered almost every economic and political issue before the American people. He discussed everything from the tariff and taxation and municipal corruption to labor unions and foreign policy. But the book received special attention for its comments on the trusts. Croly argued that those who advocated merely breaking up those large conglomerations of private economic power were shortsighted and simpleminded. In the first place, the trusts were inevitable outgrowths of American capitalism, called into being by considerations of efficiency and the result of free competition—break them up and they would spring into existence again in some other form. In the second place, most trusts performed valuable services—they provided high quality products at reasonable prices, employed their workers steadily, and took advantage of scientific research and technological advances in ways that their small, usually less responsible, often

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


struggling and ephemeral competitors could not. In general, therefore, the trusts should be allowed to go about their business. Croly also acknowledged that trusts could sometimes misbehave; they sometimes used unfair methods of competition, mistreated their workers, or in other ways operated in a manner that was harmful to society. To meet those cases, the nation needed a government strong enough to regulate misbehaving corporations, equipped with sufficient power to hold quasi-judicial hearings and drag back into line those that persisted in their wrongful conduct.

INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF THE BOOK

Croly himself explained that he was initially inspired to write The Promise of American Life by reading Robert Grant’s (1852–1940) Unleavened Bread, a novel of 1900 that explored the difficulties of an architect struggling to express his creativity in an American culture that did not value creativity. Historians have generally concluded that the origins of Croly’s ideas are far more complicated and multifaceted. But they have not agreed about the precise sources that lay at the heart of the book. It is difficult to escape the view that the positivism of Auguste Comte, as first applied to American conditions by Croly’s father, is an important component of Croly’s thought. Particular scholars have suggested other ingredients that may have played a part in shaping the work. These range from William James’s (1842– 1910) pragmatism and G. W. F. Hegel’s ideas on the nation-state to the views of Croly’s Harvard teachers Royce, Santayana, and Charles Eliot Norton. Still others point to the importance of a group of English and continental social democratic thinkers or to the influence of the stirring of American progressive politics and the critical questions that were thrown into the air by the general agitation. No doubt, as the historian James T. Kloppenberg put it, “There is no reason to deny the evidence that Croly’s ideas were shaped by a variety of sources that were in no way consistent with one another” (p. 489). THE BOOK’S INFLUENCE

Shortly after its publication, Croly’s book came into the hands of the former president Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), who found many of his own views confirmed and rationalized in the book and who was probably suitably flattered by Croly’s warm praise of him. When Roosevelt publicly praised the book in a widely noticed review and then adopted Croly’s phrase, “the new nationalism,” as the name for his own political outlook, the book and its author became instantly fashionable. The Promise of American A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Life, despite its sometimes ponderous style, was reviewed in dozens of magazines and newspapers and read and discussed by numerous progressives. Croly himself benefited directly from his new fame. He was asked to write other books—a biography of the political boss Mark Hanna and a second book of political commentary titled Progressive Democracy (1914). In 1914 he was discovered by a wealthy socialite couple who were attracted by the ideas of The Promise of American Life. They agreed to start a journal of political opinion, the New Republic, under Croly’s editorship. He, together with a talented group of other writers, made the magazine one of the most important voices of American liberalism in the twentieth century. Herbert Croly’s Promise of American Life has appeared in at least ten editions since 1909. It is recognized as one of those landmark works signaling the end of liberalism’s traditional faith in unregulated capitalist free enterprise, severely restricted government, and unbridled individualism. In its celebration of community, its acceptance of expertise and efficiency, and its confidence in the ability of government to address and resolve social problems while still remaining democratic in form and spirit, the book pointed the way to the future of American reformist thought in the twentieth century. See also Reform BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Croly, Herbert. “My Aim in The Promise of American Life: Why I Wrote My Latest Book.” World’s Work 20 (June 1910): 13,086. Croly, Herbert. The Promise of American Life. New York: Macmillan, 1909. Secondary Works

Forcey, Charles. The Crossroads of Liberalism: Croly, Weyl, Lippmann, and the Progressive Era, 1900–1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961. Frankfurter, Felix. “Herbert Croly and American Political Opinion.” New Republic 63 (16 July 1930): 247–250. Kloppenberg, James T. Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870–1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Levy, David W. Herbert Croly of the “New Republic”: The Life and Thought of an American Progressive. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985. Lippmann, Walter. “Notes for a Biography.” New Republic 63 (16 July 1930): 250–252.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

913

PROSTITUTION

Noble, David W. “Herbert Croly and American Progressive Thought.” Western Political Quarterly 7 (1954): 537– 553. Stettner, Edward A. Shaping Modern Liberalism: Herbert Croly and Progressive Thought. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993. David W. Levy

PROSTITUTION Prostitution reached a new level of public awareness in the United States during the waning decades of the nineteenth century. While few Americans had ever really denied its existence, many were forced to recognize it as a serious social problem. Sociological studies, newspaper accounts, and novels all prompted people to rethink the idea of prostitution in terms of both its causes and its effects. Traditionally people had assumed that women turned to prostitution only after they had been seduced and abandoned, but empirical studies suggested that the reasons women turned to prostitution were far more complex. STATISTICS

William W. Sanger, resident physician at the correctional facility on Blackwell’s Island, New York, prepared The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World (1858) as an official report to the governor of the Alms-House of the City of New York. The first two-thirds of this nearly sevenhundred-page tome, largely compiled from other sources, traces the history of prostitution around the world. The last third of the book is based on primary research. At the time of its publication, Sanger’s History of Prostitution was recognized as the most important sociological study of prostitution ever conducted. It became the standard authority on the subject and was reprinted many times into the twentieth century. In the course of his research, Sanger interviewed two thousand prostitutes on Blackwell’s Island and gathered information about age, nationality, marital status, family upbringing, religion, and literacy. Of all the questions he asked, Sanger considered one the most important: “What was the cause of your becoming a prostitute?” The results of this survey astonished Sanger and his contemporaries. Expecting “seduced and abandoned” to be named the overwhelming cause of prostitution, they were amazed to learn that over a quarter of the women interviewed listed “inclination” as the reason they became prostitutes. At the time, few were

914

A M E R I C A N

willing to acknowledge the existence of female sexual desire let alone to see it as a motivating factor for prostitution. Instead, people preferred to accept the stereotype that women were chaste beings who would not degrade themselves for the purposes of satisfying their baser instincts. Poverty, according to Sanger’s statistics, also proved to be a prevalent cause of prostitution. The idea that women would become prostitutes from starvation or homelessness was also difficult for Americans to accept. Few wanted to admit that social conditions in the United States could be responsible for such poverty. Furthermore, many seriously believed that women would starve to death before they resigned themselves to prostitution. “Seduced and abandoned” came in a distant third, as only one-eighth of Sanger’s two thousand interviewees named this cause as the reason why they became prostitutes. Analyzing the results of his survey, Sanger himself appears unable to accept them. In his analysis he downplayed the significance of the number of prostitutes who answered either “inclination” or “destitution” and reasserted the importance of the traditional reason for prostitution. Disregarding his own statistics, Sanger made “seduced and abandoned” the most significant cause of prostitution. Better to do that than to admit that women could have sexual desires or that poverty represented a significant social problem in democratic, egalitarian America. Three decades later a different sort of empirical study yielded information about the relationship between social conditions and prostitution. During the intervening time, women had begun to enter the workforce in increasing numbers, and new stereotypes were forming to characterize working women. With the rise of the department store during the second half of the nineteenth century, many young single women entered the workforce as store clerks. Of all working women at the time, retail clerks were the most visible to the public, and many people thought they had the loosest morals of all working women. Some believed that becoming a store clerk was the first step toward prostitution. In 1889 the U.S. Bureau of Labor released its fourth annual report, which outlined the demographics of working women. Correlating the previous occupations of prostitutes, the report authoritatively disproved any connection between morality and occupation, but the stereotype continued to live on nonetheless. SKETCHES OF THE CITY

With the title of his book The Dangerous Classes of New York (1872), the reformer Charles Loring Brace (1826–1890) coined an apt phrase that entered the vernacular. In a chapter titled “Street Girls,” Brace presents his impressions on prostitution. Much of

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PROSTITUTION

Brace’s book contains exciting, graphically told episodes of crime and privation, but when he comes to the subject of prostitution, he resorts to generalizations instead of offering specific examples of individual prostitutes. Once a young woman has turned to prostitution, she begins a downward spiral that is impossible to reverse. Every encounter, every experience forces her farther downward: “The diabolical women who support and plunder her, the vile society she keeps, the literature she reads, the business she has chosen or fallen into, serve continually more and more to degrade and defile her” (Brace, “Street Girls,” p. 275). Like other contemporary observers, Brace refused to acknowledge that women became prostitutes out of inclination, but he did expose the “seduced and abandoned” excuse as a convenient fiction. Brace put the greatest blame on poverty as the root cause of prostitution. Other contemporary collections of city sketches similar to Brace’s that explore the haunts of such dangerous classes include Edward Crapsey’s The Nether Side of New York; or, The Vice, Crime, and Poverty of the Great Metropolis (1872) and James W. Buel’s Metropolitan Life Unveiled; or, The Mysteries and Miseries of America’s Great Cities (1882). Both of these works include sections describing prostitutes that combine firsthand observation with imagination. In The Nether Side of New York, Crapsey delineates several different classes of prostitutes, describes the appearance and behavior of women in each class, and notes the areas of New York where they make their homes and ply their nefarious trade. As Buel (1849–1920) discusses the subject of prostitution in Metropolitan Life Revealed he gradually abandons realism for sentiment. Rather than taking a real prostitute for example, Buel invents an example. The result is a syrupy tale of a sweet young woman who, having been seduced and abandoned, must choose between the only two courses of action available to her, prostitution or suicide. Though eager to visit the neighborhoods where prostitutes worked as they explored the dark side of the modern city, both Crapsey and Buel stopped short of entering brothels. Their accounts begin with vivid and realistic descriptions but end with conjectural depictions of the prostitute crowded with stereotype and cliché. “The Case of Rose Haggerty,” one of the finest contemporary sketches of a prostitute, first appeared in the New York Tribune at a time when this paper was aggressively cultivating female readers. Written by Helen Stuart Campbell (1839–1918), who later incorporated it into Prisoners of Poverty: Women WageWorkers, Their Trades, and Their Lives (1887), “The Case of Rose Haggerty” presents a realistic portrait of a woman driven to prostitution by poverty. Campbell’s anecdote suggests that the causes of prostitution are A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

much more complex than either the general public or the urbane male commentators were willing to admit. Her title character is a survivor. Instead of committing suicide, she continues working as a prostitute, sacrificing herself so that her family may live a better life. PROSTITUTES IN LITERATURE

From the waning decades of the nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth, the prostitute as a fictional character in American literature went from being a secondary figure to being the protagonist of major works. An early novel of the period, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (1811–1896) We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street (1875) tells the story of a young woman named Maggie—a commonplace nickname for a prostitute at the time— whose story embodies the contemporary stereotypes about prostitutes prevalent in the United States. A secondary character in the novel, Maggie leaves her position as a domestic and later finds employment in a department store, where she meets a man who seduces her and then places her in a house of prostitution. After some time she seeks shelter in a Magdalen home, a place of refuge patterned after the homes run by local Magdalen societies that sheltered prostitutes and helped them leave their trade and regain their dignity. Eva Henderson, the heroine of Stowe’s novel, takes Maggie into her home as a servant, an effort her family strongly disapproves. Eva tolerates the verbal abuse of her mother and her aunt, but Maggie eventually leaves their home to save her benefactor from such cruelty and returns to the vice district. Eva locates Maggie and brings her to a Methodist mission home, where she becomes a devout Christian. Maggie ultimately returns to Eva and works for her as a seamstress. In We and Our Neighbors, Maggie becomes a good seamstress as well as a good Christian, but Stowe never allows her to become a good wife. Her first transgression has eliminated that possibility. In The Evil That Men Do (1889), Edgar Fawcett (1847–1904) also used a typical seduction plot, but otherwise the novel has little in common with Stowe’s. The Evil That Men Do tells the story of Cora Strang, a young woman who works at a series of low-paying jobs. Unemployed and without a place to live, she eventually obtains a position as a personal maid in a fine household, where she is discovered by the wealthy young man-about-town Caspar Drummond. Predictably Drummond seduces Cora with the promise of marriage and abandons her to marry a society woman. Cora goes to a disorderly house, as houses of prostitution were called, becomes a prostitute, takes to drink, and ultimately descends to streetwalking. A friend kills Cora to put her out of her misery. In terms of realism


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

915

PSEUDOSCIENCE

The Evil That Men Do marks an advance over earlier prostitute novels because Fawcett emphasizes how poverty contributes to prostitution. Still, he stops short of making poverty the main cause. There is no ambiguity in The Evil That Men Do: Fawcett makes absolutely clear from his title page where he locates the responsibility for this social evil. Maggie Johnson, the title character of Stephen Crane’s Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893), may be the most memorable prostitute in American literature. Crane (1871–1900) too incorporated a traditional seduction plot but changed it sufficiently to elevate his story above earlier seduction novels. Maggie Johnson’s seducer differs greatly from the stereotype. In The Evil That Men Do, Caspar Drummond is rich and promises Cora marriage and a life of wealth. In Crane’s novel, Pete and Maggie basically come from the same social class. The promise of a better life exists in Maggie’s romantic imagination, not in Pete’s words. The character of Maggie’s brother Jimmie contributes moral ambiguity to the story and makes the novel more complex than earlier tales of seduction. A staunch defender of his sister’s purity, Jimmie has more than one woman seeking child support from him. Enhancing the story’s moral ambiguity, Crane purposely avoids any explicit moralizing. As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth and naturalism gave way to modernism, sexual mores changed. The prostitute in literature was not only allowed to survive but also to succeed. In the posthumously published Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1917), David Graham Phillips (1867–1911) makes his title character an illegitimate child who strikes out on her own as a teenager. Poverty forces her into prostitution, which she tries to escape, yet she repeatedly returns to her life as a prostitute. Finally befriended by a distinguished playwright, she is able to succeed as an actress. Susan Lenox marks the start of a more complex, more nuanced depiction of the prostitute in literature that subsequent authors would continue to develop with a greater degree of sympathy and forgiveness. See also Diseases and Epidemics; Feminism; Maggie, A Girl of the Streets; Poverty BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Brace, Charles Loring. The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years’ Work among Them. New York: Wynkoop and Hallenbeck, 1872. Brace, Charles Loring. “Street Girls.” In Maggie, a Girl of the Streets: A Story of New York, by Stephen Crane, edited by Kevin J. Hayes, pp. 273–276. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999.

916

A M E R I C A N

Buel, James W. Metropolitan Life Unveiled; or, The Mysteries and Miseries of America’s Great Cities, Embracing New York, Washington City, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and New Orleans. St. Louis: Historical Publishing, 1882. Campbell, Helen Stuart. Prisoners of Poverty: Women WageWorkers, Their Trades, and Their Lives. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1887. Crane, Stephen. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets: A Story of New York. 1893. Edited by Kevin J. Hayes. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 1999. Crapsey, Edward. The Nether Side of New York; or, The Vice, Crime, and Poverty of the Great Metropolis. New York: Sheldon, 1872. Fawcett, Edgar. The Evil That Men Do. New York: Belford, 1889. Phillips, David Graham. Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise. New York: D. Appleton, 1917. Sanger, William W. The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World. New York: Harper, 1858. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. We and Our Neighbors; or, The Records of an Unfashionable Street. New York: J. B. Ford, 1875. U.S. Bureau of Labor. Working Women in Large Cities. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889. Secondary Works

Hapke, Laura. Girls Who Went Wrong: Prostitutes in American Fiction, 1885–1917. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989. Hayes, Kevin J. Stephen Crane. Tavistock, Northumberland, U.K.: Northcote House in association with the British Council, 2004. Horn, Pierre L., and Mary Beth Pringle. The Image of the Prostitute in Modern Literature. New York: F. Ungar, 1984. Kevin J. Hayes

PSEUDOSCIENCE The term “pseudoscience,” which literally means “false science,” is sometimes contrasted unambiguously with “true science,” as if we can make an easy distinction between the two terms or as if only a fraud or ignoramus would put forward as scientific something that is not. Once in a while that clear-cut distinction is warranted. Albert Abrams (1863–1924), a medical doctor, is a case in point. For his quack medicine the American Medical Association later dubbed him the “dean of twentieth-century charlatans.”

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PSEUDOSCIENCE

Abrams devised all sorts of diagnostic machines, including the Dynamizer, the Biodynamometer, and the Reflexophone. Another diagnostic machine, the Omnipotent Oscilloclast, could determine from one drop of blood, Abrams claimed, not only a person’s disease but also his or her religious affiliation. Although some pseudoscience of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century can be traced to the ingenuities of con artists like Abrams, most pseudoscience of the period arose under much more complex circumstances. Among those circumstances were unprecedented scientific discoveries, a burgeoning popular interest in science, a widening gap between general literacy and scientific literacy, and a great deal of uncertainty about the implications of new scientific discoveries. With the uncertainties came a hunger for mystery as well as for some assurance that an understanding of the material world would not undermine a spiritual and ethical sensibility. Perhaps traces of these hungers exist in all cultures, but the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century had a particularly acute longing for them. These hungers and uncertainties provided rich material for contemporary writers. Mark Twain and other American writers responded both to the conditions that invited pseudoscience and to specific pseudoscientific fads, including mesmerism, physiognomy, phrenology, electrotherapy, wonder medicines, water therapy, and occultism— as well as to new archaeological “discoveries.” As already suggested, some definitions of “pseudoscience” imply that “false science” can be distinguished unambiguously from “true science.” For example, in The Skeptic’s Dictionary (2003), Robert Todd defines “pseudoscience” as a “set of ideas based on theories put forth as scientific when they are not scientific.” Todd implies that the distinction between science and nonscience is clear-cut; he elsewhere implies that a good skeptic would spot dubious evidence and would not fall prey to the claims of pseudoscientists such as Abrams. However, for the purposes of this article, the most useful definitions of pseudoscience will be those that allow for some ambiguity, such as the definition in the American Heritage Dictionary. There “pseudoscience” is defined as “an unscientific or trivial scientific theory, methodology, or activity that appears to be or is presented as scientific.” This definition permits one to consider pseudoscience from a number of perspectives, including its presentation (at one extreme, by charlatans), its reception (at one extreme, by the scientifically illiterate), and tensions in science itself between appearance and reality, between the intuitive and the counterintuitive. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

The line between pseudoscience and science, between dogma and theory, is often clearer in hindsight than it is in the present. Nonetheless, the conditions under which pseudoscience has thrived in the past include those conditions noted by Mark Twain: situations in which individuals stop asking questions and seekers reach too readily for answers.

I have seen several entirely sincere people who . . . believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. That was the end of the search. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. Twain, What Is Man? and Other Essays, p. 15.

THE CHICANERY OF CON ARTISTS

“There’s a sucker born every minute.” This insight, first quipped in 1869, was not lost on charlatans such as George Hull, Stub Newell, Charles Dawson, and Smith Woodward. Hull created a sensation when in 1868 he and his brother-in-law, Stub Newell, manufactured a fossil later dubbed the “Cardiff Giant.” Hull was an atheist who had argued with an evangelical Christian about a line from Genesis: “There were giants in the earth in those days” (Gen. 6:4). Hull schemed with his brother-in-law to add one more “fossil” to the many already discovered in a region near Cardiff, New York. After ordering three thousand pounds of gypsum and hiring a stonecutter to make a “petrified giant,” Hull and Newell buried the fake giant in a marsh, where it was “discovered” in 1869 by well diggers. For the next year, thousands of curiosity seekers flocked to Cardiff, undeterred by the skepticism of scientists who declared that the giant was either a statue or a hoax. Hull and Newell’s fortunes grew as each tourist dropped fifty cents for a look at the fossilized giant. However, Hull and Newell were P. T. Barnum’s ultimate “suckers.” Barnum attempted to buy interests in the Cardiff Giant, and when he was turned down he made a fake of the fake and claimed that Hull had sold him the original and was now displaying the fake. Not only did Barnum’s fake fake giant allegedly draw larger crowds, the “sucker” quote is misattributed to Barnum when in fact it was uttered by Hull’s banker, David Hannum. If Barnum, Hull, and Newell were able to prey on gullible nonscientists, Dawson and Woodward in 1912


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

917

PSEUDOSCIENCE

and again in 1915 showed that paleontologists could be equally gullible. In the gravel pits of Piltdown, England, Dawson “found” several parts of a prehistoric man hailed as a “missing link” between apes and humans. Presumably Dawson and his companion Woodward were the ones who buried the fake “missing link,” which was later determined to be a human skull wired together with an apish jaw. Although the American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn was skeptical upon Dawson’s first “discovery,” he became an enthusiastic believer when Dawson “found” the second skull fragment. Unlike the Cardiff Giant, which was exposed as a hoax within a year, the Piltdown fragments were accepted as authentic for nearly fifty years.

piano teacher turned circus bareback rider who became world famous for her psychic claims; Eva C. (1886–?), born Marthe Béraud, who “materialized spirit faces” by presenting crumpled pictures in darkened rooms; and Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), a photographer who believed that he had clairvoyant powers. Blavatsky, Cayce, and another medium, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), all claimed that they could consult the Akashic records, records supposed to contain data on everything future, present, and past, in order to contact spirits. In 1875 Max Auzinger developed a “black art principle,” a conjuring trick of covering scaffolds and supports when featuring such objects as “floating” trumpets and tambourines during séances.

In the half-century between the fake discoveries of the Cardiff Giant and the Piltdown Man, pseudoscientific fads thrived on both sides of the Atlantic. Among con artists of the period were some who allegedly hoped to teach a lesson. In 1908 Douglas Blackburn admitted that he and G. A. Smith had never communicated telepathically, as they had been claiming for the last quarter of a century. In trying to justify their chicanery, Blackburn claimed that their hoax “originated in the honest desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific mind and training could be deceived when seeking evidence in support of a theory they were wishful to establish” (Kurtz, p. 235).

Some pseudoscientific fads simply appealed to a common appetite for amazing and awesome events. Among the most skillful conjurers was Harry Houdini (1874–1926), world famous as an escape artist and magician. The “mentalists” Washington Irving Bishop (1856–1889), Joseph Dunninger (1892–1975), and Erik Jan Hanussen (1889–1933) claimed that they had paranormal powers enabling them to accomplish superhuman feats such as the “blindfold drive” (navigating a carriage while blindfolded), mind reading, and psychokinesis (making objects move, allegedly by mind power). In 1882 F. W. Myers coined the term “telepathy” to describe the ability of humans or animals to perceive others’ thoughts without depending on the senses. Not only people but animals were featured for their marvelous talents. Clever Hans, a horse, attracted crowds throughout the 1890s because of his “ability” to do mathematical calculations. Perhaps the most amazing theory of the period was the “hollow earth” theory, first suggested by the astronomer Edmond Halley and “improved” upon in 1870 by Cyrus Reed Teed, who believed that the world is hollow and people live on the inside of it.

Whether or not most pseudoscientists were clever enough to recognize the vulnerabilities of “men of scientific mind,” they were certainly clever enough to recognize the vulnerabilities of those who lacked scientific training. It was the heyday of unqualified capitalism and of ways to make a fast buck at the expense of others’ gullibility. Practitioners of phrenology, physiognomy, mesmerism, theosophy, and spiritualism thrived. Frequently the fakers who carried on these trades pandered to prevailing prejudices—racism, for example, in the case of phrenologists and physiognomists—as well as to prevailing desires—for marvels, miracles, and spiritual connections. In the wake of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, many people feared that science would undermine religion, which perhaps fueled interest in the occult and spiritualism. Spirit mediums, as used here, refers to charlatans who claimed that they could summon spirits and ghosts and communicate with them, sometimes with the aid of devices such as a heart-shaped pointer called a planchette, which would spell out answers on a Ouija board, sometimes during séances, sessions held in semidarkened rooms, where the medium would seem to go into a trance to summon her spirits. Among the best-known spirit mediums were Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), a

918

A M E R I C A N

Perhaps the richest sampling of the pseudoscience craze of the late nineteenth century is found in the fiction of Mark Twain, where one finds references to bloodletting (“A Majestic Literary Fossil”), fraudulent patent medicines (The Gilded Age), electrotherapy (A Connecticut Yankee), water treatments (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer), and mesmerism (his autobiography), among many others. Much of the humor in The Innocents Abroad depends on his readers’ familiarity with current scientific and pseudoscientific topics. At one point in The Innocents Abroad, Twain lampoons a human tendency to project motivations when no evidence exists for them and to dream up theories with no foundation. His American innocents discover a cut in a hillside exposing several veins not of gold, copper, or any other mineral but of oyster shells mixed

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PSEUDOSCIENCE

with crockery. The innocents wonder how those oysters got up the hill and, after rejecting several natural and biblical explanations, theorize that the oysters climbed up there to look at the scenery. This theory, though, is rejected because oysters, with their retiring dispositions, actually scorn beautiful scenery. Later his innocents arrive in a Greek church, only to discover that one unusually short column marks the center of the earth, a reference to the Flat Earth Society, a group that flourished on both sides of the Atlantic after Samuel Birley Rowbotham calculated in 1849 that the North Pole is at the center of the earth and that the earth is indeed flat. (Interestingly, Rowbotham’s pseudoscientific theory, fueled by discrepancies between biblical and scientific versions of geography, is based on data about lighthouses and the point at which mariners sight them. Using numbers available in Lighthouses of the World, Rowbotham’s calculations actually stand up to scrutiny, but his sampling procedures do not.) Twain’s fictional believers conclude that the column in the Greek chapel exists as a “withering rebuke to those philosophers who would make us believe that it is not possible,” while Twain’s skeptic climbs the dome of the church to see if he can see his shadow. The skeptic concludes that the church must be the center of the earth since he sees no shadow, even though it is a cloudy day. Twain’s fictional innocents then discover under the roof of the Greek church a sign identifying Adam’s tomb in an episode reminiscent of the Cardiff Giant and pseudoscientific spoofs on biblical authority. Twain’s innocent narrator is ecstatic to find Adam’s tomb in this land of strangers, for it is the tomb of one of his blood relatives. “True,” he acknowledges, “a distant one, but still a relation” ( p. 211). Whether Twain humorously jabs at science or pseudoscience, his writing reflects the era’s preoccupation with both. THE “SCIENCE” OF THE SCIENTIFICALLY ILLITERATE

The word “scientist” did not exist until William Whewell coined it in 1822 to describe the people who attended the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS). By mid-century science had become a marker of national status; by the turn of the century the Nobel Prize was established as one of the most prestigious international prizes ever to have existed. Scientists were held in high regard, and many Americans wanted to know more about them and their discoveries. Most Americans, however, lacked the scientific training to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. The popular interest in science was not due to the amount of information the new sciences produced. Nineteenth-century science was not yet “big science,” A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

An advertisement for the Phrenological Journal, 1869. Drawing erroneous conclusions from the essentially sound idea that different regions of the brain are responsible for different functions, phrenology became one of the most commonly practiced pseudosciences of the period and was even used by police to develop profiles of potential criminals. © CORBIS

a term coined by Alvin Weinberg in 1961 to describe the multibillion-dollar network of corporate- and government-funded research that pumps out massive amounts of information. What was unprecedented, however—and what fascinated and troubled ordinary nineteenth-century newspaper readers—was the degree to which scientific assumptions challenged many of the prevailing religious and social “ways of knowing.” If scientists were stirring an epistemological pot, ordinary men and women were left wondering what the basis could be for answering life’s most basic questions, what the basis could be for seeking truth. The discomfort some people felt left them vulnerable to the “quick fixes” offered by con men such as Abrams. The longing for a lost, less-material world left others hungering for the pseudoscience of various


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

919

PSEUDOSCIENCE

occultists and spiritualists. The mere novelty of unprecedented scientific changes whetted the appetites of those who sought the sensational and who subsequently sought any wondrous or miraculous device. Whether or not ordinary Americans liked what science might be showing them, they could not help reacting to the issues that science put before them. More and more Americans were able to read in the nineteenth century. The agrarian and Industrial revolutions in the early part of the century led to falling mortality rates and a huge spike in population. Paralleling the spike in population was a spike in literacy, partly due to the early-nineteenth-century selfhelp movements and Jacksonian “we can do it ourselves” democracy. The nineteenth century also witnessed a huge increase in publications, including many unrefereed magazines that would allow their authors to raise controversial—and perhaps pseudoscientific—issues unchecked. The sizable literate public and its freedom of expression in the nineteenth century may have been double-sided: on one hand, more people had the potential to read about scientific issues; on the other hand, there were more venues for outright fraud and deliberate pseudoscience. While ordinary readers of novels and newspapers were frequently interested in scientific issues, few were prepared to critique what they might be reading. By what standards would one judge the merits of a scientific claim? These standards were just being established within newly emerging scientific subdisciplines, and they were often lost on the average reader. Part of the gap between the general reader and the scientist was due to changes in professionalization. Earlier in the century scholars were respected for being Renaissance men, for being generalists who knew a little bit about a lot of different things; by the end of the century scholars had specialized, and the Renaissance ideal was largely forgotten. According to Mary Jo Nye, the scientific changes that took place during the nineteenth century outstripped changes before and since. It was during this period that scientific training and research practices that had in many ways remained unchanged since medieval times shifted to the modern model of government-funded universities outfitted with research labs, where faculty members are expected to produce and publish original research. It was during this century too that the peerreviewed journals that publish original research became established within disciplinary norms, together with an increase in specialized societies that served as gateways. The number of scientists and scientific papers had doubled approximately every fifteen years since the beginning of the seventeenth

920

A M E R I C A N

century; by the mid-nineteenth century publication in the sciences had become specialized, often coinciding with the legitimization of new subdisciplines. Representative of the shift from general to specialized literacy is the shift in Nature, first published in 1869. David Roos argues that the editors of Nature initially aimed to “create a higher-level but still general and accessible forum for the discussion of scientific matters” (p. 162) but that specialization shortly eclipsed accessibility. The average American reader, then, was likely to be interested in scientific issues but was unlikely to find accessible the papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Whatever this average American read was likely to be mediated by a nonscientist, often in novels, periodicals, and poetry. Thus the nineteenth-century “Age of Science” was populated largely by nonscientists who learned about science in texts penned by nonscientists. By 1870 periodicals such as Galaxy, Atlantic Monthly, Appleton’s Journal, North American Review, and Harper’s New Monthly had begun to accommodate their readers’ interest in science even though their “science columns” may not have been reviewed by practicing scientists. It was 1920 before journalists established professional standards for science reporting, and then only under pressure from the American Medical Association, which objected to lurid tales in popular publications such as William Randolph Hearst’s American Weekly. As Martin Gardner notes, this weekly would publish stories about “men who could hear radio broadcasts through gold inlays in their teeth” and “frogs found alive in the cornerstones of ancient buildings” (p. 4). As suggested earlier, some pseudoscientific theories may have thrived in this period because of fears about the difficulty of reconciling religious doctrine with evolutionary theory. Another fear, concern about the future of race relations after Reconstruction, may have fueled pseudoscientific theories of white supremacy, ranging from Samuel George Morton’s and Paul Broca’s work with craniometry to Joseph Le Conte’s biological justification for the “race line,” which, he maintained, resulted from a “necessary instinct” to preserve the blood purity of the “higher race.” Further stimulating pseudoscientific arguments about race were Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism and widespread interest in physiognomy, the art of reading character and fate from the features of the face, whereby white features were equated with good character and black features with bad. For some writers, both physiognomy and phrenology could be tools for suggesting so-called

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PSEUDOSCIENCE

natural relationships between physical features and character. One finds in the literature of Thomas Dixon, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Charles Chesnutt, and James Weldon Johnson, among others, widespread response to pseudoscientific theories of race, ranging from Dixon’s white supremacist The Leopard’s Spots (1902) to Johnson’s critique of representations of race in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912). Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), Twain’s most direct treatment of slavery, resists easy interpretation, while William Dean Howells’s An Imperative Duty (1892) and Charles Chesnutt’s The House behind the Cedars (1900) represent the relationship between race and character ironically. With the emergence of science fiction came narratives that for the most part critically reflected upon real issues in science and society through the medium of fantastic scientific schemes. For example, Edward BulwerLytton’s 1871 utopian fantasy The Coming Race features an engineer who stumbles into a mine and finds there a whole civilization of mystics who have at their disposal the powerful force of Vril, an electricity-like force that is both more creative and destructive than anything known to ordinary humans. While the Vril-yas are depicted as proscience and the novel suggests that Bulwer-Lytton was well versed in scientific issues, the novel also addresses pseudoscientific subjects such as Social Darwinism, eugenics, and clairvoyance. Arguably, this novel responds to the same public ambivalence about evolutionary theory and technological progress that prompted public interest in many of the pseudoscientific issues of the day. By the end of the century science fiction as a self-conscious genre was well established with the publication of H. G. Wells’s “The Man of the Year Million,” The Time Machine, and War of the Worlds. While these texts include “false science” in the sense of imaginary schemes, Wells expected his readers to know that they were imaginary. Even when the reader knows a novel is fiction, though, some elements from the fiction may live on in pseudoscientific lore, as was the case with Vril, the cosmic energy described in The Coming Race, which captured the imagination of the occultist Madame Blavatsky and the “inventor” John Keely. Also ambiguous is the “pseudoscience” in Ignatius Donnelly’s wildly successful novel Ragnarok, published in 1883. Was Donnelly a pseudoscientist? He was a lawyer, a U.S. congressman, and a dabbler in science. He was obsessed by the existence of Atlantis and the belief that a visiting comet would have catastrophic effects. His novel Ragnarok describes a comet colliding with Earth. Was he using fiction to perpetuate ideas that he really believed? A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

UNFINISHED SCIENCE OR SCIENCE IN THE MAKING

By the mid-nineteenth century science was no longer primarily an avocation for gentlemen amateurs but a vocation for professionals. However, scientists too could make mistakes and pseudoscientific claims. Sometimes the same individual was spectacularly wrong about one thing and brilliantly right about another. While nonscientists lacked the training to be able to distinguish science from pseudoscience, scientists had training but often could not distinguish absolutely between pseudoscience and science except in hindsight. Among famous physicists who generalized from the physical to the metaphysical were Rudolf Clausius, who in 1865 coined the term “entropy,” and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), who in 1854 coined the term “thermodynamics.” In 1875 Lord Kelvin coauthored a book, The Unseen Universe, that argued that energy moves between visible and invisible worlds. These physicists’ metaphysical claims would be considered pseudoscientific by most physicists in the twenty-first century. Psychologists as well as physicists sought a unified theory of spirit and material forces. William James, who contributed much to nineteenth-century psychology, believed in the mediumship of the spiritualist Leonora Piper (1857–1950), a Boston housewife who conducted pseudoscientific séances. Again, some of the brightest individuals of the period also accepted as factual things that were not. Moreover, some fields that one thinks of as “sciences” in the early twenty-first century were really closer to “arts” in the nineteenth century, including medicine. Between the limited understanding of bacteriology, infection, and disease on the one hand and the rise in advertising and unlabeled patent medicines on the other, sincere medical practitioners could make nearly as many mistakes as their quack counterparts, something Mark Twain will not let one forget. While snake-oil salesmen may have represented quackery at its worst, the sincere medical doctor may not have been much more help until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 forced labeling of medicines and until penicillin and other antibiotics were discovered two decades later. Within scientific institutions, little happened in the last half of the nineteenth century in the absence of intense debate, whether about mental capacities, the periodic table, probabilistic interpretations of thermodynamics, the electron, X-rays, or general relativity. In the heat of these debates, weak and pseudoscientific theories competed with those eventually accepted as scientific. Generally it is only in hindsight, after the debates have been settled, that one can determine what is “true science” and what is “false science.”


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

921

PSEUDOSCIENCE

Furthermore, on occasion “false science” serves as a placeholder for a subsequent “true” theory. James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish physicist who died in 1879, claimed that “it is a good thing to have two ways of looking at a subject and to admit there are two ways of looking at it. I hold that the chief merit of a temporary theory is that it shall guide the experiment without impeding the progress of the true theory when it appears” (quoted in Nye, p. 72). While Maxwell understood that his scientific claims were tentative at best and would not be confirmed until some time in the future, some scientists were less critical and made claims that edge closer to “false science,” to pseudoscience. Even so, the boundary between “true” and “false” is not always clear. Franz Josef Gall (1758–1828), a medical doctor and the father of phrenology, paved the way for legions of quacks who bilked nineteenth-century curiosity seekers with fatuous character analyses and the reading of head bumps. Yet while phrenology was a thriving pseudoscientific industry for much of the nineteenth century, one cannot say that Gall was a simple pseudoscientist. His assumption that bumps on the head correlate to certain character traits is false, but his idea that different sites of the brain may be responsible for different functions is not entirely mistaken. One can perhaps empathize with the plight of ordinary victims of pseudoscience when one looks at the experiences of scientists who, although trained to be skeptical, suspended their critical faculties in the face of some overwhelming desire. For instance, in 1903, shortly after the discovery of X-rays, the French physicist René Blondlot believed that he had discovered a new form of radiation, which he named N-rays after his university in Nancy, France. The American physicist Robert Wood secretly removed Blondlot’s “radioactive” object during one of Blondlot’s demonstrations, but Blondlot proceeded to count N-rays. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity, although there is every reason to think his will to believe led him to imagine specks of light when there were none. About the same time, Gustav Geley looked into the pseudoscientific spiritualism of Eva C., even though he was an established physicist. Similarly Charles Richet, the 1913 Nobel laureate for physiology and medicine, endorsed the claims of spirit mediums such as Eva C. and William Eglinton. In the early twentieth century Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, a scientist who did pioneer work in early radio and research on lightning, believed that he had contact with his son Raymond, killed in World War I. Peter Demianovich Ouspensk, a Russian mathematician and mystic, tried to reconcile Western rationalism and Eastern mysticism, and Sir William Matthew

922

A M E R I C A N

Flinders Petrie, a talented archaeologist, believed that the Great Pyramid of Egypt was constructed in the form of a prophetic message. In all of these instances one might speculate that the scientists’ overwhelming desires led them to believe in the existence of something for which there is no evidence. If such highly trained individuals as these could have lapses in scientific skepticism, one can surely understand the enthusiasms of the scientifically illiterate majority in the nineteenth century. See also Circuses; Darwinism; Health and Medicine; Museums; Science and Technology; Spiritualism BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. The Coming Race. 1871. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2002. Chesnutt, Charles. The House behind the Cedars. 1900. New York: Penguin, 1993. Dixon, Thomas. The Leopard’s Spots. 1902. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Donnelly, Ignatius. Ragnarok. 1883 Kila, Mo.: Kessinger, 1997. Howells, William Dean. An Imperative Duty. New York: Harper, 1892. Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an ExColored Man. 1912. New York: Dover, 1995. Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 1876. New York: World, 1946. Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court. 1889. New York: Harper, 1917. Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrims’ Progress. 1869. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Twain, Mark. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson. 1894. Avon, Conn.: Limited Editions Club, 1974. Twain, Mark. What Is Man? and Other Essays. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1917. Twain, Mark, and C. D. Warner. The Gilded Age. 1873. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Wells, H. G. “The Man of the Year Million.” 1893. In Apeman, Spaceman, edited by Leon E. Stover and Harry Harrison. London: Penguin, 1968. Wells, H. G. The Time Machine. 1893. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1964. Wells, H. G. War of the Worlds. 1898. London: Heinemann, 1951. Secondary Works

Boeckmann, Cathy. A Question of Character: Scientific Racism and the Genres of American Fiction, 1892–1912. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PSYCHOLOGY

Gardner, Martin. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover, 1957. Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. Rev. ed. New York: Norton, 1996. Gould, Stephen Jay. “Piltdown Revisited.” In his The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History. New York: Norton, 1980. Jastrow, Joseph, ed. The Story of Human Error. New York: Appleton-Century, 1936. Jay, Ricky. Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women. New York: Villard, 1986. Kerr, Howard. Mediums, and Spirit-Rappers, and Roaring Radicals: Spiritualism in American Literature, 1850– 1900. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Kurtz, Paul, ed. A Skeptic’s Handbook of Parapsychology. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1985. Langmuir, Irving. “Pathological Science.” Transcribed and edited by Robert N. Hall. Physics Today 42 (October 1989): 36–48. Nye, Mary Jo. Before Big Science: The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Randi, James. An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995. Roos, David. “The Aims and Intentions of Nature.” In Victorian Science and Victorian Values, edited by James Paradis and Thomas Postelwait. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1985. Martha D. Patton

PSYCHOLOGY The development of experimental and clinical psychology had implications for diverse areas of U.S. social and intellectual life between 1870 and 1920; after 1910, psychological ideas and practices also influenced the American political and economic system. Currents of psychological theory and practice—most of which fall into the categories of philosophical, organic/somatic, experimental, psychometric, forensic, and psychoanalytic—appear in literary and popular texts throughout the period. Some writers incorporated new theories into their writings as information about these ideas became available in popular U.S. magazines and/or English translations of German and French texts; at times, these writers used multiple, potentially contradictory theories in the same texts or in the same period. PRE-EXPERIMENTAL METHODS

Before the experimental methods of the German Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) spread throughout U.S. universities (via Wundtian protégés such as Edward A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Titchener), the sources and implications of human mental activity were theorized by professors of philosophy, while mental pathologies—especially “nervous exhaustion,” or “neurasthenia” (similar to the currentday diagnosis of depression with anxiety and assorted physical symptoms), and alcoholism—were treated by medical doctors and clergy. Even after Wundtian practices were becoming widespread, academic philosophers, physicians, and ministers were treated as public authorities on both normal and abnormal mental functioning. Organic (or “somatic”) practitioners, usually medical doctors, believed that behavioral and cognitive disorders could be traced to problems with digestion, the blood, reproductive organs, or the central nervous system; the best-known theorists of somatic psychology were Silas Weir Mitchell (Wear and Tear [1871] and Fat and Blood [1877]) and George Miller Beard (American Nervousness [1903]). Mitchell (1829– 1914) built his reputation treating traumatized Civil War soldiers with a combination of physical rest and mental inactivity; middle-class businessmen and housewives were later prescribed this regimen. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 story “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” a proto-modernist, feminist critique of Mitchell’s treatment, vividly depicts the “rest cure” from the perspective of a middle-class housewife whose postpartum depression deteriorates into psychosis by the end of the text. Somewhere between the orientations of philosophical, medical, and religious psychologists, but operating on the cultural margins were practitioners of Christian Science (founded in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy) and New Thought (associated with Phineas Parkhurst Quimby and Horatio W. Dresser), two movements that emphasized individuals’ abilities to influence the course of both physical and mental complaints through guided, positive thinking. In his novel The “Genius” (1916), Theodore Dreiser shows the novel’s protagonist, Eugene Witla, and his estranged wife consulting a Christian Science practitioner in hopes of both healing Witla’s mental anguish and steeling his frail wife against the demands of a high-risk pregnancy. EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

The philosophical exploration of everyday mental activity, begun in the eighteenth century by “common sense” thinkers such as John Locke and Thomas Reid, started being challenged in the 1870s by the anthropometric laboratory methods of Wundt (University of Leipzig) and William James (Harvard). By measuring reaction times, visual and auditory perception, memory, and other neurologically based abilities, physiologically oriented psychologists tried to construct an objective, scientific base for the study of human consciousness. Though, for the most part, they avoided asking larger


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

923

PSYCHOLOGY

questions about the roots or purposes of complex human behaviors, their work was explicitly influenced by Spencerian philosophy and Darwinian theories of adaptation and natural selection. Especially between 1890 and 1910, the ideas of Wundtian psychologists were sometimes invoked in the scientific and popular press to justify racist, sexist, and imperialist public policies. Intellectual unease with Wundtian psychology had less to do with some of its social/political uses than with a more general sense that the discipline (and the Spencerian/Darwinian theories that influenced it) had no need for the Christian underpinnings of American moral philosophy. For a genteel novelist like William Dean Howells (1837–1920), Spencerian determinism tended to emphasize biological and environmental determinism at the expense of human free will. Howells’s late-career speculative fiction A Traveller from Altruria (1894), however, showed him embracing the implicitly Christian version of Spencerian thinking popularized by Howells’s common sense philosopher friend, John Fiske. Altruria reflects Howells’s hope that environmental determinism, exerted through socially just public policies, could, over many generations, improve the moral and ethical behaviors typical of the human species. Wundtian psychologists like Titchener (Cornell), James McKeen Cattell (Columbia), Joseph Jastrow (Wisconsin), and Hugo Munsterberg (Harvard) trained university students to test and record each other’s physical responses so that students could, in turn, compile anthropometric data from specific segments of their communities. The thousands of visitors to the 1893 Columbian World Exposition in Chicago tested by the anthropologist Franz Boas and his students spread public awareness of brass instrument psychology (so called because of the use of scientific instruments in the psychology of the time) and prepared Americans for the large-scale progressive-movement testing and measurement policies that would affect millions of schoolchildren, prisoners, immigrants, and workers in the first decades of the twentieth century. Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), the Californiaborn writer whose modernist language experiments would later bring her work artistic acclaim and public celebrity (as well as ridicule), was an undergraduate student of both William James (1842–1910) and Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) at the Harvard Annex (later called Radcliffe College) in 1893 and 1894. In her 1933 Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Stein would rightly claim that James—best known in literary circles for his description (in his 1890 Principles of Psychology) of consciousness as “a stream”—strongly influenced her personal and intel-

924

A M E R I C A N

lectual development. Her college compositions and early narratives such as “Melanctha” and “The Gentle Lena,” however, show that she was preoccupied with mental normality and pathology, as well as by comparisons between “quicker” and “slower,” or “bright” and “stupid” characters. These concerns reflect her “brass instrument” training under Munsterberg—and her subsequent medical school education at Johns Hopkins—more than the comparatively humanistic influence of James. Stein’s mammoth novel The Making of Americans (composed between 1908 and 1911), by contrast, experiments with theories about what Stein called “bottom nature,” which she developed in part after reading Viennese philosopher Otto Weininger’s 1903 Sex and Character (translated into English in 1906). In her personal life, Stein took comfort in Weininger’s patently misogynist ideas about homosexuality, which the sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, in his 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis, called “inversion”: he argued that the “mannishness” of some lesbians made them superior to most heterosexual women, whose identification with and proximity to physical reproductive processes proved their intellectual inferiority. In letters and notebooks, as well as (in a more coded way) in published texts like Tender Buttons (1914), Stein expresses ambivalence toward the “messy” femaleness of women such as her sister Bertha and even her longtime partner, Alice Toklas. Stein’s uses of experimental psychology are noteworthy in part because the literary texts she produced with their help are also explicitly experimental. In Three Lives (1903) and The Making of Americans, she tests the implications of newer theories of consciousness, personality, and intelligence for narrative structure. Her narrative representations of individual emotional development over time (as in her depiction of Jeff Campbell in “Melanctha”) reflect James’s contention that, to the perceiving human mind, there is only the present moment: instead of describing Jeff’s feelings for Melanctha as evolving toward and later away from love, Stein’s narrator repeatedly presents discrete and absolute impressions of Jeff’s attitudes, using words like “always” and “never.” Likewise, her portrayal of Melanctha’s friend Rose Johnson, which was influenced by Stein’s medical school encounters with uneducated black women, echoes developing psychomedical discourses about the eugenic dangers presented by “feeble-minded” African Americans and immigrants. “Melanctha” opens with the death of Rose’s baby from neglect, an event that is narrated without emotion and then “forgotten” until much later in the text, much in the same way that Rose “forgets” the baby itself. The disengaged, emotionally flat narrative style and chronology of “Melanctha” are presented as

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PSYCHOLOGY

analogous to the underdeveloped, disordered mind of Rose Johnson, a woman whose inability to respond to Melanctha’s emotional pain ultimately contributes to the death of the text’s title character. Though Stein’s experimental work with psychological theories was unusual in the period, she was obviously not the first American writer to weave contemporary psychology into fiction. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Charles Brockden Brown had infused Lockean ideas about perception and reason into Edgar Huntley (1799), whereas both Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall (1854) and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855) referred at many points to phrenological theories of personality popular at mid-century. Insofar as the phrenological penchant for categories of thought and behavior may have influenced Whitman’s development of a “cataloging” style, his use of contemporary psychology might also be said to be experimental in somewhat the same way as Stein’s was. By the end of the nineteenth century, U.S. novels—like their realist counterparts in England and France—regularly incorporated what might be called “lay” or philosophical/psychological observations about region, social class, and gender into their closely focused treatments of individual thinking and perception. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FREUD’S 1909 CLARK UNIVERSITY LECTURES

Around 1910, as somatic psychology waned, the currents of experimental, psychometric, forensic, and psychoanalytic psychology flowed with increasing force into both literary and journalistic discourse. In the decade that followed this infusion, the English translation of Sigmund Freud’s 1909 Clark University lectures would appear to have been the most influential psychological event in U.S. culture; as the examples of Howells, Mark Twain (1835–1910), Pauline Hopkins, Henry James (1843–1916), Edith Wharton (1862– 1937), Kate Chopin (1851–1904), Frank Norris (1870–1902), Theodore Dreiser (1871– 1945), and Jack London (1876–1916) attest, however, the literary importance of psychoanalytic theory needs to be assessed within the contexts of the psychological discourses (academic and otherwise) that had been developing over the previous two decades. In keeping with the hegemonic tradition of philosophical/theological psychology, a writer such as Mark Twain, for instance, refined realist techniques for representing consciousness in order to explore Huck Finn’s uncertainties about the ethical bonds of friendship with a slave. In The Ambassadors (1903) and The House of Mirth (1905), likewise, James and Wharton narrated fictional minds capable of the most A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

subtle moral equivocation in the areas of social class and marital politics. Within Pauline Hopkins’s novel Contending Forces (1900), William James’s ideas about double consciousness and spiritualism help explain her African American character’s decision to pass as a white American. As Cynthia Schrager (1997) has shown, James’s theory probably influenced African American sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois’s own version of double consciousness, articulated in his 1903 The Souls of Black Folk. Writers who experimented with the extreme version of realism known as “naturalism”—a narrative form first practiced in the 1870s by the French novelist Émile Zola (L’Assommoir [1877], Germinal [1885])— tested the roles of heredity, environment, and individual choice for characters themselves functioning in settings of extreme poverty, physical danger, or moral ambiguity. For writers like Norris, Dreiser, and London, the growth of state-run institutions for “mentally defective” children and adults, combined with increased public awareness of educational and medical discourses about individual differences in intelligence, led to the creation of characters whose intellectual deficiencies limit their personal freedom and responsibility. The most famous of these characters was Norris’s “slow-witted” dentist, McTeague (1899), a giant Irishman who functions more or less competently in a socially supportive environment, but who becomes a menacing, drunken “brute” when the state prevents him from practicing his trade. In his short story “Told in the Drooling Ward” (1914), London creates a borderline “feeble-minded” male who comments articulately on the politics of institutional life, but who clearly cannot survive beyond the walls of the state “home.” Both Norris and London had personal connections to the California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble Minded Children in Eldridge, California. Norris was the longtime friend of William Lawlor, director of the Home, whereas London, whose “Beauty Ranch” bordered the grounds of the large facility, boasted of his friendships with “imbeciles” living there. In 1916 Dreiser, whose descriptions of characters frequently included blunt assessments of their intelligence, shocked New York theater audiences with The Hand of the Potter, a forensic drama about the mental life of an epileptic child molester and murderer. Everyone in this poorly received play—from the police, to the murderer’s Russian Jewish family, to the murderer Isadore Berchansky himself—debates the “causes and consequences” (to borrow the title of Clark-trained psychologist H. H. Goddard’s 1917 compendium on “idiocy,” “imbecility,” and “moronism”) of Berchansky’s frightening form of feeblemindedness.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

925

PSYCHOLOGY

In Theodore Dreiser’s 1916 play The Hand of the Potter, Quinn, an Irish American reporter, informs his colleagues (and the play’s audience) of the current research on sexual pathology:

Now ye were sayin’ a while ago that ye can’t understand why a man like that should be attackin’ a little girl, unless he were a low, vile creature, even if he wasn’t balanced quite right— but I can. If ye’d ever made a study ave the passion ave love in the sense that Freud an’ some others have ye’d understand it well enough. It’s a great force about which we know naathing as yet an’ which we’re just beginnin’ to look into—what it manes, how it affects people. Dreiser, The Hand of the Potter.

FREUD’S IMPACT ON AMERICAN CULTURE, 1910–1920

Establishing the thoroughly psychological character of U.S. narrative before Freud is important because, as Steven Marcus and other literary scholars have shown, the medical/philosophical orientation, Darwinist worldview, and narrative structure of Freudian theory closely paralleled the developmental bent and internally focused structure of much European and American fiction. In other words, Freud’s writings (especially his case studies) looked a lot like the narratives that literary scholars would later analyze with Freud’s help. For example, ten or more years before Freud’s U.S. debut, Frank Norris wrote (but did not publish) Vandover and the Brute, in which the protagonist’s childhood psychosexual trauma plants the seed of his eventual mental deterioration. Similarly, in her 1899 The Awakening, Kate Chopin explored the emotional effects of middle-class sexual repression on a character who resembles the patients (or heroines) in some of Freud’s case studies. How best to account for the overlap between psychological developments in the narrative and theory of this period? As historian John Demos (1997) argues, Freud’s theories about infantile sexuality and the emotional (dys)function of the nuclear mother/father/ child triad grew out of the same “hothouse family” structure that animated so much late-nineteenth-century realist fiction. Both the psychological novels and psychoanalytic theories were logical products of a middle-class family structure

926

A M E R I C A N

in which socially disempowered mothers were rewarded by their husbands and communities for investing most of their emotional energy in the nurturance of children (especially sons); likewise, fathers’ work in the capitalist marketplace rendered their authority over their children more symbolic (and hence open to children’s interpretation and fantasy) than it had been in previous eras. For their part, children in the “hothouse family” learned to see their same-sex parent as rivals for the affection of their opposite-sex parent. While the Victorian glorification of the nuclear family and taboos against open discussion of sexuality meant that most novels of the period would not revolve around overtly sexualized parentchild conflicts, realist narratives frequently emphasized competition between sons and fathers or overly intense mother/ child bonds. Freud’s theories provided a technical vocabulary for analyzing both latenineteenth-century middle-class subjects and the narratives they produced. Between 1914 and 1916, popular American magazines like Vanity Fair and the New Republic familiarized educated readers with basic psychoanalytic terms and concepts, usually in simplified form; further simplified (and perhaps distorted) borrowings soon appeared in explicitly literary contexts. Since its introduction to the United States, both proponents and critics of psychoanalysis have lamented the widespread “liberatory” interpretation that Freud’s ideas received from American intellectuals between 1911 and 1930: while Freud and his professional disciples emphasized the hard work of sublimating or integrating instinctual drives (especially for sexual satisfaction and parental approval) to form a productive adult psyche, lay followers used Freudian insights about sexual repression and expression to authorize “free love” and other transgressions of middle-class sexual convention. In his 1918 play The Angel Intrudes, for instance, Freudian enthusiast Floyd Dell (1887–1969; one of the founders, with George Cook Cram and Susan Glaspell, of the influential Provincetown Players) presented a man and his much younger partner (played by the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay) whose tryst is interrupted by the appearance of the man’s guardian angel. Far from intending to redirect the man’s sensuality, however, the angel wants to emulate it—to dress, drink, and love the way his human charge does. Faced with a choice between the sexually predictable man and his naive, “utterly depraved” guardian, Annabelle (named, perhaps, after the child lover in Edgar Allan Poe’s 1849 poem “Annabelle Lee”) runs away with the angel, promising the angel, “I shall never hold you against your will. I do not want to burn your wings. I really don’t!”

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

PSYCHOLOGY

While the tone of his play is ironic, Dell wants audiences to see the spontaneous, pleasure-seeking angel as the taboo-ridden man’s better self. Dell’s embrace of (what he saw as) Freudian freedom may have been partly a rejection of the Iowan’s midwestern background in favor of the cosmopolitan ethos of his adopted home in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Orthodox Freudians saw such interpretations as dangerous oversimplifications, but their currency would spread, especially with the popularity of Eugene O’Neill’s plays from 1920 on. In his 1918 story “Seeds,” included in his 1920 short story collection The Triumph of the Egg, Chicagoan Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) takes what professional psychologists might have seen as a pessimistic, but nonetheless more responsible, approach to the therapeutic value of sexual expression. His caution reflected the reserved culture of the midwestern characters he created: far from believing that sexual activity could cure what later philosophers would describe as existential angst, Anderson saw sexuality as a force that might be biologically innate but was still constructed by culture. As such, it was just as likely as other forms of expression to be confused or misunderstood; because so many taboos surrounded the “language” of sex, miscommunications of the body and of emotional desire were harder than verbal ones to resolve. While a story like “Seeds” suggests that Anderson the modernist writer saw artistic value in Freudian insights about human development and sexuality, his characters make it clear that the writer had little faith in psychoanalysis as a therapeutic practice. Even more than Sherwood Anderson, Jack London disagreed with “liberatory” uses of Freudian thought; at the same time, however, London praised Freud as a crucial connector of human biological and cultural behaviors. Writing in California, far from the New York City hub of Freudian fans, London may have been following developments in Freud’s thinking (among other psychologists, scientists, and philosophers) as they were being discussed by scholars, even before their translation into English. Deeply influenced by Darwin and Spencer, London understood whatever theories he read in terms of evolutionary ideas of natural selection. His interpretations of psychologists Freud, Havelock Ellis, Carl Jung, and Otto Rank emphasized his belief that psychological adjustment occurred in the evolutionary service of biological reproduction. In London’s 1913 novel The Valley of the Moon, for example, Freud’s and Ellis’s ideas about female hysteria help London show how the example of what he sometimes called “primitives”—in this case, wild animals and a dark-skinned woman—helps his heroine, Saxon, learn an evolutionarily healthy sexuality. Saxon’s self-aware sexuality is not A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

a tool for what later psychoanalytic devotees might call “self-actualization,” but a key to what London saw as a responsible, reproductively oriented adulthood. In a late, partly autobiographical novel like The Little Lady of the Big House (1916), by contrast, the suicide of the female protagonist demonstrates London’s belief that emotionally complicated adults are unlikely to be freed of their mental pain and neuroses by loosened sexual conventions. The number of practicing Freudian psychoanalysts in the United States was never large in the years immediately following Freud’s Clark lectures, but, thanks to popularizers like Dell, Max Eastman, and Walter Lippmann, Freudian ideas directly influenced legal, social, and educational policy; trends in public policy, in turn, influenced literary texts by writers who might not themselves have read Freud before 1920. An especially vivid example appears in Dreiser’s The Hand of the Potter (1918). Near the end of the play, Dreiser shows one police detective (saddled by Dreiser with the broadest possible Irish accent) chastising another for not knowing current psychological theories about deviant sexuality. Dreiser’s invocation of Freud to explain behavior that was far beyond the pale of any of Freud’s own subjects anticipates by six years the defense attorney Clarence Darrow’s use of Freudian theory to exculpate teenage “thrill-kill” murderers Leopold and Loeb, who, in 1924, would (inexplicably, to most observers) kill a younger boy and dump his body in a marshland outside of Chicago. By 1920 Freudian “slips,” “inferiority complexes,” “death drives,” “Oedipal complexes,” and other concepts from his writings had been thoroughly absorbed into educated public discourse and were well on their way to becoming clichés. See also Pseudoscience; Realism; Science and Technology BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Dell, Floyd. The Angel Intrudes: A Play in One Act. New York: E. Arens, 1918. Available at http://gutenberg .teleglobe.net/etext04/kgrts10.txt. Dreiser, Theodore. The Hand of the Potter. 1916. In The Collected Plays of Theodore Dreiser, edited by Keith Newlin and Frederic E. Rusch. Albany: Whitston, 2000. Freud, Sigmund. “The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis.” American Journal of Psychology 21 (1910): 181–218. Available at http://psychclassics. yorku.ca/ Freud/Origin/. Goddard, Henry Herbert. Feeble-Mindedness: Its Causes and Consequences. New York: Macmillan, 1914. London, Jack. The Valley of the Moon. 1913. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

927

PSYCHOLOGY

edited by Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane, pp. 56–91. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

Secondary Works

Alkana, Joseph. The Social Self: Hawthorne, Howells, William James, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997. Auerbach, Jonathan. Male Call: Becoming Jack London. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996. Demos, John. “History and the Psychosocial: Reflections on ‘Oedipus and America.’” In Inventing the Psychological: Toward a Cultural History of Emotional Life in America, edited by Joel Pfister and Nancy Schnog, pp. 79–83. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997. Hale, Nathan G. Freud and the Americans: The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Marcus, Steven. “Freud and Dora: Story, History, Case History.” In In Dora’s Case: Freud-Hysteria-Feminism,

928

A M E R I C A N

Perkins, Priscilla. “‘A Little Body with a Very Large Head’: Composition, Psychopathology, and the Making of Stein’s Normal Self.” Modern Fiction Studies 42, no. 3 (1996): 529–546. Perkins, Priscilla. “Self-Generation in a Post-Eugenic Utopia: Dreiser’s Conception of the ‘Matronized’ Genius.” American Literary Realism 32, no. 1 (1999): 12–34. Schrager, Cynthia. “Pauline Hopkins and William James: The New Psychology and the Politics of Race.” In Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, edited by Elizabeth Abel, Barbara Christian, and Helene Moglen, pp. 307–329. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

H I S T O R Y

Priscilla Perkins

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RACE NOVELS

R

In many ways “race” is everywhere one looks in American literature, and the decades from the end of the Civil War through the beginning of literary modernism and the Harlem Renaissance in the 1910s and 1920s, respectively, are no exception. Even Henry James and Edith Wharton, whose fictional worlds centered on the nation’s white middle and upper classes, concerned themselves on occasion with the problem of depicting nonwhite characters. More importantly, in selecting the centers of consciousness for their novels or in constructing the knowable communities of their literary worlds, James and Wharton intertwined matters of social and aesthetic discrimination. If we credit at all Ernest Hemingway’s assertion that the literature of the United States begins with Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) (1885), a novel that centers on the relationship between a black man and a white adolescent, then we might be justified in asking whether any American novel escapes being a race novel. A major thrust of recent scholarly engagements with the period is to see race as a constituent feature of the American literary imagination. This suggests that labeling a body of work as race novels is somewhat problematic. It would probably make more sense to reiterate Ralph Ellison’s contention that neither the national identity nor the literature of the United States through the mid-twentieth century exists outside of the problem of race. This being said, what may justify describing some novels from this period as “race” novels is that many writers composed and published their works with the

hope of affecting the laws, practices, and attitudes directed at former slaves and the nation’s other subordinated population groups. Race, as a term, obviously encompasses more than the social and political differences between blacks and whites, and to some extent the literature of this period reflects this broader awareness. For example, Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) attempted to awaken the nation’s conscience to the atrocities whites had perpetrated against Native Americans by writing a work of nonfiction, A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes (1881), which she mailed to every member of the United States Senate in an effort to change national policy. Unsatisfied with the response to her efforts, Jackson supplemented her exposé with her 1884 novel, Ramona: A Story, a tale of love in which a mixed-race heroine discovers her Native American heritage. Jackson’s novel was only one indication that such factors as the midcentury appropriation of lands in the American West and the Southwest along with increasing immigration from southern and eastern Europe and China contributed to a hyperawareness of human difference. Reflecting these differences was a proliferation of short stories in the major monthly magazines focusing on local customs and linguistic differences. The term “race novel,” however, tended to be reserved for fiction such as Jackson’s Ramona that addressed itself to solving a significant social problem—and during this era, the problem to which most of these novels addressed themselves was the ongoing discrimination against African Americans in their effort to secure their rights as citizens.

929

RACE NOVELS

THE NOVEL AND RECONSTRUCTION

The early pattern for this work was set as the Civil War was coming to a close. John William De Forest (1826– 1906), who coined the term “the great American novel,” wrote Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867) about the war and its aftermath. Not only did his novel include an attempt by one of its characters to reorganize black labor in the South, but De Forest, who had served in the Union Army, also went on himself to work for the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (more familiarly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau) in South Carolina from 1866 through 1868. The Freedmen’s Bureau was the institution most directly responsible for protecting the rights and the livelihoods of former slaves in the south during the period of Reconstruction (1866–1877). De Forest’s novel, despite his sympathy for the former slaves, did not represent optimistically the prospects for full and equal citizenship for blacks after the war. Also combining fictional endeavors with official and unofficial advocacy on behalf of black Americans were two other white authors, Albion W. Tourgée (1838– 1905) and George Washington Cable (1844–1925). Tourgée, who also served in the Union Army during the war, became a staunch supporter of Reconstruction in North Carolina, where he was a Republican Party official and a Superior Court Judge. He is perhaps best known for having argued on behalf of Homer A. Plessy, who unsuccessfully challenged the constitutionality of segregated rail cars in the landmark 1896 Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. Long before Plessy, however, Tourgée had castigated the Republican Party for its lukewarm support of the former slaves in two novels, A Fool’s Errand (1879) and Bricks without Straw (1880), both of which drew upon his experiences in North Carolina. Likewise a Civil War veteran, but on the side of the Confederacy, George Washington Cable became, after the war, perhaps the most prominent southern advocate for black civil rights of his generation, arguing against such ills as the convict-lease system. His most prominent race-related novel is The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life (1880), which takes up the plight of free people of color under slavery as a way of pointing up the wrong of racial prejudice. Closer to the center of the American literary mainstream, Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, who were to all intents and purposes Civil War noncombatants, wrote novels that drew attention, albeit sometimes ambivalently, to racial inequality. The moral heart of Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is Huck’s decision to “go to Hell,” rather than return Jim to slavery. A later novel, Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), uses the device of switching two

930

A M E R I C A N

babies in their cradles as a way of demonstrating that racial behavior and language were the result of social conditioning. Yet the novel’s satire leaves intact the possibility that certain racial traits are innate. Howells, who from his editorial perches at the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s had advocated for realist approaches to novel writing, engaged directly the problem of black/white racial difference in An Imperative Duty (1891). The novel focuses on a genteel female character who learns of her black ancestry only as she reaches the stage of courtship. In keeping with his distaste for sentimentalism, Howells prevents his heroine from making the self-sacrifice of foregoing marriage to a white suitor for an educational career in the South, working on behalf of the race she has newly discovered as her own. Instead, her suitor, a white doctor who is fully aware of her background, cajoles her into accepting her proposal. THE MUTED VOICES OF THE FORMER SLAVES

If white American authors were first out of the gate in establishing the racial themes of the postbellum period, they did so fully expecting to be overtaken by African Americans themselves. In an essay entitled “The South as a Field for Fiction” (1888), Tourgée declared that the lives of the former slaves, as well as those of poor white southerners, constituted the most promising source for distinctive American writing. Tourgée argues that the future of American literature lay in championing those forms, melodramatic and romantic, best suited to the epic sweep of war, reunion, and reaction in the South. The African American essayist and social critic Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964) warned that until black authors, particularly black female authors, had told their stories both American society and American literature would fall short of their fulfillment. Cooper’s voice was seconded by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911), a novelist, poet, and social crusader, who concluded her novel Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted (1892) with a note observing that while the “race has not had very long to straighten its hands from the hoe, to grasp the pen and wield it as a power for good,” there was reason for optimism (p. 282). According to this line of thinking, the turn-oftwentieth-century literary world should have expected to see many former slaves abandoning the kitchen and cotton field for the writing desk, recapitulating the itineraries of antebellum authors such as Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), William Wells Brown (1813– 1884), and Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813–1896), each of whom had written memorably of their escapes from slavery to freedom. Brown had also authored Clotel;

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RACE NOVELS

or, the President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States, which appeared in 1853, the first novel published by an African American. That same year Douglass published his only work of fiction, “The Heroic Slave,” a novella about a slave rebellion. Both works were written in the wake of the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811– 1896), which had galvanized abolitionist literature the year before and had become a model and a foil for writers, black and white. The evils of slavery and the problem of racial prejudice were the issues to which antebellum race fiction addressed itself. So many of these works were published that in 1858 John Mercer Langston hailed the “splendid achievement” of the antislavery movement in having established “its own literature” (Langston, p. 61). In the years after the war, with the matter of slavery presumably settled, the issue of race revolved around questions of how completely African Americans would be incorporated into the polity. The literary issue was whether or not this quest for full citizenship would find its imaginative chroniclers among the former slaves. Had a system of universal public education based on the classical liberal curriculum of New England’s schools been established in the South, more of the writers who emerged at the turn of the twentieth century might have been former slaves. Instead, because many whites, including those from the north, opposed the former slaves’ demands for universal education, a large proportion of the schools for blacks that did open employed curricula designed to produce contented agricultural and industrial workers rather than equal citizens. And while these schools did not achieve their aim of reconciling the mass of black Americans to second-class citizenship, they did garner resources and support that might otherwise have gone to schools more in line with African American aspirations. Somewhat ironically, the most visible node of opposition to the classical liberal education model centered on Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), himself a former slave, whose Tuskegee Institute championed an industrial education model. Speaking to the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895, Washington disparaged literary aspirations among the former slaves, declaiming, “no race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem” (p. 220). THE FICTION OF THE BLACK ELITE

Washington’s opposition to the humanistic educational aims embraced by many African Americans was voiced against the backdrop of severe reprisals and A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

state-sanctioned terrorism in the nation’s southern states against those black Americans who sought to exercise the rights granted them by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The early 1890s witnessed a dramatic increase in brutal lynchings, as state after state rolled back the political, civil, and economic gains made during Reconstruction. Much of the black voting that had taken place since Reconstruction was suppressed by rewriting state constitutions and by looking the other way when what rights that remained were not enforced. The latter years of the 1890s and the early years of the twentieth century were pockmarked by race riots in such cities as Wilmington, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia. Not surprisingly, then, the most prominent black novelists of this period were not individuals who had experienced directly the oppressive regime of southern field and domestic labor. Rather, while turn-of-the-twentiethcentury black authors suffered economically, politically, psychologically, and sometimes physically from Jim Crow strictures, they wrote their novels not as former slaves but on behalf of the former slaves. Consequently, the sympathy and sensitivity these writers brought to bear in portraying the plight of both the freed slaves and their better-educated fellow citizens did not prevent them from reproducing a social vision in which former field hands and cooks deferred to characters displaying gentility, literacy, and conventional beauty. Even though black political equality was not up for grabs in these works, their authors tended to acquiesce in the belief that a majority of the former slaves and their descendants needed moral, intellectual, and political guidance before they could exercise their political rights responsibly. Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy exemplifies this problem. In representing the speech of illiterate black characters early in the novel, Harper stresses that the slaves’ broken English does not indicate their intellectual incapacity but rather their political astuteness about the implications for them of the Civil War. Harper remarks, “some of the shrewder slaves, coming in contact with their masters and overhearing their conversations, invented a phraseology to convey in the most unsuspected manner news to each other from the battle-field” (pp. 8–9). Yet later in the same novel one of Harper’s exemplary characters, upon reading in the newspapers that black women were no longer fit to work as servants for whites, comes to the conclusion that these same black women must also be “unfit to be mothers to their own children, and she conceived the idea of opening a school to train future wives and mothers” (p. 199). This oscillation between viewing the freed slaves as ready to act on their own


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

931

RACE NOVELS

behalf and, alternately, as a disorganized populace awaiting direction from a college-educated elite—the group that Du Bois was to call the “Talented Tenth”— reflects how this elite stratum was pushed to rebut charges of black inferiority even as its spokespersons argued for the necessity of racial uplift. In order to depict racial inequality as a caste system and to dramatize racial pride, most of these fictions focused on characters whose skin color and educational status would have allowed them to be taken for white. Although antebellum authors had used this character type—whom critics have termed the “tragic mulatto”—to highlight the irrationality and injustice of slavery, race novels of the postbellum era tended to employ these characters to dramatize black racial identity as something worth choosing. Harper’s Iola Leroy repeatedly draws her readers’ attention to the decisions made by her main characters to insist on being black even when the material inducements to assuming a white identity are considerable. Likewise, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859–1930) underwrote a commitment to the race with interracial marriage among the black upper classes in several of her plots. Hopkins, who edited Colored American Magazine, published four novels between 1900 and 1903, including Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (1900). More ambivalent about the capacity of a mixedrace elite to consolidate itself for class leadership were two novels by Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858– 1932), The House behind the Cedars (1900) and The Marrow of Tradition (1901). The former is a tragedy of racial passing, which subordinates condemnation of passing to a criticism of the hypocrisy of whites who make race the only criterion of human judgment. The latter, one of only three black-authored race novels to respond to the aesthetics of literary realism (the others being Paul Laurence Dunbar’s The Sport of the Gods and James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man), fictionalized the violent white attack on the black citizenry of Wilmington, North Carolina. This race riot targeted the city’s black middle class, and Chesnutt’s novel uses this violence to delineate the sources and consequences of white supremacy. The Sport of the Gods (1902) by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was the author’s only novel focusing on black characters and chronicles the ill fortunes of a black family forced to migrate from the South to the North after the father is falsely convicted of stealing money. The novel offers a naturalist examination of the effects of the urban environment on character development.

932

A M E R I C A N

RESPONDING TO THE LITERATURE OF WHITE SUPREMACY

Not only did black novelists from the turn of the twentieth century write against actual lynchings, race riots, and political disenfranchisement, but also against popular novels that defended the white supremacist order of the Jim Crow South. In 1898 Thomas Nelson Page (1853–1922) published Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction, which echoed the historiography of William A. Dunning and others in excoriating Reconstruction as an unjustified imperialist assault on the South. This view was underscored when Thomas Dixon (1864–1946) published The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden 1865–1900 (1902) and The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905). Both novels depicted black demands for the franchise as a sexual threat to white womanhood, and Dixon, in particular, justified the use of violence against black men. Dixon’s novel provided the basis for D. W. Griffith’s racist feature film The Birth of A Nation (1915), the success of which indicated how the tenets of Southern white supremacy were truly national in scope. One of the African American authors challenging these racist depictions was Sutton Elbert Griggs (1872–1930), a Texas-born Baptist minister who published five novels between 1899 and 1908. The first, Imperium in Imperio (1899), has often been remarked for the attention that it gives to black separatism, although Griggs’s commitment throughout his works is to black equality within the United States. Griggs was specifically asked to write The Hindered Hand; or, The Reign of the Repressionist (1905) as a response to Dixon’s work, which he did, but without garnering anywhere near the attention that rewarded Dixon’s efforts. W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois (1868–1963), who in 1903 published his landmark book The Souls of Black Folk, a text that, among other things, celebrates the distinctiveness of black musical expression, also wrote his first novel during this period. The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911) weaves an exposé of the cotton economy and Du Bois’s ambivalent relation to the untutored folk into a plot that also reveals the economic basis of Southern opposition to black education. The work that both caps the race novels of the turnof-the-century and opens onto the era of the Harlem Renaissance is James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), which was first published in 1912 and re-published in 1927. The fictionalized autobiography of an accomplished pianist who successfully passes for white, the novel recycles many of the themes and problems of the earlier race novels. Yet by extending Du Bois’s celebration of black

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RACIAL UPLIFT

spirituals to include secular forms of expression like ragtime, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man delineates what was to become a major premise of twentieth-century African American fiction: the belief that the nurturing of a distinctively black culture was a necessary component of black political activity. See also The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; Blacks; Civil Rights; Iola Leroy; Jim Crow; Ku Klux Klan; Lynching;The Marrow of Tradition; Miscegenation; Racial Uplift; Reform


Chesnutt, Charles W. The Marrow of Tradition. 1901. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. De Forest, John William. Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty. 1867. New York: Penguin, 2000. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. New York: Vintage Library of America, 1990. Harper, Frances E. W. Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted. 1892. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Hopkins, Pauline E. Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South. 1900. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an ExColored Man. 1912. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Langston, John Mercer. Freedom and Citizenship: Selected Lectures and Addresses. 1883. Miami, Fla.: Mnemosyne, 1969. Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery: The Autobiography of Booker T. Washington, The Foremost Educator of His Times. 1901. New York: University Books, 1989. Secondary Works

Anderson, James. D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Carby, Hazel V. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Fishkin, Shelly Fisher. Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-American Voices. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Michaels, Walter Benn. Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995. Warren, Kenneth W. Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Kenneth W. Warren

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

RACIAL UPLIFT In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most whites viewed African Americans as “a homogenous mass of degraded people” (Gatewood, p. 7). The African presence was perceived as a national liability in the imagined community, a “body of death” chained to the larger body politic. Despite the inability of whites to think in terms of a stratified black society, by the late nineteenth century, a small but growing African American middle class regarded its own existence as prima facie evidence of racial progress. This African American elite, whose culture and style of living often more closely resembled that of the better class of whites, shouldered the burden of “uplifting the race” during the period that the historian Rayford W. Logan has labeled “the Nadir” (1880–1915). During this turbulent era, the voting and civil rights gains of Reconstruction (1864–1876) were systematically dismantled. Confronting violence and extra-legal terrorism of often-barbaric intensity and a virulent racial discourse in which science and the rhetoric of lynching converged, these black elites sought to rehabilitate the image of the race by embodying “respectability” and an ethos of service to the masses. Believing that improvement of their material and moral condition through self-help would diminish white racism, African American elites emphasized education, achievement, and propriety as marks of personal distinction that would refute racial distinctions and establish a basis for positive black identities. The origins of racial uplift ideology can be traced to the race relations of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (1776–1840), a period characterized by an open struggle for respectability and citizenship between various social groups, including free African Americans in the states “north of slavery.” Despite such struggles, the black image in the white mind was one of incapacity and degradation. Responding to the ostracizing power of a hegemonic racial discourse that focused on black “degradation,” African American elites sought to develop independent institutions that would enable free people of color to “uplift” themselves to conditions of respectability. As James Brewer Stewart writes in “Modernizing ‘Difference’: The Political Meanings of Color in the Free States, 1776–1840” (1999), this approach stressed “patient incrementalism, strenuous self-improvement, deference from ordinary community members, and the guidance of patriarchal leaders” (p. 694). It gave rise to many of the themes and tensions associated with later conceptions of racial uplift ideology. Facing the deep-rooted racial prejudice of this period, black leaders insisted on the responsibility of each individual


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

933

RACIAL UPLIFT

to uplift all by “striving to embrace piety, practice thrift and temperance, comport one’s self with wellmannered dignity, and seek all advantage that education offered” (Stewart, p. 695). African American leaders of the period sought to demonstrate cultural parity with whites of the highest attainment, to challenge judgments of black capacity based on the behavior of a “degenerate few” (p. 696) and to assert African American manhood and citizenship. Respectability connoted possession of the intellectual and literary skills necessary for African Americans to contribute their own authoritative voices as equals to the nation’s ongoing civic discussions. The evolving ideological formations and social relations of this period provide a template for the period 1870–1920. Mirroring the dynamics of this earlier historical period, efforts by African Americans to uplift themselves into conditions of respectability provoked violent resistance from the vast majority of whites, particularly in the South. The intrusion of the black body into white social space led to mythic discourses and mob violence. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, circumstances initially favored the efforts of newly emancipated bondsmen to integrate into the civic and political affairs of the South. For a brief period, Radical Republicans experienced mild success in their efforts to extend the franchise to black Americans. A civil rights bill, passed in 1866 over President Johnson’s veto, declared that former slaves were citizens of the United States and should receive equal treatment under the law. To forestall anticipated debate over the constitutionality of the law, and to further protect the newly freed blacks, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed by Congress and ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the states in 1868, making African Americans citizens of the country. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, subsequently insured that a man’s right to vote could not be prohibited on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. As a consequence of these advances, African Americans served admirably in state and local governments and in the United States Congress. At the state level, they helped to create state-supported schools for blacks and whites, to liberalize suffrage, and to abolish dueling, imprisonment for debt, and punishment by the whipping post and the branding iron. They also instituted reforms in county administrations. In sum, significant progress toward the goal of granting full citizenship to blacks occurred during Reconstruction. In The Negro in the United States (1970), Rayford W. Logan links the demise of Reconstruction to the infamous Tilden-Hayes compromise of 1877. The

934

A M E R I C A N

withdrawal of federal troops from the South proved a watershed event in the subsequent disfranchisement of African Americans, leading to the low point in race relations that Logan labels as the Nadir. Without secure promises from southerners that they would faithfully observe the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the fate of African Americans was left to the “great mass of intelligent white men” (Logan, p. 38). A series of adverse Supreme Court decisions, most notably Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), eroded the short-lived gains made by African Americans during Reconstruction. As Logan notes, “Southern state laws, railway regulations, and customs began to fix the pattern of segregation which was to become even more rigid until the middle of the twentieth century” (p. 40). But perhaps more important, this decline in political and civil rights was accompanied by an upsurge in racial violence and terrorism against African Americans. The lynch mob was commonplace in a campaign of violence and intimidation intended to disfranchise African Americans politically and socially. This occurred against the backdrop of pseudoscientific theories of racism, eugenics, and Social Darwinism. In the rhetoric of lynching and in novels of national reconciliation, African Americans were depicted as a biologically inferior and immoral race that would never achieve parity with white Americans. As they had in earlier periods, white Americans imagined a community in which black Americans were figured as “the other.” As in earlier periods, the themes and tensions of racial uplift ideology in the late nineteenth century were conceived in response to a pervasive racial discourse. In Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century, Kevin K. Gaines notes that black elites, concerned with improving the collective social fortunes of the race, placed emphasis on “self-help, racial solidarity, temperance, thrift, chastity, social purity, patriarchal authority, and the accumulation of wealth” (p. 2). Due to the network of institutions for group elevation established within antebellum free black communities and to the efforts of early leaders to uplift themselves to conditions of respectability, racial uplift ideology had indeed stressed deference from “the lower orders.” (Stewart, p. 5). Despite such emphasis, uplift was initially conceived in collectivist terms. This connotation of racial uplift persisted in the wake of Emancipation, when a view of education as the key to liberation reflects its subsequent manifestation as a group struggle for freedom and social advancement. In the post-Reconstruction era, however, uplift ideology was transformed by the imperatives of Jim Crow terror and New South economic development and by the values of a transatlantic Victorian culture.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RACIAL UPLIFT

In this context, uplift became an ideology of self-help articulated mainly in racial- and middle-class-specific terms rather than in a broader, egalitarian social context. Consistent with the late Victorian emphasis on autonomous individualism and personal achievement, black elites opposed racism by pointing to class distinctions within the race as evidence of evolutionary progress. Retreating from natural-rights arguments, they regarded freedom as a reward for upright, cultured behavior. Gaines charges that an “unconscious, internalized racism” fostered an ambivalent relationship with the black masses. “Amidst legal and extralegal repression,” Gaines writes, “many black elites sought status, moral authority, and recognition of their humanity by distinguishing themselves, as bourgeois agents of civilization, from the presumably undeveloped black majority; hence the phrase, so purposeful and earnest, yet so often of ambiguous significance, ‘uplifting the race’” (p. 2). According to Wilson Jeremiah Moses in The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925 (1978), a distinctive feature of African American elites committed to racial improvement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the quest for gentility. African American elites argued their capacity for assimilation into the larger society by displaying external evidence of culture, refinement, and character. Guided by the rules of the “genteel performance” they regarded manners and morals, rather than material possessions, as the true measure of success and social class. Gentility forbade loud talking and laughing in public, or any behavior considered vulgar, annoying, or crude. Self-restraint, the prime attribute of gentility, important in all matters from emotion and expression to dress, was the basis for collective racial improvement. Further, black gentility dictated that “race men” rationalize personal success in terms of the collective advance of the race. The quest for black gentility went beyond a simple emphasis on proper conduct. African American elites sought to fulfill the majority society’s normative gender conventions and to adopt its sexual attitudes. Educated African Americans regarded the family and patriarchal gender relations as crucial markers of respectability and racial progress. Seeking to counter the charge of sexual immorality directed at black females, the black women’s club movement adopted the motto “lifting as we climb,” reflecting its efforts to elevate the race by teaching women the importance of the home and the woman’s moral influence within it. In their paeans to patriarchal family life, black elites explicitly celebrated Victorian standards of genteel courtship and premarital chastity. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

The quest for black gentility, in all of its dimensions, fostered the development of the stratified African American society, “successive classes with higher and higher sexual morals,” called for by W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) in The Negro American Family (1908). Defining themselves in relation to the masses, African American elites posited that the two groups were in different phases of development. “Contrasting their own adherence to the genteel performance with the crude behavior with which they credited the lower classes,” writes Willard B. Gatewood in Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 (1990), the elites often “assumed the obligation of instructing the lower classes in the essentials of the genteel performance” (pp. 187–188). Others, replicating the racial fictions used to justify segregation even as they contested them, believed that little could be done to improve the collective fortunes of the race. In their minds, the measure of gentility was the distance between themselves and the masses. The tensions of racial uplift ideology are visible in Gatewood’s assertion that “some aristocrats of color alternated between the uplift approach and the stratagem of placing distance between themselves and the ill-mannered masses. Or, on occasion, they attempted both approaches simultaneously” (p. 188). Those race strategists concerned with altering the behavior of the African American masses believed that by establishing self-restraint as a communal norm, they would foster collective racial advancement. In “Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization” (found in The Future of the Race), Cornel West examines the various “Victorian strategies” enacted by black men and women in the late ninteteenth century to accomplish their didactic aims. As a sacrificial cultural elite dedicated to improving the material and moral conditions of the race, they believed it their role to “shape and mold the values and viewpoints of the masses by managing educational and political bureaucracies” (p. 65). Further, they believed that “the effective management of institutions by the educated few for the benefit of many would promote material and spiritual progress” (p. 65). These black Victorians created a network of religious, educational, and social institutions to prepare black Americans for citizenship participation. Albert G. Miller, in Elevating the Race: Theophilus G. Steward, Black Theology, and the Making of an African American Civil Society, 1865–1924 (2003), writes that this “civil society,” comprised of “churches, the Free African Society, the Prince Hall Masons, literary societies, schools, and newspapers,” provided a social space for discussion of public concerns. Created as “buffers from white society and as tools of liberation” (p. xvii),


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

935

RACIAL UPLIFT

these entities formed an institutional base for African American leaders who surpassed the often hollow, abstract rhetoric of racial uplift with practical service. Their techniques of persuasion and instruction, of selfimprovement and the improvement of others, were manifestations of Victorianism.

racial assault” (Aristocrats of Color, p. 218). Consistent with Victorian strategies of racial uplift, the role of the educated figures invited to join the academy was to shape and direct the behavior of the crude masses. Such an elite was needed as an indigenous missionary force, as bearers of culture that would guide the race in the creation of a black civilization.

BLACK VICTORIANS: THE ORIGINS AND EVOLVING MEANINGS OF RACIAL UPLIFT IDEOLOGY

The death of Crummell and Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) in the 1890s left Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) and W. E. B. Du Bois as black America’s most visible leaders in the project of racial uplift. Their seemingly antagonistic race strategies similarly reflected the values of Victorian culture. Typically, scholars contrast Du Bois’s belief in liberal culture with Washington’s views on agriculture. Washington’s “pedagogy of the oppressed,” reflecting the influence of Samuel Chapman Armstrong, his Hampton mentor, was designed to rehabilitate the rural peasantry. Educated at Fisk and Harvard Universities, Du Bois believed that liberal culture was essential for an educated citizenry. Washington associated Du Bois with an artificial class that violated natural laws by being so detached from productive labor. Du Bois charged that Washington’s gospel of work and money threatened to overshadow the higher aims of life.

Various figures embody the contradictions associated with the ambivalent ideology of racial uplift, which included resistance to and immersion in the values of the larger white culture. Spanning the greater part of the nineteenth century, from the premodern period to the Nadir, the life of Alexander Crummell (1819– 1898) typified the antebellum origins and evolving meanings of a racial uplift ideology. Examined against the backdrop of nineteenth-century racial discourse, Crummell was a “disconcerting anomaly, a black man of letters before the Civil War,” in the opinion of Wilson Jeremiah Moses, author of Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (1989). “Knowledgeable in the classics at a time when the average black American was an illiterate slave” (p. 5), Crummell graduated from Queens College, Cambridge, in 1853 and was ordained a priest of the Episcopal Church. As a civilizing missionary among black people, he embodied the deep-seated and abiding commitment to the ideals of “racial uplift, Negro improvement, African Civilization, race progress, and African development” and preached “Civilization” as the “primal need of the race” (Moses, Alexander Crummell, p. 262). Crummell spent nearly twenty years in Liberia as a missionary, an educator, and a public moralist. His lifelong project of humanistic self-cultivation, Protestant self-denial, and bourgeois self-control reflected his belief that a weak and degraded race needed moral and intellectual uplift. Because he believed that the basis for collective racial progress was the disciplined autonomous self, Crummell “associated upward social mobility with bourgeois morality, sober behavior, and temperance” (p. 217). Crummell was the founder and first president of the American Negro Academy (ANA) in 1897, and perhaps the ideological parent of W. E. B. Du Bois, who expressed similar concerns with uplifting the race through character building and the elevation of moral life. Willard B. Gatewood writes that the objectives of the ANA were “the promotion of Negro culture and unity through literary and scholarly works, aid of youths of genius in the attainment of high culture, the establishment of historical and literary archives, and assistance to publications that vindicated the race from

936

A M E R I C A N

In reality, as William Toll points out in The Resurgence of Race: Black Social Theory from Reconstruction to the Pan-African Conferences (1979), Washington’s program of “social rehabilitation” and Du Bois’s strategy of “cultural revitalization” were alternate conceptions of racial uplift. Both men believed that the backwardness of the masses necessitated a specially trained elite to expunge the social primitivism that was the product of the slave experience and to combat the stigma attached to the race. Both promoted Victorian ideals associated with modernization—a high valuation of time, a concern with rational order, and, above all, sense of moral urgency. And, as Daniel Walker Howe notes in “Victorian Culture in America” (1976), both Washington and Du Bois “taught people to work hard, to postpone gratification, to repress themselves sexually, to ‘improve’ themselves, to be sober, conscientious, even compulsive” (p. 17). Impatient with mere book learning, Washington taught black students the dignity of toil so that they might benefit from the modernization of the region. In his most famous public utterance on the virtue of work, Washington counseled black Americans to cast down their buckets in “agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions” (p. 153). Preaching the “Gospel of Wealth,” the “Wizard of Tuskegee” believed that discipline— both individually and collectively—was necessary for

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RACIAL UPLIFT

the race to become part of the world capitalist economy. Washington created a rigid daily schedule at Tuskegee in order to foster habits of self-discipline. Consistent with the collective sensibility of racial uplift ideology, he believed that individual self-control would foster a pattern of communal organization. Du Bois’s more academic moralizing and his program of cultural revitalization were products of a didacticism that assumed that everyone would benefit from the pursuit of “culture.” Addressing “the Negro Problem” in “The Conservation of Races,” he spoke of the need to correct “the immorality, crime and laziness among the Negroes themselves, which still remains as a heritage from slavery” (A Reader, p. 27). Preaching the “Gospel of Sacrifice” in The Souls of Black Folk, and from the pages of The Crisis, he called for a “talented tenth” to “scatter civilization among a people whose ignorance was not simply of letters, but of life itself ” (The Souls of Black Folk, p. 81). Traced to its origins, however, Du Bois’s notion of cultural revitalization was not mutually exclusive with Washington’s program of social rehabilitation. William Toll notes that Du Bois’s spiritual mentor Alexander Crummell emphasized the dignity of skilled labor and “tied individual achievement to racial rebirth” (p. 40). Indeed, Crummell’s “particular proposals—to learn trades, to work humbly when young, to save money, to buy farms—could have provided the philosophical basis for Booker T. Washington” (Toll, p. 40). But Crummell’s praise of skilled labor was tempered by his defense of the “‘natural right’ of all persons to aspire to occupations commensurate with their talents” (p. 40). In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois would similarly argue the need to “teach workers to work, teach thinkers to think” (p. 72). Like Crummell, Du Bois embraced the need for broader training in order to combat racial stereotypes. Clearly, both Du Bois and Washington wanted to refine and cultivate persons of African descent. Despite their celebrated differences, the two principal architects of racial uplift strategies during the Nadir shared a fundamental belief that ignorance was the major obstacle to black advancement. As Cornel West notes in The Future of the Race, Victorian strategies of racial uplift were predicated on the assumption that if “the black masses were educated—in order to acquire skills and culture—black America would thrive” (p. 60). Because of their obvious roles in the formation of African American civil society Washington and Du Bois often eclipse black women who were equally committed to uplifting the race. The masculinist imperatives of uplift, however, not only barred black women like Anna Julia Cooper (1858–1964) from A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

The Crisis. Cover of the first issue of W. E. B. Du Bois’s journal, November 1910. © BETTMANN/CORBIS

inclusion in organizations such as the ANA, it asked black women to choose racial concerns over those of gender. In 1897, the year the ANA was founded, Cooper, the daughter of a former slave woman and her white master, was a teacher of mathematics and science at Washington Colored High School in the District of Columbia. She would later serve as principal and teacher of classics at this institution, which was successively known as the M Street School and finally as Dunbar High School. The venerable institution was famous for the learning of its teachers and its role in preparing the children of black elites for the rigors of top-rank northern universities. With a B.A. and an M.A. from Oberlin College, Cooper rivaled her male counterparts in the ANA. Cooper was known, however, for her firm stances on issues of the day, as well as her commitment to


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

937

RACIAL UPLIFT

improving the collective fortunes of black women. Dismissed as the school’s principal by forces committed to vocational and industrial training, she earned a Ph.D. from the University of Paris at the age of sixtyseven. Anticipating the themes and classical allusiveness of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, Cooper’s A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892) challenged male attitudes regarding the dictates of gentility. Using domesticity as a site of resistance she critiqued both male patriarchy and the hypocrisy of the suffrage movement. Cooper sought the moral and educational elevation of black womanhood as the “vital element in the regeneration and progress of a race” (p. 9). Arguing for black women to lead the way in the redemption of the racial family, she embodied purity and piety if not submissiveness. Black women like Mary Church Terrell (1863– 1954) and Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) also contested the attitudes of men who believed that higher education or public visibility somehow “unsexed” women. The daughter of Robert Church, a wealthy man from Memphis, Terrell, like Cooper, encountered opposition to her educational aspirations. Her decision to teach at Wilberforce College led her father to threaten disinheritance. Ultimately married to Robert Terrell, an influential judge in Washington, D.C., the “capital of the colored aristocracy” (Gatewood, p. 39), she subverted the traditional housewife’s role in order to engage in activist pursuits. Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s work as an anti-lynching crusader did not always enjoy the blessing of black male leaders, who felt it inappropriate for her to assume such a role. The difficulties encountered by these women further illustrate the tensions inherent within racial uplift ideology and its inability to foster progressive change. The values associated with racial uplift ideology declined significantly after World War I, due in part to changes associated with industrialization and urbanization, but perhaps in greater measure to changes in the black aristocracy. As a new generation of prosperous black businesspeople, politicians, and professionals emerged that placed less emphasis on the pursuit of gentility, the prestige and influence of an older black upper class eroded. THE AESTHETICS OF RACIAL UPLIFT

The values of racial uplift influenced both the aesthetic mandates and the themes of African American expression from the post-Reconstruction era up through the New Negro Movement of the 1920s. Because they shared in and lived life according to the dominant values of the larger society, a crucial force

938

A M E R I C A N

in black expression was the interaction of racism and the middle-class character of black writers. Reflecting the tensions and ambiguities of racial uplift, ambivalence was a key structural element of African American expression. Even those writers known for their celebrations of black folk culture, such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911), Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906), and Charles Waddell Chesnutt (1858–1932), viewed art as an instrument of social change. Their attempts to gain “civil rights by copyrights” (Lewis, p. 13) reflected their faith that literary endeavor would challenge white beliefs in black inferiority. Protest and gentility, the development of inner virtue through the cultivation of proper thoughts and feelings, were key characteristics during a period of literary assimilationism. While striving for assimilation into the larger white culture, however, many black elites worried that the race would lose its identity in the process. As a result, many African American writers found themselves committed, simultaneously and paradoxically, to the “racial ideal,” that is, a belief that blacks exhibited a clear “racial particularity” and therefore had a distinctive message for humanity. The resultant tensions— between the desire to put the best foot forward and the desire to celebrate the black folk tradition— shaped the literature of black writers. This tension is apparent in stories like Charles Waddell Chesnutt’s “The Wife of His Youth” (1899). Due to his genius for social leadership Mr. Ryder is regarded as dean of the “Blue Veins” (a term that refers to the light skin color possessed by many of the elite African Americans). Maligned for its “colorphobia,” the group nonetheless views its purpose as that of racial uplift. Having distanced himself from his folk past and his former identity as “Sam Taylor,” Ryder exhibits the accoutrements of culture: a fine house, social standing, and an affinity for European literature. Ryder dramatizes the tensions of racial uplift: “I have no race prejudice,” he would say, “but we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by the white race and extinction in the black. The one doesn’t want us yet, but may take us in time. The other would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step.” (P. 7)

The story finds Mr. Ryder on the eve of his engagement to Molly Dixon, a near-white widow who embodies the virtues of domestic gentility. Perusing a volume of Tennyson in search of quotations appropriate to the occasion, Ryder is interrupted by “’Liza Jane,” the wife of his youth, who has searched faithfully for her husband for over twenty years. In contrast with Molly Dixon, she is old, and her garments suggest a life of

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RACIAL UPLIFT

servitude. Further, she is “very black,” indeed, “so black that her toothless gums, revealed when she opened her mouth to speak, were not red, but blue.” As “a bit of the old plantation life” (p. 10), she compels Mr. Ryder to choose between an elite conception of racial uplift that values class distinctions as evidence of progress or a more democratic conception that defends the humanity of the “folk.” Ryder’s choice, made possible by ’Liza Jane’s genteel virtue, is ultimately one for racial unity versus the politics of respectability. The unnamed narrator in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) similarly embodies the tensions inherent in racial uplift ideology—between the desire for assimilation and a belief in black distinctiveness. As a “perfect little aristocrat” who acknowledges his aversion to being classed with other black students, he feels a tinge of race pride when “Shiny” gives a wonderful speech. This pride causes him “to form wild dreams of bringing glory and honour to the Negro race” (p. 46). Trained as a classical pianist, he is the race genius who can create symphonic scores from ragtime. His efforts to tame and routinize the folk spirit are compromised, however, by his ambivalence toward the black masses. Describing his initial encounter with the “folk,” he confesses, “the unkempt appearance, the shambling slouching gait and loud talk and laughter of these people aroused in me a feeling of almost repulsion” (p. 56). Throughout the text, Johnson’s narrator contrasts his own gentility with the crude behavior of the lower classes and alternates between the uplift approach and that of distancing himself from the black masses. His desire to explicate black folk culture is certainly a project of racial uplift. His unwillingness to identify with a despised people, however, leads him, by the novel’s end, to forfeit his “birthright” for “a mess of pottage” (p. 211). An understanding of racial uplift ideology furnishes a useful way of examining African American literary expression from the post-Reconstruction era well into the 1930s. During the Harlem Renaissance, however, younger artists and intellectuals like Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, and Wallace Henry Thurman rejected the aesthetic mandates inherent in racial uplift while examining its myriad contradictions. See also Assimilation; Blacks; Genteel Tradition; Race Novels; Reform; The Souls of Black Folk; Success BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Chesnutt, Charles W. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line. 1899. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South. 1892. Reprinted as A Voice from the South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Du Bois, W. E. B. “The Conservation of Races.” In W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, edited by David Levering Lewis. New York: H. Holt, 1995. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. New York: Penguin, 1989. Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia. 1785. New York: Harper and Row, 1964. Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an ExColoured man. 1912. New York: Hill and Wang, 1960. Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. 1901. New York.: Penguin Putnam, 2000. Secondary Works

Gaines, Kevin K. Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and Cornel West. The Future of the Race. New York: Knopf, 1996. Gatewood, Willard B. Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Gatewood, Willard B., Jr. “Aristocrats of Color: South and North The Black Elite, 1880–1920.” Journal of Southern History 54, no. 1 (February 1988): 3–20. Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact on Black Women of Race and Sex in America. New York: W. Morrow, 1984. Howe, Daniel Walker. “Victorian Culture in America.” In Victorian America, edited by Daniel Walker Howe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976. Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Knopf, 1981; reprint New York: Penguin, 1997. Logan, Rayford W. The Negro in the United States. Vol. 1, A History to 1945: From Slavery to Second-class Citizenship. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970. Miller, Albert G. Elevating the Race: Theophilus G. Steward, Black Theology, and the Making of an African American Civil Society, 1865–1924. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1978. Stewart, James Brewer. “Modernizing ‘Difference’: The Political Meanings of Color in the Free States,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

939

RAMONA

1776–1840.” Journal of the Early Republic 19, no. 4 (winter 1999): 691–712. Toll, William. The Resurgence of Race: Black Social Theory from Reconstruction to the Pan-African Conferences. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979. Jeffrey R. Williams

RAMONA Ramona: A True Story (1884) by Helen Hunt (a.k.a. Helen Hunt Jackson, 1830–1885) has been called the American West’s most enduring romance novel. Nearly three hundred editions of it have appeared since its initial publication in 1884, and it has shaped the historical mythos of southern California and helped to spawn California’s tourism industry. However, these

were hardly the results Hunt had hoped the novel would prompt. For Hunt, Ramona began as a response to the failure of her nonfiction work A Century of Dishonor to have the impact for which she hoped. Hunt published A Century of Dishonor in 1881 as a factual, uncompromising account of the history of broken treaties and systemic mistreatment of American Indians by the United States. Hunt saw A Century of Dishonor as a means of documenting and changing America’s relationship with American Indians, and in 1881, at her own expense, she sent inscribed copies to every member of Congress. The inscription read, “Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations.” If Hunt expected a groundswell of reaction from Congress, she was disappointed. Little, if anything, changed. THE STORY AND ITS BACKGROUND

Ramona is written in a highly sentimental style, and Hunt used melodrama as a means of helping Anglo readers understand the emotional costs of unjust confiscation of Indian lands. The following exchange occurs between Alessandro and Ramona the day white settlers show up to take their land:

[H]e said, “I will plough no more land for the robbers.” But after his fields were all planted, and the beneficent rains still kept on, and the hills all along the valley wall began to turn green earlier than ever before was known, he said to Ramona one morning, “I think I will make one more field of wheat. There will be a great yield this year. Maybe we will be left unmolested till the harvest is over.” “Oh, yes, and for many more harvests, dear Alessandro!” said Ramona, cheerily. “You are always looking on the black side.” “There is no other but the black side, Majella,” he replied. “Strain my eyes as I may, on all sides all is black. You will see. Never any more harvests in San Pasquale for us, after this. If we get this, we are lucky. I have seen the white men riding up and down in the valley, and I found some of their cursed bits of wood with figures on them set up on my land the other day; and I pulled them up and burned them to ashes.” Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona.

940

A M E R I C A N

Between December 1883 and March 1884 Hunt sat in the Berkeley Hotel in downtown Manhattan and wrote the 150,000-word Ramona in something of a creative frenzy, regularly producing 1,000 to 2,000 words per day (May, Helen Hunt Jackson, pp. 106–112). She saw the novel as a way to invoke an emotional response to the Indian Question that A Century of Dishonor, with its intellectual appeal, had failed to produce. In a letter to a friend in southern California, Hunt described Ramona as “a way to move people’s hearts” (May, Helen Hunt Jackson, p. 106). In the same letter she went on to describe her audience as those who “will read a novel when they will not read serious books.” Hunt hoped Ramona would do for Indians what Harriet Beecher Stowe’s equally sentimental Uncle Tom’s Cabin had done for African Americans, and she wrote to her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson that “The success of it, if it succeeds, will be that I do not even suggest any Indian history till the interest is so aroused in the heroine and hero, that the people will not want to lay the book down” (May, Helen Hunt Jackson, p. 110). Hunt’s chief modern biographer describes the novel as a “sugar pill” (May, Helen Hunt Jackson, p. 112). According to Antoinette May, Hunt sentimentalized the story in order to seduce the reader into swallowing the bitter medicine of a realistic depiction of the brutal mistreatment of California Indians and, through this depiction, to recognize the oppression of all Indians. She introduced elements of romance and set the story in exotic Old California, replete with missions, haciendas, dons, stunning landscapes, and land battles among Americans, Mexicans, and Indians. Even though Hunt creates only one fully developed Indian character, Alessandro, she saw her depictions of southern California and the introduction

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RAMONA

of Mexicans and Americas as a means, as she said, of introducing “variety” (May, Helen Hunt Jackson, p. 106). The novel focuses on Ramona, who is half-Indian, and her Indian lover, Alessandro. As the story opens, Ramona is the ward of her aristocratic, haughty stepmother, Señora Moreno. Even though the romance is forbidden by Señora Moreno, Ramona falls in love with Alessandro, and they flee Moreno’s hacienda and are married by a sympathetic priest. The parallels between Ramona’s romance and that of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are quite clear. Just as the prejudices and animosities of the great, warring houses of the Montagues and the Capulets lead to a tragic end regretted by both parties, the allusions to Romeo and Juliet suggest that the prejudices and mistreatment of Indians by whites will also end tragically, foreclosing the possibility that Indians will be assimilated. However, while the allusions to Romeo and Juliet suggest a tragic end for Alessandro and Ramona, to provide contrast, Hunt depicts the beginning of Alessandro and Ramona’s married life as happy. Ramona adapts quickly to Indian ways, finding much to admire, and is accepted into the community. At this point in the story the future looks rosy—that is, until Anglos take over tribal lands, forcing Ramona and Alessandro to move. They attempt to establish themselves in a lovely, remote valley near Saboba, and again they are forced to move by the arrival of Anglo settlers. Finally taking refuge in the mountains, Ramona and Alessandro’s baby dies, and, unable to deal with this final tragedy, Alessandro suffers a breakdown. In the midst of this breakdown a confused Alessandro steals an American’s horse, which he inadvertently mistakes for his own. The final outrage occurs when the American owner tracks down Alessandro and kills him in Ramona’s presence. In all, the greed and bigotry of the Anglo landowners, the shared hardships with other Mission Indians, and the tragic murder of Ramona’s husband underscore the social injustices suffered by all Indians. The shooting of Alessandro is loosely based on actual events, and a host of articles published over the decades purport to have found “the real Ramona” or to document Hunt’s supposed writing of the novel in various California locations. The best of these— one supported by Hunt’s letters and court documents—was written by the historian George Wharton James in 1910. James traveled through the area depicted in the novel and was introduced to a Cahuillan Indian woman named Ramona. She claimed to be the real Ramona on whose story Hunt’s novel is loosely based. James recorded Ramona’s story into a gramophone. A letter written to a friend, Mary Sheriff, by Hunt substantiates much of the story A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

recorded by this Ramona. In the letter Hunt asks Sheriff to make an inquiry into the killing of a Juan Diego by a Sam Temple, an Anglo settler, and into Temple’s subsequent trial (May, Helen Hunt Jackson, p. 107). According to the account recorded by James, Juan Diego was the husband of the Cahuillian Ramona, who had met Hunt while she was visiting California. According to Ramona’s story, her husband suffered from a condition that caused mental lapses. During a trip into town, Diego suffered one of these lapses, and he took Temple’s horse, leaving his own pony in its place. Temple tracked down Diego. At Ramona and Diego’s home, Temple repeatedly shot Diego in front of Ramona and her baby, leaving her husband’s body riddled with bullets. Even though he bragged of shooting an Indian, he was acquitted of murder. Temple would later profit from the killing, making public appearances billing himself as “the man who shot Alessandro” and who, hence, inspired Ramona (May, The Annotated Ramona, p. 206). RECEPTION AND INFLUENCE

Ramona proved an instant popular success; however, much of its message of social injustice was ignored, with critical opinion focusing on the novel’s success as romantic fiction. Ramona was initially serialized in the Christian Union in 1884. The Union’s announcement of the forthcoming novel lauded it as “an intensely dramatic and thoroughly modern story” (Byers, p. 236). Roberts Brothers produced the first booklength edition for Christmas 1884. Early reviews were mixed, but most tended to be laudatory. The New York Independent’s review, appearing only a few weeks after the release of the Roberts Brothers’ edition, exemplifies these early reviews. It noted that Ramona was written in a new style for Hunt and praised its “excellence, breadth, and force,” noting that it far surpassed anything she had produced heretofore. The review praised the romance of the story, its exceptional characterization, and its use of local color. However, the reviewer criticized its didacticism, particularly in the latter chapters. Other reviews were less kind (Byers, pp. 236–237). The London Athenaeum described the novel as a “slight but graceful story,” noting that the characterization was rather unreal and that Hunt was unfamiliar with “pioneer camps and American rowdies” (Byers, p. 214). Other critics, particularly those in the West, panned the novel, citing its romanticized treatment of Indians and harsh treatment of settlers. The reading public, however, embraced Ramona, and it soon became a best-seller (May, Helen Hunt Jackson, p. 131). The novel sold 7,000 copies in the


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

941

RAMONA

“The Love Story of the Ages.” During the high point of southern California’s Ramona boom there were roadside attractions advertising themselves as “Ramona’s Marriage Place,” many offering the chance to meet the “real” Ramona. This early advertisement is from the best known of these tourist attractions, today known as the Casa de Estudillo in Old Town San Diego State Historic Park. COURTESY OF STEPHEN BRANDON

three months following its initial release and 15,000 copies prior to Hunt’s death in August 1885 (Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson, p. 81). Hunt died certain that Ramona and Century of Dishonor were the best of all her writings. However, in the months prior to her death she worried that the reviewers and the public would continue to focus on the romance of Alessandro and Ramona and not on the “Indian side of the story” (Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson, p. 83). Hunt’s death only added to the novel’s mystique. In the two decades following its publication, Ramona was described as “an exquisite work of art” (Byers,

942

A M E R I C A N

p. 209) and “unquestionably the best novel yet produced by an American woman” (Byers, p. 229). Ralph Waldo Emerson and Higginson ranked Hunt among the best women writers of the period (Byers, p. 228). If anything, the novel’s popular appeal far outstripped early critical praise. In 1931 Publishers Weekly noted that since 1884 over 400,000 copies of Ramona had been sold and that it was still selling at the rate of 10,000 copies per year. New editions of the novel appeared well into the 1940s (Byers, p. 231). Among Indian rights groups Ramona and Hunt came to enjoy the kind—if not the degree—of influence that Hunt had hoped for the novel. The Women’s National Indian Association, for example, established the Ramona Mission among the California Indians (Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson, p. 92), and the novel influenced the 1887 passage of the Dawes Act, which provided for individual allotment of tribal lands and was believed by many liberal thinkers at the time to be the first step toward the eventual assimilation of Indians into American society as equals. The novel’s popular appeal, however, continued to be focused on the romance of Alessandro and Ramona and its setting. Accepted by its early readers not so much as inspired by a true story but as a true story, the novel seems to have captured a romantic Old Mission California that the public embraced. Hunt’s social justice agenda was generally ignored. Instead it became an icon in American popular culture. The novel inspired a silent movie by D. W. Griffith and two subsequent Hollywood adaptations. It also inspired a 1920s hit song, and in 1923 the Ramona Pageant began in the southern California town of Hemet. The pageant featured a staged production of Ramona that is currently billed as both the largest and the longestrunning American outdoor drama. Most important for southern California, the novel inspired what has been called the “Ramona boom,” an influx of tourists seeking the California depicted in the novel. A report in 1916 noted that over 50 million tourism dollars could be directly linked to the popularity of Ramona (May, The Annotated Ramona, p. 231). Everything from olive and fruit groves to a Catholic convent has honored the novel by taking its name. Despite the novel’s wide popular appeal, its sentimentality caused Ramona’s critical star to dim from the late 1940s through the early 1980s. The novel was largely ignored by cultural critics and literary historians, who dismissed it as overly melodramatic. The late twentieth century saw renewed interest in the novel, however, and some scholars turned their attention to Hunt and her work. In 1987 Antoinette May produced the first modern biography of Hunt; in 2003 Kate Phillips published a fully documented, scholarly biography.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REALISM

In 1989 May capitalized on the success of her biography to issue an annotated edition of Ramona. Valerie Mathes has also written a monograph on Hunt’s legacy as an Indian activist (1990) and edited a collection of Hunt’s Indian reform letters (1998). Given the continuing interest in ethnic and women’s literature, it seems likely that critical attention to Hunt and Ramona will increase in the years to come as scholars recover Hunt as a western regional writer, a nineteenth-century professional woman author, and, to a lesser extent, an author of children’s literature.

Jackson, Helen Hunt. A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881.

tenets of realism in the 1870s and 1880s—emphasizing the near-at-hand as opposed to the remote, the probable rather than the extraordinary, the ethically complex in preference to the idealized. They believed that literature should portray people such as one might meet, in situations that those people might actually encounter. Realism concerned itself almost entirely with fiction, although the work of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen was influential, especially in the movement’s later stages, and the work of the period’s two major American poets, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, was to some degree compatible with realist theories. Howells, James, and Mark Twain (1835–1910) are often specified as the great trio of American realistic novelists—though it might be more accurate to say that Twain and James are great novelists who can be identified with realism, while Howells is a great realist who (among other things) wrote novels.

Jackson, Helen Hunt. Ramona. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884.

THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN REALISM

See also Indians BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Secondary Works

Byers, John and Elizabeth. “Helen Hunt Jackson: A Critical Bibliography of Secondary Comment.” American Literary Realism 6, no. 3 (summer 1973): 196–241. Mathes, Valerie Sherer. Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. Mathes, Valerie Sherer. The Indian Reform Letters of Helen Hunt Jackson, 1879–1885. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. May, Antoinette. Helen Hunt Jackson: A Lonely Voice of Conscience. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1987. May, Antoinette, ed. The Annotated Ramona. San Carlos, Calif.: Wide World Publishing, 1989. Phillips, Kate. Helen Hunt Jackson: A Literary Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Stephen Brandon

REALISM The era of American realism is most commonly defined as the period from the end of the Civil War to about 1900. Within this, the somewhat shorter span of 1870–1890 can be delineated as the time when realism was clearly the dominant literary idea in the United States. Yet even during this shorter period its dominance was more as a topic of critical debate than as a pervasive practice. Theorists such as William Dean Howells (1837–1920), Thomas Sergeant Perry (1845– 1928), and Henry James (1843–1916) laid out the A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

The literary mode known as realism began not in the United States but in France and Russia. Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert were early exemplars in France, and Émile Zola became one of the most controversial figures in the American critical debate. Ivan Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy were the most influential Russian figures. Among British novelists, Howells pointed to Jane Austen as exemplary for her uncompromisingly hardheaded portrayals of the conflicts that arise in ordinary life, and both Howells and James saw George Eliot (though in James’s case with some reservations) as a positive force among their contemporaries. In the United States the pre–Civil War vogue for regional fiction—like that of Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Washington Harris, and Thomas Bangs Thorpe—moved toward an interest in the distinctive characteristics of individuals and cultural settings, though there was little attention to the nuances of psychological experience. In poetry, Whitman’s description of actual people in ordinary situations and his broadly democratic embrace of those people were important realistic elements, and his Drum-Taps poems explored the gritty actuality of suffering in the Civil War, while Dickinson’s poetry turned inward to explore the landscape of individual psychology in moments of joy, perplexity, and pain. Realism also had its origin in a repudiation of romanticism, with novelists Sir Walter Scott (1771– 1832) and James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) as favorite targets. Scott was criticized for his interest in distant times and places, especially the medieval, and for the lack of subtlety in his characterizations. His


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

943

REALISM

THE TENETS OF REALISM: HOWELLS, PERRY, LATHROP

William Dean Howells in 1896.

THE GRANGER COLLECTION,

NEW YORK

novels were seen to promote a kind of exaggerated notion of aristocracy, both false in its depiction of humankind and antithetical to the democratic ideals that Americans revere. A truer depiction of humanity would focus on the natural dignity and innate equality of all human beings without elevating a few individuals to heroic status. As for Cooper, he was attacked for inattention to detail in plot construction, stereotyping of characters, improbability of events, and stylistic imprecision. In “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” (1895), Twain states that “Cooper’s eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly” (p. 1244). From the point of view of the realists, the most important failing of Romantics like Cooper and Scott was sentimentality—seeming emotion that was not, in fact, true to the ways in which actual human beings respond to events and situations. The realists wanted to set this matter right. In an oftenquoted definition, Howells called realism “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material” (“Editor’s Study,” p. 966). Realists tried to present the truth of human experience without the distortions of sentimentality.

944

A M E R I C A N

The great theorist of American realism was unquestionably William Dean Howells. In fact, it might be said with some justice that without Howells there is little basis for identifying an “Age of Realism” in the United States at all. Howells was himself a prolific novelist who crafted his works in accordance with realist principles. But more important, as assistant editor (1866–1871) and then editor (1871–1881) of the Atlantic Monthly and later (1886–1892) as columnist (“Editor’s Study”) for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, he both articulated the principles of realism and promoted the careers of the great figures of the period— especially James and Twain, but also including (among others) Hamlin Garland, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Stephen Crane. Howells persistently and effectively argued for “realistic” fiction that would leave behind the sentimental excesses of many popular nineteenthcentury novelists, representing instead the situations and experience of “real” people and truthfully exploring problems and possibilities pertinent to actual existence. Fiction, by this view, emerges more as a matter of fact than of genius—a departure from the Romantic view of the writer as a sort of mystical seer. Indeed, Howells confided to his readers that the belief in “genius” seemed to him “rather a mischievous superstition.” In the 1870s and early 1880s, Howells’s friend Thomas Sergeant Perry produced a series of critical reviews praising the European realists and, along with Howells, working out the principles for an American realism. In a very early essay titled “American Novels” (1872), Perry proposed that the important action in a novel lies in the experience of its characters, not in the structure of events the novel describes: “In the true novel the scene, the incidents, are subordinated to the sufferings, actions, and qualities of the characters” (p. 369). The novel, then, is not an adventure story but a study in ethical behavior, and the trajectory of the study is inward: “the real story lies beneath the hats and bonnets of those concerned, not in the distant cataracts that wet them, nor the bullets that scar them” (p. 369). It might be said that what both Howells and Perry were calling for was greater patience on the part of both author and reader—the patience to get to know the characters and to attend not just to the events in the story but to the characters’ anticipations, responses, and afterthoughts concerning those events. For Perry the novel should—by means of its careful description of physical details, realistic rendering of conversation, and attention to nuance—take readers deep into the psyches of its characters. Another essay by Perry, “Ivan Turgénieff,” which appeared two years later in the Atlantic

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REALISM

Monthly, praises the Russian novelist Turgenev for the naturalness of his characters, his keen observation, the vividness of detail in his work, and the absence of an “avowed purpose” (p. 567) to be read between the lines. Turgenev wrote, according to Perry, “as if his aim were entirely of another sort, simply to describe certain Russian peculiarities” (p. 567). He also praised Turgenev for “hiding himself ” (p. 569) in his narrative, avoiding unnecessary authorial comment and simply presenting his characters as living people who could speak for themselves. These qualities were among those that realists were expected to exhibit, and Turgenev came to be regarded by American realists as a model to emulate. Another very early advocate of realism, George Parsons Lathrop (1851–1898), in an 1874 essay titled “The Novel and Its Future,” proposed that while the improbable may produce potent momentary effects, attention to the more usual occurrence and the more commonplace character can take one deeper into the true nature of things. The realist takes characters and events that seem to have little of interest to offer and, by “profound and sympathetic penetration” (p. 318) reveals their “full value and true meaning,” bringing to light “the connection between the familiar and the extraordinary, and the seen and unseen of human nature” (p. 321). This, Lathrop believed, is an exercise of imagination far higher than the creation by Romantic writers of fantasies with little connection to the lives of ordinary people. The heroes and heroines of fiction of realist fiction were “taken from the rank and file of the race” and thus would “represent people whom we daily encounter” (p. 324). In Criticism and Fiction (1894), Howells himself maintained that in fiction, “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” (p. 49). And in this focus on the “truthful,” he believed, the “marvelous” would be revealed in a new and unsentimental light. The “foolish man,” Howells quotes Emerson, “wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual” (p. 40). A cornerstone of this realist approach to fiction was his rejection of the falsely “ideal”—a rejection that he conveyed by comparing the writing of fiction to studying a grasshopper. The realistic novelist in this analogy is a scientist in the tradition of Baconian and Cartesian reasoning who does not begin with an idea of a grasshopper (thus, the “ideal”) but by looking at a real one. The Romantic, on the other hand, gives us a perfected grasshopper, beautiful to look at but not real. For Howells, “what is true is always beautiful and good” (p. 10). He concludes that the artist (and the artist’s A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

SMILING REALISM Howells believed that American fiction should reflect the American character and American conditions. Since life in the United States is predominantly pleasant, a realistic portrayal would emphasize the “smiling aspects.”

Whatever their deserts, very few American novelists have been led out to be shot, or finally exiled to the rigors of a winter at Duluth; and in a land where journeymen carpenters and plumbers strike for four dollars a day the sum of hunger and cold is comparatively small, and the wrong from class to class has been almost inappreciable, though all this is changing for the worse. Our novelists, therefore, concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American, and seek the universal in the individual rather than the social interests. It is worth while, even at the risk of being called commonplace, to be true to our well-to-do actualities; the very passions themselves seem to be softened and modified by conditions which formerly at least could not be said to wrong any one, to cramp endeavor, or to cross lawful desire. Howells, Criticism and Fiction, p. 62.

audience) must “reject the ideal grasshopper wherever he finds it, in science, in literature, in art, because it is not ‘simple, natural, and honest,’ because it is not like a real grasshopper” (p. 13). It can be objected, of course, that, like Howells’s definition of realism as “the truthful treatment of material,” this emphasis on “truth” as a clearly identifiable entity ignores the epistemologically problematic status of both “truth” and “the real.” After all, the Romantics, like the realists, believed that their creations were profoundly truthful in ways that their predecessors’ had not been. It would be more philosophically accurate to say that Howells is recommending that the writer attend not to the “real” itself but to the appearances of things. There is a faith here that appearances bear a relation to the truth that is not ironic—as opposed, for instance, to the Platonic view that appearance conceals truth (a view romanticism generally accepts). The realist


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

945

REALISM

tends to believe that appearances are in important ways straightforwardly revealing to the observer who can read them accurately. The great novelists and their comprehending readers must be such insightful observers. If the accurate observation recommended by Howells is crucial to the novelist’s art, it readily follows that the novelist must write about things within his or her field of vision. This means for the American author that, as a rule, the subject should be American, and this is particularly so in Howells’s opinion because accurate seeing and actions based on such seeing are characteristic of Americans. Howells also believed that life in the United States, as compared to that in other countries, consists for the most part of pleasant experience: “the sum of hunger and cold is comparatively small, and the wrong from class to class has been almost inappreciable” (Criticism and Fiction, p. 62). It is therefore appropriate for American fiction to “be true to our well-to-do actualities,” concerning itself with “the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American, and to seek the universal in the individual rather than in the social interests” (p. 62). In this Howells formulates what came to be known as “smiling realism”—his belief that optimistic tone and subject matter in fiction are appropriate to the happy destinies of life in the United States. For Howells’s later detractors, this made him an easy target for the claim that his doctrines had the effect of trivializing fiction. As for the ethics of fiction writing, aside from the ethical implications of the emphasis on “truthfulness,” Howells portrays realism as being in some sense devout because it cherishes God’s creation as it is, rather than escaping into unreal fantasy. The true realist, in Howells’s opinion, finds significance in everything that he or she encounters: “All tells of destiny and character; nothing that God has made is contemptible. He cannot look upon human life and declare this thing or that thing unworthy of notice” (Criticism and Fiction, p. 15). And while fiction should bring individual experience to light, the result for Howells is to reveal how much all humanity has in common and to “make them know one another better, that they may all be humbled and strengthened with a sense of their fraternity” (p. 87). PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM: HENRY JAMES

James made his most important contribution to realism theory in his essay “The Art of Fiction” (originally published in Longman’s Magazine in September 1884), which is regarded as one of America’s classic statements of literary criticism. In this essay James pro-

946

A M E R I C A N

REPRESENTING LIFE Henry James, like other realists, maintained that the primary task of the writer of fiction is to show life as it really is—not to substitute for that reality a contrived version of life. In “The Art of Fiction” (1884), he expressed this as “life without rearrangement” versus “life with rearrangement.”

Catching the very note and trick, the strange irregular rhythm of life, that is the attempt whose strenuous force keeps Fiction upon her feet. In proportion as in what she offers us we see life without rearrangement do we feel that we are touching the truth; in proportion as we see it with rearrangement do we feel that we are being put off with a substitute, a compromise and convention. Henry James, “The Art of Fiction,” p. 16.

claims the writing of fiction to be one of the fine arts and examines at length the comparison between fiction and painting (whereas many of Howells’s detractors compared his approach to photography). James, like Howells and Perry, regarded the novelist more as a craftsman than as a creative genius. The writer of fiction must meticulously observe, and turn his or her impressions into art. For James the only reason for existence of a novel or short story is that it “represents life.” The “supreme virtue of the novel,” in his view, is “the air of reality,” which he explains as “solidity of specification” (p. 12). That is, the novelist must create a convincing image of life, one that seems as if it might really happen. James also agrees with Perry that the crucial action in a story should be internal. Extending the comparison between fiction and painting he remarks, “A psychological reason is, to my imagination, an object adorably pictorial; to catch the tint of its complexion—I feel as if that idea might inspire one to Titianesque efforts” (p. 19). Here we see James’s conversion of realism to something less literal than Howells’s model. James advocated and practiced what came to be known as “psychological realism”—a devotion not to the precise reproduction of external detail but to a rendering of the nuances of the inner lives of his characters. However, for all his advocacy of careful observation, he gave at least equal

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REALISM

weight to what he called in 1909 the “crucible of the imagination”—a notion not far removed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “secondary imagination,” which “dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate.” Thus, James effected a sort of fusion (sometimes identified with impressionism) of the realistic with the Romantic that moved in the direction of twentiethcentury modernism. Howells identified James as the “chief exemplar” of a “new school” of fiction writing deriving from Nathaniel Hawthorne and George Eliot. James’s fiction, like Howells’s, avoids the exotic and the superficially dramatic, but he plumbs the psyches of his characters much more deeply than Howells. His fictions revolve around such situations as a governess trying to understand the moral and psychological forces that have been working on the children in her charge (The Turn of the Screw); a man wondering what his life might have been like if he had stayed in America and had a “career” instead of going to Europe and having none (“The Jolly Corner”); a man too obsessed with his own destiny, failing to make the human connection that he might have made if he had simply been attentive to the world around him (“The Beast in the Jungle”). In each case James gives readers a “central consciousness” through whom they can understand the events not simply in terms of the details of their occurrence but also in terms of their significance. James’s fiction satisfies his own and Perry’s criterion that the real action of the story should be in the minds of the characters, yet he makes that action visible by means of symbolic entities that he uses, as he says, to “paint” the “psychological reasons”—entities such as ghosts, “the beast,” the subtly flawed golden bowl in the novel by that title, and so forth. In this, again, he is part realist and part “modernist.” Other important writers who produced works related to Jamesian psychological realism were Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, and Edith Wharton. Bierce mined his own traumatic experiences in the Civil War to craft stories that explored the psychological effects of violence and the nearness of death. Crane (1871–1900), who was himself too young to have personally experienced the Civil War, nonetheless chose it as his setting for The Red Badge of Courage (1895), which considers how an ordinary person might react to being thrown into a bewildering situation that demands heroic courage and stamina. Wharton is often characterized as a lesser version of James himself, though her works were actually more popular than his. Like James she wrote stories that treated the psychological nuances of social life among the culturally sophisticated, in whose conversations the unsaid was frequently as significant as the said. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

MARK TWAIN AND LOCAL COLOR

Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)—notable for its realistic detail, the psychologically realistic portrayal of its protagonist (and other characters), the meaningful ethical dilemmas that the novel poses, and the effective use of dialect—is undoubtedly one of the great literary achievements of American realism. Although Huck Finn is an uncommon character in an uncommon situation, such moments as his decision to try to save the lives of the murderers trapped on the Walter Scott and his efforts to free the slave Jim, in spite of his acceptance of the primacy of property rights over human rights, reach deep into the ethical and psychological realms for any human being. Perry, in his review of Twain’s novel in Century Magazine, found that it demonstrates how “Life teaches its lessons by implications, not by didactic preaching; and literature is at its best when it is an imitation of life and not an excuse for instruction” (p. 171). Twain’s realistic disposition is revealed, albeit humorously, in his prefatory materials, which on one hand deny the existence of plot or moral in the novel but on the other hand self-consciously insist on the accuracy of the dialects. Twain also broke new ground in the use of realism in his quasi-fictional travel books, which played off the standard travel book conventions to deflate conventional expectations. The Innocents Abroad (1869), for instance, was regarded as offensive by some because it accurately described the desolate barrenness of the Holy Land, in direct contradiction of the romanticized portraits that travel books usually offered. Unlike Howells and James, whose work tends to move within mainstream culture, Twain, in Huckleberry Finn and in other novels and tales, takes the reader to more remote and primitive locations, such as the Mississippi River valley and the California mining camps. In doing so he demonstrates his ties to regionalism and regional literature, a variety of realistic literature that attempts to capture the flavor of particular regions of the United States—an attempt particularly congenial to Howells’s and Perry’s notion that realism is democratic in its interest in ordinary people in common situations. However, regionalism also adds the element of the exotic—that is, it takes its readers on an exploration of cultural settings with which they are not likely to be familiar; one of its attractions is the opportunity to travel to new places through the experience of reading. Local color fiction was a particularly popular species of regionalism that thrived at the same time (1870–1890) as realism proper. Local color stories attempted to capture the uniqueness of the regions in which they were set. Twain began his career as a local colorist writing about the Far West, earning his first national fame for “The Celebrated Jumping


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

947

REALISM

Frog of Calaveras County” (1865), set in a mining camp in California. Bret Harte likewise wrote local color stories capturing the curious characters and settings of the mining camps and the West in general. Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman were important local colorists using New England settings, and George Washington Cable, Joel Chandler Harris, and Mary N. Murfree wrote local color fiction set in the South. Although local color tended to be nostalgic, often to the point of sentimentality, for the lifestyles of the areas in which it was set, it was realistic in its attention to actual settings and speech patterns, often including a heavy reliance on dialect to produce its effects. THE REALISM WAR

By the early 1880s Howells, Perry, and other realists were engaged in a resolute battle against sentimental, “undemocratic,” “untruthful” literature. Perry’s essay “William Dean Howells,” published in Century Magazine in March 1882, praises Howells as America’s great practitioner of realism, whose work “has proved that realism does not mean groping in the mire” (p. 685). Howells’s fiction, Perry says, fulfills the novelist’s responsibility “to tell us what he sees, not to pervert the truth according to his whims or prejudices” (p. 684). And he praises realism itself as the enemy of superstition, injustice, and the old-fashioned: “Just as the scientific spirit digs the ground from beneath superstition, so does its fellow-worker, realism, tend to prick the bubble of abstract types. Realism is the tool of the democratic spirit, the modern spirit by means of which the truth is elicited” (p. 683). In the same year Howells proclaimed the triumph of realism and the resulting elevation of fiction writing: “The art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray. . . . These great men are of the past” (“Henry James, Jr.,” p. 28). Realism was of the present. Richard Watson Gilder (1844– 1909) remarked in an essay several years later (New Princeton Review, 1887), “Realism is, in fact, something in the air which even those who do not think of it by name must necessarily feel” (p. 3). Yet even as the triumph and current predominance of realism were being proclaimed, there was an equally vigorous and vocal countercurrent of critical opinion condemning the new “realistic” literature as unentertaining, immoral (or at least amoral), and even atheistic. The clash between these two sometimes violently opposed camps became known as the “realism war.” Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900), best remembered as the coauthor of Mark Twain’s first novel, The Gilded Age (1873), issued one of the first answering shots, remarking in an 1883 essay titled “Modern

948

A M E R I C A N

Fiction”: “One of the worst characteristics of modern fiction is its so-called truth to nature” (p. 464). Art, in Warner’s view, requires idealization, but realism prides itself on a “photographic fidelity to nature” (p. 464), which he regards as an insufficient criterion for art. Warner complains that the realists, writing in a style that lacks the elevating enrichment of imaginative seeing, appear intent on representing the most sordid aspects of society: “it is held to be artistic to look almost altogether upon the shady and the seamy side of life, giving to this view the name of ‘realism’; to select the disagreeable, the vicious, the unwholesome” (p. 471). The realism war heated up with the publication of Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), which was viewed by critics, both friendly and hostile, as the purest application to date of the principles espoused by Howells and Perry. As such, it became a center of critical controversy between those who agreed with realist principles and those who opposed them. The novel is set in contemporary Boston, Howells’s home base while he was working for the Atlantic Monthly. Its protagonist, Silas Lapham, is a successful businessman who encounters a situation that forces him to choose between his material well-being and his desire to do the right thing. Howells succeeds in embedding a dilemma that calls for heroism within an ordinary, seemingly unheroic context, and in doing so suggests that heroism is not something removed from everyday life. The events of the novel are mundane—business transactions and domestic arrangements—and trace what is in material terms the fall of the protagonist, but the title ironically implies that the rises and falls that matter are the moral ones. Howells’s other novels of the 1870s and 1880s, including Their Wedding Journey (1872) and A Modern Instance (1882), follow similar trajectories. James said of Howells, in a piece published in Harper’s Weekly in June 1886, “He is animated by a love of the common, the immediate, the familiar and vulgar elements of life, and holds that in proportion as we move into the rare and strange we become vague and arbitrary” (“William Dean Howells,” p. 394). In listing Howells’s intentions and the qualities for which he was striving, James might also have mentioned a kind of authorial objectivity that would reveal the mixture of strength and weakness typical of actual human beings. Fellow realist H. H. Boyesen (1848–1895) exclaimed, “In ‘A Modern Instance,’ and ‘The Rise of Silas Lapham,’ [Howells] has penetrated more deeply into the heart of reality, as it manifests itself on this side of the Atlantic, than any previous novelist” (“Why We Have No Great Novelists”). A less sympathetic critic calling himself “R. P.” conceded in his essay

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REALISM

“Novel-Writing as a Science” that Silas Lapham was “the most scientifically realistic novel that has yet been written” (p. 276), that Howells’s fictional methods were revolutionary, and that he believed Howells intended his novels to serve admirable purposes. But such a scientific approach was, in his view, “a descent, a degradation” (p. 278). He saw in Howells’s novel “the logic of the downward progress of godless science” (p. 279). Howells, according to R. P., studied “men and women as a naturalist does insects. . . . he investigates and expounds his theme with the same soullessness and absence of all emotion” (p. 277). The editor and literary critic Hamilton Wright Mabie (1845–1916), in his review of Silas Lapham, agreed with R. P. on the matter of soullessness. While granting that the novel was often precise in its depictions, he found that it remained cold, lacking the “vital spark” that brings literature to life. Mabie accused Howells and the other realists of “crowding the world of fiction with commonplace people; people whom one would positively avoid coming in contact with in real life” (“A Typical Novel,” p. 423). True art, according to Mabie, reveals spiritual laws and universal facts, embodying them in noble forms. He found in Howells’s fiction a “lack of unforced and triumphant faith in the worth, the dignity, and the significance for art of human experience in its whole range” (p. 421). Without this faith, he believed, Howells was unable to communicate a deep feeling for his subject and, thus, “A true art is impossible” (p. 421). For Mabie (and others) the problem was not so much a matter of subject matter or of style, but of the lack of an intention to promote a certain view of the world. In Mabie’s view realism was “practical atheism applied to art” (p. 426). Like Mabie, Maurice Thompson (1844–1901), in The Ethics of Literary Art (1893), perceived a need for what he called a “moral bias” transcending the objectivity that realists like Howells were striving for. Moral bias, he believed, is “the initial impulse” from which “every art movement springs; for it is moral bias that controls every conception of the form and the function of art” (p. 16). However, Thompson suggested that Howells’s saving grace, to the extent that he had one at all, was that his novels were not entirely in keeping with the theories he articulated. Thompson, himself a novelist and poet, found in Howells’s novels substantial evidence of “romance disguised as realism.” In his judgment Howells must not be a realist after all but a Romantic in disguise, since “his literary tissue is healthy, the spirit of his work is even, calm, just, and his purpose is pure.” The work of genuine realists, like Émile Zola (1840–1902), he found to be A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

decadent, focusing on “the vulgar, the commonplace, and the insignificant.” The dramatist and biographer William Roscoe Thayer (1859–1923), who held a similar opinion of Zola, coined the term “epidermism” to describe realism in his essay “The New Story-tellers and the Doom of Realism” (1894). He claimed that the French authors and their American imitators investigated “only the surface, the cuticle of life, usually with a preference for very dirty skin” (p. 477). Referring to Howells as one of the epidermists, he condemned Howells’s work as photographic reproduction that revealed only the surface appearance and not the meaningful depth of things. Realism/epidermism was doomed, he judged, because the human element was missing; the realists had “mistaken the dead actual for reality” (p. 477). This decadence of fiction could lead only to moral anarchy because “the Real without the Ideal is as the body without life” (p. 480). In the same year, H. C. Vedder, a Baptist clergyman and literary critic, asked, after exclaiming over the flatness of Howells’s fiction, “Has he never known anybody who has a soul above the buttons?” In fairness to the American realists it should be noted that they for the most part shared their attackers’ disdain for the “filth” of French realism, especially Zola. Although Thayer rather bizarrely pictured Howells “smacking his lips” over Zola’s “filth” during the composition of The Rise of Silas Lapham, Howells actually condemned Zola’s uncritical depiction of vice, as did James and Perry. Perry, in “Zola’s Last Novel” (1880), maintained that the men and women in Zola’s novels were “beasts” and that his work was “more shameless and disgusting than anything in modern literature” (p. 694). Nonetheless, the accusation of moral decadence, carrying over from Americans’ shock at such French “realists” as Zola—who are more accurately described as naturalists—continued to be applied to American realists, especially to Howells. Along with the realists’ continued justifications of their methods and theories, there also were some efforts at peacemaking. Gilder proposed that the differences between Romantics and realists had been exaggerated because all fiction contains elements of both: “There are few realists who have no ideality, and few idealists, few romanticists, who do not make use of the real” (p. 1). George Pellew, who had been a student of Perry at Harvard, agreed. In “The New Battle of the Books” (1888), he maintained that the ultimate intentions of Romantics and realists were not significantly different, although they employed different methods. He found that, while the Romantic approached the object as a “mechanical


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

949

REALISM

draughtsman” (p. 572) and the realist was like a photographer, both wanted to reveal the truth of the object. CRITICAL REALISM

In time the steady attention to truthful reproduction of reality became wearisome even to the realists, who were also troubled by the social-economic turmoil of the 1880s, and—led by Howells, Boyesen, and Hamlin Garland—the turn was made from a nonideological fiction to one intended to foster social progress. The term given to this new direction was “critical realism.” Critical realism, which thrived especially in the 1890s, was in some ways a more reasonable application of Howells’s and Perry’s ideas, because culture-specific fiction is likely to speak more directly to culture-specific issues than to universal concerns. Howells himself was drawn into the notion of fiction as a force for reforming society partly as a reaction to the Haymarket labor riot in 1886, which demonstrated the willingness of those in authority to harshly repress labor uprisings—and in their aftermath showed the general lack of sympathy that Americans held for the plight of the workingman or workingwoman. His response was to turn his attention toward fiction that would show the true complexity of societal problems and in a way that would move people to try to find solutions. A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), which some regard as his best novel, was the most notable result in his own work. Howells was also a mentor to the promising young novelist Stephen Crane and greatly admired Crane’s brutal account of life in the urban slums in his first novel, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893). Hamlin Garland (1860–1940), another novelist who found a supportive friend in Howells, championed what he called “veritism,” a variant of realism that, by its reference to veritas, changed the focus more specifically to truthfulness. In his essay, “Productive Conditions of American Literature” (1894), Garland proposed that “American literature must be faithful to American conditions. . . . It should rise out of our conditions as naturally as the corn grows” (p. 690). This emphasis on “our conditions” reflects his concern with the effects of environment on the individual, and his fiction chronicles the lives of ordinary people making their way under difficult circumstances. Garland was also a local colorist, setting his fiction in what he called the “middle border”—the north central portion of the United States. His best-known work is MainTravelled Roads (1891), a book of short stories that, like many of his works, exposes the harsh lives led by farmers in the middle border region but finds in those lives a heroism unappreciated by the world at large. His commitment to revealing sympathetically but

950

A M E R I C A N

unflinchingly the grim actuality of his characters’ lives is very much in line with Howells’s intention in the turn to critical realism. Boyesen, in 1894, judged Garland to be “the most vigorous realist in America” (Literary and Social Silhouettes, p. 77). Boyesen, a Norwegian immigrant known in his own time as both novelist and critic, believed that American novelists had paid too little attention to the “strong forces which are visibly and invisibly at work in our society, fashioning our destinies as a nation” (p. 46). Like Garland and Crane, Boyesen took a somewhat deterministic view of human conduct, emphasizing its direct relation to environment and heredity, and like other realists he complained about the persistence of sentimentality in American fiction. In an essay titled “Why We Have No Great Novelists” (1887), Boyesen offered the provocative opinion that the market for American fiction revolved around the delicate sensibilities of adolescent girls: “The readers of novels are chiefly young girls, and a popular novel is a novel which pleases them” (p. 616). Thus, the young American girl functioned, in his view, as an “Iron Madonna who strangles in her iron embrace the American novelist” (p. 619). The result was, he thought, an insipid body of literature, momentarily entertaining but reluctant to face issues seriously. But eight years later, perceiving a turn in the direction of critical realism, he offered, in “The Progressive Realism of American Fiction,” the judgment that American fiction had “devoted itself to the serious task of studying and chronicling our own social conditions” and consequently “is to-day commanding the attention of the civilized world” (Literary and Social Silhouettes, p. 78). Another strong advocate of critical realism was the lawyer Clarence Darrow (1857–1938), a real-world activist and defender of those prosecuted in the Haymarket affair. Darrow, in an essay titled “Realism in Literature and Art” (1893), disagreed with Howells’s notion of “smiling realism,” maintaining, “The true artist has no right to choose only the lovely spots, and make us think that this is life” (p. 118). Rather the novelist should face the ugly truths in the world and, by bringing those truths to the world’s attention, contribute to their correction. Instead of beginning with the Romantic faith that the good, the true, and the beautiful inherently coincide, the novelist must work to make them so. He or she must “write and work until the world shall learn so much, and grow so good, that the true will be all beautiful, and all the real be ideal” (p. 118). The turn to critical realism also brought the realists closer to a contemporaneous literature of social activism directed toward special issues. Rebecca Harding Davis was an early practitioner of such fiction, focusing on

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REALISM

REALISM’S MORAL LESSONS Clarence Darrow, a prominent lawyer and social activist, in his essay “Realism in Literature and Art” (1893), maintained that realism does teach morality—a morality that springs naturally from the truthful treatment of its characters and situations. In fact, he suggests that this is the most compelling sort of moral lesson.

The realist would teach a lesson, too, but he would not violate a single fact for all the theories in the world, for a theory could not be true if it did violence to life. He paints his picture so true and perfect that all men who look upon it know that it is a likeness of the world that they have seen; they know that these are men and women and little children whom they meet upon the streets, and they see the conditions of their lives, and the moral of the picture sinks deeply into their minds. Clarence Darrow, “Realism in Literature and Art,” p.109.

humanity, and its characters tended to be driven by internal or external forces that they could neither understand nor control. It was, in other words, the philosophical counterpoint to romanticism’s belief in the inherent rightness and connectedness of all things. Realism had experimented with an idea of truthfulness that attempted to record the actualities of human experience without fitting them into a preconceived mold. But in the progression to critical realism and then to naturalism, the photographic method fell more and more into the service of the thematizing intention. See also Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Ambassadors; The Atlantic Monthly; A Hazard of New Fortunes; Naturalism; The Portrait of a Lady; Regionalism and Local Color Fiction BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Crane, Stephen. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. New York: D. Appleton, 1896. Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. New York, D. Appleton, 1895. Garland, Hamlin. Main-Travelled Roads: Being Six Stories of the Mississippi Valley. Cambridge, U.K.: Stone and Kimball, 1893. Howells, William Dean. A Hazard of New Fortunes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891.

issues of gender, race, and poverty, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with its debunking of the myths of the happy slave and the benevolent slaveholder, likewise was a precursor of critical realism. The fiction of Charles Waddell Chesnutt (himself an African American) also turned a realistic eye on the life of African Americans in the slaveholding and post-slaveholding South, as did the fiction of George Washington Cable on the mixed racial situation in New Orleans and vicinity. Meanwhile, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin wrote fiction that showcased the problems of women caught in the rigid framework of stereotyped gender expectations.

Howells, William Dean. The Rise of Silas Lapham. Boston: Ticknor, 1885. James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1881. James, Henry. The Two Magics: The Turn of the Screw, Covering End. New York: Macmillan, 1898. Thompson, Maurice. The Ethics of Literary Art. Hartford, Conn.: Hartford Seminary Press, 1893. Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885. Twain, Mark. Sketches, New and Old. Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing, 1875. Secondary Works

THE TURN TO NATURALISM

Just as realism led naturally into critical realism, the same trajectory led logically from critical realism into naturalism—which took the realistic tendency to the opposite pole of Howells’s “smiling realism.” Writers such as Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser examined the lives of characters in society’s lowest reaches. Whereas realism had tried for a sort of philosophical neutrality, naturalism posited a universe indifferent, or even hostile, to the fate of A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Anesko, Michael, ed. Letters, Fictions, Lives: Henry James and William Dean Howells. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Bell, Michael D. The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Benardete, Jane, ed. American Realism. New York: Putnam, 1972. Berthoff, Warner. The Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884–1919. New York: Free Press, 1965.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

951

REALISM

Boyesen, H. H. Literary and Social Silhouettes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1894.

Nagel, James, and Tom Quirk, eds. The Portable American Realism Reader. New York: Penguin Books, 1997.

Boyesen, H. H. “Why We Have No Great Novelists.” Forum 2 (February 1887): 615–622.

Parrington, Vernon L. The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America, 1860–1920: Completed to 1900 Only. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1930.

Cady, Edwin H. The Light of Common Day: Realism in American Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971.

Pellew, George. “The New Battle of the Books.” Forum 5 (July 1888): 564–573.

Carter, Everett. Howells and the Age of Realism. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1954.

Perry, Thomas Sergeant. “American Novels.” North American Review 115 (October 1872): 366–379.

Darrow, Clarence. “Realism in Literature and Art.” The Arena (December 1893): 98–113.

Perry, Thomas Sergeant. “Ivan Turgénieff.” Atlantic Monthly 33 (May 1874): 565–576.

Fishkin, Shelley F. From Fact to Fiction: Journalism and Imaginative Writing in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.

Perry, Thomas Sergeant. Review of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Century Magazine 30 (May 1885): 171–173.

Garland, Hamlin. “Productive Conditions of American Literature.” Forum 27 (August 1894): 690–694.

Perry, Thomas Sergeant. “William Dean Howells.” Century Magazine 23 (March 1882): 680–685.

Glazener, Nancy. Reading for Realism: The History of a Literary Institution. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997.

Perry, Thomas Sergeant. “Zola’s Last Novel.” Atlantic Monthly 45 (May 1880): 693–699.

Gilder, Richard Watson. “Certain Tendencies in Current Literature.” New Princeton Review (July 1887): 1–13.

Pizer, Donald. Realism and Naturalism in NineteenthCentury American Literature. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966.

Greenwald, Elissa. Realism and the Romance: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and American Fiction. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1989.

Pizer, Donald, ed. The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism, Howells to London. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Hochman, Barbara. Getting at the Author: Reimaging Books and Reading in the Age of American Realism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.

Pizer, Donald, ed. Documents of American Realism and Naturalism. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998.

Howells, William Dean. “Criticism and Fiction.” 1894. In Criticism and Fiction and Other Essays, edited by Clara Marburg Kirk and Rudolf Kirk. New York: New York University Press, 1959.

Pizer, Donald, and Earl Harbert, eds. American Realists and Naturalists. Vol. 12 of Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1982.

Howells, William Dean. “Editor’s Study.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (November 1889): 962–967. Howells, William Dean. “Henry James, Jr.” Century 25 (November 1882): 24–29. James, Henry. “The Art of Fiction.” 1884. In The Art of Fiction and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948. James, Henry. “William Dean Howells.” Harper’s Weekly, 19 June 1886, pp. 394–395. Kaplan, Amy. The Social Construction of American Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Lathrop, George Parsons. “The Novel and Its Future.” Atlantic Monthly 34 (September 1874): 313–324. Lucie-Smith, Edward. American Realism. New York: Abrams, 1994. Mabie, Hamilton Wright. “A Typical Novel.” Andover Review 4 (November 1885): 417–429. McKay, Janet H. Narration and Discourse in American Realistic Fiction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.

952

A M E R I C A N

Quirk, Tom, and Gary Scharnhorst, eds. American Realism and the Canon. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994. Rawlings, Peter, ed. Americans on Fiction, 1776–1900. 3 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2002. Contains many of the essays from nineteenth-century literary magazines quoted here. R. P. “Novel Writing as a Science.” Catholic World 42 (November 1885): 274–282. Smith, Christopher, ed. American Realism. San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Sundquist, Eric J., ed. American Realism: New Essays. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. Thayer, William Roscoe. “The New Story-Tellers and the Doom of Realism.” Forum 18 (December 1894): 470–480. Twain, Mark. “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses.” 1895. In The Unabridged Mark Twain, edited by Lawrence Teacher, pp. 1239–1250. Philadephia: Running Press, 1976. Vedder, H. C. American Writers of Today. New York: Silver Burdett and Co., 1894.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RECONSTRUCTION

Warner, Charles Dudley. “Modern Fiction.” Atlantic Monthly 51 (April 1883): 464–474. Warren, Kenneth. Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. James S. Leonard

RECONSTRUCTION The Reconstruction era following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, like any postwar period, was a turbulent historical context for the production of a national literature. Until well into the twentieth century, literary artists, scholars, orators, and journalists grappled with the legacies of slavery and war within the uniquely American dynamics of race and democracy. HISTORICAL CONTEXT

When the Civil War ended, the United States faced the challenge of reconstructing a newly expanded civil democracy amid the rubble of war. Reconstruction called on the energies of the entire nation but was most contested within the radically redefined legal and social relationships of the American South. Not surprisingly, there was intense political conflict over the terms under which Reconstruction would proceed in the region, and at times violent conflict erupted over who would define those terms. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibited slavery in 1865 and freed close to 4 million people of African descent from chattel slavery, where they had been denied all rights of citizenship and prevented by law from learning to read and write. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) granted citizenship rights to black Americans and the Fifteenth (1870) guaranteed suffrage to all male U.S. citizens. The project of rebuilding a fractured nation began in the wake of these legal redefinitions of who was to be considered a citizen. The term “Federal Reconstruction” (sometimes called “Radical Reconstruction”) refers to the period between 1867 and 1877, when the federal government officially occupied the South and national policy focused on enforcing new civil rights and legal protections for black citizens in the former Confederate states. During this period, the Freedmen’s Bureau was established to support free black communities in the South. Continuing the long labors of the black abolitionist movement, thousands of black activists, along with their white allies, worked to build schools, elect African American representatives to state legislatures, and build social institutions that were controlled by black citA M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

izens: colleges, businesses, newspapers, churches, civic organizations. At the same time, some whites in both the North and South remained committed to racial segregation and white supremacy. They launched concerted efforts to suppress the black vote, to institute “black codes” that restricted the social and legal freedom of recently emancipated black citizens, and to reestablish the legal and social racial hierarchies of the slavery period through intimidation, resistance to federal authority, and violent aggression toward blacks. This official Reconstruction ended in 1877 with a political compromise hammered out among white political leaders to settle the hotly contested 1876 presidential election, leading to the withdrawal of federal troops from the former Confederate states and to renewed political power for Southern whites. The formal end of Federal Reconstruction also relieved Southern whites of political pressure to honor the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and opened a new era of uninhibited white supremacy, political inequality, and racial segregation for black America. The term “Reconstruction,” however, is also used for the decades following 1877, when the project of rebuilding American democracy continued, sometimes along lines that advanced black freedom, sometimes along lines aimed at keeping democracy closed to millions of newly emancipated citizens. This longer period of Reconstruction, continuing well into the early decades of the twentieth century, was characterized both by substantial social and economic progress and by persisting racial, social, and economic conflict. Some American thinkers, in fact, argue that Reconstruction continued into the twenty-first century, though they differ about its relative purposes, successes, and failures. CONTEXTUAL ISSUES

From 1870 to 1920, a number of historical issues were both central to the Reconstruction context within which writers were working and symbolically important within the American literature being produced. These included the particular legacies of slavery and the Civil War: displaced communities; catastrophic damage to persons, landscapes, and towns; broken and separated families; psychological trauma; the struggle for literacy and education; redefined gender roles in the wake of war and emancipation; Christian churches struggling over different and often conflicting interpretations of the gospel during and after the slavery era; economic shifts from rural to urban economies and from agrarian to industrial labor; immigration and expanding cultural diversity; the emergence of greater religious pluralism in a nation that had been dominated


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

953

RECONSTRUCTION

Reconstruction 6 May 1861

Date of secession 25 June 1868 Date of readmission 14 July 1868 Military control withdrawn Military district boundary Both Union and Confederate governments, 1861–1865

Wisconsin

New York Michigan

Virginia 17 April 1861

Illinois

Indiana

West Virginia

Delaware Maryland

Separated from Virginia 20 August 1862, admitted to Union 20 June 1863

Kansas Missouri

New Jersey

16 January 1870 16 January 1870

Ohio

MILITARY DISTRICT No. 1

Kentucky

North Carolina 20 May 1861

Tennessee

Indiana Territory

25 June 1868 14 July 1868

Under military executive control, 1862–1865

Arkansas 6 May 1861


22 June 1868 30 June 1868


Alabama

Georgia

11 January 1861

18 January 1861

14 July 1868 14 July 1868

15 July 1870 18 July 1870


South Carolina 20 December 1860

25 June 1868 15 April 1877


Texas 1 February 1861

ATLANTIC OCEAN

30 March 1870 15 April 1870

Louisiana 16 January 1861

25 June 1868 15 April 1877

N

Florida

Mississippi

10 January 1861

25 June 1868 31 December 1876

9 January 1861

23 February 1870 26 February 1870

Gulf of Mexico 0 0

100 100

200 mi.

200 km

by white Protestant Christianity; developments in science and philosophy that sharpened tensions—for some—between traditional religion and the resources of “modernity”; and westward expansionism, which under the ideology of Manifest Destiny continued to obliterate or displace American Indians. SLAVERY AS SETTING AND SYMBOL

For over two centuries, unpaid slave labor had built the U.S. economy, but in 1865 the 4 million newly freed slaves shared with poorer people of all races the reality of serious economic obstacles to personal and collective security. Literary treatments of race and democracy during Reconstruction were often closely intertwined with economic issues. The legacy of persisting material

954

A M E R I C A N

hardship for black Americans was a theme that emerged across genres, especially—but not exclusively—in the works of writers who were themselves African American. For example, the ironic and highly symbolic stories in Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman (1899) repeatedly place black and white characters in situations where economic and political hierarchies are shifting along color lines. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s novel Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted (1892) and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) both weave explicitly economic themes into narratives set both before and after the Civil War. Important nonfiction works such as W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Anna Julia Cooper’s A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South (1892), and

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RECONSTRUCTION

Booker T. Washington’s “Atlantic Exposition Address” (1895) and Up from Slavery (1901) directly address the political economy of slavery and the impact on Reconstruction of economic relationships established during the slavery period. Economic themes in Reconstruction literature include the postwar challenges facing free black labor, racial conflict among the laboring classes generally, and white efforts to restrict and control black labor and black economic self-determination. The broader topic of “slavery,” as subject matter and as metaphor, also emerged as an important symbolic resource for a wide range of American authors during the Reconstruction era. American writers often offered sharply different images of the past and of what American life, democracy, and the nation’s future should look like. Poets such as Albery Allson Whitman (Not a Man and Yet a Man, 1877), Frances E. W. Harper (Sketches of Southern Life, 1872), Paul Laurence Dunbar (Lyrics of a Lowly Life, 1897; Lyrics of the Hearthside, 1899), and Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass, 1871–1872 edition; Democratic Vistas, 1871) use slavery figuratively in their work. Slavery was also a central theme for Reconstruction fiction writers as politically and culturally diverse as Joel Chandler Harris (Nights with Uncle Remus, 1883), Mark Twain (The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, 1894), Victoria Earle (Aunt Lindy: A Story Founded on Real Life, 1893), and Paul Laurence Dunbar (In Old Plantation Days, 1903; The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories, 1900). Reconstruction-era playwrights who used slavery as a theme or setting include Bartley Campbell (The White Slave, 1882), Edward Sheldon (The Nigger, 1909), and Pauline E. Hopkins (Slaves’ Escape: or, The Underground Railroad, 1880). In addition, during Reconstruction in the broader sense, hundreds of “Tom Troupes” toured the country, performing scenes adapted from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and caricaturing black people and the slave experience in accordance with prevailing late-nineteenth-century white racist stereotypes. In contrast, slave narratives published after the Civil War expanded on some of the narrative patterns characteristic of the genre in the antebellum years, but also portrayed African Americans looking back on slavery and placed new emphasis on the realities facing free black Americans during Reconstruction. THE CIVIL WAR AS SETTING AND SYMBOL

Not surprisingly, the Civil War itself appears extensively as a topic, setting, and symbol in literature of the Reconstruction period. For example, a number of A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Writing in 1935, during the heyday of Jim Crow segregation, W. E. B. Du Bois concluded his groundbreaking historical study Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880 with a chapter entitled “The Propaganda of History,” in which he took American historians (and educators) to task for ignoring African American contributions to American democracy. American students, argued Du Bois, would complete their educations lacking any accurate sense of the realities of Reconstruction. But the problem was even deeper, as he showed by recounting his own experience as a writer:

Herein lies more than mere omission and difference of emphasis. The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans. The editors of the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica asked me for an article on the history of the American Negro. From my manuscript they cut out all my references to Reconstruction. I insisted on including the following statement: “White historians have ascribed the faults and failures of Reconstruction to Negro ignorance and corruption. But the Negro insists that it was Negro loyalty and the Negro vote alone that restored the South to the Union; established the new democracy, both for white and black, and instituted the public schools.” This the editor refused to print. . . . I was not satisfied and refused to allow the article to appear. After illustrating this deliberate exclusion of black perspective from the scholarly record, Du Bois added: Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable? Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, pp. 713–714.

white writers lament the loss of the war by the Confederacy, in some cases by explicitly embracing old norms of white supremacy and in other cases by focusing on the loss of southern (white) community and


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

955

RECONSTRUCTION

identity. These include Jefferson Davis’s nonfiction The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881); Constance Fenimore Woolson’s For the Major, an 1883 novel sympathetic toward the Confederacy; Mary Boykin Chesnut’s A Diary from Dixie (1905); and John William De Forest’s 1881 The Bloody Chasm, a novel set in Charleston, South Carolina. Other writers—poets, playwrights, fiction writers, essayists, and social theorists—from all regions of the country and across the cultural, racial, and political spectrum grappled with the legacy of the Civil War on its own terms or addressed the general problem of war as a philosophical and political problem: Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage, 1895), Walt Whitman (Drum-Taps and Sequel, 1865; Memorandum during the War, 1875; Specimen Days and Collect, 1882), Ethel Lynn Beers (All Quiet along the Potomac and Other Poems, 1879), Louisa May Alcott (Proverb Stories, 1882), George Wilbur Peck (How Private Geo. W. Peck Put Down the Rebellion, 1887), Ambrose Bierce (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, 1891, a collection including famous stories such as “Chickamauga” and “The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”), Paul Laurence Dunbar (Lyrics of Love and Laughter, 1903), Augustus Thomas (Alabama, 1891; The Copperhead, 1918), William Dean Howells (The Undiscovered Country, 1880), and Grace Elizabeth King (Monsieur Motte, 1888; Tales of a Time and Place, 1892; Balcony Stories, 1893). Many of the writers who used slavery as a literary trope also used the Civil War as setting and symbol. A number of themes related to the immediate aftermath of the Civil War and to the legacy of slavery during Reconstruction emerged in both fiction and nonfiction between 1865 and 1920. These themes include: the importance of literacy and the need for schools controlled by newly freed black communities; the problems emerging within white communities—in the North and South—as new dynamics of civic equality and democratic access for black citizens sparked progressive change and a virulent white backlash; the rampant civic destruction during the war and the resulting struggle by communities to define themselves under new postwar social conditions; displaced populations and broken families (these two themes were especially prominent among African American writers during this period); redefined gender roles; the imperative for what might be called “theological Reconstruction,” as American Christianity, sharply divided along racial lines in the antebellum era, entered the Reconstruction period with the problem of race still looming large and the reality of greater religious pluralism ahead; and finally, the persisting legacy of widespread social violence.

956

A M E R I C A N

RACE

Many Reconstruction-era writers worked “the color line,” as W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) called it, making use especially of skin color as a symbol for personal identity and the state of American democracy. Literary tropes related to race abound in Reconstruction writing, including “mixed race heritage,” the “tragic mulatto,” “blackness,” “whiteness,” “Indian-ness,” and skin color used as a code for social and economic conflict within black communities. Interracial sexuality is a common theme among writers with dramatically different attitudes toward and artistic interests in race. Within this complex symbolic matrix, many Reconstruction-era writers set stories and nonfiction within a “then” (slavery) and “now” (Reconstruction) conceptual framework. This technique often allowed them to illuminate the dynamics of racial progress or regress in Reconstruction America. Works by William Wells Brown (My Southern Home; or, The South and Its People, 1880) and James Weldon Johnson (The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, 1912), as well as by the white writers Constance Fenimore Woolson (Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches, 1880) and George Washington Cable (John March, Southerner, 1895) make use of this method. Similarly, the historical period of Reconstruction itself frequently appears as a symbol for America’s glories or failures where race is concerned, presenting a wide range of perspectives on the American democracy’s past, present, and future. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy uses Reconstruction as symbol, as do works by Charles Chesnutt (The Wife of His Youth, 1899; The House behind the Cedars, 1900; The Marrow of Tradition, 1901), Albion W. Tourgée (Fool’s Errand, 1879; Bricks without Straw, 1880), George Washington Cable (The Grandissimes, 1880); The Silent South, 1885), Pauline Hopkins (Contending Forces: A Romance of Negro Life North and South, 1900), and W. E. B. Du Bois (Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil, 1920). One aspect of Reconstruction often overlooked because of the tendency to focus on black/white dynamics is the increased occupation of Indian Country by white settlers and recently emancipated blacks fleeing white violence in the South. American Indian oratory was recorded in writing during this period. Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa; 1858–1939), displaying interesting philosophical parallels to W. E. B. Du Bois, grappled with cultural and religious “double consciousness” in The Soul of the Indian (1911) and From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916). The apocalyptic voice of the Ghost Dance Songs composed by various tribes in the later nineteenth century

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RECONSTRUCTION

exemplifies Native American resistance to forced displacement, which sometimes came at the hands of African American soldiers, for whom service in the American military offered professional opportunity after the Civil War. The persisting problem in the United States of violent and institutionalized white supremacy was a frequent subject of Reconstruction-era literature. Many writers dealt directly with the theme, but two writers with profoundly different philosophies about race made it central to their work: Thomas Dixon (1864–1946) and Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931). Notorious for his unapologetic embrace of white superiority and the Ku Klux Klan, Thomas Dixon celebrated white supremacist forms of Protestant Christianity and implicitly sanctioned white racial violence in his novels The Leopard’s Spots (1902), The Clansman (1905), and The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907). D. W. Griffith adapted The Clansman as the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, a “blockbuster” that drew long lines to theaters all around the country at a time when Ku Klux Klan membership in the United States surged for a second time since the Civil War. In contrast, Ida B. Wells-Barnett worked as an activist and writer to confront Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and white race riots. Her now-famous pamphlets include: Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892), A Red Record (1895), and Mob Rule in New Orleans (1900). Wells-Barnett exemplifies the refusal of black Americans and others to accept white supremacy as a national norm. Her use of the pen in combination with political activism was characteristic of the work of many social issue writers between 1870 and 1920. INTERPRETIVE ISSUES

Both Federal Reconstruction and the broader Reconstruction period presented significant challenges over the years for historians and literary critics. Much initial historiography of the era was written by white scholars who were sometimes “unreconstructed” sympathizers with white southern segregationist thinking or were unsympathetic either to full black emancipation or to the complete restructuring of American democratic life based on racial equality. W. E. B. Du Bois’s groundbreaking study Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880 (1935) was an early—or belated, depending on one’s perspective— break with this white bias in social analysis, offering an interpretation of Reconstruction grounded in black historical experience and perspectives. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

In the years since the publication of Black Reconstruction in America, historical and sociological analysis has expanded to consider a much wider range of sources and points of view. Additionally, Black studies, Africana studies, and American Indian studies, all interdisciplinary traditions of scholarship, have provided more balance in the American historical, literary, and interpretive record. In fact, some literary historians of Reconstruction believe it is important to treat historiography and other forms of narrative social analysis as distinct literary genres and to investigate the literary history of “histories of Reconstruction.” Since the mid-twentieth century, scholars in literary criticism and literary history have availed themselves of previously undervalued primary sources from the Reconstruction era (oral traditions, pamphlets, journalism) and have also made available a more representative selection of works from traditional literary genres such as autobiography, novels, plays, poetry, and short fiction. One interpretive framework that has proven helpful for American thinkers has been the placement of Reconstruction within international contexts for the purpose of comparison. For example, various approaches to postcolonial theory in history, sociology, and literary studies can illuminate the history and literature of Reconstruction in new ways, as can crossnational or comparative work that considers American Reconstruction in relation to the history and literature of other nations such as South Africa, where racially coded hierarchies are also entrenched. Interpreters from outside the United States often see American social and literary history in terms that put American interpretive habits into sharper relief and sometimes introduce a necessary tension. American society often exhibits what scholars call “historical amnesia,” the tendency to repress or forget the true complexity of history in the United States. Reconstruction, charged with postwar tension and the often violent racial legacies of slavery and Manifest Destiny, offers scholars and students of American history and literature ample opportunity to confront head-on and overcome this historical amnesia. See also Jim Crow; Ku Klux Klan; New South BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Chesnutt, Charles W. The Marrow of Tradition. 1901. New York: Penguin, 1993. Dixon, Thomas, Jr. The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. 1905. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

957

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE

Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880. 1935. New York: Free Press, 1999. Harper, Frances E. W. Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted. 1892. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999. Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1885. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002. Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. Edited by William Andrews. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1995. Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Selected Works of Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Edited by Trudier Harris. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Secondary Works

Burt, Daniel S., ed. The Chronology of American Literature: America’s Literary Achievement from the Colonial Era to Modern Times. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 2004. Chalmers, David M. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan, 1865–1965. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965. Edwards, Laura F. Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Perennial Classics, Illustrated Edition, 2002. Foner, Eric, and Olivia Mahoney. American Reconstruction: People and Politics after the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Fredrickson, George. Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Nieman, Donald G., ed. African Americans and the Emergence of Segregation, 1865–1900. New York: Garland, 1994. Packard, Jerrold M. American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow. New York: St. Martin’s, 2002. Painter, Nell Irvin. Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919. New York: Norton, 1987. Trelease, Allen W. Reconstruction: The Great Experiment. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Turkel, Studs. Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1993. Sharon Carson

THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE A classic in the tradition of realism, generally considered the most important novel of the American Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage was written by a young author who had never seen a battle. Stephen Crane,

958

A M E R I C A N

who was born six years after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, began the novel when he was twenty-one and finished his revisions a year later. The book was published by Appleton in 1895, a few days before Crane celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday. Given the vivid descriptions of battle scenes, the youth and inexperience of the author seem strange, even in the early twenty-first century. Stranger still is the fact that The Red Badge of Courage seems utterly remote from the issues—such as slavery and secession—that are usually cited as the causes of the Civil War. Except for the subtitle, An Episode of the American Civil War, and the distinctive local color that defines its social, temporal, and spatial milieus, the war depicted in Crane’s novel might have occurred in a thousand different settings. COMPOSITION AND PUBLICATION

The youngest son of a Methodist minister, Stephen Crane (1871–1900) was born in Newark, New Jersey. In 1878 the family moved to Port Jervis, New York, a railroad hub in Appalachia on the Pennsylvania border. He was schooled at the Pennington Seminary and at Claverack College, a military prep school on the Hudson River. In 1890 he entered Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, but transferred to Syracuse University in 1891 for one desultory term, excusing himself from classes and specializing in baseball. Sponsored by his brother, Townley, he became a stringer or reporter for the New York Tribune covering the Jersey Coast, but he lost his job when his callow satire caused a minor brouhaha. By 1892 Crane was living with fraternity brothers on Avenue A in Manhattan. There he wrote Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (A Story of New York) (1893) and published it with the inheritance he received from his mother’s estate. Crane began The Red Badge of Courage, as a “potboiler” (Wertheim and Sorrentino, p. 91), while living with his brother, Edmund, in Lake View, New Jersey, in the summer and early autumn of 1893. He continued its composition when he moved to the old Art Students’ League at East Twenty-third Street in Manhattan, where, as an impoverished bohemian, he shared a large studio with struggling artists. Crane became a nocturnal writer, working often after midnight until dawn. A chief source for The Red Badge of Courage, according to Crane’s artist friends, was the series of Civil War memoirs published in the Century between 1884 and 1887. Corwin Knapp Linson, for example, remembered Crane “poring over the Civil War articles” in 1893 (p. 19). Presumably, the stories of veterans in Port Jervis were an oral source; the movements of Crane’s fictional

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Stampede of the Eleventh Corps on the Plank Road. Illustration by A. C. Redwood for “The Chancellorsville Campaign” by Darius N. Cough in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 1887–1888. Chancellorsville, Virginia, is the site of the battle in Crane’s novel. GRADUATE LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

regiment, the 304th New York, parallel those of the 124th New York State Volunteer Regiment (called the Orange Blossoms), which saw its first combat at Chancellorsville, Virginia, the site of the battle in the novel. Another oral source, John B. Van Petten, one of Crane’s teachers at Claverack and a noted raconteur of war stories, had been a chaplain and lieutenant colonel in the Union army. Seriously wounded and decorated for bravery, Van Petten served in the battles of Antietam and Winchester, where he witnessed the panic and confusion of terrified soldiers running from the enemy. Several literary works—notably Leo Tolstoy’s Sebastopol (1855), Rudyard Kipling’s The Light That Failed (1890), and Émile Zola’s La Débâcle (1892)—have been cited as possible sources of The Red Badge of Courage, but although the similarities are sometimes striking, there is no evidence that Crane read these books. Again, he may have been influenced by the perspectives of infantry soldiers in such works as Wilbur F. Hinman’s Corporal Si Klegg and His “Pard”: How They A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Lived and Talked and What They Did and Suffered While Fighting for the Flag (1887) and by the vivid fictional descriptions of warfare in John W. De Forest’s Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867), Joseph Kirkland’s The Captain of Company K (1891), and Ambrose Bierce’s Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891). Without conclusive evidence, however, the influence of these works remains controversial. In April 1894 Crane showed Hamlin Garland the first half of his manuscript (the other half being held “in hock” with a typist for $15). Garland immediately recognized the novel as “a work of genius” (Roadside Meetings, pp. 196–197). In penciled comments on the manuscript, Garland advised Crane to regularize the regional speech of his characters. Initially Crane followed this advice, but he eventually restored most of the Appalachian dialect except for Henry Fleming’s speech. At about this time Crane also substituted epithets for the names of his characters: Fleming became “the youth,” Wilson “the loud soldier,” and Conklin “the tall soldier.” Their names appear only in direct address.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

959


The original title, “Private Fleming: His Various Battles,” now became The Red Badge of Courage. With Garland’s supporting letter, Crane offered the novel to S. S. McClure for publication in either McClure’s Magazine or in his Newspaper Features Syndicate. McClure postponed making a commitment to publish the novel. Six months later Crane lost patience with McClure and took the manuscript to his competitor, Irving Bacheller, who, impressed by its power and vividness, immediately arranged to publish a syndicated version of The Red Badge of Courage in December 1894. An abridged version of the novel was published by Bacheller in at least seven newspapers, including the Philadelphia Press, where it was most enthusiastically received (Wertheim and Sorrentino, pp. 104–117). In December 1894 Ripley Hitchcock, a senior editor at D. Appleton and Company, tentatively accepted the novel for publication. For five months—January through May 1895—Crane was traveling in the West and Mexico on assignment with the Bacheller syndicate. On 17 June 1895 he signed a contract with Appleton for the publication of The Red Badge of Courage. The novel was published by Appleton in the United States in September and by William Heinemann in England in November 1895.

alleged censorship ever occurred. Crane never objected to the published version of his novel or suggested that he was forced to cut anything. The typescript that served as the printer’s copy or the printer’s proof would probably help to resolve these issues, but unfortunately these items are lost. This is not merely a pedantic quarrel; the chosen text affects one’s overall evaluation of the novel and impinges crucially on matters of interpretation. The Parker-Binder version intensifies Crane’s ironic treatment of Henry Fleming and blatantly supports an antiwar reading of the novel. In the early twenty-first century, however, most scholars accept the authority of the Appleton text. The manuscript contributes to the understanding of Crane’s imaginative process, but as Christopher Benfey has succinctly observed: “a manuscript is not a book” (p. 108). The manuscript also helps to correct printing and proofreading errors. Among the editors who adopt the 1895 version as their copy text, Bowers accepts manuscript readings that make Crane’s use of regional speech consistent. Donald Pizer is conservative with emendations; J. C. Levenson is more so. Because no two editors agree at every point, there is no single authoritative edition of The Red Badge of Courage.

TEXTUAL ISSUES

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Discrepancies between the manuscript and the first book edition of The Red Badge of Courage have sparked a heated debate among Crane scholars, including Fredson Bowers, the editor of the University of Virginia edition of The Works of Stephen Crane, and Hershel Parker, a distinguished Herman Melville scholar and a severe critic of Bowers’s editorial procedures. Parker and his graduate student at the University of Southern California, Henry Binder, have argued that the Virginia edition of The Red Badge of Courage violates Crane’s intentions. Parker and Binder insist that the manuscript—not the Appleton first edition—be established as the authoritative text of The Red Badge of Courage (see Parker in Mitchell, pp. 25–47). They reason that Hitchcock must have pressured Crane to delete many passages (including all of the manuscript’s chapter 12) in which Fleming’s reflections seem especially deluded, pompous, and petulant. According to this argument, Hitchcock intervened in order to produce a book that was acceptable to patriotic readers in the 1890s. The last few pages were heavily revised, and the final paragraph— “Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds”—does not appear in the manuscript. Parker and Binder believe that Hitchcock’s invasive role is conspicuous here. This argument, however, is flawed because there is no evidence that the

The first reviews that appeared in U.S. newspapers noted the vivid detail and terrifying realism of the novel. The Detroit Free Press (7 October 1895) found it “so vivid a picture of the emotions and the horrors of the battlefield that you will pray your eyes may never look upon the reality.” To Edward Marshall in the New York Press (13 October 1895), “the description is so vivid as to be almost suffocating.” The Boston Times (27 October 1895) stressed its “pitiless vividness”: “the most realistic and ghastly picture of the late war which has ever come to our notice.” The Philadelphia Press (13 October 1895) praised the novel “as a most impressive and accurate record of actual personal experiences.” Similarly the New York Times (19 October 1895) found it “extraordinarily true.” Among the negative reviews, the New York Tribune (13 October 1895), still with a grudge against Crane, denounced the novel as “tedious,” “grotesque,” “ridiculous,” and “exaggerated.” William Dean Howells, one of Crane’s steadfast mentors, wrote a bland review for Harper’s Weekly (26 October 1895). Psychologically, he wrote, “the book is worth while as an earnest of the greater things we may hope from a new talent” (Wertheim and Sorrentino, pp. 141–146). While The Red Badge of Courage was, in general, an instant success in the United States, in England it was a sensation. Arthur Waugh, in a “London Letter” for the Critic (28 December 1895), wrote that “everyone is

960

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


asking about [Crane]; and his Red Badge of Courage is being read all over the country.” A reviewer for the London Sketch (18 December 1895) found it “fascinating,” “almost diabolically clever,” “amazing—indeed, Zolaesque.” In the Pall Mall Gazette (26 November 1895), H. B. Marriott-Watson wrote: “Mr. Crane . . . has written a remarkable book. His insight and his power of realization amount to genius” (Wertheim and Sorrentino, pp. 152–157). The most sustained and penetrating analysis was written by George Wyndham for the New Review (January 1896). Wyndham was among the first to note Crane’s innovations in prose style and narrative method. Crane, he said, has hit on a new device. . . . In order to show the features of modern war, he takes a subject—a youth with a peculiar temperament, capable of exaltation and yet morbidly sensitive. Then he traces the successive impressions made on such a temperament, from minute to minute, during two days of heavy fighting. He stages the drama of war, so to speak, within the mind of one man, and then admits you as to a theatre.

Wyndham repeatedly compared Crane to Tolstoy and Zola and concluded: “Mr. Crane, as an artist, achieves by his singleness of purpose a truer and completer picture of war than either” (reprinted in Crane, The Red Badge of Courage, Norton Critical edition, pp. 175–182). A hot exchange was provoked by a letter written to the Dial, 16 April 1896, by Alexander C. McClurg, the magazine’s owner and a decorated hero of the Civil War. The Red Badge of Courage, McClurg wrote, “is a vicious satire upon American soldiers and American armies.” Henry Fleming “is an ignorant and stupid country lad [who] acts throughout like a madman. . . . [He] first rushes madly to the rear in a crazy panic, and afterwards plunges forward to the rescue of the colors under exactly the same influences,” McClurg complained. “Nowhere are seen the quiet, manly selfrespecting, and patriotic men, influenced by the highest sense of duty, who in reality fought our battles.” McClurg suggested that the novel was an expression of British anti-American prejudice. Replies to McClurg by Appleton and Sidney Brooks were printed in the Dial in May but were offset by a renewed burst of criticism by J. L. Onderdonk and by a letter in Harper’s Weekly by William M. Payne supporting McClurg’s attack on Crane’s “monstrous extravagance” (Wertheim and Sorrentino, pp. 179–184). INTERPRETATION

Most readers agree that The Red Badge of Courage is a masterpiece of social and psychological realism. Many readers also see it as a classic in the tradition of A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

naturalism. Others, by observing its painterly style, link it to impressionism. Still other readers find a mythic or philosophic subtext that lifts the novel above its historical context to a more universal level. The Red Badge of Courage may be read as a document in the social history of the Civil War. The novel is known to have been based on the battle of Chancellorsville. Harold Hungerford points out that the battle is mentioned explicitly in “The Veteran,” a short story that Crane published a year after The Red Badge of Courage, in which an older Henry Fleming says, “That was at Chancellorsville” (p. 223). Crane presumably studied the history of this campaign in the Century and interviewed veterans in order to develop an exact knowledge of the relevant historical background. The geography, troop movements, and details of battle scenes in the novel consistently correspond to actual events. Late in April 1863 the Union army massed at Falmouth, Virginia, then crossed the Rappahannock River, and attacked Confederates on 2 May. It was the first battle of the year and the first military action for many of the soldiers. Thus, Chancellorsville served as an apt framework for studying the responses of a raw recruit in his first battle. This campaign probably attracted Crane’s attention also because of its ironic nuances: after only two days it ended in a stalemate and was a humiliating defeat of Union troops under the inept Joseph Hooker, whose vastly superior manpower (two to one) was defeated through the ingenuity of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, commanders of the Confederate army. The Red Badge of Courage may also be read in the context of the 1890s—that is, as a reinterpretation of the Civil War as it was popularly understood when Crane wrote and published his novel. Similarly, cultural and political issues that were being played out at the end of the nineteenth century found their way metaphorically into The Red Badge of Courage. Images of violent class conflicts between workers and owners, the results of a modern industrialized machine, are obliquely depicted in Crane’s novel. As Amy Kaplan points out (in Mitchell’s New Essays), it also anticipates the Spanish-American War and the global wars of the twentieth century. Irony is often seen as the key to The Red Badge of Courage. Henry is the romantic dreamer: in fantasy he sees himself as a Homeric or chivalric hero, when in reality he is an ignorant farm boy and a self-centered antihero who becomes consumed with “wild battle madness.” Eric Solomon has concluded that Crane’s war novel is therefore a parody of traditional popular historical fiction. Other critics, notably William Bysshe Stein and Florence Leaver, argue that the novel should


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

961


be read ironically. To Stein, who draws a parallel to the French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, Henry Fleming is an absurdist hero. Leaver reads The Red Badge of Courage through the lens of David Reisman’s 1950 study The Lonely Crowd. She maintains that Fleming is a prototype of the “other-directed” outsider, emphatically not a Civil War hero. While most critics prefer the ironic approach to The Red Badge of Courage, they often debate the degrees of irony that can be found throughout the novel, especially in its ending. In the realm of mythic and archetypal interpretation, one name stands out: R. W. Stallman. In an introduction to the Modern Library edition (1951) of The Red Badge of Courage, Stallman reinterpreted the novel as a religious allegory, a timeless story of sin, suffering, and redemption. Stallman found religious symbolism throughout the novel, but most notably he located it in the death of Jim Conklin, Crane’s “intended” Christ figure. At the end of chapter 9, the blood-drenched, wafer-like sun symbolizes the crucified redeemer, and Fleming’s “spiritual rebirth begins” at this moment (pp. xxxiv–xxxv). For at least twenty years, Stallman was the center of a fierce academic debate, and he kept the issues alive by rewriting his interpretation six times. Finally he totally contradicted himself by arguing that Fleming is not spiritually saved; rather, the whole redemption myth is an intended irony: “Proud Henry . . . [thinking] that he is reborn . . . is self-deceived” (Stephen Crane, p. 175). With the decline of archetypal criticism, Stallman’s eccentric interpretation has virtually disappeared from hermeneutic discourse. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell provides a lens for another mythic reading of The Red Badge of Courage. Using Campbell’s model, John E. Hart sees Henry Fleming as a hero who passes through the successive stages of separation, initiation, and return. The dominance of brute instinct over reason, of environment over personal choice, and of natural processes over teleology—in short, naturalism, is another popular framework for reading The Red Badge of Courage. Some scholars, such as Lars Åhnebrink, have drawn parallels to European antecedents, principally Émile Zola. Others, such as Charles C. Walcutt, believe that with a close reading of the text one sees Henry moving lockstep from naive idealism to challenging circumstance and then to panic and flight. The often-cited “chapel” scene in The Red Badge of Courage illustrates this type of naturalism: Henry enters a verdant, quasi-religious enclosure where he faces a dead soldier, a corpse rotting and being eaten by black ants that seem surrealistically to pursue the

962

A M E R I C A N

terrified, fleeing recruit. Elsewhere, human beings are reduced to devils, barbarians, hell-roosters, wolves, and wildcats. Unlike Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, however, Crane does not interrupt the narrative flow to preach a naturalistic philosophy; he simply places his characters in a life-threatening environment and lets “nature” run its course. Distinct from naturalism, impressionism—a prose technique involving the interaction of light and color— offers an alternative context. Garland’s initial response to the manuscript indicates an early interest in this feature of Crane’s style, for “veritism”—Garland’s personal theory of realism—includes impressionism as a vital component. Harold Frederic noted the pictorial aspect of The Red Badge of Courage, and Joseph Conrad also stressed Crane’s impressionism. Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism (1980) by James Nagel is the fullest and most convincing discussion of this approach. The presentation of war as spectacle provides another context for reading The Red Badge of Courage. Battles are depicted as football games or other sporting events, circus parades, and theatrical tableaus. Bill Brown maintains that the entertainment industry, which expanded dramatically in the 1890s, seeped unconsciously into Crane’s works, where grotesque parallels are often drawn between violence and amusement. Lastly, Crane’s family background in the temperance movement provides still another context for understanding the novel. Both of Crane’s devout parents actively supported the relentless war against alcohol. Their writings on the subject, as well as the enormous body of temperance literature, must have been repeatedly brought to Crane’s attention during childhood. George Monteiro argues that the upturned faces of corpses on the battlefield, including the soldier that Fleming encounters in the green chapel, derive from temperance descriptions of ragged men lying dead drunk in the dirt and covered with bugs. The ravings of Jim Conklin in his death scene suggest the temperance accounts of delirium tremens. A review of the scholarship pertaining to The Red Badge of Courage, including the books by Brown and Monteiro, shows that Crane’s novel has evoked and continues to evoke fresh interpretations. If a test of a literary classic is its complexity and therefore its ability to generate multiple interpretations, then surely The Red Badge of Courage is a classic. See also Civil War Memoirs; Historical Romance; Impressionism; Naturalism; Realism

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REFORM


Crane, Stephen. The Correspondence of Stephen Crane. Edited by Stanley Wertheim and Paul M. Sorrentino. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Nagel, James. Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980. Solomon, Eric. Stephen Crane: From Parody to Realism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. Edited by Donald Pizer. Norton Critical edition, 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 1994.

Stallman, R. W. “Introduction.” In The Red Badge of Courage. Modern Library edition. New York: Random House, 1951.

Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. Edited by Fredson Bowers. In The Works of Stephen Crane, vol. 2. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975.

Stallman, R. W. Stephen Crane: A Biography. New York: Braziller, 1968.

Crane, Stephen. Stephen Crane: Prose and Poetry. Edited by J. C. Levenson. New York: Library of America, 1984. Crane, Stephen. “The Veteran.” McClure’s Magazine 7 (August 1896): 222–224. Secondary Works

Åhnebrink, Lars. The Beginnings of Naturalism in American Fiction. Uppsala, Sweden: American Institute of the University of Uppsala, 1950. Bassan, Maurice, ed. Stephen Crane: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967.

Stein, William Bysshe. “Stephen Crane’s Homo Absurdus.” Bucknell Review 8 (1959): 168–188. Walcutt, Charles C. American Literary Naturalism: A Divided Stream. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956. Weatherford, Richard M. Stephen Crane: The Critical Heritage. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973. Wertheim, Stanley, and Paul M. Sorrentino. The Crane Log: A Documentary Life of Stephen Crane, 1871–1900. New York: G. K. Hall, 1994. John Clendenning

Benfey, Christopher. The Double Life of Stephen Crane. New York: Knopf, 1992. Brown, Bill. The Material Unconscious: American Amusement, Stephen Crane, and the Economics of Play. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Commemorative edition. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. Garland, Hamlin. Crumbling Idols: Twelve Essays on Art Dealing Chiefly with Literature, Painting, and the Drama. 1894. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960. Garland, Hamlin. Roadside Meetings. New York: Macmillan, 1930. Hart, John E. “The Red Badge of Courage as Myth and Symbol.” University of Kansas City Review 19 (1953): 249–256. Hungerford, Harold R. “‘That Was at Chancellorsville’: The Factual Framework for The Red Badge of Courage.” American Literature 34 (1963): 520–531. Leaver, Florence. “Isolation in the Work of Stephen Crane.” South Atlantic Quarterly 61 (1962): 521–532. Linson, Corwin Knapp. “Little Stories of ‘Steve’ Crane.” Saturday Evening Post, 11 April 1903, pp. 19–20. Mitchell, Lee Clark. New Essays on “The Red Badge of Courage.” Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Includes Hershel Parker, “Getting Used to the ‘Original Form’ of The Red Badge of Courage,” pp. 25–47; and Amy Kaplan, “The Spectacle of War in Crane’s Revision of History,” pp. 77–108. Monteiro, George. Stephen Crane’s Blue Badge of Courage. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

REFORM Throughout the fifty-year span from 1870 to 1920, American authors sought increasingly to link their writing to the mission of social reform. For many members of the literary generation that came of age during the 1860s, the carnage of civil war created a crisis in representation, in which forms of literature that were popular before the war now seemed increasingly evasive and banal. To better link writing more directly to emerging social realities, a coterie of younger authors embraced the techniques of literary realism developed by European authors in the first half of the nineteenth century. A literature of the real, they argued, would shake popular American writing out of its tendency toward escapism and would reorient the audiences that dominated the antebellum literary marketplace. One was the audience of women readers who frequently favored writing that the realists found melodramatic, sentimental, and out of touch. Another was the growing genteel middle-class readership that equated literature with a sense of refinement and decorum, seeking to isolate itself from the gritty realities of American life. Literary realism, this new generation argued, would embrace this grittiness—and by so doing alter the goals of American writing. By representing the realities of poverty (rural and urban), prejudice (racial and ethnic), and financial malfeasance (municipal and corporate), these writers sought to elevate their role within American society. Not only


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

963

REFORM

IMPORTANT DATES FOR REFORM, 1870–1920 1870: John D. Rockefeller founds the Standard Oil

1900: Theodore Dreiser publishes Sister Carrie

Company

Frank Norris publishes The Octopus

1873: Financial panic of 1873

1902: Ida Tarbell publishes The History of the

1874: Tompkins Square Labor Riot in New York

Standard Oil Company

1877: Federal and state troops crush nationwide rail-

Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle

road strike 1879: Henry George publishes Progress and Poverty

Lincoln Steffens publishes The Shame of the Cities

1882: Thirty thousand workers march in the first

W. E. B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk

Labor Day parade in New York City

1903: Department of Commerce and Labor created

by Congress

1884: William Dean Howells publishes The Rise of

Silas Lapham

1905: Industrial Workers of the World founded in

Chicago

1886: In Chicago 350,000 workers demonstrate for

the eight-hour workday

1906: Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle

1887: Seven anarchists sentenced to death for the

1909: National Association for the Advancement of

Haymarket bombing

Colored People founded

1888: Edward Bellamy publishes Looking Backward

1910: Jane Addams publishes Twenty Years at Hull-

House

1889: Jane Addams opens Hull-House 1890: William Dean Howells publishes A Hazard of

1911: Fire kills 146 workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist

New Fortunes

Factory in New York City

Jacob Riis publishes How the Other Half Lives 1891: People’s (Populist) Party formed

1913: U.S. Department of Labor established 1915: Van Wyck Brooks publishes America’s Coming-

of-Age

Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel strike Hamlin Garland publishes Main-Travelled Roads

1916: Congress passes Federal Child Labor Law

Eight-hour day becomes federal law

1893: Depression begins

Stephen Crane publishes Maggie, A Girl of the Streets

1917: United States enters World War I

Abraham Cahan publishes The Rise of David Levinsky

1894: Coxey’s Army of the unemployed marches on

Washington, D.C.

1919: Postwar strikes sweep across the nation

Labor Day becomes an official U.S. holiday

Communist Party of America founded

would they instruct, entertain, and sell through their writing, but they would also impel social action and political reform. THE ARRIVAL OF REALISM

Edward Eggleston (1837–1902), one of the more popular American writers of the 1870s, articulated as well as any member of his generation the desire to use postwar writing as a vehicle for social change. Reflecting in 1892 on his forty-year career as an author, minister, and social activist, Eggleston wrote: “Two manner of men were born in me, and for the greater part of my life there has been an enduring

964

A M E R I C A N

struggle between the lover of literary art and the religionist, the reformer, the philanthropist, the man with a mission.” The link Eggleston draws between religion and social reform is instructive. American literary realists were often people of deep faith who sought to reproduce in postwar America the altruistic “Christian capitalism” they associated with their antebellum youths. They often combined this desire with an urge to re-create the moral universe (a universe more often imagined than real) of prewar republicanism—the idealized values of personal and local autonomy, civic participation, and moderation in economic and civic affairs. Not all realists shared this vision of

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REFORM

reform, nor for that matter did they share the desire to reform society at all. Some, such as Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, and Henry James, were indifferent, skeptical, or contemptuous of the reformist impulse. But others, such as William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland, consistently claimed that writers had an ethical duty to confront social reality, particularly the turbulent forms of industrial capitalism emerging throughout the period. They felt their mission as writers was both aesthetic and social. On the one hand, they sought to elevate American writing to “art,” and on the other, they desired to propel their readers toward active, participatory citizenship. “Realistic” accounts of American life, they argued, would revivify sentiments for the equitable system of economic and social relations they believed were passing from everyday American life. Once again, Eggleston said it as well as anyone: he insisted that this new American writing should represent “facts bearing on the subtle principles of social development” (“Social Science at the West,” p. 4). Postwar writing, he continued, should chronicle the “very unformed and plastic state of society,” so that “the principles of its development shall be understood [and] remedies for its evils shall be known and applied” (“Western Correspondence,” p. 4). Henry George (1839–1897) is a central figure for both American reform and American writing in the late nineteenth century. An occasional neighbor of Howells, and much admired by him and Garland, George shared with them a desire to maintain a system of values and virtues they saw corrupted by commercial capitalism’s ability to amass and concentrate extraordinary wealth into the hands of the few. George’s influence can be seen throughout the fiction of the period, but is perhaps most vividly invoked in Eggleston’s Mystery of Metropolisville (1873). In its desire to unravel the mysterious economic processes at work in Gilded Age America, the novel functions as a companion piece to George’s Progress and Poverty (1879), one of the most influential books of the period. Like George, Eggleston saw in the speculation and “concentration” of land major causes of the growing inequalities within American life. The story concerns corrupt land speculators in a small Minnesota town, which, as the title of the novel suggests, is being absorbed into the metropolitan system of commercial capitalism making inroads throughout the period into the hinterlands. After the Civil War, speculative financial panics, which were once localized and thus minimally disruptive, tended to intensify and cascade throughout the increasingly interconnected national economic matrix. These economic disruptions lead to the further consolidation of previously semiautonomous local economies as A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

smaller localized producers were unable to maintain their market position against larger, more efficient, national firms. In the aftermath of war, an economy of scale emerged that was literally unimaginable to most Americans ten years earlier. Through speculation and industrial consolidation, enormous personal fortunes and new economic entities—trusts, corporations, combinations—began to control the national economy. George was one of the most forceful and influential critics of the emerging order. He wrote in a vocabulary that resonated with the prewar memories through which many members of the postwar generation processed the extraordinary and often inexplicable changes reshaping American life in the 1870s. His solution for economic problems was a “single tax” on land used for speculation rather than homesteading. George surmised that a heavily progressive tax on speculative land purchases would restore order and a human scale to the economy. George’s call for a single tax was unrealistic politically and economically (Karl Marx called him a “panacea monger”), yet as much as any literary realist, he articulated the aesthetic credo at the very heart of realistic reform. Consider, for example, this passage from George’s “Our Land and Land Policy” an essay from 1872 that anticipated the main arguments of Progress and Poverty, published seven years later: When the monopolization of land is not permitted, where a man can only take land which he wants to use, unused land can have no value, at least none above the price fixed by the state for the privilege of occupying it. But as land becomes occupied, most of it would acquire a value either from the possession of natural advantages superior to that still unoccupied, or from its more central position as respects the population. This we may call the necessary or real value of land, in contradistinction to the unnecessary or fictitious value of land which results from monopolization. (P. 35)

George’s setting of real value against fictitious value captures an issue at the heart of realistic literary reform. The realists knew, of course, that they were writing fiction, but it was a fiction that alluded constantly, almost compulsively, to its grounding in the “real.” It rarely interrogated the idea of the “real” as the product of a particular cultural point of view, a social construct, so to speak, that could possibly have different valences depending on the class, ethnicity, or gender of the observer. This considerable blind spot aside, George’s sense of real value touches upon the tendency among literary reformers to condemn a set of postwar cultural values many of them considered false and misguided. The issue of land proved an effective


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

965

REFORM

means through which to discuss questions of cultural value, providing a vocabulary of sorts through which Americans of the 1870s and 1880s debated the future of their society. THE REVOLT OF THE PROVINCES

In spite of the ascendancy of industrialization, Gilded Age America remained predominantly an agrarian nation. The promise of accessible land resonated deeply within the Jeffersonian-Lincolnian vision of a moral social economy comprised of small agrarian shareholders. But this was also an economy increasingly overwhelmed by the forces of rapacious overaccumulation, fueled particularly by railroads and the postwar settlement of the Far West, where monopolistic ownership of land provided greater economic efficiency than the more egalitarian settlement patterns of the older Midwest. Monopolistic land ownership, frequently by the railroads, allowed carriers to fix rates for shipping goods to market, usually to the detriment of the small farmer, and gave rise to one of the most powerful reform movements in American history— populism. Populism produced a number of literary works, the most noteworthy being Ignatius Donnelly’s dystopian novel Caesar’s Column (1890). The stranglehold railroads held over rural societies aroused populist—and popular—outrage throughout the Gilded Age, receiving its most in-depth literary treatment in Frank Norris’s (1870–1902) California novel The Octopus (1901). Although not usually viewed as an example of local color writing, The Octopus draws upon a major impulse within regionalist writing that prevailed within American literature for four decades after the Civil War. Widely divergent in scope and intention, both local color and regionalist writing often focused on the symbolic force of land—and communities based on landed economies—as besieged vestiges of “authentic” cultural values. Though local color writing could be ineffectual nostalgia, at its most powerful it used accounts of rural space to critique the “fictitious” values of corporate consolidation and commercial capitalism emanating from the metropolis. This is certainly true of Eggleston’s Mystery of Metropolisville but also of the work of Mary Wilkins Freeman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Hamlin Garland—and at times even Mark Twain. GENTEEL SOCIALISM

William Dean Howells, Twain’s friend and champion, took some of the most thoughtful and courageous political positions assumed by mainstream writers throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Near the end of his career, Howells’s reputation suffered at the hands of a new generation of writers and critics led by

966

A M E R I C A N

H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis, who resented his generation-long hold upon American letters. Their critique of his work was haphazard, and tended to harp upon an essay he wrote in 1886 in which he observed that American novelists “concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American” (“Editor’s Study,” p. 642). Yet in his own novels and social practice, Howells was quick to confront many aspects of American life he found increasingly disturbing, although to many of his later critics he tended do so in a register that was overly tame. Nonetheless, few novelists of the era articulated as clearly and consistently as Howells the idea that the drive toward economic expansion and accumulation had led post–Civil War middle- and upper-class Americans to replace civic and religious responsibility with the pursuit of personal gain. The corruption of middle-class values was a central theme of Howells’s most successful novels: The Minister’s Charge (1887), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890). It also informed his utopian tract, A Traveller from Altruria (1892). Howells also displayed extraordinary personal integrity and courage when he bucked popular middle-class and elite opinion by defending the group of immigrant anarchists falsely convicted of inciting the Haymarket labor riot in 1886, which left eight Chicago policemen dead. Howells’s public defense of the anarchists marked a quickening in the relationship between writers and reformist politics unknown in America since the days of abolitionism. By the late 1880s, tensions between labor and capital had reached unprecedented levels, with many Americans imagining a new civil war based on class rather than race and geopolitics. The tension over class and industrialization shaped Howells’s most mature work and also explains the reception of the most popular novel of the postwar period, Edward Bellamy’s utopian story Looking Backward (1888). Bellamy’s novel of a future society that had solved the problems of the present provided comfort to a population increasingly haunted by strikes, labor violence, and the growth of urban poverty. Told from the imaginative vantage point of the late twentieth century, Looking Backward offered in prescient detail the promise of a future industrial utopia in which the “shocking social consequences” of “the modern industrial system” were solved through a combination of statist planning and spirituality (p. 93). Bellamy called this solution nationalism, a civic and emotional force fueled by an almost mystical sense of social comity he termed the “the religion of solidarity.” Remarkable in its own right for its anticipation of many of the social and material technologies of modernist America

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REFORM

Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000–1887 was the most popular American book of the second half of the nineteenth century. Bellamy’s vision of a future industrial utopia clashed with the everyday realities of his contemporaries, who feared that industrialism was producing a social cataclysm, pitting rich against poor, capital against labor.

Living as we do in the closing year of the twentieth century, enjoying the blessings of a social order at once so simple and logical that it seems but the triumph of common sense, it is no doubt difficult for those whose studies have not been largely historical to realize that the present organization of society is, in its completeness, less than a century old. No historical fact is, however, better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval! The readiness with which men accustom themselves, as matters of course, to improvements in their condition, which, when anticipated, seemed to leave nothing more to be desired, could not be more strikingly illustrated. What reflection could be better calculated to moderate the enthusiasm of reformers who count for their reward on the lively gratitude of future ages! Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887.

(and, in some ways, fascism), Looking Backward was also remarkable for another reason: it was one of the few novels in American history to initiate a political movement. Acting on the phenomenal success of the novel, Bellamy and his readers (who now became followers and converts) established the Nationalist magazine and nationalist clubs, which sprang up throughout the country. The magazine and the clubs championed a social vision that was to form the basis of the modernist liberal state: centralized planning and statist mechanisms for wealth redistribution, desires that fueled both the rise of progressivism in the early twentieth A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

century and the New Deal of the 1930s. The nationalist clubs and magazine were, in fact, part of a larger cultural movement through which writers, cultural critics, and social reformers assumed active roles in political life. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, writers engaged in the Social Gospel movement, Christian socialism, populism, and the settlement house movements produced an array of fiction and nonfiction works that imagined a society based on principles of religious altruism, social equality, and shared wealth, most prominently Jane Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910). Another major figure in this movement was the Boston-based socialist B. O. Flower (1858–1918), one of Hamlin Garland’s earliest mentors. Flower’s journal the Arena became one of the leading literary and political organs for reformist and at times radical politics. He understood the uses of literature in making his case for social reform, and he urged Garland to explore through his short stories the social contours of contemporary American life. Many of the chapters of Garland’s Main-Travelled Roads (1891) first appeared in the Arena. Arena clubs also appeared around the country, fostering Flower’s brand of socialist reform and like Bellamy’s nationalist clubs paving the way for progressivism, which was less radical but deeply informed by the visions of Flower and Bellamy. PROGRESSIVE LITERARY REFORM

By the 1890s the tradition of literary reform established after the Civil War—and intensified by the breakdown of labor-capital relations throughout the 1880s—experienced a “second wave,” as a new generation of writers (novelists, journalists, social critics) began to emerge who would prove enormously influential in fueling progressive reform in the early twentieth century. From a purely literary standpoint, first and foremost among them was Stephen Crane, whose short novel Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893) provided a “stylistic leap” that marked a major turning point in the history of American representation, popular taste, and political reform. Although far more interested in aesthetics than social change, Crane influenced a coterie of Progressive Era novelists whose interest in reform went far deeper than his own. Crane’s work affected the writing of Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair (1878–1968), whose novel of the meatpacking industry, The Jungle, provided one of the most explicit and politically influential exposés of the abusive labor practices of the period. Sinclair later ran unsuccessfully as a Socialist for governor of California. Crane also influenced the muckrakers, journalists such as Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Jacob Riis, whose exposés of corporate corruption and


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

967

REFORM

urban mismanagement created the new field of investigative journalism, and in Riis’s case, investigative photojournalism. The shift in representation that occurred in the 1890s was part of a larger moment of change within the decade. The historian Paul Boyer has noted that in the 1890s a major transformation occurred in the way many Americans viewed reform. Previously, many citizens adhered to a strictly individualist religious model he calls “coercive reform.” Coercive reform held people fully responsible for their problems and actions, denying the role that social forces might play in an individual’s success or failure. Churches and missionary societies following this model sought to coerce “sinners” to change their lives by changing their behavior—by developing the “character” to reform themselves, which in the Christian vocabulary of coercive reform meant accepting Jesus into their lives. However, to some members of a younger generation of reform-minded writers, many of whom were raised in the church, this model seemed increasingly ineffective against mounting systemic urban social ills. In response, they developed a new model— environmental reform—which argued that in order to change behavior, society needed to change the circumstances in which people lived. Churches would still play a role in reform activities, but duties previously assumed by the church would shift, following Bellamy’s argument in Looking Backward, to a much larger, more effective instrument of social change: the national, secular state. Instead of concerning itself with individual moral degradation, the state (and a good deal of literary realism) would focus on the degraded environments inhabited by both the urban and rural poor. This attitude was a cornerstone of progressive political and literary reform, and although earlier intimations of it could be found in state-run charity boards that began to appear in the 1870s, it was only in the 1890s that this model came to dominate national reformist thinking. By the first decade of the twentieth century, environmental reform and statism began to take hold. During the Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson administrations, the federal government passed hundreds of laws regulating business and commerce. This transfer of cultural authority from the churches to the state was neither sudden nor absolute but rather part of a larger cultural shift that sought to combine in the spirit of Bellamy’s Looking Backward a sense of national consensus built upon a secular “religion of solidarity.” The Social Gospel movement of the 1890s and the rise of Christian socialism were complementary movements to progressivism. All three drew upon values derived from religious sentiments and sought to use government as a vehicle for applying these values to social reform. Influenced by the work

968

A M E R I C A N

of Tolstoy, Howells, for example, identified himself as a Christian socialist and understood his novels to be something more than literature: they were part of a larger political movement for social justice. At the same time, the Social Gospel movement around the turn of the century produced a spate of novels and tracts, the most influential among them Charles Sheldon’s enormously popular work In His Steps (1896), which asked readers to consider contemporary social inequalities as spiritual and religious dilemmas. Sheldon’s work presented familiar social problems to its readers and asked them to consider a question that for many of them was both compelling and timely: “What would Jesus do?” A pairing of texts from the 1890s uncannily chronicles the tensions and transitions within literary reform (both secular and religious) during this period: Crane’s Maggie and an obscure text published two years later, The Story about “Meg,” a vignette concerning “Meg of the street” that appeared in Reverend T. De Witt Talmage’s (1832–1902) book Evils of the Cities (1892). Similar in title and subject, the stories are radically different in presentation, and together they highlight the multifaceted nature of reform and representation in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Crane’s short novel was influential and innovative, whereas Talmage’s work was popular and prosaic, a literary dead end. Yet both stood at the crossroads of reformist sensibilities and demonstrate the transition between coercive and environmental reform Boyer has in mind. Like Crane’s Maggie, Talmage’s Meg becomes a “lost wanderer of the street” (p. 270), a young woman overwhelmed by the attractions of the urban world, easily seduced by the promise the city holds for her. Crane’s Maggie dwells in a Darwinian social universe at once harshly cruel and indifferent to human longing; Talmage’s Meg lives in a tragic world of individual suffering, yet one guided by spiritual transcendence and redemption. In Maggie, Crane creates another kind of world, pioneering the genre of literary naturalism, an offshoot of realism in which social forces dominate the action of the novel, becoming in effect the driving force of plot and character. Maggie’s world is an urban world of grinding poverty, alcoholism, violence, degraded labor, lust, and unbridled desire, forces that consistently trump the individual’s ability to triumph over misery and despair. It is a bleak world lacking in moral or spiritual transcendence. For Talmage, on the other hand, social forces seem to exist hardly at all; it is not as if they are entirely absent from the story of Meg, but they are presented with a startling lack of detail, all but reducing Meg to a stock figure in a timeworn morality play. There is nothing real or natural about her. In

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REFORM

Meg’s world, an ossified sense of moral certitude prevails; the reader gets no sense of her motivations or psychology, no sense of her relation to the social universe she inhabits. In this world, abstract selves simply choose to succeed or fail through wise or poor choices; it is a world in which death always has a higher meaning and a moral lesson attached to it. It is a worldview increasingly at odds with progressive reform and literary realism, but one that many reform-minded Americans still held to fastly and devoutly. Scorned by her family, Crane’s Maggie dies a fallen woman, a prostitute who wanders off into the darkness of the New York Harbor to meet death without redemption. Talmage’s Meg dies a saved woman, redeemed by her family and by “a pardoning Jesus” who takes “back one whom the world rejected” (p. 272). Crane initiated a form of stark, detailed, militantly antisentimental literary representation that would prove useful, indeed necessary, for mainstream political writers and reformers. Yet arguably, at the century’s turn the most significant relation between writing and reform occurred within subaltern populations: blacks, immigrants, and women, who often found themselves the objects of mainstream white male realist representation, but who had little political or cultural power to represent themselves outside of dominant literary conventions. For example, Pauline E. Hopkins’s Contending Forces (1900), Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy (1892), and Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901) moved the African American literary tradition to new ground. Drawing upon the slave narrative tradition, they moved black writing beyond it, issuing powerful cultural critiques of race relations within black culture and between whites and blacks. Additionally, white women, many of whom pointedly felt their second class status even as members of the white cultural elite, used fiction to plot positions of feminist resistance to patriarchal power: for example, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1899) and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899). And immigrant writers such as Anzia Yezierska, Mary Antin, and Abraham Cahan detailed the lives of ethnic minorities from a position far more politically informed—and politically charged—than Crane’s rendering of Maggie, which is at once sympathetic and contemptuous. RACE AND RECOIL

Within this upsurge in turn-of-the-century subaltern writing, the most significant and far reaching work was W. E. B. Du Bois’s magisterial The Souls of Black Folk (1902). Deeply embroiled in the politics of contemporary African American life, Du Bois (1868–1963) was the first African American to receive a PhD from Harvard. A sociologist by training, Du Bois felt A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

powerfully the burden of living and being between cultures. Central to this feeling is Du Bois’s complex and slippery concept of double consciousness, one of the most significant rhetorical constructs of the twentieth century, with implications for psychology, anthropology, sociology, literary modernism, and later in the century, postcolonialism. “It is a peculiar sensation, this doubleconsciousness,” Du Bois wrote in understated fashion: This sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (P. 3)

Double consciousness, Du Bois argued, was both a gift and a curse. On the one hand, it internalized the racist gaze of the dominant white culture and required African Americans to see themselves as constant objects of racial scrutiny. On the other hand, it gave African Americans an ability to see white culture more clearly than did whites themselves; it gave them insights into the workings of white dominance to which whites were often indifferent or oblivious. It was simultaneously a form of painful self-scrutiny and powerful social critique. Indeed, Du Bois’s writing was both deeply personal and deeply political and was meant first and foremost to serve as a vehicle for social transformation. In 1909 along with the black activist Ida Wells-Barnett, the white publisher of the Nation, Oswald Garrison Villard, and a group of other advocates for racial justice, Du Bois played a key role in founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the more significant American reform organizations of the twentieth century. Van Wyck Brooks’s essay America’s Coming-ofAge (1915) provides a useful end point for plotting the entanglement of literature and reform that marked the period between the Civil War and World War I. The period of war and Wilsonian internationalism that accompanied it marked a redirection of progressive energies that left many older writers and reformers fatigued, disillusioned, or at loose ends. Brooks (1886– 1963) pioneers in this cultural manifesto a new social role that was soon to become a commonplace: the cultural critic who uses the American literary tradition as a means for waging debates about contemporary American life. Through his critiques of American life, Brooks sought what he called “a usable past,” a sense of a shared cultural tradition that might enrich and direct social energies more productively and profoundly than social reform movements. “Movements of Reform,” Brooks argued, are “external” and “superficial.” “The


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

969

REFORM

impetus of reform,” he added “is evidently derived from the hope that a sufficient number of reformers can be trained and brought into the field to match the forces of business—the one group canceling the other group. The ideal of reform, in short, is the attainment of zero” (p. 30). Redirecting the energies of the public reform movements that began with Reconstruction and later fueled progressivism, Brooks argued that the only serious approach to society is the personal approach, and that more than economic justice or social equality, what “the majority of Americans” need is “an object of living,” a shared sense of individual and national purpose (p. 34). In a retreat from two decades of activist social reform, Brooks claims that “the center of gravity in American affairs has shifted wholly from the plane of politics to the plane of psychology and morals.” “So long as we fail to realize this,” he adds, “politics can only continue to the old endless unfruitful seesaw of corruption and reform” (p. 168). Like Ralph Waldo Emerson almost one hundred years earlier, Brooks chose self-help over social action. In terms of literature, the search for self-fulfillment that Brooks championed led many of the best American authors of the 1920s to leave America—and led them to produce in a short span of time the finest collection of American writing since the 1850s. Yet this writing had little consequence for American political life. And when Americans did produce a politically powerful literature, Brooks seemed unable to see it. He missed entirely the work toward racial justice—“an object for living” if ever there was one—that produced the Harlem Renaissance. For most of the citizens and writers he had in mind, the decade-long depression that began in 1929 redirected energies away from a counterfeit form of selffulfillment—Jazz Age hedonism—and toward the “catchpenny realities” of economic deprivation (p. 7). The Great Depression led many writers back to politics and reform and in many cases took them even further into political radicalism. Indeed, the momentary breakdown of global capitalism led many writers during the depression toward socialism, communism, and antifascism. In charting new political territory, these writers tended to disavow the generation of mainstream literary reformers who came before them—and on whose books they were raised. Yet it was these generations—the generations from 1870 to 1920—that, in fact, created part of the “usable past” for which Brooks longed. It was a guiding tradition for the ways in which literary reformers and the literature of reform might begin the work of creating a new kind of reader-citizen, one who would equate the personal with the political and come to see that self-realization and social justice are inseparable goals.

970

A M E R I C A N

See also The Jungle; Jurisprudence; Muckrakers and Yellow Journalism; Poverty; Presidential Elections; The Souls of Black Folk; Temperance; Women’s Suffrage BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House, with Autobiographical Notes. New York: Macmillan, 1910. Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward, 2000–1887. 1888. Edited by John L. Thomas. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967. Bellamy, Edward. The Religion of Solidarity. Edited by Arthur E. Morgan. Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch Bookplate, 1940. Brooks, Van Wyck. America’s Coming of Age. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1915. Chesnutt, Charles Waddell. The Marrow of Tradition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Chicago: H. S. Stone, 1899. Crane, Stephen. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets. New York: Appleton, 1896. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1903. Eggleston, Edward. The Mystery of Metropolisville. New York: O. Judd, 1873. Eggleston, Edward. “Social Science at the West.” Independent, 7 May 1868, p. 4. Eggleston, Edward. “Western Correspondence.” Independent, 25 December 1968, p. 4. Garland, Hamlin. Main-Travelled Roads: Six Mississippi Valley Stories. Boston: Arena, 1891. George, Henry. Our Land and Land Policy. San Francisco: White and Bauer, 1871. George, Henry. Progress and Poverty: An Enquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions, and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth—the Remedy. San Francisco: H. George, 1879. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wall-Paper. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1899. Hopkins, Pauline E. Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South. Boston: Colored Cooperative Publishing Company, 1900. Howells, William Dean. “Editor’s Study: Dostoyevsky and the More Smiling Aspects of Life.” Harper’s Weekly 73 (1886): 642. Howells, William Dean. A Hazard of New Fortunes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890. Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. New York: Scribners, 1890.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

REGIONALISM AND LOCAL COLOR FICTION

Steffens, Lincoln. The Shame of the Cities. New York: Peter Smith, 1901. Talmage, T. De Witt. Evils of the Cities. Chicago: Rhodes and McClure, 1891. Tarbell, Ida. The History of the Standard Oil Company. New York: McClure, Phillips, 1904. Secondary Works

Boyer, Paul. Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. Dombroski, James. The Early Days of Christian Socialism in America. New York: Octagon Books, 1977. Kaplan, Amy. The Social Construction of American Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. May, Henry F. Protestant Churches and Industrial America. New York: Harper, 1949. Pizer, Donald, ed. The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: From Howells to London. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Thomas, John L. Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demerest Lloyd, and the Adversary Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983. Wiebe, Robert. The Search for Order, 1877–1920. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967. Bruce Levy

REGIONALISM AND LOCAL COLOR FICTION The terms “regionalism” and “local color fiction” refer to a literary movement that flourished from the close of the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century. Although most fiction is regional in that it makes use of a specific setting, for regionalist writers the setting was not incidental but central, and the “local color” details that established that setting gave a name to the movement. In writing regional fiction, authors focused on representing the unique locales of what they saw as a vanishing American past whose customs, dialect, and characters they sought to preserve. Furthermore, as writers of a continuing national narrative implicitly focused on what it meant to be American, they often presented characters as types, sometimes as representatives of the collective traits of a community or region and sometimes as outsiders or eccentrics whose attempts to fit into a community exposed both the community’s values and their own. In addition to this emphasis on setting and its effect upon character, local color stories feature dialect that lends authenticity to the tale. Another element A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

common to local color fiction is a degree of narrative distance rendered through the character of a narrator differing in class or place of origin from the region’s residents; a variation on this is a narrative voice distanced through educated diction or an ironic tone. In the late nineteenth century, local color fiction appeared in the great literary journals of the day such as Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, the Century, and the Atlantic Monthly as well as in newspapers and popular magazines, as Nancy Glazener, Richard Brodhead, and Charles Johanningsmeier have shown. It differed from mainstream realism in its choice of local or rural instead of urban subjects and its interest in the customs of populations otherwise invisible in the literary landscape, such as the poor, ethnic minorities, and the elderly; moreover, unlike mainstream realism, the market for local color encouraged writers who might otherwise find difficulty publishing their work because of gender, geography, class, or ethnicity. Describing a locale, a time, and a set of characters removed from the concerns of city dwellers who read high-culture journals, local color stories provided an imagined space containing the roots of the nation, a site of unchanging values and authentic traditions against which to view the uncertainties of industrial urban life. Such a perspective later led to claims that regionalism was too limited in its subjects and too nostalgic or sentimental in its approach, charges that contributed to its disappearance early in the twentieth century. Twentiethcentury critics saw local color fiction as a marginal offshoot of mainstream realism, with women’s regional fiction a “literature of impoverishment,” in Ann Douglas Wood’s words, that lacked the aesthetic sophistication of modernist works, the vigor of writing by male social realists, and even the rich detail of domestic fiction written in the 1850s and 1860s. Some commentators have challenged both the denunciation of local color fiction and the conditions of its literary revival. Like realism, local color fiction now seems a significant staging-ground for late-nineteenth-century debates over citizenship and nationhood, although the criteria for establishing that significance have shifted. For example, beginning in the 1970s feminist critics such as Josephine Donovan, Marjorie Pryse, and Judith Fetterley found in the form a vibrant celebration of community that resisted the Gilded Age’s preoccupation with national wealth and industrial power, whereas twenty years later Sandra Zagarell, Susan Gillman, and Elizabeth Ammons denounced its promotion of racist, nationalist, and imperialist ideologies and, by virtue of its celebration of community, its strategies for resisting social change and reinforcing an oppressive status quo. Opinions also differ as to the whether the focus on region that


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

971


provided access to publishing markets for populations for women and ethnic minorities was an unmixed blessing, for as James Cox notes, the local colorists’ “region was a refuge for imaginative expression, yet it was also the enclosure that kept them in their place” (p. 767). As Tom Lutz sums up the controversies in Cosmopolitan Vistas:

Most central, however, as Lutz suggests, is the issue of whether local color exploits the region as a site for cultural tourism, as Richard Brodhead and Amy Kaplan contend, or whether this exploitation occurs only in certain kinds of fiction. In Writing Out of Place, for example, Fetterley and Pryse differentiate “local color” from “regionalist” fiction: “local color” writing exploits regional materials for the benefit of an urban elite, but “regionalist” fiction, with its sympathetic approach, does not. With the exception of Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932), Fetterley and Pryse see regionalism as a woman’s genre. Any account of local color’s origins, rise, and fall can therefore present only a partial view of the ways in which local color fiction was received and interpreted by its nineteenth-century audiences. At issue is the very nature of the “cultural work” that local color performed: Did it rebuild and unite a nation fractured by the Civil War? Or did it create a false narrative of national origins that conspired to suppress the clamoring of immigrants, people of color, and the poor for political and cultural power?

literary tastes. The Civil War had made the regions all too aware of one another as their inhabitants traveled to, or experienced vicariously through letters and newspapers, areas of the country that now had names and significance even for remote villages. Unsettled by rapidly changing technologies, such as the railroad and the telegraph, by the increasing racial and ethnic diversity fed by successive waves of immigration and internal migration, and by crumbling class structures and uncertain social mobility, the middle-class reading public looked toward an imagined past located in the very regions which many of them had abandoned for an urban existence. According to Amy Kaplan, this imaginary harmonious past is a “Janus-faced nostalgia” through which readers in an industrial present project images of their desire for a simpler time onto the past as represented by a region (p. 242). Stephanie Foote sees a further paradox in the construction of regionalism in that its narrative techniques, such as dialect, run counter to its program of reinforcing harmony and sameness; however, the speech of rural, uneducated characters also preserves a comfortable distance from standard English, with dialect exotic enough to be fresh and interesting without evoking the accents of immigrants or the urban poor. Yet to imagine the local color landscape as a placid escape from modern life is to ignore the problems that the writers depict. Local color settings may differ from one another, but the problems are universal, such as the threat of violence and child abuse, as in Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s (1852–1930) Pembroke (1894) and “Old Woman Magoun” (1905); the desperate straits of the elderly poor, as in Sarah Orne Jewett’s (1849–1909) “The Town Poor” (1890) and Freeman’s “A Church Mouse” (1891); the abuses of the mill system, as in Jewett’s “The Gray Mills of Farley” (1898); and the injustices of the banking system in Garland’s “Under the Lion’s Paw” (1891).

ORIGINS

REGIONS

Even before the Civil War, types of local color fiction such as regional humor and frontier tales had found favor with the public. Among the most prominent examples of regional humor were the stories of the southwestern humorists, vivid tales of characters such as Augustus Baldwin Longstreet’s Ransy Sniffle (Georgia Scenes, 1835), George Washington Harris’s Sut Lovingood (collected as Sut Lovingood: Yarns Spun by a “Nat’ral Born Durn’d Fool,” 1867), and Johnson Jones Hooper’s Simon Suggs (Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, Late of the Tallapoosa Volunteers, 1845). The great wave of local color stories that began appearing in literary magazines during the late 1860s owed as much to historical and cultural forces as to

New England writers were among the earliest to appear in “Atlantic group” magazines; for example, Rose Terry Cooke’s (1827–1892) “Sally Parson’s Duty” was one of the stories published in the inaugural issue of the Atlantic Monthly in November 1857, and her stories and poetry appeared regularly in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Scribner’s Magazine, and the New England Magazine until shortly before her death in 1892. Although Cooke’s poetry was regular in meter and often conventional in sentiment, her fiction depicted a New England in which a decayed Puritan self-righteousness led to stunted emotional lives; more tellingly, Cooke’s characters suffer physical cruelty and domestic abuse, too, as in “The Ring Fetter: A New

There are many other debates in the history of criticism . . . having to do with local color’s “minor status” (pro and con), the genre’s relation to gender (it’s women’s province; no, it isn’t), to ethnic literature (ethnic lit is also local color; no, it’s something else), to political progressivism (local color is fer it; no, it’s agin it), to realism (it is a degraded popular offshoot, it is where true realism begins and develops), and to regional identity. (P. 26)

972

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


England Tragedy” (1859) and “Freedom Wheeler’s Controversy with Providence” (1877). Other major writers of New England local color fiction include Celia Thaxter (1835–1894), Alice Brown (1857– 1948), Philander Deming (1829–1915), Rowland Robinson (1833–1900), Jewett, and Freeman. Invoking Herman Melville’s sketches of the Encantadas as a touchstone for her work, Celia Thaxter described the terrain of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire in a series of essays for the Atlantic Monthly in 1879 and 1880, also publishing poetry and a late work, An Island Garden (1894), before her death the same year. Alice Brown wrote of the fictional New Hampshire village of Tiverton in Meadow Grass (1886) and Tiverton Tales (1899). Brown’s work illustrates what Glazener, Ann Romines, and others see as a common feature of women’s regional fiction: a vision of the domestic sphere as “unapologetically dedicated to women’s pleasure in homemaking and friendship” (Glazener, p. 225). Turning to the wilderness as well as the village as a subject, Philander Deming wrote spare stories of the mountain regions of New York state in Adirondack Stories (1880) and Tompkins, and Other Folks (1885) while Rowland E. Robinson’s sketches and stories of Vermont included essays on rural industries such as sugar-making and marble-quarrying as well as tales of the imaginary town of Danvis. Among the most critically esteemed of the New England local colorists were Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary E. Wilkins (later Freeman). Considered by Willa Cather (1873–1947) to be one of the three masterpieces of American literature, Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in four parts from January through September 1896 and contains several features of New England women’s local color fiction. Its unnamed urban narrator moves for the summer to the small, coastal village of Dunnet Landing and becomes the friend and disciple of Mrs. Todd, an herbalist and symbolically a keeper of what Josephine Donovan has called the “subjugated knowledges” of a richly symbolic preindustrial women’s culture. In listening to the residents’ stories, she hears tales of isolation and loss, such as those of Poor Joanna, Captain Littlepage, and Elijah Tilley, and participates in the community’s social gatherings, including the Bowden family reunion. Read by some as the narrator’s initiation into the Dunnet Landing community, the Bowden reunion also affirms “racial purity, global dominance, and white ethnic superiority and solidarity,” according to Elizabeth Ammons (p. 97). Freeman, like Jewett, provided alternative models for women’s lives in her fiction, frequently emphasizing issues of power within communities and characters’ struggles for independence. In the title story of Freeman’s A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

In the Garden (Celia Thaxter in Her Garden). Painting by Childe Hassam, 1892. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Thaxter spent much of her life on the nearby Isles of Shoals, which she celebrated in her writings. SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, DC/ART RESOURCE, NY

A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891), for example, Louisa Ellis breaks off her long engagement with Joe Dagget and renounces marriage in favor of the pleasures of the orderly and domestic life she has forged for herself, and Hetty Fifield of “A Church Mouse” (1891) barricades herself in the church and faces down the church elders who want to deny her both a place to live and a means of making a living as the sexton. Contemporary reviewers frequently paired Jewett and Freeman, with Jewett cast as a fine and learned writer of delicate perceptions and Freeman a lesstutored but no less striking example of native genius whose humor redeemed her grim subject matter. An 1891 review essay, “New England in the Short Story,” compares Freeman’s A New England Nun and Other Stories with Sarah Orne Jewett’s Strangers and Wayfarers in terms characteristic of the time: Freeman’s humor and Jewett’s charity toward her characters signify their superior artistry. More striking is the essay’s praise for Jewett’s attempts to portray New England


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

973


work is considered a precursor to the naturalist school of fiction. Similarly, reviewers compared Joseph Kirkland to Thomas Hardy for his realistic representation of rural Illinois in Zury, the Meanest Man in Spring County (1887) and its sequel, The McVeys (1888). Later midwestern regionalists such as Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) and Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) drew from these earlier models; Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio is modernist in tone and in its portraits of alienated grotesques and fragmented lives, while Tarkington’s novels such as The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921) present a sociological picture of class disintegration due to external forces and stubborn protagonists. In The Magnificent Ambersons, for example, the hero, George Amberson Minafer, defies change by resting on class privilege until the twin forces of industrialism and the automobile figuratively and literally drive him away from the once-great Amberson estate. A different view of the midwestern plains, this time of South Dakota, and the destructive powers of encroaching civilization implicitly informs Zitkala-Sˇa’s Old Indian Legends (1901) and the autobiographical narratives such as “The School Days of an Indian Girl” which she published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1900. Sarah Orne Jewett.

© BETTMANN/CORBIS

Irish life—a hint that the writer, and the public, would prefer more tales of “contemporaneous New England” rather than the typical tales of “rural New England of two generations back” (p. 849). In the Midwest, regionalist writers frequently focused on the raw conditions and grim details of life in the region, although works such as Alice Cary’s Clovernook; or, Recollections of our Neighborhood in the West (1852) and Clovernook, Second Series (1853), are less stark in their presentation. Stories of a Western Town (1893) by Octave Thanet (1850–1934), the pseudonym of Alice French, are set in a lightly fictionalized Davenport, Iowa, although Thanet also wrote stories of southern local color. Like Thanet, Constance Fenimore Woolson wrote local color fiction based in two regions: Michigan in Castle Nowhere: Lake Country Sketches (1875) and North Carolina in “Rodman the Keeper” (1877), For the Major (1883), and other works. Edward Eggleston’s The Hoosier School-Master (1871) and especially E. W. Howe’s The Story of a Country Town (1883) exposed the inverse side of small-town life—its violence at a community rather than a domestic level—in such a manner that Howe’s

974

A M E R I C A N

The most important of the first generation of midwestern regionalists, Hamlin Garland (1860–1940), is as important for his manifesto Crumbling Idols (1894) as for his collection Main-Travelled Roads (1891). In stories such as “Under the Lion’s Paw,” Garland promoted populist ideas, a departure from the ostensibly apolitical writings of the New England local colorists, and his declaration of sentiments on local color is equally provocative. For Garland, local color “means that [the work] has such quality of texture and background that it could not have been written in any other place or by any one else than a native” (p. 54), a direct challenge to those who, like Jewett, were less natives than visitors, and a sentiment that ignored one of the paradoxes of local color fiction: those closest to the region, the natives of several generations’ standing who were untouched by the outside world, were also those least likely to have the education, critical distance, and literary contacts to have their work published. Yet in promoting regionalism as the best hope for a national literature and in defending his version of realistic regionalism during a celebrated debate with romantic regionalist Mary Hartwell Catherwood at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, Garland reinforced the critical legitimacy of local color as a mainstream art form, much as William Dean Howells (1837–1920) had done in his “Editor’s Study” columns (1886–1892) for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Southern local color developed as regions within regions, with stories of the Tennessee hill country such as In the Tennessee Mountains (1884) by Mary N. Murfree (1850–1922), who used Charles Egbert Craddock as her pseudonym; Murfree’s immensely popular work inspired Sherwood Bonner to visit Murfree and, according to Richard Brodhead’s lessthan-flattering assessment, “learn how to ‘do’ Tennessee mountain folk and cash in on Murfree’s success” (p. 119). Worlds away from this smaller region was the Creole culture of Louisiana portrayed by Kate Chopin (1851–1904), Grace King (1852–1932), and Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875–1935). Set against the social dislocations of the war and of Reconstruction, Chopin’s Bayou Folk (1894) and other tales of Creole and Cajun culture explored the region’s complex distinctions of class and race. So incensed was Grace King at what she believed to be the inaccuracies of George Washington Cable’s Old Creole Days (1879) that she wrote Balcony Stories (1893) in response. DunbarNelson’s The Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Stories (1899) and Violets and Other Tales (1895) mix conventional local color stories with coded tales of racial identity like “Sister Josepha,” in which a young girl possibly of mixed race stays in the convent rather than risk sexual exploitation from a prospective guardian. In a subgenre of local color fiction called the “plantation tradition,” stories such as “Marse Chan” from Thomas Nelson Page’s In Ole Virginia (1887) presented an idealized version of the South and harmonious relationships between kindly masters and happy, subservient slaves before the Civil War. Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories, dialect versions of African American folktales, borrow somewhat from this tradition, but the subversive messages of the tales undercut the idea of white authority central to the plantation tradition. Also choosing to follow the plantation tradition in form, Charles W. Chesnutt subtly reverses its meaning in The Conjure Woman (1899). Although Chesnutt follows the formula by having the storytelling ex-slave, Uncle Julius, living on a ruined plantation, Uncle Julius tells his tales only to manipulate the Northern narrator and his wife into granting him the property or privileges that he feels are his by rights. The meanings of Julius’s stories, always understood by the narrator’s sympathetic wife, Annie, and ignored by the narrator himself, reinforce the idea of the inhumanity of slavery. In the West, writers such as Mark Twain (1835– 1910), Bret Harte (1836–1902), Mary Hallock Foote (1847–1938), Owen Wister (1860–1938), Mary Austin (1868–1934), and María Cristina Mena (1893–1965) sought to interpret unfamiliar occupations, such as mining and ranching, as well as unfamiliar Spanish and A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Native American cultures for a curious eastern audience. Early in his career, Twain published sketches and hoaxes in the western humor vein, such as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865), which relies on a deadpan delivery, carefully nuanced dialect, contrasts between western and eastern characters, and a plot of a would-be trickster who is tricked. The tensions between literary East and roughneck West also inform Twain’s infamous performance at a dinner for John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) on 17 December 1877. Delivered to an august company that included Whittier, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), and Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), “The Whittier Birthday Dinner Speech” caricatured these eminent authors as hard-drinking, knife-carrying card cheats traveling in the California mining camps, a piece of western humor that according to Twain’s friend William Dean Howells provoked not laughter but “a silence, weighing many tons to the square inch” on the part of the “appalled and appalling listeners” (p. 60). Although not a conventional piece of local color fiction, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) bears traces of southwestern humor and regional stories in its accurate use of dialect, its depiction of village life, and its employment of character types. Twain’s sometime friend and later rival, Bret Harte, gained fame with quietly humorous tales of mining towns such as “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” which established such western types as the principled, well-educated gambler and the “soiled dove” with a heart of gold; later and lesser-known stories such as “Wan Lee, the Pagan” (1874) and “Three Vagabonds of Trinidad” (1900), however, protest racial violence against Chinese immigrants and Native Americans. In the former, Wan Lee, a lively, intelligent, but impish boy who works in a printing office, is “stoned to death . . . by a mob of half-grown boys and Christian school children” (p. 137), an incident that Harte based on antiChinese rioting in San Francisco (p. 292). The “overtly anti-imperialist satire” (p. xxi) “Three Vagabonds of Trinidad” evokes and deliberately reverses the Jackson’s Island episode of Huckleberry Finn: in it, Li Tee and “Injin Jim” escape to an island after a series of misadventures, rightly fearing a possible lynching at the hands of those who, like prominent citizen Mr. Parkin Skinner, believe it is their “manifest destiny to clar them out” (p. 160). Their sanctuary is invaded by Skinner’s son Bob, who first wastes their provisions and then betrays them to a murderous mob of townspeople. Owen Wister remains best known as the author of The Virginian (1902), but several of his stories of the West appeared in Harper’s in the early 1890s, including at least three featuring the young ranch hand Lin McLean. The earliest of this series of stories, which were


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

975


later collected and expanded as Lin McLean (1897), is “How Lin McLean Went East” (December 1892), a chronicle of its protagonist’s long-announced and often delayed trip to Boston and his decision after a few days there to buy a ticket back to Rawlins, Wyoming. Less typical is the unromantic view of Wister’s “The Promised Land” (April 1894), in which a pioneer family traveling to the Okanogan River is beset by random violence brought on by Indians despoiled by what the story suggests is the imperfect flotsam of the East: a weak-willed man who illegally sells liquor to the Indians and cares for his epileptic son. Although their characters sometimes tend toward the conventional, Mary Hallock Foote’s stories and novels set in western mining country, such as The Lead-Horse Claim (1882) and Coeur d’Alene (1894), are notable for their portrayal of a fresh and inhospitable terrain, one that can decisively determine a character’s fate, as when Rose Gilroy disappears into the “skeleton flood” (p. 96) of the lava fields near the Snake River in “Maverick” (1894). Adaptation to an inhospitable landscape, this time the Southwest, is the subject of Mary Austin’s The Land of Little Rain (1903); framed by a narrative voice that establishes the land as a character, the sketches in this volume feature regionalism as ecological and ethnographic observation. Although they often take place in Mexico and Spain, María Cristina Mena’s stories such as “The Education of Popo” (Century, March 1914) explore the clash of Anglo and Mexican cultures and class hierarchies in the border regions of the Southwest. Like the South, the West is less a single region than a multitude of regions; it is united by habits of mind that go far beyond simply defining the space as wild or as existing in opposition to the East. EPILOGUE

By the late 1890s local color as a genre was dying out, eclipsed by the popular historical romances of the day, by tales of Americans adventuring in distant lands, including the work of Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Richard Harding Davis, and by other forms of realism, such as naturalism and Jamesian dramas of consciousness, that made local color fiction seem limited by comparison. As Charles Dudley Warner wrote in his “Editor’s Study” column for Harper’s in 1896, “We do not hear much now of ‘local color’; that has rather gone out. . . . [S]o much color was produced that the market broke down” (p. 961). Although dialect stories and rural novels such as E. N. Westcott’s David Harum (1898) and Irving Bacheller’s Eben Holden (1900) continued to be popular in the first decades of the twentieth century, the market for serious rather than popular local color fiction dwindled. Other regional writers would thrive in the twentieth

976

A M E R I C A N

century, among them Willa Cather and William Faulkner, but the influence of modernism, a disdain for what was thought to be local color’s nostalgia and sentimentality, and an impatience with the limitations of the form ensured that the new literatures of regions announced themselves as art on a national scale rather than as regional representations on a small one. See also The Country of the Pointed Firs; In the Tennessee Mountains; A New England Nun and Other Stories; New South; Realism; Slang, Dialect, and Other Types of Marked Language; Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Foote, Mary Hallock. The Cup of Trembling and Other Stories. 1895. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970. Garland, Hamlin. Crumbling Idols: Twelve Essays on Art Dealing Chiefly with Literature, Painting, and the Drama. 1894. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960. Harte, Bret. The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings. Edited and introduced by Gary Scharnhorst. New York: Penguin, 2001. Howells, William Dean. My Mark Twain: Reminiscences and Criticisms. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910. Lowell, James Russell. The Biglow Papers, Second Series. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1867. Secondary Works

Ammons, Elizabeth. “Material Culture, Empire, and Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs.” In New Essays on The Country of the Pointed Firs, edited by June Howard, pp. 81–100. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Brodhead, Richard H. Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Cox, James M. “Regionalism: A Diminished Thing.” In Columbia Literary History of the United States, edited by Emory Elliott et al., pp. 761–784. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Fetterley, Judith, and Marjorie Pryse. Writing out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Foote, Stephanie. Regional Fictions: Culture and Identity in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. Glazener, Nancy. Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. Literary Institution, 1850–1910. New Americanists. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997. Johanningsmeier, Charles. Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RESORTS

in America, 1860–1900. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Kaplan, Amy. “Nation, Region, and Empire.” In The Columbia History of the American Novel, edited by Emory Elliott, pp. 240–266. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Lutz, Tom. Cosmopolitan Vistas: American Regionalism and Literary Value. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004. “New England in the Short Story.” Atlantic Monthly 67 (1891): 845–850. Nickels, Cameron C. New England Humor: From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. 1st ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Pryse, Marjorie. “Origins of American Literary Regionalism: Gender in Irving, Stowe, and Longstreet.” In Breaking Boundaries: New Perspectives on Women’s Regional Writing, edited by Sherrie A. Inness and Diana Royer, pp. 17–37. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997. Warner, Charles Dudley. “Editor’s Study.” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 92 (1896): 961–962. Wood, Ann D. “The Literature of Impoverishment: The Women Local Colorists in America, 1865–1914.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1 (1972): 3–46. Donna M. Campbell

RELIGION See The Bible; Catholics; Christianity; Christian Science; Jews; Mormons

RESORTS By 1870 vacation and travel destinations where visitors could enjoy the pleasures of time away from work and home had become an established part of American life. Though resorts varied in size, cost, and variety of entertainments offered, their numbers grew exponentially as the size of America’s vacationing public expanded. While the elite had been “taking the waters” for both health and amusement at resorts such as White Sulphur Springs, Virginia; Newport, Rhode Island; Long Branch, New Jersey; and Saratoga Springs, New York, since the eighteenth century, many historians argue that as early as the 1820s, members of the emerging middle class were touring New York State’s Hudson River Valley, Ballston Spa, and the Lake Champlain and Niagara Falls regions. With the rapid expansion of the middle class, as businesses required increasing numbers of white-collar A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

workers, the demand for vacation accommodations for this group fueled development. No longer primarily the province of the elite, resorts by the 1870s catered to a middle class who had come to view summer vacations as a necessity. Newspapers and magazines depicted resorts as destinations that offered businessmen rest and rejuvenation from their constant “brain work” and relieved their families of the swelter of summers in the city. Yearly visits to resorts by this time had become a marker of middle-class life and identity, and the period between 1850 and 1900 saw a vast development of such facilities, which sprang up along lakes and the seashore, in the mountains and countryside of all regions. While newspaper society columns continued charting the movements of the rich and famous at the fashionable eastern resorts such as Saratoga, Long Branch, and Newport, more affordable resorts were in such demand that any small village along a rail line could market its location as a summer travel destination. Historians studying resorts in the United States note their importance as locations for carving out social class identity. Thomas Chambers, for example, investigates early resorts, contending that mineral springs resorts were sites where the “nation’s social and political leaders experimented with the idea that they formed a coherent culture and an elite class” (p. xiii). Cindy Aron’s history of vacationing in the United States, though not restricted to resorts, shows how resorts began as locations for the elite but later appealed to first a middle-class and then, by the first decades of the twentieth century, working-class clientele. The tension between leisure and work, particularly middle-class anxiety about the morally dangerous aspects of leisure, is central to her study. Jon Sterngass, examining Saratoga Springs, New York; Newport, Rhode Island; and Coney Island, New York, traces the shift in resorts’ cultural meanings during the nineteenth century; he argues that while early in the century resorts functioned as places where visitors could act out behaviors not indulged in everyday life, by the end of the century they had become a commodity, marketed to consumers at different social and economic levels of society. Theodore Corbett, using Saratoga Springs as his prime example, argues that a resort’s success depended upon the hosts (i.e., developers) who created the attractions “that would appeal to the broadest respectable public” (p. 11). Novels of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century bear out interpretations focused on social class. In 1873, for example, Mark Twain (1835– 1910) and Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1911) caricatured in The Gilded Age gradations of American society, depicting Newport as the resort of choice of


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

977

RESORTS

Broadway, Saratoga Springs, New York. Illustration by Harry Ogden for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 21 August 1875. The dazzling spectacle of an afternoon promenade along Saratoga’s Broadway is shown. Morning and afternoon promenades, givens of the resort experience, encouraged the display of fashionable attire. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

society’s highest tier. Though one of the characters admits that Newport is damp, cold, windy, and disagreeable, she insists that it is the only acceptable choice because it is “select.” William Dean Howells (1837– 1920) was particularly interested in the resort as a place where the so-called respectable classes might commingle and where members of the middle class might edge upward through contact with the more elite. In Howells’s A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), his nouveau riche character Dryfoos sends his daughters to Saratoga because it was known for fashion, but their lack of refinement prevents them from establishing alliances there. SARATOGA SPRINGS AND CONGRESS WATER

Saratoga Springs lay two hundred miles inland from New York City and grew up around sets of springs that in the late eighteenth century began to attract visitors.

978

A M E R I C A N

Gideon Putnam’s opening of a three-story tavern in the first decade of the nineteenth century and his subsequent development of a grandiose village with treelined streets leading to public fountains made the village an attractive vacation destination, and by 1870 ten grand hotels lined its main thoroughfare, each offering the amenities and amusements expected of a fashionable resort hotel. Between three of them— the Grand Union, United States Hotel, and Congress Hall—five thousand guests could stay at any one time. Amusements at Saratoga changed somewhat over the course of the nineteenth century, although a given of the experience remained the stroll to Congress Spring where a dipper boy offered guests tumblers of mineral water. Sought out for its health-giving powers, Congress Spring waters had become available throughout the United States in 1820 in the form of Congress Water, which was bottled at a plant owned by John Clark. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, water

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RESORTS

bars throughout the resort served tumblers of the famous drink, and visitors partook several times a day. Morning and afternoon promenades encouraged a display of fashionable attire as visitors came “to see and be seen,” and the round of activities—the dances and concerts, the day trips to Glens Falls or Lake George or the Indian encampments that offered tourists a momentary glance at Native American life—each required a change of costume. After the British writer and aesthete Oscar Wilde visited Saratoga in 1882, a period of male dandyism commenced, as exemplified in the legendary forty changes of costume completed in one day by Evander Berry Wall. Overdressing remained synonymous with a stay at Saratoga, and this emphasis on fashion was satirized by Marietta Holley in her 1887 best-selling novel Samantha at Saratoga; or, Racin’ after Fashion by Josiah Allen’s Wife. The period after 1870 also saw added emphasis on gambling, shopping, and commercial entertainments. John Morrissey, who had opened Saratoga’s first gaming house in 1862, initiated the development of a race course, and during the second half of the century, women and men alike were enjoying betting on the races. Minstrels, theatricals, panoramas, lantern slide lectures, Swiss bell ringers, tableaux vivants, and circus acts are but a few of the diverse amusements that made life at Saratoga a frenzied round of activities and the quintessential resort experience. NEWPORT

The most exclusive of all U.S. resorts, Newport, Rhode Island, had since the eighteenth century catered to an exclusive clientele. Whereas Saratoga’s popularity and capacity to accommodate visitors escalated throughout the nineteenth century, Newport reached its zenith as a summer haven for fashionable multitudes before the 1860s. Henry James, who lived in Newport from 1858 to 1864, wrote in 1870 comparing what he disparagingly called Saratoga’s “democratization of elegance” to the “substantial and civilized” Newport (Sterngass, p. 182). By the 1870s Newport’s grand hotels had closed or were closing, and private “cottages”—the mansions and villas of America’s wealthiest class—were on the rise. Newport’s shift from hotel culture to a private and distanced exclusivity is the focus of Charles Dudley Warner’s novel Their Pilgrimage (1886). His protagonist bungles his efforts at social climbing when he finds himself walking with butlers and maids on his Sunday stroll along the Cliff Walk. The period of privatization brought Newport mansions such as William K. Vanderbilt’s $11 million Marble House or the even more ostentatious The Breakers, commissioned by Cornelius Vanderbilt II. Homes such as these became the stages for extravagant private parties, ornate balls, and performances; in the fiction of Edith Wharton they A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

became models for the homes of the elite who people the pages of novels such as The House of Mirth (1905). LONG BRANCH

Like its rivals, Long Branch, located on the seashore of New Jersey, began in the late 1700s, attracting wealthy visitors who came in pursuit of health and relaxation. By the 1870s it was more popular than either Saratoga or Newport, but popularity tended to preclude the exclusiveness enjoyed by its competitors. Enjoying its distinction as Summer Capitol or Summer White House, Long Branch served as headquarters for the U.S. presidents Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, William McKinley, and Woodrow Wilson and as backdrop for the passing of the wounded president James A. Garfield. At its zenith during the 1880s and 1890s, Long Branch was the resort of choice of actresses Lillie Langtry, Lillian Russell, and Fanny Davenport, and they, along with its magnificent hotels and attractions such as the Monmouth Park racetrack and Hoey’s Gardens, attracted huge summer crowds. Sundays brought an additional twenty thousand day-trippers, who came to bathe and to watch the parade of fine carriages conducting the famous and fashionable down Ocean Avenue. After antigambling legislation closed Monmouth Park, the other racetracks, and the gaming clubs, Saratoga won back the fashionable set, and though the crowds remained through the 1910s, they came more for rest and relaxation than for the luxurious gaiety that marked its triumph just decades before. CONEY ISLAND

Coney Island developed later than the other early resorts, but its proximity to New York and Brooklyn allowed it to emerge in the late 1870s as the “people’s playground,” where the urban working class could travel for a day’s pleasure at the beach bathing or strolling amid the dime museums, shooting galleries, carousels, bandstands, and racetracks. By 1879, nine steamboat lines and 250 trains daily served the island. Summer railway travel averaged 23,000 on weekdays and 100,000 on Sundays. Although Coney Island was unique in that from the start it attracted working-class patrons, an 1878 Harper’s Weekly article deemed it the best of American seaside resorts, a “playground where rich and poor alike may take their pleasure” (Sterngass, p. 105). Although people of all social classes were attracted by Coney’s mass entertainment offerings, stratification of these groups followed a distinctly geographic path east to west. The wealthy frequented Manhattan Beach on the island’s eastern end, staying at two of


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

979

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

the resorts grand hotels—the Manhattan Beach Hotel and the Oriental Hotel. Here they enjoyed pyrotechnic spectacles and panoramas of historical events within a ten-thousand-seat fireworks arena, hot air balloon rides, and concerts featuring celebrity conductors. Not more than three quarters of a mile west of the elite zone, Brighton Beach offered Coney’s third grand hotel, which appealed to the middle class. Pavilions, bathhouses, and attractions such as the Seaside Aquarium, with its zoological garden, aviary, music hall, and collection of sea creatures in tanks, or the three-hundredfoot-high observatory, the Iron Tower, which had acted as centerpiece of the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, made Brighton Beach a favored destination for middle-class vacationers. West Brighton’s amusement district, replete with rides, lights, catchpenny attractions, and curiosities of all sorts, attracted both middle-class travelers and working-class daytrippers, the latter of whom, according to an 1889 Harper’s Weekly article, formed “a motley throng. . . . The struggling many, who here find their only summer outing” (Immerso, pp. 41–42). Finally, Norton’s Point at the west end of the island was resort of the underclasses. While stratified, these areas had quite permeable boundaries, and reformers of the late nineteenth century wrote of Coney as a thoroughly democratic environment where the mingling of classes would benefit all. Resorts played a major role in establishing the vacation as an institution of twentieth- and twentyfirst-century life. Fashionable resorts lent their green lawns and grand hotels as backdrops first for the elite and the middle class to work out social class identities, while the less-fashionable resorts made their marks as early vacation spots for an ever broadening spectrum of visitors. Though the glory days of the grand resort have passed, their legacy remains in those cherished weeks away—the vacation—which have become so much a part of American culture. See also Health and Medicine; Wealth BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Brownell, William. “Newport.” Scribner’s (August 1894): 142–143. Creedmore, Walter. “The Real Coney Island.” Munsey’s (August 1899): 746. Sweeney, Beatrice. The Grand Union Hotel: A Memorial and a Lament. Saratoga Springs, N.Y.: Historical Society, 1982. “Where Life Is Like a Story: Fashionable Summer Life at Gay Newport.” Ladies Home Journal (August 1890): 2.

980

A M E R I C A N

Secondary Works

Aron, Cindy S. Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Chambers, Thomas A. Drinking the Waters: Creating an American Leisure Class at Nineteenth-Century Mineral Springs. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002. Corbett, Theodore. The Making of American Resorts: Saratoga Springs, Ballston Spa, and Lake George. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Immerso, Michael. Coney Island: The People’s Playground. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Sterngass, Jon. First Resorts: Pursuing Pleasure at Saratoga Springs, Newport, and Coney Island. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Carolyn L. Mathews

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Bret Harte (1836–1902) did not, by himself, invent local color or regionalist fiction. However, his California gold rush tales did garner an immense amount of international acclaim, an acclaim that clearly testifies to Harte’s status as a leading contributor to post–Civil War efforts to develop a literary form supple enough to render the unique qualities by which regions are constituted or understood. Moreover, Harte’s fame affirms the importance to regionalist fiction of the American West and, more broadly, of rural and frontier literature. Not coincidentally, as Harte was helping to turn western topics into vital elements of regional literature, so too were western American natural resources (gold and silver, water, lumber, and eventually oil) contributing significantly to the United States’ phenomenal postbellum growth. Which is to say that such tales as “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1869) helped to set the stage for literary productions that were, at the very least, responsive to the predominant economic engines of a great many American locales. So much of what concerns regional writing—the interaction of people with place and nature, the promise (or threat) of population diversification through immigration, the stability of gender categories, and the relationship of any given region to the nation as a whole—may be found in the literary record of those regions, western or otherwise, where the earth’s raw materials provided the bases for economic, social, and cultural development. The phrase “resource management” euphemistically describes the practice of exploiting found objects for material and economic gain. In a

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

more figurative sense, it also provides a framework for understanding the efforts of a number of significant late-nineteenth-century artists to represent their regions. That is, the representation of natural resources and their attendant industries offered the literary regionalist a useful means of taking the measure of, responding to, and even shaping the nation’s increasing pace of industrial and territorial expansion. MINERAL RICHES

By 1859, when a not-yet-famous Bret Harte was working as a printer’s devil in a remote area to the north of San Francisco, the initial California boom had calmed considerably and opportunities for individuals to locate and acquire wealth were greatly diminished. Thus it was that new discoveries in the territories of Nevada and Colorado touched off the next wave of rushes for silver and gold, the cultural effects of which are very much part of American culture to the early twenty-first century. For one, in the frenzied development of a mining industry in a silver-bearing region along Nevada’s sagebrush desert known as the Comstock Lode, a style of literary humor emerged that paralleled Harte’s early satirical tendencies and, more importantly, allowed for the first-ever appearance in print of the byline “Mark Twain.” Having come West in large part to avoid the Civil War, an aspiring miner and writer named Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910) cut his teeth as a reporter for the Virginia City Daily Territorial Enterprise. Given a tremendous amount of freedom by his editor Joseph T. Goodman and working with a talented group of writers and newspapermen that included William Wright, Rollin Daggett, and Alf Doten, Clemens rapidly developed into a devastatingly insightful satirist. And while there is still some disagreement about the true origin of Clemens’s famous pseudonym, Mark Twain, most scholars now generally agree that the saloon culture of Virginia City, Nevada, probably played a significant role in its creation. What is less in doubt is the extent to which this rowdy but humor-rich milieu aided in the creation of Twain’s early persona, the foolhardy naïf of Roughing It (1872), whose adventures provide trenchant insight into the prides and prejudices of both locals and strangers. Twain may be known as a southern writer, but his career-long skepticism about the accuracy of representations received a significant boost in western mining towns, where speculative fortunes could be gained or lost literally overnight, usually on the evidence of dubious or downright fraudulent claims. Chief among Twain’s mentors in Virginia City was William Wright (1829–1898), who under the pseudonym “Dan De Quille” published scores of A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

sketches, satires, and hoaxes. When asked about his talented stable of writers, Joe Goodman recalled that in 1863 he would have chosen De Quille, not Twain, as the writer who would become nationally known for his humor and literary talent. Less inclined than his fellow pseudonymous journalist to seek self-promotion, De Quille spent his career almost exclusively in the Virginia City area. His sketches and stories, however, were routinely picked up by newspapers and magazines throughout the West, some even as far away as Europe. De Quille specialized in what he called “quaints,” literary hoaxes designed to draw in readers whose level of credulity about what they assumed to be the American West’s uniqueness could easily be stretched. For instance, his 1874 report on “solar armor,” about a refrigerated rubber suit that protects against desert heat but which, unfortunately, leads to its inventor’s freezing to death on a summer day in Death Valley (where temperatures rarely dip below 100° F), was picked up by the London Daily Telegraph and noted in Scientific American. When asked about the credibility of this report, De Quille published a clarification that provided even more detail. Earlier, in 1865, De Quille had published a quaint inspired by Twain’s 1862 “petrified man” hoax, pointing out that underground conditions are much more favorable to petrifaction via pure silver rather than via limestone sediment. This technique of clarifying an implausible scenario by “correcting” it with an ostensibly more authoritative detail is one that De Quille used repeatedly with great success, and it is a technique that anticipates the manner in which Twain’s Huckleberry Finn repeatedly confesses to his own lies with newer falsehoods that have a tone of confession about them. By the end of 1872, the initial flurry of activity on the Comstock had tapered off, Twain had moved east for marriage and celebrity status, and De Quille had begun planning a collection of literary sketches that might advance his own reputation as an author of regional fiction. Within just a handful of years, however, both De Quille’s and Virginia City’s fortunes would experience tremendous changes. The discovery of a silver deposit far in excess of anything previously found on the Comstock touched off another tremendous boom period, and the local silver barons began to pressure De Quille to write not a collection of literary sketches but instead an informational guidebook to the region. At the same time, Twain wrote to his old friend suggesting he capitalize on the Comstock’s renewed popularity by writing a Roughing It–style book about the new boom. Guided by Twain, with whom he stayed in Hartford, Connecticut, for several months while writing and collating his material, De Quille ultimately opted to combine the two book


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

981

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

spent both contributing to and taking advantage of, through humor, popular conceptions about the Far West.

Miners in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, c. 1876. Gold was discovered near Deadwood Gulch in 1874. As with other sites in the West, the discovery quickly created the kind of exploitative community described by Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and other western writers. © CORBIS

ideas into one, thus producing The Big Bonanza (1876). A wonderful and complex regionalist representation of the Comstock, this book mixes straightforward, statistic-laden reportage with fictions, tall tales, burlesques, and satires. One of De Quille’s more notable accomplishments in The Big Bonanza is the subtle manner in which he simultaneously praises and lampoons his benefactors, the rich and powerful industrialists in whose pockets could be found the majority of Virginia City’s mining operations. The final event chronicled in the book is, sadly, the destruction of the greater part of Virginia City by fire in October 1875. The city was rapidly rebuilt; however, within a year the supply of silver ore played out as quickly as it had appeared, the boom ended, and the town never again fully recovered its stature. Similarly, The Big Bonanza failed to gain a widespread audience, and De Quille continued as he had before, writing local journalism and publishing the occasional sketch or quaint but without the national prominence enjoyed by his erstwhile colleague. Nevertheless, De Quille’s writings collectively offer an enduring testament to a career

982

A M E R I C A N

As the Comstock had drawn immigrants to Virginia City, so did the discovery of massive silver carbonate deposits high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado attract wealth seekers to the unlikely little town of Leadville. By the summer of 1879 and in the wake of Virginia City’s decline, over forty thousand immigrants contributed to the making of Leadville as the next destination of choice for laborers and literati alike. So attractive was the cachet of a trip to this encampment, almost two miles above sea level, that even Walt Whitman (1819–1892) claimed in the sketches assembled in Specimen Days and Collect (1882) that in 1879 he, too, had been to this town. In fact, Whitman had made it only as far as the first crest of the Front Range beyond Denver, a full day’s trail ride and one more crest away from Leadville. Nevertheless, he included Leadville among the marvelous sights he had encountered in the West, sights which for him demonstrated that western American nature could trump the aesthetic appeal of European culture every time. The example of Clarence King (1842–1901) is even more instructive. The author of the popular Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (1872) and a close friend of Henry Adams, King had passed through Virginia City in 1868 during his decade-long conduct of the U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel. In his company had been one of the nation’s preeminent landscape photographers, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, whose extraordinarily detailed, epic-scaled, and often sublime images from the exploration have become photographic touchstones in the history of western landscape representation. Newly appointed (in 1879) as the nation’s first director of the U.S. Geological Exploration, King traveled to Leadville in the summer of 1879 to conduct a public lands inventory; while in town, he helped with his very presence to establish the distinction that Walt Whitman would seek several months later. He did so largely by becoming an honored guest in the local literary salon established in the home of a local mining engineer named Arthur Foote and his wife, Mary. Mary Hallock Foote (1847–1938), in fact, did perhaps more than any other single person to put Colorado’s early mining industry on the literary map. She did so in part as host of a salon that regularly welcomed the likes of not only King but also Helen Hunt Jackson, the mining financier’s wife who would in a few years write Ramona (1884), the book credited with almost single-handedly inspiring an intensively

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

regionalist nostalgia for California’s Spanish past that reached its peak in the mission revival style of architecture. However, Foote’s greatest contributions are as an author and illustrator in her own right. She first made a name for herself with a series of essays and stories she had written and illustrated for Scribner’s Monthly on the mines around Santa Cruz, California, where she had lived prior to arriving in Leadville. By 1882 Foote began publishing in Century Magazine a serial novel called The Led-Horse Claim (1883), the first of three Leadville-inspired novels that would firmly establish her reputation as a writer about the western region. The story of star-crossed lovers from opposite sides of a mining-claim dispute, The LedHorse Claim successfully blends realistic-seeming detail with the sort of sentimental plot that made for nineteenth-century best-sellers. Moreover, the eventual marriage of a mine superintendent to the sister of a competing mine’s superintendent offers a meditation on both the consolidation of capital and the supposed “civilizing” influence of women in the West. With the publication of her first novel, Foote inaugurated a career of writing about the West’s social fabric that poses crucial questions about gender relations and economic realities. She would continue to do so as she further migrated, with her husband, to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where her growing awareness of western water issues would lead to such novels as The Chosen Valley (1892), a story about the disastrous consequences of an ill-conceived irrigation project. HYDRAULIC TREASURES

In 1875 an intrepid and indefatigable one-armed Civil War veteran named John Wesley Powell (1834–1902) published a government report detailing his journey by raft through the Grand Canyon, a trip which no Anglo-European had until then successfully completed. With later refinements and amplifications, the text of Powell’s Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries provided both a valuable scientific survey of geology and geography and one of the first and most engaging introductions that Americans would have to the regions of the canyon. Indeed, the book’s spare, present-tense, almost matter-of-fact narrative is still hailed as one of the most compelling and readable accounts of a trip down the Colorado River. After his book’s publication, Powell established himself in Washington, D.C., where, through his influence and legislative connections, he succeeded in creating the U.S. Geological Exploration with his friend Clarence King as its first director (Powell himself became director in 1881 after King stepped down). As a government scientist and policy maker, Powell spent much of the remainder of his career arguing that A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

the arid western regions, because of their resourcebased economies, required a fundamentally different approach to land ownership and use. In short, he repeatedly called for people to recognize that water would very soon supplant mineral ore as the West’s most vital resource. Without water, miners could not effectively separate precious metals from the rocks in which they were embedded, farmers could not adequately irrigate their fields, and above all, cities such as Los Angeles, Denver, and Phoenix could not begin to approach the scale of urbanization they presently enjoy. Published at a time when the Comstock was still at its height, Leadville only just beginning to brew, and the rush for gold in the Klondike that would inspire Jack London still several decades off, the Exploration in its various manifestations, however, did not immediately gain recognition as a story about water. Nevertheless, Powell’s contention that water would be the defining factor in the West’s regional identity did eventually prove prophetic. Mary Austin’s (1868–1934) The Land of Little Rain (1903), for example, describes the Owens Valley area of eastern California as a region intimately tied, both culturally and materially, to its local water resources. More to the point, it does so at the very historical moment when the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 began to re-create the American West as a region governed not by mining entrepreneurs or railroads but by federal water policies. In the wake of Newlands, most of the Owens Valley’s sparse water reserves were redirected to the booming city of Los Angeles, leading, by some accounts, to the impoverishment of local agriculture and community. Austin spent many years fulminating against this appropriation, even when her attention shifted in the 1920s to the political battles over the allocation of the Colorado River. Another best-selling writer, however, took inspiration from the Owens Valley situation in a very different way. Harold Bell Wright (1872–1944), who in his day sold more books than almost anyone else, praised such reclamation projects as those in California’s Owens and Imperial valleys for their success in promoting economic growth through resource exploitation. Wright’s melodramatic western water novel, The Winning of Barbara Worth (1911), even acknowledges the work of William Mulholland, the enterprising chief engineer who took the water from Austin’s land of little rain and delivered it to the orange groves and front lawns of suburban Los Angeles. Together, these texts represent the two poles of a debate that continues into the twenty-first century about western water, and they are indicative of the extent to which, at the beginning of the twentieth century, regional sensibilities shifted


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

983

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

toward an understanding of the West’s status as a hydraulic society. WHAT ABOUT TREES?

There is something keenly ironic in the fact that timber, the resource most materially related to literature (insofar as literature has long been published on paper products derived from harvested trees), is least represented in regional writing, western or otherwise. But this is not to say that it does not appear at all. Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) bemoans the wholesale depletion of the northeastern forests in The Maine Woods (1864) when he observes that “the Anglo-American . . . ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town-meeting warrants on them” (p. 314). Similarly, in The Big Bonanza, Dan De Quille laments that “the Comstock Lode may truthfully be said to be the tomb of the forests of the Sierras” (p. 174). Referring to the mining industry’s insatiable need for lumber in the fight against mine shaft cave-ins, De Quille succinctly puts his finger on the interdependence of the various resource industries. And John Muir (1838–1914) based much of his advocacy for national parks and nature preservation on the assumption that forests must be protected from human encroachment. This attitude is most evident in the dozens of articles on California’s Sierra Nevada areas such as Yosemite Valley that Muir published in Scribner’s and Century from the 1870s through the 1910s. In popular fiction, however, the “resource management” philosophies associated with Gifford Pinchot, appointed by Theodore Roosevelt as the nation’s first chief of the Forest Service, are much more in evidence. Roosevelt’s friend Owen Wister, for instance, has his title character in The Virginian (1902) retire from ranching life to become, on the last page, a lumber baron. Stewart Edward White (1873–1946), also a friend of Roosevelt and a fellow big-game hunting aficionado, first established himself as a best-selling author with the 1902 publication of The Blazed Trail, a tale about northern Michigan lumber camps and the dynamic young logger-investor who creates a successful business in the face of corporate corruption (in 1901 White had also published The Claim Jumpers, a novel about South Dakota’s gold rush). White’s career soon took him from Michigan to California, where he continued to publish a variety of genre-based adventure novels as well as nonfictional, regionally inflected books such as The Forest (1903) and The Cabin (1911). In these latter two publications, White deftly mixes personal memoir with naturist essays and reflections on the value of carefully husbanded forest resources. In all, the beginning of the twentieth century heralded

984

A M E R I C A N

the advent of Roosevelt’s conservationist ethos, a resource-management culture in which popular fiction frequently espoused the conservationist attitude of centralized authority and profit management while nonfiction prose was generally put to the service of preservationist or environmentalist philosophies. See also Frontier; The Land of Little Rain; Nature Writing BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

De Quille, Dan. The Big Bonanza: An Authentic Account of the Discovery, History, and Working of the WorldRenowned Comstock Lode of Nevada. 1876. New York: Knopf, 1947. De Quille, Dan. The Fighting Horse of the Stanislaus: Stories and Essays. Edited by Lawrence I. Berkove. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990. Foote, Mary Hallock. The Led-Horse Claim: A Romance of a Mining Camp. Boston: Osgood, 1883. Powell, John Wesley. Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries. 1875. Revised and reprinted as Canyons of the Colorado, 1895. Reprinted as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons. New York: Penguin, 1987. Thoreau, Henry David. The Maine Woods. 1864. New York: Penguin, 1988. White, Stewart Edward. The Blazed Trail. New York: McClure, Phillips, 1902. Secondary Works

Berkove, Lawrence I. Dan De Quille. Western Writers Series, no. 136. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1999. Fender, Stephen. Plotting the Golden West: American Literature and the Rhetoric of the California Trail. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Henderson, George L. California and the Fictions of Capital. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Robbins, William G. Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1994. Starr, Kevin. Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Teague, David W. The Southwest in American Literature and Art: The Rise of a Desert Aesthetic. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997. Trachtenberg, Alan. “Naming the View.” In his Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans, pp. 119–165. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

T H E R I S E O F D AV I D L E V I N S K Y

Walker, Franklin. Jack London and the Klondike. San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1966. Witschi, Nicolas S. Traces of Gold: California’s Natural Resources and the Claim to Realism in Western American Literature. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002. Nicolas S. Witschi

THE RISE OF DAVID LEVINSKY When Abraham Cahan began drafting the narrative that ultimately became his most important novel, The Rise of David Levinsky (1917), he had neither the idea nor the intention of writing another long work of fiction. Cahan was principally a journalist with the Yiddish press; he edited the Socialist Labor Party’s Arbeter tsaytung and Tsukunft through the mid-1890s, and he was a founding editor of the Jewish daily Forwerts, or Forward; under his direction for nearly fifty years, the Forward became the most widely read Yiddish newspaper in the world. He was also a major influence in the development of organized labor on New York’s Lower East Side, almost from the time he arrived in that city from Russia in 1882 as a committed socialist, having fled from the tsar’s police at twenty-two because of his leftist leanings. Thirty years later his wide reputation as an influential socialist, Jewish leader, and journalist, in support of organized labor, was firm. He had also gained stature as a writer of fiction in English and had spent about four years (late 1897 through 1901) as a reporter for the New York Commercial Advertiser, then under the city editorship of Lincoln Steffens. In 1912 Burton J. Hendrick, associate editor of McClure’s Magazine, a monthly known for its muckraking exposés of corruption and chicanery in industry at the turn of the century, invited Cahan to compose a short series of two articles on the success of the Jewish immigrant in the garment trade. Cahan immediately accepted the offer. He did not expect the series to take much time, and he thought that informing readers how successfully the Jewish immigrants had established themselves in a major American industry—clothing manufacturing and trade in the United States had been dominated by Jews since at least 1880—would prove beneficial not only to them but to the American public as well. Initially he intended to write expository articles, specifically to convey information about Jews in the garment trade, but he immediately oriented his material toward fiction by creating a first-person narrator. His first article was so successful that readers wanted more, and he agreed to extend the two-part series to A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Abraham Cahan.

JEWISH DAILY FORWARD

four sections under the title “The Autobiography of an American Jew: The Rise of David Levinsky,” published from April through July 1913. A literary realist devoted to presenting real life in fiction, Cahan drew the subtitle of his series from The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) by William Dean Howells, the most influential advocate for realism in the United States late in the preceding century. Howells was at the height of his influence when he befriended Cahan in 1895 and supported the aspiring Jewish author with a highly favorable review of his first novel in English, Yekl, A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896). By then, Cahan had read with great admiration nearly all of Howells’s earlier fiction; inspired by the Dean’s realism, he was determined to reveal the truth of East Side life as he knew it, with all its grimness and suffering. To do this, however, he had to transcend Howells’s ideas that morality is universal and decency has bounds outside of which respectable fiction cannot go. To fulfill his own ethic as an author and present a true picture of life in the tenement district, Cahan understood that he might have to create figures of dubious character and depict the sordid ghetto environment naturalistically. Thus he risked offending many readers, Jewish and Gentile alike, with his series, but he felt he could not do otherwise.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

985


What Cahan did not know, however, and perhaps never fully realized, is that he was being set up by Hendrick and McClure’s to make Jews in business fit the stereotype of shrewd, manipulative schemers whose sole aim was to acquire wealth and power. Jules Chametzky gives an illuminating account of this editorial duplicity in his introduction to the Penguin edition (1993) of The Rise of David Levinsky and points to the way that the repugnance of Cahan’s narrator was dramatized in effect by the grotesque depictions of Jews in illustrations accompanying the text. OVERVIEW

For the title of his novel, Cahan used only the subtitle of his McClure’s series. On the surface The Rise of David Levinsky covers the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century and the first fifteen of the twentieth. The novel combines a naturalistic exposition of Jewish immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side with a history of the burgeoning American garment industry, including its development and operation from the lowest echelon of workers to the owners, with dramatic views of the persistent labor unrest that agitates it. But on a more subtle level, it is simultaneously a study of the depressed, hypocritical, alienated narrator, Levinsky, who relates the story of his life from his grim childhood in Antomir, a Russian shtetl, to his middle years as a wealthy industrialist in New York City. No longer simply a device by which the development of a major industry is exposed, Levinsky is a fully realized character in the novel, with a principal role not only in the evolution of the garment trade but also in the lives of the numerous secondary and tertiary figures, nearly all of whom in one way or another are involved with it. The characters are highly individualized, and they reappear in different contexts from time to time like motifs in a large musical composition; whenever they return they bring with them echoes of their past associations with Levinsky, all of which adds to the depth and drama of their scenes. One by one they illustrate the two primary components of Levinsky’s narrative: his rise in an industrial community comprised predominantly of East European Jewish immigrants like himself and the psychological peculiarities he exposes during the course of relating his candid autobiography. For example, Naphtali, his free-thinking companion at the yeshiva in Antomir, is an alter-ego who helps Levinsky break with his past. Reb Bender, his benign teacher, ineffectually counsels him at the yeshiva. Matilda, a young divorcee, tempts the naive Talmud student Levinsky to seduce her, then ridicules him, gives him money to emigrate, and finally, years later, when she visits

986

A M E R I C A N

America as an ardent socialist, contemptuously dismisses him as a union-hating millionaire. Argentine Rachael, the shrewd prostitute from Antomir, sells her favors to Levinsky and educates him about East Side politics. Gussie, an unattractive coworker he seduces in an attempt to gain her savings, later contributes part of her wages to support a strike and rejects his invitation to work in his factory. Mrs. Chaikin, the cautious, shrewish wife of his first designer, tries to outwit Levinsky and fails. “Maximum Max” Margolis, a street peddler, teaches Levinsky the ropes, assuring him that any woman can be won with the right effort and thus inadvertently sets up the seduction of his own lovely wife, Dora, despite her earnest resistance to Levinsky’s overbearing solicitations. After having his way with her, however, Levinsky cannot persuade Dora to become his mistress; the moving scene in Stuyvesant Park that leads to her break with him is worthy of comparison with James. Themes alone do not make a novel; these figures and numerous other characters in a succession of dramatic scenes constitute the texture that vitalizes the themes and brings the fiction to life. Yet as both narrator and participant, Levinsky is the axis on which the whole massive novel turns. Having made his fortune through extraordinary chutzpah and exploitation, he finds life meaningless. Responsible to no one, he has everything to share but no one with whom to share it. Structurally Levinsky’s state of mind is of particular interest, because he confesses on the opening page that despite his wealth and power his life still “seems devoid of significance” (p. 3). By beginning his autobiography at the end, after the action has occurred, he leaves readers to learn not how well the poor young immigrant fares after his arrival in America but why, with all his money, he is so despondent. As the novel progresses and Levinsky’s life story unfolds, the perceptive reader gradually apprehends that the industrialist’s emotional and moral limitations helped him rise financially while they continue to undermine the possibility of his spiritual fulfillment. The essential question, never answered, is whether or not he realizes even as he begins his account that the apparent lack of significance in his life is attributable wholly to his own shortcomings. JEWISH IMMIGRATION AND THE GARMENT INDUSTRY

The nearly half a century between 1880 and 1924 brought an influx of some 2.5 million Jewish immigrants into the United States, predominantly from eastern Europe, and most of them remained in New York. In 1915 the Jewish population of New York City

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


The paragraph below, which begins The Rise of David Levinsky, exhibits in a few lines much of the thematic substance of Cahan’s novel. Levinsky himself is the autobiographical narrator who exposes in these few lines his material status and spiritual vacuity, his rise to wealth and fame that ironically has left him alienated and alone. The questions he implicitly asks here are how did he become so wealthy, and what has caused his despondency? Through the course of the novel, he explains his answer to the first in great and candid detail, but it remains dubious that he himself has ever determined an answer to the second.

Sometimes, when I think of my past in a superficial, casual way, the metamorphosis I have gone through strikes me as nothing short of a miracle. I was born and reared in the lowest depths of poverty and I arrived in America—in 1885—with four cents in my pocket. I am now worth more than two million dollars and recognized as one of the two or three leading men in the cloak-andsuit trade in the United States. And yet when I take a look at my inner identity it impresses me as being precisely the same as it was thirty or forty years ago. My present station, power, the amount of worldly happiness at my command, and the rest of it, seem to be devoid of significance. Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky, p. 3.

was nearly a million and a half, roughly 28 percent of the total, and a disproportionate percentage of the immigrants were crowded into the tenements of the Lower East Side. The twenty-year-old David Levinsky arrives at Castle Garden in 1885, two years younger than Cahan when he immigrated at twenty-two. When Levinsky commences his autobiography, however, he is fiftytwo, precisely Cahan’s age as he began to draft his series of articles for McClure’s. Like Cahan, after being admitted to the country, Levinsky remains on the Lower East Side where he, too, must learn English while struggling to earn a living, going so far as to attend public-school English classes with the children. For Levinsky, people who speak English as a native language are superior by birth, and he is as determined to become fluent as Cahan himself had become. These similarities and numerous others between the author and his eponymous hero have led such critics as Louis A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Harap to consider Levinsky as Cahan’s surrogate, reviewing his own past and views. But the essential differences between the author and his creation are far more significant than such correspondences in circumstances and events. Having arrived at Castle Garden with little money, Cahan had gained a position of great influence by the time he wrote Levinsky, yet unlike his narrator, he neither sought nor acquired riches. Instead, he aspired to improve the lives of other eastern European immigrant Jews by promoting Americanization in advice columns in the Forward and pressing hard for labor reform. Cahan’s benevolent personal aims, however, are not evident in his narrator. Instead, Levinsky illustrates how financial success can be managed without initial capital or serious moral scruples, with the aid of shrewdness, exploitation, and luck. Typically, he begins his career in the United States with a few unsatisfactory odd jobs before he becomes a modestly successful peddler by hawking and bargaining while he observes what goes on around him. Advised by an acquaintance to learn how to operate a sewing machine for more lucrative earnings, Levinsky becomes adept with a Singer and quickly finds a position with a contractor working fifteen-hour days; then he joins a union. Dissatisfied with the first shop, he moves to one owned by the Manheimer brothers. Meanwhile he gives private English lessons to supplement his earnings; the wealthy manufacturer he tutors, Meyer Nodleman, becomes Levinsky’s benefactor when he opens his own factory. During each stage of his rise in fortune, Levinsky takes advantage of the gullibility or limitations of others, as he borrows with dubious security, writes checks with inadequate backing, secretly copies new fashion designs from competitors, supports the union initially only to undermine it later, and so forth. Simultaneously, he learns more about business and people from fellow workers in shops and on the streets; from drummers on trains when he travels to hawk his own merchandise; and from managers and owners. Having been told that he has a “credit face,” he takes advantage of his appearance of honesty to gain people’s trust. “We are all actors, more or less” (p. 194), he confesses, thus justifying his hypocrisy in his own eyes. With every person Levinsky meets and each new position he gains in his ascension to wealth, Cahan exhibits another aspect of East Side life, seedy elements included. Historically on the edge of the red-light district, the Lower East Side was notorious for prostitution. After his first visit to a prostitute, Levinsky persistently succumbs to his passions. He returns repetitively to


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

987


Argentine Rachael, who sells him sex and counsels him on how the local police and politicians operate. A clever businesswoman, Argentine Rachael becomes Levinsky’s confidante, thereby abetting his social and economic ascent.

sacrifices her life for him. Although he is over eighteen at the time, his chief concern over her death is that she has abandoned him to fare for himself; this traumatic incident occurs about a year before he departs for America.

Not all those with whom Levinsky associates are Jewish, of course, but most are, particularly in his early years on the streets and in the sweatshops. By living among the immigrants before achieving his wealth, Levinsky has no serious problems with antiSemitism, which was present in the United States only in a subdued form until the years of mass east European migration, when it steadily increased. In 1924, only seven years after Levinsky was published, an antiimmigration bill was passed by Congress and signed by the president.

His father died many years earlier, leaving little David as the man of the family. Throughout his boyhood and youth, he is attracted to girls as sex objects, and he allows himself to be exploited by them because their attention satisfies his vanity. From the local heder, David advances to a yeshiva, where he studies to become learned in Jewish thought. But sexual fantasies squelch his interest in Talmud, an interest that he has forced on himself from the beginning. When an opportunity comes to emigrate, he takes advantage of it and sails to America, where his life as an immigrant commences. Unlike his perception of most immigrants, however, he undergoes no essential transformation in the United States, no “second birth” (p. 93), because the seeds of change germinated long before he left Antomir.

PORTRAIT OF AN AMBIVALENT NARRATOR

Readers of The Rise of David Levinsky interested chiefly in the history of American business and labor, Jewish immigration, or New York’s Lower East Side late in the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth will find Cahan’s novel instructive. Readers who peruse the novel on a deeper level will find it no less engaging for its humanistic and literary values. In his psychological portrait of Levinsky, Cahan has created an ambiguous autobiographer whose ambivalence throughout the novel may be traced to roots deep in his past. His narrative is divided into fourteen sections, only one of which, “On the Road,” describing his experiences while traveling to sell his merchandise, even implies a business interest. The other titles refer specifically to Levinsky’s personal life. That is one reason his candid and realistic self-portrait equals his grand sociohistorical panorama in importance to the novel. At age fifty-two the millionaire industrialist cannot understand why he remains unfulfilled. Having discovered Herbert Spencer’s theory of Social Darwinism, in which only the fittest can survive in a life based on competition, Levinsky operates accordingly. When he deceives someone and gains by it, he justifies his action on the grounds of survival of the fittest; for him, Spencer’s theory has become a way of life, replacing the sound moral behavior he learned from his mother and his teachers at the yeshiva back in Antomir. People who treat him with respect are either patronized, exploited, or brushed aside and neglected. He dreams of love, marriage, and children, a family he can call his own, but although he seeks a wife through the marriage market and nearly finds one in Fanny Kaplan, he never weds. To a large extent his alienation and failure with women may be explained by the way as a child and adolescent he dotes on his mother, who impulsively

988

A M E R I C A N

From the first few days after his arrival in America until he starts to achieve success in the garment manufactory, by which time his dubious interest in Talmud has completely atrophied, he expresses a strong desire to continue his education by attending college but not to study anything in particular. With the approach of financial success his dream of college gives way to his desire for wealth and his longing for an ideal woman, a combination of his mother and some of the girls and women he has known or seen. Each new woman he meets is an object of seduction or wishful thinking but not love—until he becomes infatuated with Anna Tevkin, whom he first sees playing tennis at the Rigi Kulm House, a posh Jewish hotel in the Catskills where fashionable vulgarity prevails among those guests whom Cahan called “olraytniks” (from “all right”). Levinsky has stopped at the Rigi Kulm overnight to avoid riding on the Sabbath while on his way to visit his fiancée and her family at their summer cottage in the mountains; he feels that violating the Hebrew restriction against Sabbath travel might offend his future father-in-law. But he is captivated when he notices Anna, the appealing young daughter of a poet whose romantic love story is known to him. Her image, enhanced in his ever-active imagination by her parents’ romance, proves fatal to his engagement. His attraction to Anna becomes an obsession that leads him to lose nearly all he owns when he over-invests in a real-estate boom to gain favor with Anna’s father. The aging Russian poet, brilliantly portrayed with his New York houseful of radicals and eccentrics, is as obsessed with real estate as

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Illustration by Jay Hambridge for The Rise of David Levinsky from the June 1913 issue of McClure’s Magazine. David Levinsky is gazing at an attractive, fashionably dressed young woman, in a cloak probably designed and manufactured in his garment factory. GRADUATE LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Levinsky is with his daughter. Appalled by Levinsky’s chutzpah when he proposes for the second time, Anna dismisses him with finality. When the real-estate boom collapses and Levinsky regains financial stability with A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

the aid of a Gentile with whom he’s done business, he seems to relinquish his romantic dream; he remains a despondent millionaire longing for a past that never was and a future that appears beyond his reach.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

989


CRITICAL RECEPTION

Cahan’s novel was generally praised by the critics for its realism, although it drew complaints about the unfavorable portrait of its Jewish protagonist. Some readers considered it borderline anti-Semitism—an understandable response because Levinsky has few if any redeeming features. Others found it altogether detestable, but whether they were criticizing the novel or its East Side content is subject to question. Harper & Brothers sold about eight thousand copies of Levinsky in 1917 and 1918, a respectable sales figure for the time; the novel was republished ten years later by Grosset and Dunlap (1928), who kept it in print for another decade. CONCLUSION

The Rise of David Levinsky has deservedly been praised as one of the best immigration novels published in America. Written by a Jewish immigrant with a strong commitment to his people and his adoptive country alike, it authentically depicts how an industry grew in the United States, making some people wealthy but keeping a multitude of others destitute through exploitation. Yet it also reveals the impact of organized labor—a popular force toward which Cahan was greatly sympathetic—when the abuses became more severe than the laborers were willing to bear. For Cahan, life in the ghetto was not entirely grim despite the constant struggle of its inhabitants to survive and eventually progress. Although Levinsky, the narrator, is central, many of the secondary and tertiary characters represent such struggles on a more typical level. All of the major figures in the novel, and most of the minor ones, are Jewish, yet Cahan depicted a remarkable variety of characters on the Lower East Side and individualized them all, thereby enhancing the authenticity of his narrative. One of the novel’s cardinal achievements is the complex portrait of its eponymous narrator. Levinsky presents himself as objectively as possible from his own limited perspective. He exposes his eccentricities; his bewilderment over his chronically despondent state of mind; his constant self-justification based on his reading of Herbert Spencer; his exploitation of anyone in a position to provide him with what he needs, male or female, worker or financier, friend or competitor. He is far more honest with readers than with himself or any of acquaintances, for he enables readers to apprehend what he cannot see reflectively. The Rise of David Levinsky was Cahan’s final novel and a stunning achievement. The novel represents the garment trade in all its complexity, both feeding off and depending on the hands of millions of struggling immigrants, who drive themselves day by day to earn a wretched living in the Jewish ghettos. Simul-

990

A M E R I C A N

taneously, the narrator exposes himself as shrewd, exploitative, and laden with emotional and psychological burdens. The greater depth and increased length of The Rise of David Levinsky gives it the literary stature that the original serialized “autobiography” lacks. Ironically, Cahan wrote his grandest novel almost as an afterthought, in order to fill out the story he had begun a few years earlier in four magazine articles. Had the offer from McClure’s not come, The Rise of David Levinsky would never have been written. This serendipitous sequence appears to confirm the significant role of luck in real life and thereby justify its place in realistic and naturalistic fiction, however unlikely it may seem to skeptical readers. See also Assimilation; Immigration; Jews; Labor; New York; Realism; Success BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Cahan, Abraham. “The Autobiography of an American Jew: The Rise of David Levinsky.” Illustrated by Jay Hambridge. McClure’s Magazine, April 1913, pp. 92– 106; May 1913, pp. 73–85; June 1913, pp. 131–132; 134, 138, 141–142; 145, 147–148; 151–152; July 1913, pp. 116–128. Cahan, Abraham. The Rise of David Levinsky. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1917. Howells, William Dean. Criticism and Fiction. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891. Secondary Works

Chametzky, Jules. From the Ghetto: The Fiction of Abraham Cahan. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977. Chametzky, Jules. Introduction and Notes. In The Rise of David Levinsky, by Abraham Cahan. 1917. New York: Penguin, 1993. Harap, Louis. The Image of the Jew in American Literature from Early Republic to Mass Immigration. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1974. Higham, John. Introduction. In The Rise of David Levinsky. 1917. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960. Howe, Irving. World of Our Fathers. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976. Marovitz, Sanford E. Abraham Cahan. New York: Twayne/ Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1996. Pollock, Theodore Marvin. “The Solitary Clarinetist: A Critical Biography of Abraham Cahan, 1860–1917.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1959. Sanders, Ronald. The Downtown Jews: Portraits of an Immigrant Generation. New York: Harper and Row, 1969.

H I S T O R Y

Sanford E. Marovitz

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

ST. LOUIS WORLD’S FAIR

S

The St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904, technically the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, was held to celebrate the centenary of the purchase of a huge tract of land from the French. Despite being originally scheduled to be held in 1903, planning and scale meant that the fair didn’t open until 30 April 1904. The gates of the fairground in Forest Park, St. Louis, stayed open until 1 December 1904, and an average of 100,000 people attended each day. In total over twenty million people saw the exhibition. Many innovations in the fields of science and technology were debuted in St. Louis, including the X-ray machine, the electric typewriter, the coffeemaker, the dishwasher, and a prototype of the telephone answering machine called the Paulson Telegraphone. The fair was the brainchild of the former Missouri governor David R. Francis, who headed the planning committee. Forest Park was chosen as the site for the exhibition, and the city of St. Louis raised $5 million, which was matched by the U.S. government and by public subscription. One of the conditions of using the site was that it would be relandscaped as a park at the end of the fair. The site covered a huge area, larger than any other world’s fair before or since: 1,272 acres, including 615 acres of private property and all of the land owned by Washington University (founded by William Greenleaf Eliot, the grandfather of the poet T. S. Eliot, in 1853). Francis Field, on the campus of Washington University, was used to host the 1904 Olympic Games, the first to be held on U.S. soil and the only Olympics to take place during a world’s fair.

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition seems to have taken its model from the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, for many of the buildings echoed the architecture seen in Illinois eleven years earlier, with enormous white palaces surrounded by specially constructed waterways and lakes and spectacular landscaping. Another echo of the Chicago fair was the presence of George Ferris’s big wheel, which gave aerial views of the fair to visitors as it had in Chicago on the Midway Plaisance in 1893. The central building in St. Louis was the Festival Hall, and in front of it the Cascades—a massively tiered set of waterfalls—led down Art Hill to the Grand Lagoon. Fifteen exhibit palaces outlined with electric lights (which were used liberally throughout the site) covered 128 acres (about 10 percent) of the fairgrounds. Each hall had a theme, such as education, mines and metallurgy, electricity, liberal arts, and manufacture. A visitor could visit a sunken Japanese garden, a re-creation of the walled city of Jerusalem, or the actual log cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born. All told the site contained nine hundred separate buildings spread around the custom-built rolling landscape that raised the land from forty to sixty-five feet above base level. For visitors, it required a month to do any real justice to the exhibits because the fair spread over seventy-five miles of paths and roadways. St. Louis’s equivalent of the Chicago Plaisance was the street known as the Pike. Running for a mile, the Pike was lined with amusements that were run by an army of attendants. At night, when the exhibition halls closed down, the crowds funneled into the Pike to promenade and to be serenaded by brass bands and

991

S T. L O U I S W O R L D ’ S F A I R

A view of the St. Louis World’s Fair, 1905. Seen here are the vast exhibition halls and a canal, one of many water features of the fair’s landscape. Even the design of the grounds was intended to be instructive, presenting a model of an ideal city. © CORBIS

vocal groups vying with each other with megaphones. The expression “coming down the Pike” originated here, because visitors never knew what they would encounter next along the pathway. The entertainment included a replica of the Blarney Castle, a Parisian fashion show, an interactive deep-sea diving exhibit, and the sea battle of Santiago, staged with model ships in a miniature lake. Rides were available on camels, turtles, and elephants. Food was of course in plentiful supply, and the fair of 1904 is credited with introducing the world’s first ice cream cone and iced tea. Twenty-two countries were represented in pavilions, including the Philippines, Ceylon, and China. The United States was of course well represented. Forty-four cities, states, and territories built their own display buildings. One of the chief draws was a huge

992

A M E R I C A N

aviary, funded by the federal government, which was big enough for birds to fly freely within it. A working replica of a coal mine was set up to highlight U.S. industry and resources, and much to the surprise of the construction crew, real coal was found underneath the model when the shaft was sunk. Literary figures were witnesses and participants. A young T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) visited the fair in his native city and spent many hours in the Igorot Village, one part of the exhibition from the Philippines. A couple of months later he wrote a number of pieces concerning primitive life, including a short story called “The Man Who Was King” for the Smith Academy Record. Set in Polynesia, the description of the village in the story is close to contemporary reports of the Filipino exhibit. Eliot pursued

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

S T. L O U I S W O R L D ’ S F A I R

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, LOUIS The St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904 had an official song written for it. This song was also heavily featured in the 1944 film Meet Me in St. Louis and gave the movie its name. (Note: In this song “Louis” is pronounced “Louie.”)

When Louis came home to the flat, He hung up his coat and his hat, He gazed all around, but no wifey he found, So he said “where can Flossie be at?” A note on the table he spied, He read it just once, then he cried. It ran, “Louis dear, it’s too slow for me here, So I think I will go for a ride.”

The dresses that hung in the hall, Were gone, she had taken them all; She took all his rings and the rest of his things; The picture he missed from the wall. “What! moving!” the janitor said, “Your rent is paid three months ahead.” “What good is the flat?” said poor Louis, “Read that.” And the janitor smiled as he read.

“Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, Meet me at the fair, Don’t tell me the lights are shining any place but there; We will dance the Hoochee Koochee, I will be your tootsie wootsie, If you will meet in St. Louis, Louis, Meet me at the fair.”

“Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, Meet me at the fair, Don’t tell me the lights are shining any place but there; We will dance the Hoochee Koochee, I will be your tootsie wootsie, If you will meet in St. Louis, Louis, Meet me at the fair.”

Lyrics by Andrew B. Sterling, music by Frederick Allen “Kerry” Mills. Published 1904 by F. A. Mills, 48 West Twenty-ninth Street, New York.

his anthropological interests during his study at Harvard, and his interests in native and primitive cultures inform much of his best-known poetry. The novelist and short story writer Kate Chopin (1851–1904) visited the fair on 20 August 1904 and spent a long day touring the exhibits. Returning home in the evening, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died two days later. While the majority of acclaim and appreciation for Chopin’s work was still some decades away, Mark Twain (1835–1910) was already established as a literary giant. Although hailing from Missouri, Twain did not manage to attend the fair itself, but he had been involved from afar. In 1902, when he was granted an honorary degree from the University of Missouri, Twain embarked on a journey down the Mississippi to receive it. Beginning his journey in Hannibal, his childhood home, Twain was received warmly at every stop on his way to Columbia, where he received his degree on 4 June. A riverboat was renamed in Twain’s honor to mark the occasion. In St. Louis the next day he participated in groundbreaking ceremonies to mark the inauguration of construction for the World’s Fair. Although Twain did not travel to St. Louis when the fair A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

opened two years later, he did (unsuccessfully) suggest holding a steamboat race down the Mississippi in commemoration of the event. Two requests were made to the writer asking for his blessing for a Mark Twain Day at the fair, and twice Twain refused. In his second letter to decline the honor he wrote that “such compliments are not proper for the living; they are proper and safe for the dead only. . . . So long as we remain alive we are not safe from doing things which, however righteously and honorably intended, can wreck our repute and extinguish our friendships” (Letter to T. F. Gatts, 1903). The St. Louis World’s Fair also had its own song, written by Andrew B. Sterling and Frederick Allen “Kerry” Mills. It was this song that gave the name to the movie Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), directed by Vincente Minnelli. The song’s refrain is sung frequently throughout the movie, and it becomes a point of reference and contact for the characters. It encapsulates their excitement about the fair, and the movie ends with the whole family at the showgrounds, thrilled by the display of electric light. See also World’s Columbian Exposition


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

993

SAME-SEX LOVE

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Work

Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Letters. Vol. 5, 1901–1905. 2004. Edited by Albert Bigelow Paine. Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of Mark Twain. Available at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/1/9/3197/3197. txt. Secondary Works

Breitbart, Eric. A World on Display: Photographs from the St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. Minkin, Bert. Legacies of the St. Louis World’s Fair. Lynchburg: Virginia Publishing, 1998. Primm, James Neal. Lion of the Valley: St. Louis, Missouri, 1764–1980. 3rd ed. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1998. Rydell, Robert W. All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Keith Gumery

SAME-SEX LOVE Same-sex love changed dramatically between 1870 and 1920. The word “homosexual” was coined and gradually entered popular speech. While the mere coining of a term cannot be credited alone with introducing and spreading the belief that some people are intrinsically defined by an erotic orientation toward persons of the same sex (or the opposite sex), along with the new term came a distinct concept of homosexual identity or personhood. Significantly, the term “heterosexual” was only coined later, in reaction to and in distinction from the category of “homosexual.” Some historians have argued that the very idea of sexuality (of a more or less stable inner predisposition toward certain objects of desire, either same-sex or opposite-sex) was a new idea during this period: in earlier eras people did not seem to think of themselves as having “sexuality” at all, and they would not necessarily have understood all dimensions of what we understand as sexuality in the early twenty-first century. These are quite complicated historical and theoretical issues, still awaiting further research that may clarify if not resolve them. What seems evident, however, is that few if any people in the mid-nineteenth century thought that they belonged to a distinct category of person, defined by and grounded in their habitual sexual behavior or usual erotic preferences. But by the end of the century, and even more powerfully in the

994

A M E R I C A N

early twentieth century, sexual identities as we now know them had begun to shape people’s lives in farreaching ways.

SEXUAL IDENTITY IN LITERATURE

Imaginative literature of various kinds played a central role in this process of creating and promulgating sexual identities: patterns of behavior, ways of speech, and modes of consciousness associated with same-sex love were observed and represented, established and tested, and circulated and transformed by novels, plays, poems, autobiographies, and other literary forms. And the images and patterns of same-sex love we encounter around 1870 are, on the whole, very different from those we can find in the literature that appeared by 1920. Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), for instance, published her immensely successful novel Little Women in two parts in 1868 and 1869, and in it she depicts a female-centric world featuring a tomboyish heroine (Jo March) toward whom lesbian readers later looked as a model. Alcott did have Jo marry in the end, and in the sequels to Little Women—Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886)—she has Jo live a fairly conventional life as a wife, mother, and schoolteacher. But Alcott herself dismissed these tales, perhaps unfairly, as “moral pap for the young” (Little Women, p. 1075) and meanwhile was busy writing (but publishing only anonymously) much racier newspaper tales that featured all kinds of relatively deviant behavior and feeling. For instance, in Alcott’s 1869 tale “My Mysterious Mademoiselle,” the plot features an English bachelor, en route to see his ailing sister; he consents to share his train carriage with a “slender girl of sixteen or so” (p. 112) whose hand he eventually kisses and from whom he exacts a flirtatious promise that in exchange for his protection during their travels she shall bestow upon him at the end of their journey a kiss on the mouth. The “mademoiselle” is eventually revealed to be a fifteen-year-old young man named George Vane escaping from his private school to visit his sick mother; in fact he is the nephew of the traveling bachelor, and they are headed to the same place. The boy often “played girl-parts” (p. 124) on stage at his school, and thus had experience crossdressing. At the end of their journey, he offers to make good on his promised kiss on the lips, but his uncle declines, shakes his hand “manfully,” and off they go together. The narrative’s pleasure in erotic ambiguity is palpable, and its teasing approach to the possibility of a male-male kiss is more daring than what Alcott would attempt in the respectable fiction she published under her own name. Scenes of cross-dressing and erotic ambiguity are plentiful in the literature of the postbellum United States (from Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SAME-SEX LOVE

1869 Malbone to Mark Twain’s 1885 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), and in many cases seem to presage later homosexual styles. At the same time, novels like Bayard Taylor’s Joseph and His Friend (1870), Frederick W. Loring’s Two College Friends (1871), Henry James’s Roderick Hudson (1875), William Dean Howells’s Private Theatricals (1876) and The Shadow of a Dream (1890), as well as short stories like James Lane Allen’s “Two Gentlemen of Kentucky” (1888) all feature pairs of men whose intimacy—usually categorized as a “romantic friendship,” as the scholar Axel Nissen notes—seems to carry a special charge that exceeds social norms. Although novels played a central role in exploring the contours and boundaries of same-sex relationships in this period, short stories often seem to have provided the opportunity for particularly daring and searching depictions, and perhaps even more so in the case of female same-sex feeling than for male same-sex love. In the pioneering anthology Two Friends and Other Nineteenth-Century Lesbian Stories by American Women Writers (1994), Susan Koppelman collects fascinating tales by Rose Terry Cooke, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Kate Chopin, Alice French (Octave Thanet), Alice Brown, and Sara Orne Jewett. Like many of the stories of male “romantic friendship,” these tales may seem, in retrospect, identifiably “lesbian” (as Koppelman’s title puts it), but they must also have seemed fundamentally unobjectionable to the magazine editors who published them. For women of this period who chose to live together in intimate emotional attachment, there was a term—“Boston marriage”— that was readily available. Jewett herself lived for twentyseven years in a Boston marriage with Annie Adams Fields (the widow of Jewett’s Atlantic Monthly editor James T. Fields). The emotional interior of Jewett’s and Fields’s life together is necessarily inaccessible to us, but it is not implausible to suggest that the close emotional bonds between women in stories like Jewett’s “Martha’s Lady” (1897) or Woolson’s “Felipa” (1876) or Freeman’s “Two Friends” (1887) were in fact fictional explorations of new modes of affection and new styles of life that were being created by the stories’ realworld counterparts, including their authors. THE CONCEPT OF SEXUALITY

Recovering anything like an authentic account of the radically different ways in which people from earlier eras thought about the various feelings and experiences we now usually lump together and call “sexuality” is extremely difficult. Sexuality, which we tend to think of as a more or less discrete and unitary phenomenon (however complex and vexing), something one “has” A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

or “is,” can actually be more reasonably thought of as a composite entity (a lumping together of various separable elements), and these distinct elements can be teased apart. Michel Foucault, whose multivolume The History of Sexuality (1976–1984) is probably the most influential work on the subject, argued forcefully that we ought to stop thinking of sexuality as a “natural given” and see sexuality itself as a historical construction, a concept linking together “the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special knowledges, [and] the strengthening of controls and resistances” (pp. 105–106). These various elements do not naturally and necessarily go together, Foucault argued, but he observed that we have come to think of them as essentially linked, comprising a natural whole. This analysis of Foucault’s has potentially important implications for reading the literature of the past with an eye toward learning about same-sex love. Instead of reading a novel, for example, and trying to find characters who resemble homosexuals of today or relationships that resemble later gay or lesbian relationships, we might instead watch for the subtler, separate elements that were not in earlier times always aggregated and called “sexuality.” That is, we could read the imaginative literature of the past and look for “the stimulation of bodies” (when and how do characters get excited?) or “the formation of special knowledges” (when do we see some kind of professional expertise employed to identify erotic deviance?) without presupposing that these individual elements are coded exactly as they are today. Thus in Walt Whitman’s poetry, which is thought to celebrate gay love, it might be a valuable exercise for readers to examine how various kinds of sensual pleasure are depicted in (and stimulated by) his poetry. Whitman (1819–1892) wrote rapturously about bodies, pleasure, acts, interpersonal encounters, separate singularity, and affective collectivity, and Michael Moon, among others, has demonstrated the way that over the course of many years Whitman revised and expanded Leaves of Grass repeatedly, all while the social organization of erotic experience was drastically changing around him. Leaves of Grass first appeared as a slim volume in 1855, and upon its first publication one hostile reviewer denounced it as “a mass of stupid filth,” characterized by “a degrading, beastly sensuality,” but could only bring himself to specify this sensuality in Latin, “Peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum”—that is “that horrible sin, not to be named among Christians” (quoted in Katz, Love Stories, pp. 105– 106). This is an ancient phrase, long associated with homosexual sodomy, but while we might consider the reviewer to be prescient in detecting the same-sex the-


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

995

SAME-SEX LOVE

Annie Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett. The two women, who are known to have had a “Boston marriage,” in their library at 148 Charles Street, Boston, Massachusetts. COURTESY OF HISTORIC NEW ENGLAND/SPNEA

matics of Leaves of Grass, it is noteworthy that other reviewers did not appear to notice anything objectionable, and this reviewer reverted to an archaic theological condemnation of acts (sodomy) rather than a critique of a type of person (a homosexual). In his 1976 anthology Gay American History, Jonathan Ned Katz recounts that in the last years of Whitman’s life, he was revered and sought out by some of the leading spokesmen and theorists of the early homosexual rights movement, including the English writers Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) and John Addington Symonds (1840–1893), the latter of whom, in particular, pestered Whitman to declare unequivocally that his poetry was defending and advocating homosexuality. Symonds in an 1890 letter to Whitman professed his own belief that “some men have a strong natural bias toward persons of their own sex” and ventured his opinion that the “Calamus” section of Leaves of Grass was “calculated to encourage ardent and physical intimacies” (p. 348). Whitman, in irritation, replied

996

A M E R I C A N

to Symonds in what may seem to us a puzzling fashion, refusing to be slotted neatly into such a category and perversely declaring that Symonds was utterly mistaken in making such “morbid inferences” (p. 349). What to make of this? Was Whitman unhappy to be “outed”? Or did he believe that the rich inner life of feeling, and the complex experience of embodiment—not to mention the relationship between these subjective phenomena and literary expression—could not be reduced to newly established categories like “homosexual” and “heterosexual” except at great cost? Whatever we conclude, and whatever our interpretation of Whitman’s poetry, we can at least observe that Whitman lived through the radical transformations of (or the emergence of) sexuality that occurred in this period, wrote and revised his poetry over the long span of years from 1855 to the 1891 “deathbed edition,” and registered those transformations sensitively. Some contemporary readers, like Carpenter and Symonds, adopted Whitman as an avatar of homosexual love, and

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SAME-SEX LOVE

thus his writing—regardless of his intentions or wishes— played an instrumental role in establishing homosexual consciousness and founding a modern homosexual movement. The same could be said of many other authors, including Herman Melville (1819–1891), who was largely forgotten by the general public and disregarded by literary critics for the last decades of his life, when he lived in relative obscurity and virtually ceased publishing. But at his death in 1891 he left in manuscript a long story titled “Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative),” which was eventually published in 1924. The recovery of this tale, and the rehabilitation of Melville’s reputation, were partly instigated by coteries of homosexual readers who believed they detected in his writing a proto-gay sensibility. Had Melville been able, like Whitman, to respond to such ardent readers, his reaction would have great value for those who wish to understand how same-sex love impinges on literary creation (and vice versa). Literary scholars including James Creech and Robert K. Martin point to the dilemma that, in the absence of such evidence, we are left to wonder whether Melville was bestowing on his posterity a tale that made relatively explicit the same-sex thematics that readers have also found somewhat more cloudily available in his earlier writings such as Typee (1846), MobyDick (1851), and Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (1852). THE EMBRACE OF HOMOSEXUALITY

Although many literary texts from the nineteenth century pose difficult problems of historical interpretation— do their depictions of same-sex love anticipate later homosexual identities, or do we misrecognize them if we characterize them in that way?—by the early twentieth century there were literary works that are unmistakably modern in their depiction of love between persons of the same sex who have internalized a distinctly homosexual (or, for that matter, heterosexual) self-concept. In 1901, for instance, Claude Hartland’s The Story of a Life offered a candid depiction of a man struggling with the shame he felt due to his sexual desire for other men. The subtitle of the narrative, For the Consideration of the Medical Fraternity, suggests that Hartland was aware of the way the medical establishment was coming to think of homosexuality. In 1902, a nineteen-year-old woman from Butte, Montana, created a literary sensation when she published The Story of Mary MacLane, by Herself, in which she unabashedly proclaimed her own odd genius, expressed her powerful dissatisfaction with life in Butte, and professed her devotion to the high school teacher she referred to as “the anemone lady.” “I feel in the anemone lady a strange attraction of sex,” MacLane wrote. “There is in me a masculine element that, when I am thinking of A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

her, arises and overshadows all the others” (p. 77). MacLane’s weird self-narrative illustrates, among other things, that a young person in a remote place who feels different from her family and surroundings, and who is understood by no one around her, will often turn to reading to provide an imaginative world in which she can feel at least somewhat better oriented, if not exactly comfortable. MacLane tells frequently of the authors she likes and with whom she identifies. Charles Warren Stoddard, who had been publishing homoerotic tales of same-sex love since his South Sea Idyls (1869), published in 1903 an autobiographical novel depicting bohemian literary, theatrical, and artistic circles in San Francisco in which homoerotic interest is represented obliquely. What is sometimes called the first openly gay novel, Imre: A Memorandum (1906), by Edward Prime-Stevenson, approached homosexual love more directly than Stoddard did, but the novel had to be published abroad (in Naples) by private arrangement and under the pseudonym Xavier Mayne. James Gifford, who edited a 2003 edition of Imre, has likewise drawn our attention to an obscure short story by Stevenson, “Out of the Sun” (1913), also published by a vanity press in Italy, in which many of the contents of the library of a turn-of-the-century homosexual named Dayneford are helpfully listed. Dayneford has grouped and sequestered those books in his library that pertain to his same-sex erotic interests. In Dayneford’s Library (1995), Gifford lists the titles, and besides the specific makeup of this set of books, what is striking is that the construction of homosexuality is shown to be supported by literary canon-making. This connection between literary interest and emerging homosexual identity is pronounced as well in the novel published late in the life of the onceprominent Henry Blake Fuller, in which the eponymous hero is a graduate student in literature at a thinly disguised Northwestern University. Bertram Cope’s Year (1919) is fascinating, among other reasons, for the way it depicts the coexistence in one place and time of what seem to be several different styles of same-sex attachment and love, harking back to the earlier romantic friendship model, on the one hand, and anticipating a later style of urban gay identity, on the other. Fuller’s novel came out roughly at the same time as two other texts with which it can profitably be compared. Earl Lind’s Autobiography of an Androgyne (1918) describes a highly developed urban subculture in New York City, composed mainly of transvestite homosexuals, or fairies, whose headquarters was a beer garden called Paresis Hall on the Lower East Side. Lind, who was also called Ralph Werther and Jennie June at


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

997

SAME-SEX LOVE

times, describes a circle of men who have a highly articulate and politically astute account of their own sexual orientation. When Bertram, having narrowly escaped his friends’ attempts to get him married, leaves Chicago for a position at a university in the East at the end of the novel, an older woman who has taken a great interest in him believes he will settle into his new job and then resume what she imagines is his romance with one of the girls who boards with her, eventually sending for her to marry him. The older bachelor who has cultivated a friendship with Bertram believes, on the contrary, that in the new city Bertram will set up housekeeping with his flamboyant and effeminate friend Arthur Lemoyne, who embarrassed him in Chicago but would probably fit in with Earl Lind’s fairies at Paresis Hall. If Arthur and Bertram were to end up at Paresis Hall or a similar urban homosexual resort, they would luckily have avoided the sad fate of Sherwood Anderson’s Wing Biddelbaum in the story “Hands”—part of Winesburg, Ohio (1919)—who, nearly lynched by the panicked residents of a small town where he taught school and was falsely accused of improper conduct with the boys under his care, has sought fearful refuge in Winesburg with an elderly aunt. In provincial Winesburg he protects himself against renewed suspicion by carefully avoiding social interaction, suppressing what he thinks are revealing gestures, and stifling his imagination. Thus, approaching 1920 American literature reflected the status of same-sex love in the United States: although violent prejudice against homosexuality was rife a bold embrace of homosexual dignity was becoming possible. See also Sex Education

Lind, Earl. Autobiography of an Androgyne. New York: Medico-Legal Journal, 1918. MacLane, Mary. The Story of Mary MacLane, by Herself. 1902. In Tender Darkness: A Mary MacLane Anthology, edited by Elizabeth Pruitt. Belmont, Calif.: Abernathy and Brown, 1993. Nissen, Axel, ed. The Romantic Friendship Reader: Love Stories between Men in Victorian America. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003. Prime-Stevenson, Edward. Imre: A Memorandum. 1906. Edited by James J. Gifford. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2003. Stoddard, Charles Warren. For the Pleasure of His Company: An Affair of the Misty City. San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1903. Stoddard, Charles Warren. South Sea Idyls. 1869. In Cruising the South Seas: Stories by Charles Warren Stoddard, edited by Winston Leyland. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1987. Secondary Works

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Creech, James. Closet Writing/Gay Reading: The Case of Melville’s Pierre. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women, from the Renaissance to the Present. New York: Morrow, 1981. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage, 1990. See pp. 105–106. Gifford, James. Dayneford’s Library: American Homosexual Writing, 1900–1913. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.


Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys. New York: Library of America, 2005. Alcott, Louisa May. “My Mysterious Mademoiselle.” In From Jo March’s Attic: Stories of Intrigue and Suspense, edited by Madeleine B. Stern and Daniel Shealy, pp. 111–126. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993. Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1919. Fuller, Henry Blake. Bertram Cope’s Year. Chicago: R. F. Seymour, 1919.

Katz, Jonathan Ned. Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.: A Documentary. New York: Crowell, 1976. Katz, Jonathan Ned. Love Stories: Sex between Men before Homosexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Kent, Kathryn R. Making Girls into Women: American Women’s Writing and the Rise of Lesbian Identity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003.

Hartland, Claude. Claude Hartland: The Story of a Life: For the Consideration of the Medical Fraternity. 1901. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press, 1985.

Martin, Robert K. Hero, Captain, and Stranger: Male Friendship, Social Critique, and Literary Form in the Sea Novels of Herman Melville. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Koppelman, Susan, ed. Two Friends and Other NineteenthCentury Lesbian Stories by American Women Writers. New York: Meridian, 1994.

Moon, Michael. Disseminating Whitman: Revision and Corporeality in Leaves of Grass. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

998

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SAN FRANCISCO

Vicinus, Martha. Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778–1928. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Christopher Looby

SAN FRANCISCO In the wake of the 1848–1849 gold rush, San Francisco did not so much evolve as erupt as a frontier boomtown. And a decade later, in the 1860s, it emerged as a literary frontier when an impressive group of young writers began showing up in town and writing for a number of new lively local journals. Among the arriving writers were Bret Harte, Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), Charles Warren Stoddard, Ina Coolbrith, Cincinnatus H. “Joaquin” Miller, and Ambrose Bierce. As outsiders—some just passing through—they wrote about a city of outsiders, largely for an audience of outsiders. In exaggerated glimpses of a wayward city on the far edge of the continent, they confirmed for eastern readers their preconceptions of the new city as raw, unruly “other”—as everything the East was not. In its 1860s literary construction, San Francisco was an outpost of wealth and wildness, sophistication and lawlessness, a motley gathering of drifters, outcasts, gamblers, and speculators. Nineteenth-century western literature, implicitly at least, was always about the interplay between East and West, civilization and lawlessness, and early San Francisco provided the ground for this kind of cultural exchange. WRITERS AT THE END OF AN ERA

By the 1870s most of the literary pioneers were gone. Bret Harte (1836–1902) and Mark Twain (1835– 1910) were not to return, though each would continue to write about San Francisco and the West in the years ahead, Twain revisiting his western years in Roughing It (1872) and Harte doggedly plodding on for thirty post-California years with his sentimental tales about “redshirt” Sierra miners. Among those who stayed in the city or returned after a time away were Coolbrith, Bierce, and Miller. Ina Coolbrith (1841– 1928), who assisted Harte in launching the ambitious new Overland Monthly in 1868, worked as a librarian at Oakland’s Free Library; published a collection of her poetry, Songs of the Golden Gate (1895); and presided over literary salons, encouraging such diverse figures as Miller, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the dancer Isadora Duncan, and the young Jack London. She was named the state’s first poet laureate in 1915. With Coolbrith’s encouragement, the histrionic Joaquin Miller (1837– 1913) took his act to the London stage, performing, in A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

buckskins and a ten-gallon hat, the role of “western bard,” the “real McCoy” from the American West. On his return he built a monumental estate, the Hights, in the Oakland Hills. The dark, cynical Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?), after several years abroad, returned to issue scathing attacks for a new journal—the Wasp—and for William Randolph Hearst’s Examiner, his chief targets being Dennis Kearney and his racist Workingmen’s Party and the graft of the Big Four railroad monopolists (Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker). Then in 1914, at age seventyone, he disappeared in Mexico, presumably trying to join up with Pancho Villa. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, San Francisco emerged as a cosmopolitan, multiethnic enclave, stretching across the peninsula from bay to ocean. The transcontinental railroad arrived in 1869 (and a young Henry George was writing in the Overland Monthly about the economic hardships the rail lines would bring), and four years later the first cable car was introduced on Clay Street. Golden Gate Park, on the western edge of the city, was opened in 1870. In the westward expansion, distinct class and ethnic neighborhoods emerged: the older settlers and the wealthy concentrated in the hills, the newer immigrants and the poor in the flatlands, and the middle class increasingly in the newer western neighborhoods. While 60 percent of the population was of immigrant stock in 1880—largely first- and second-generation Irish, Germans, and Italians—a shift in the national origin of immigrants occurred in the closing years of the century. The majority of newcomers were no longer of northern and western European stock but of southern and eastern European heritage—southern Italians and Sicilians, Poles, Slavs, Hungarians, and Russian Jews. The shift, which was occurring then in all large American cities, engendered a fierce nativist response in the East, but because San Francisco was largely a second area of American settlement for Europeans (who often came with a knowledge of English) and because the city was too new to develop rigid social structures and barriers, there was less overt opposition to their arrival than in eastern cities. The great exception to the relatively tolerant San Francisco was the prejudice directed at the Chinese, who began arriving by boatloads in the 1850s. The city welcomed them at first as a source of cheap labor, but in the hard times of the 1870s, businesses that hired only white labor turned to the Chinese, who were compelled to work for less pay—for “coolie wages.” Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party spearheaded a drive to deport the Chinese and stop their continuing arrival, presenting them not only as a threat to Irish labor but as a dangerous, alien race, a menace to the city’s health


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

999

SAN FRANCISCO

and safety. Anti-Chinese hysteria peaked in a Chinatown riot in 1877, followed in 1882 by the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act—America’s first significant antiimmigration law. In 1910 a detention center on Angel Island was set up, essentially for the still-arriving Chinese. Poems of despair the Chinese detainees carved on the walls of their cells have become part of the American social and literary record. At the same time the incarcerated Chinese wrote their bitter poems, they wrote letters home to family members of the success, wealth, and respect they were achieving as “Celestials” on “Gold Mountain” (California). The contrast between the fanciful letters sent home and the despairing poems inscribed on cell walls offers, as contrast between dream and reality, one of the most poignant spectacles in American history. The first notable writer of Chinese descent to publish fiction about the Chinese on the West Coast was Edith Maude Eaton (1865–1914), the daughter of an English father and Chinese mother, who, under the name Sui Sin Far, wrote stories and children’s tales about the Chinese ordeal and the dilemmas of mixed Anglo-Chinese parentage. Set mostly in San Francisco’s and Los Angeles’s Chinatowns, her stories were collected as Mrs. Spring Fragrance in 1912 (out of print until its expanded reissue in 1995). Perhaps, though, the most famous, or infamous, work about the Chinese to come out of early San Francisco was Bret Harte’s 1870 poem, “Plain Language from Truthful James” (also known as “The Heathen Chinee”), about two gamblers cheating at euchre, one Chinese, the other a Yankee. The cheating William Nye, discovering his opponent is also hiding cards, cries out, irrelevantly, “We are ruined by Chinese cheap labour” (p. 132). Although Nye castigates Ah Sin in familiar anti-Chinese language, Harte’s poem seems more clearly an indictment of racism than an expression of it, an ironic statement consistent not only with the irony that pervades Harte’s writing but also with his earlier defense of the Chinese in the dispatches he sent to eastern journals. SAN FRANCISCO FICTION IN THE AGE OF REALISM

The conclusion of the Spanish-American War in the opening years of the twentieth century persuaded San Francisco that it would be the center of a new Pacificfacing nation. Anticipating its new role, the city embarked on a major renaissance in city planning, a “City Beautiful” project on classical and European models, sparked by the reform mayor James Phelan and engineered by the architect and city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham. San Francisco would be another “White City,” like the Chicago constructed for its 1893 exposition and echoed on a smaller scale in San

1000

A M E R I C A N

Francisco’s 1894 Midwinter International Exposition in Golden Gate Park. The city would, moreover, demonstrate its hegemony over its new rival four hundred miles to the south, Los Angeles, which was then attracting hundreds of thousands of migrants. The earthquake disrupted the plans. On 18 April 1906 the city was rocked by a series of major jolts. Brick buildings south of Market Street, the financial district, and much of downtown collapsed. The worst was yet to come in the fires that followed. Before the flames were stopped on Van Ness Street, half the residential portions of the city were destroyed. The city recovered quickly, though. Most of the downtown area was rebuilt in the next four years, and the city celebrated its recovery in the 1915 PanamaPacific International Exposition. When the quake struck, the San Francisco–born writer Jack London (1876–1916), not yet thirty and with his best-known books behind him, had bought a ranch in Glen Ellen in Sonoma County (fifty miles north of the city) and was building his ketch, the Snark, in preparation for a round-the-world cruise. The quake held up construction and delayed the start. Then a skin infection he contracted caused the journey to be aborted in Australia, and in 1909 he was back in Glen Ellen, where he began work on two of his last novels, Burning Daylight (1910) and Valley of the Moon (1913), journey novels that retrace London’s own discovery of Glen Ellen (the Valley of the Moon), setting the bucolic landscape against the brutal, life-destroying experiences in the Bay Area cities—San Francisco and Oakland. In Burning Daylight, Elam Harnish, one of London’s Yukon warriors, having made a fortune in Klondike gold, returns to a San Francisco that, a generation after its own gold fever, has become a frontier of mad financial speculation, a Darwinian battleground for economic supremacy. As a naive newcomer to the city, he is swindled out of a big chunk of money, and in a showdown that might have come right out of a conventional western—that in fact reads like a parody of Bret Harte or even Owen Wister—he faces down the swindlers, a Colt .44 in his hand. From this point his Nietzschean will to power takes over. As urban capitalist, he wheels and deals his way to control vast holdings across the bay in Oakland—oil lines, ferries, and whole neighborhoods. The price he pays, though, for his ruthless individualism is nervous exhaustion and physical deterioration, and as London envisioned his own recuperation in his second marriage and settlement on the land, Harnish falls in love and finds a new destiny in Sonoma Valley, a land of rolling hills, manzanitas, madrones, and redwoods. It is a rebirth for the hero after his emotional death in San Francisco.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SAN FRANCISCO

Reconstruction efforts in San Francisco. Looking west toward San Francisco Bay, after the 1906 earthquake. CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, FN-32841

The Valley of the Moon is similarly a return-to-theland novel, Sonoma Valley rescuing Billy and Saxon Roberts from their struggle to survive in the urban jungle. The first part of the novel is a long, harrowing account of their life on the Oakland waterfront—the same land that Elam Harnish developed into an industrial zone—an urban pit of violent labor warfare, police brutality, drunkenness, prostitution, and near starvation. It is the site of the failed promise of the California City—and by extension, the American City; the urban passages might well have come from books like Stephen Crane’s Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893), Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890), or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906). London was a socialist, but he also believed in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority; the return to the land is construed as the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon in America. Billy and Saxon (their names a not-toosubtle reminder of their heritage) are rendered as the dispossessed descendants of their pioneer forebears, who crossed a continent to claim the West only to A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

lose it to foreigners—industrious European and Asian farmers. In journeying out of the city to reclaim the land, the novel implies, the couple is reclaiming what rightfully, historically, belongs to them. With the emergence of writers born in, or raised in, San Francisco—like London, Gertrude Atherton, and Frank Norris—the city could no longer be appropriated simply as exotic frontier or local color venue; the boomtown had become a metropolis with a population that exceeded 300,000 at century’s end and then doubled to over 600,000 by 1920. Significantly, the writers in this second wave of San Francisco writing employed not only tougher brands of urban realism but also a deeper consciousness of the past, of the city’s local and regional sources. For the visiting journalists of the 1860s, writing more for eastern audiences than for locals, the dialectic is geographical (East-West); in the fiction by homegrown writers in the next generation the dialectic is temporal. The present is prefigured, contained, in the past.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1001

SAN FRANCISCO

Gertrude Atherton (1857–1948), the first significant San Francisco–born novelist, was concerned throughout her long career (from the 1880s to the 1940s) with the historic reconstruction of San Francisco and its surroundings (including the city of Atherton, south of San Francisco, named after her husband’s family) from the pre-Yankee era to the multiethnic present. In her story collection The Splendid, Idle Forties (1902), she created a romantic, Arcadian myth of ranchos, missions, and haciendas before the American conquest. Thirteen of her novels, including (among her better-known works) The Californians (1898) and Ancestors (1907), belong to what she called her “story chronicle” of San Francisco, tracing the evolution of the city through the eyes of genteel, sympathetic young women trying to find useful places for themselves in a city undergoing tumultuous growth and expansion. Chicago-born Frank Norris (1870–1902), who arrived in San Francisco at age fourteen in 1884, served his literary apprenticeship in the 1890s writing for two new journals, the Lark and the Wave. Fascinated by the city’s ethnic and racial mix living in proximity on the peninsula, he wrote in the Wave of such local oddities as a red-haired child who was half Jewish and half Chinese and a man working in a Portuguese wine shop whose father was Negro and his mother Chinese. In his major San Francisco novel, McTeague (1899), the denizens of working-class Polk Street, where “Mac” has his dental parlors, constitute an ethnic stew of Anglos, Swiss German, Polish Jews, and Mexicans. But Norris was no latter-day Bret Harte, who considered himself a “foreign correspondent” in the city, observing its quaint, polyglot life; Norris’s concern in the novel is less with the city’s ethnic makeup than with the hereditary disposition of his protagonist and the irresistible pull of history. A year spent at the university in Berkeley put Norris under the influence of the evolutionary scientist Joseph Le Conte, who stressed the shaping force of heredity and the precarious mid-position human beings occupied between civilization and savagery. Le Conte and Émile Zola (whom Norris was reading then) became the principal sources both for McTeague and for another San Francisco novel, Vandover and the Brute (completed in the mid-1890s but not published until 1914, a dozen years after his death). Both trace the devolution of their title characters, who, unable to repress their primitive, instinctual sides, degenerate to a state of atavism. Mac has been born and raised in the Sierra mining country, and after his time as a Polk Street dentist comes to an end through the betrayal of a jealous friend, followed by a string of events that culminate in the murder of his wife, he returns to the territory of his childhood,

1002

A M E R I C A N

Two years before publishing McTeague, his novel of degeneracy in San Francisco, Frank Norris offered a more upbeat appraisal of literary opportunities in a new city geographically isolated from the rest of America.

Perhaps no great city in the world is as isolated as we are. . . . There is no great city to the north of us, to the south none nearer than Mexico, to the west the waste of the Pacific, to the east the waste of the deserts. Here we are set down as a pin point in a vast circle of solitude. Isolation produces individuality, originality. . . . and we have time to develop unhampered types and characters and habits unbiased by outside influences, types that are admirably suited to fictitious treatment. Frank Norris, “An Opening for Novelists: Great Opportunities for Fiction-Writers in San Francisco,” Wave 16 (22 May 1897): 7.

one step ahead of his pursuers. His animalistic side, no longer held in check by the middle-class trappings of his city life, takes over. He becomes what his heredity has dictated, sliding into the gravitational field of his primitive past. His flight takes him instinctively (by a kind of animalistic sixth sense) to the Placer mining country of his youth and then, in further flight from the present, to that most primordial landscape, Death Valley, where he finds his own death, handcuffed to his dead pursuer on the sun-scorched desert floor. Out in the endless California desert, a landscape as old as the earth, Norris offers one of the most freakish and claustrophobic scenes in literature. McTeague is chained to his hereditary past. If the West, in the national mythology, represents desire, promise, and the future, it also represents, for the major San Francisco novelists in the period considered here, the impossibility of escaping history. We carry our histories with us to the West. Memory and desire, past and future, coexist. The past may be a world elsewhere—across an ocean, as it was for the Chinese immigrants—or it may be discovered or recovered on the regional landscape, as it was for London, Atherton, and Norris. The city positioned at the end of the land is the city that engenders such returns to history. See also Chinese; Disasters; Immigration; McTeague; Mrs. Spring Fragrance; Overland Monthly; “Plain Language from Truthful James”

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

S AT I R E , B U R L E S Q U E , A N D PA R O D Y


Harte, Francis Bret. “Plain Language from Truthful James.” 1870. In The Complete Works of Bret Harte, vol.1, pp. 131– 133. London: Chatto and Windus, 1880. Hicks, Jack, James D. Houston, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Al Young, eds. The Literature of California: Writing from the Golden State. Vol. 1, Native American Beginnings to 1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Contains samplings of such San Francisco writers as Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Ina Coolbrith, Joaquin Miller, Ambrose Bierce, Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far), Gertrude Atherton, Jack London, Frank Norris, and an anonymous Chinese immigrant poet. London, Jack. Burning Daylight. 1910. Oakland, Calif.: Star Rover, 1987. London, Jack. The Valley of the Moon. 1913. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Peregrine Smith, 1975. Norris, Frank. McTeague.1899. In Novels and Essays, edited by Donald Pizer. New York: Library of America, 1986. Secondary Works

Fine, David, and Paul Skenazy, eds. San Francisco in Fiction: Essays in a Regional Literature. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995. Contains an introduction to San Francisco writing and includes essays on Harte, Twain, Norris, London, Atherton, and Chinese literature. Lyon, Thomas, et al., eds. A Literary History of the American West. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1987. Contains essays on Harte, Twain, Norris, and London. Scharnhorst, Gary. “Bret Harte and the Literary Construction of the American West.” In A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America, edited by Charles L. Crow. New York: Blackwell, 2003. Starr, Kevin. Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Walker, Franklin. San Francisco’s Literary Frontier. New York: Knopf, 1939. Wollenberg, Charles. Golden Gate Metropolis: Perspectives on Bay Area History. Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, 1985. Wyatt, David. The Fall into Eden: Landscape and Imagination in California. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986. David Fine

SATIRE, BURLESQUE, AND PARODY During his tenure as Professor of Belles Lettres at Harvard, James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) lectured on the attributes that distinguished “Humor, Wit, Fun, A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

and Satire.” Of the four, satire was the most difficult to grasp and appreciate: “Of satirists I have hitherto said nothing, because some, perhaps the most eminent of them, do not come under the head either of wit or humor. With them, as Juvenal said of himself, ‘facit indignatio versus,’ and wrath is the element, as a general rule, neither of wit nor humor” (p. 52). For Lowell, writers who performed more “as censors and moralists than as movers of laughter” (p. 56) were, like Horace, deservedly consigned to Dante’s limbo, an apt symbol of their literary merit. Nevertheless, Lowell did value those who could fuse “fun” with political and social commentary, such as Aristophanes and Miguel de Cervantes. Himself a practitioner in two series of The Biglow Papers (published in 1848 and 1862), Lowell’s heightened sensitivity on the subject here is telling. Although he would continue to produce until his death in 1891, Lowell was more the product of antebellum America. His literary and cultural ideals had been informed by the Romantic tradition. However, the horrors of the Civil War had all but trashed such aesthetic idealism. Postbellum writers emerged with different agendas and tastes, and like most new schools of art, they attacked the values of their predecessors. In their literary, social, and philosophical assault upon the old order, these new American realists used satire to overturn Romantic concepts. While Lowell’s lecture does not fend off such attacks, it does caution that satire mired in its own rebelliousness is intellectually shallow. Only when the satirist taps other resources of humor can such criticism become palatable and influential. DEFINITIONS

Although informed by a realist’s sensibility, American satire from the Civil War to World War I adhered to a tradition over 2,000 years old, whose definers include Horace (also known as Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B.C.E.–8 B.C.E.) and Juvenal (also known as Decimus Junius Juvenalis, c. 50–127 C.E.). The satirist ridicules human folly and corruption in order to raise public awareness about a salient problem, ostensibly to a point where the resulting controversy forces a reluctant authority to address the issue. Since satirists seldom hold any influential civic position, they resort to the pen to effect social, political, or aesthetic change. Because he or she lacks political power, the critic selects tactful weapons. Regardless of the intensity of his or her invective, he or she tempers it with humor so as to delineate the ludicrousness of a commonly held value, a behavior, or a state of affairs. Ideally, amid their laughter, readers will be spurred to action—to call for reform, to reject false or antiquated practices, to recognize social folly, and the like. At the very least, the


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1003


satirist hopes to make the audience realize that a problem exists or persists. Satire’s Latin root, satura, translates as “medley,” which attests to the multiple rhetorical weapons available to the writer. Favorite devices of the satirist are irony and sarcasm. The former invites readers to fathom hidden meaning below superficial images and statements. With sarcasm, the author’s true meaning is obviously opposite to the rhetorical content of the sentence. Two suborders of satire are burlesque and parody. The word “burlesque” derives from the Italian word for mockery. The targets of burlesques are usually broad, such as the practices and aesthetic virtues of a rival literary tradition. Heavily reliant upon caricature, burlesques have two extremes. High burlesque exults with lofty language and inappropriate dignity subjects that are low in character or communal standing. Low burlesque, also known as travesty, degrades with absurdity and informality topics that are held in high regard by society. In contrast to burlesque, parody specifies a target, which is usually a particular literary work or an author’s style. Clearly imitating a rival’s text, the parodist uses humor to reveal flaws in its aesthetic assumptions, the lapses in its prose or poetic techniques, and the pretentiousness of its philosophy.

tial election of 1876, writers found much grist to grind for their satiric mill. After mocking civilian responses to the Civil War in Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867), John William DeForest (1826–1906) exposed the inherently poisoning effect that American politics had upon individual character in Honest John Vane (1873). The novel traces the descent of the election slogan “Honest John Vane” from an unsubstantiated sobriquet to a sarcastic indictment of the politician, who comes to symbolize how democratic elections tend to send immoral and otherwise unqualified representatives to Congress. Midway in the plot, Vane sells his office, a folly that DeForest underscores with cynical humor: “I’ll tell you what we want, . . . a bill to stop the collection of interest until the loan falls due, when we will pay the one hundred and thirty millions at once, if we can. Second, we want a bill to change the government lien from a first to a second mortgage, so that we can issue a batch of first-mortgage bonds and raise money for current expenses. That’s all we want now, Vane, and I’m sure it’s moderate.” “O ain’t it, though?” grinned Honest John, half indignant and half amused at this imprudent rapacity. “I’m sure it’s very kind of you not to ask Uncle Sam to throw in the whole loan as a present. I dare say you might get it.” “O, we’re not a bit greedy,” Dorman continued to chuckle. (Pp. 167–168)

CULTURAL SATIRE

Ultimately, parody, burlesque, and satire have the same goal—to empower an outsider to influence attitudes toward commonly accepted cultural institutions. By infusing the outrageous with humor, postbellum American satirists sought to reassert their voices amid the din of democracy. Their targets were many—the unhealthy persistence of Romantic ideals after the Civil War, ill-conceived new trends in American letters, the unremitting relapses of corruption in American politics, the insufferable self-importance of the American ego, the delusions of predestined human progress, and the materialistic greed of the American character and economy. As the western frontier closed, as the nation meandered through a succession of ineffectual federal administrations, as the economy suffered periodic crippling downswings, as the United States struggled to redefine its democratic form of government and find its proper place in the world, these critics found much hypocrisy, vice, and self indulgence to lampoon. The public’s fascination with and horror at the political corruption that infested national and local politics during and after Reconstruction was quickly addressed in fiction. From the disillusion inspired by scandals such as the Crédit Mobilier affair during the Grant administration to the hijacking of the presiden-

1004

A M E R I C A N

Note DeForest’s employment of understatement: what is called “moderate” is criminally audacious; and Dorman’s greed is indeed boundless. Like others in the novel, the scene is uncomfortably humorous. We smile at the dark negotiations between politicians and crooks, but that response only heightens the cultural grotesqueness of the business. Speaking with his authorial voice, DeForest concludes his novel with a sober assessment, warning that the current political system fosters bribery and corruption to a degree that “Congress will surely and quickly become, what some sad souls claim that it already is, a den of thieves” (p. 232). Around the same time, Mark Twain (1835–1910) teamed with Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) to write in three months The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), which chronicles the shenanigans pursued by financiers, land speculators, and dishonest politicians for the sake of wealth and power. The catalyst for American greed is a lax monetary policy:

H I S T O R Y

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:—“I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.” (Pp. 195–196)

Such irony mocks capitalism with unsettling import for the American ethic. Based upon Twain’s relative James Lampton, the comic Colonel Sellers embodies the lustful quest for wealth that drives the speculators in the novel. When one scheme falls apart, Sellers manages to talk and bribe his way out of a lynching. Shortly after, however, “when the men’s minds had cooled and Sellers was gone, they hated themselves for letting him beguile them with fine speeches, but it was too late, now—they agreed to hang him another time—such time as Providence should appoint” (p. 188). This passage, attributed to Twain, suggests that the novel targeted two groups: those who maliciously pursue money and power, and those who through inaction or indifference permit such absurdity. Thus the moral vacillations of the lynch mob equate to politically sleepy readers whom the authors wish to arouse by exasperating them. Despite its literary flaws, The Gilded Age so effectively savaged American society and politics that historians subsequently borrowed the title to label the era. Twain’s other works likewise mixed social satire amid their general humor. The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrims’ Progress (1869) lampoons American bravado against the backdrop of European hypocrisy. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) (1885) comically questions many aspects of America life, from the pretension of religious evangelicalism, through racial and social injustice, to the burdensome legacy of Romantic idealism. Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) chronicles with a hint of cynicism the misadventures resulting from a slave’s switching her near-white baby with her master’s child. Through the resulting confusion of identities, which questions the notion of racial birthrights, Twain isolates for ridicule the America’s discriminatory caste system. Other writers of the period likewise employed humor with an edge to raise public awareness of the cultural ills of the day. Disguised somewhat in entertaining fables, the collections of Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris allegorically satirize the racial divide between white and black America. My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s (1873) by Marietta Holley employs various comedic devices to champion woman’s suffrage and temperance. In Mr. Dooley in Peace and War (1898), Finley Peter Dunne uses an Irish-born barkeeper as his spokesman to comment with wry broguery about the excessive urbanization of the United States A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

(as especially symbolized by Chicago’s city government) and about national political topics from the 1896 election to the Spanish-American War. Fables in Slang (1900) and its sequels by George Ade question the American dream, especially given the suspect motives of those who pursue it. All of the above titles are collections of short pieces. Many satires of the period were first published through either newspaper syndicates—such as the chains set up by Samuel Sidney McClure and William Randolph Hearst—or in American magazines, especially ones devoted to humor such as Puck and Judge. One of the notables of the Hearst syndicate was Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?), who in 1881 began publishing highly ironic alternative definitions of words, often epigrammatic in length, which commented cynically upon the sorry state of human affairs. Originally collected under the title The Cynic’s Word Book (1906), the work was retitled The Devil’s Dictionary (1911) when it was published as part of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce. Many of Bierce’s observations take aim at the politics of the day: Congress, n. A body of men who meet to repeal laws. Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. Agitator, n. A statesman who shakes the fruit trees of his neighbors—to dislodge the worms. Nepotism, n. Appointing your grandmother to office for the good of the party. (Pp. 20, 54–55, 228)

But other sorts of social targets provided Bierce with fair game: “Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable” (p. 288). Bierce’s penchant to interpret matters darkly and pithily inspired future iconoclasts such as H. L. Mencken, who in A Book of Burlesques (1916, rev. ed. 1921) quipped that civilization is a “concerted effort to remedy the blunders and check the practical joking of God” (p. 202). Bierce lamented the state of satire in his definition of the word: “Satire, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author’s enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. . . .” (pp. 308–309). This assessment notes how, because of the alienating nature of the genre, the satirist must stand apart from all he hopes to reform, believing that his berating


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1005


tioned tremendous facts under its breath with certain effort at concealment to seven not-dwarfed poplars on an un-distant mauve hilltop. The Mere Boy was a brilliant blue color. The effect of the scene was not un-kaleidoscopic. (P. 1122)

humor will sway the public out of its political and social inertia. PARODIES AND BURLESQUES

The cultural milieu at the turn of the century was not satire’s only target. Using the forms of burlesque and parody, American writers challenged the literary tastes of the public as well as the stylistic and thematic foibles of their fellow authors. Some critics made fun of a long-established literary trend as it was going out of fashion. Others parodied the works of rivals. Popularity invited adverse attention, as evident in this Bierce definition: “Nihilism, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi” (p. 228). Parodies and burlesques abound in the literature published between the Civil War and World War I. In Versatilities (1871) Robert Henry Newell parodied the poetry of the stalwarts of American romanticism— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In Idle Idylls (1900) and subsequent volumes, Carolyn Wells selected her targets from among the nineteenth century’s most popular poets, including William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Rudyard Kipling. Among Mark Twain’s many burlesques in long and short fiction is “A Double-Barreled Detective Story” (1902), which comically imitates the genre made famous by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales. Both Frank Norris (1870–1902) and Bret Harte (1836–1902) made concerted efforts at parody. In “Perverted Tales” (1897), Norris singled out six of his contemporaries for brief and humorous imitation— Rudyard Kipling, Stephen Crane, Bret Harte, Richard Harding Davis, Ambrose Bierce, and Anthony Hope. Being the most renowned writer of fiction and poetry living during the 1890s, Kipling was an obvious choice to parody. Harte, Davis, Bierce, and Hope all had well-established reputations. The inclusion of Stephen Crane, however, demonstrates Norris’s remarkable powers of literary assessment. It had been only two years since the publication of The Red Badge of Courage (1895), which had catapulted Crane to public acclaim. In “The Green Stone of Unrest,” Norris had a parodic field day with Crane’s preference for simple syntaxes, his impressionistic eye for color, and his universalizing characters through epithets: A Mere Boy stood on a pile of blue stones. His attitude was regardant. The day was seal brown. There was a vermillion valley containing a church. The church’s steeple aspired strenuously in a direction tangent to the earth’s center. A pale wind men-

1006

A M E R I C A N

Obviously, Norris exaggerates rhetorical effects to highlight nuances of Crane’s style. On one hand, such imitation calls attention to those prose traits that make Crane’s voice unique. On the other, Norris’s observations suggest that Crane’s techniques ultimately fail to provide his audience with a rich reading experience. Bret Harte found great success with Condensed Novels, and Other Papers (1867), in which he comically manhandles the works of writers from Charles Dickens to James Fenimore Cooper. The sequel, Condensed Novels, Second Series: New Burlesques (1902), presents seven more send-ups, which include tongue-in-cheek imitations of Hope, Conan Doyle, and Kipling. The last was perhaps the most parodied writer of his day. Harte’s burlesque “Stories Three” attacks three of Kipling’s interests—life in India, life in the British military, and literature for children. For instance, Harte delights in emulating Kipling’s hyperbolic plots about the exploits of roguish soldiers. Here, a regimental colonel complains about the behavior of three of his men: But there are some things I cannot ignore. The carrying off of the great god Vishnu from the Sacred Shrine at Ducidbad by The Three for the sake of the Priceless opals in its eyes. . . . Yet I would have overlooked the theft of the opals if they had not substituted two of the Queen’s regimental buttons for the eyes of the god. This, while it did not deceive the ignorant priests, had a deep political and racial significance. (Pp. 180–181)

Punctuated by the comic understatement at the end, this low-burlesque approach to Kipling’s view of adventure stresses the improbabilities of such events, thus reinforcing in the minds of the audience Harte’s partiality for the values of realism. A literary hoax of 1916 reveals one difficulty that satire sometimes presents for readers—that is, an audience must be aware of the parodist’s intent. Wanting to lay waste to modernist trends in poetry, particularly imagism, Witter Bynner and Arthur Davison Ficke fabricated a fictitious new school of poetry called Spectra, composed vapid poetry, and submitted their doggerel to literary magazines. The unsuspecting editors of these publications treated the poems as serious submissions. They not only published these works but also hailed the emergence of a vital new poetic tradition. Only after the hoax began to unravel did the American literary scene recognize the parodying intent of the hoaxers.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

As is true in other nations and at other times, the better satirists tend to be the better general writers of the day. Satire clarifies the cultural and aesthetic values the parodist would rather not practice. Thus Twain’s hilarious “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” (1895) articulates why he rejects romanticism. Norris’s “Perverted Tales” reinforces his own dedication to naturalism’s themes and rhetorical demands. On a larger scale, the radical changes in American democracy from 1870 to 1920 drew many to a cultural debate, where those adept in the art of satire were certain to be heard. See also Humor; Realism; Regionalism and Local Color Fiction BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Bierce, Ambrose. The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce. Vol. 7, The Devil’s Dictionary. 1911. New York: Gordian Press, 1966. DeForest, John William. Honest John Vane. 1873. College Park, Pa.: Bald Eagle Press, 1960. Harte, Bret. Condensed Novels, Second Series: New Burlesques. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902. Lowell, James Russell. “Humor, Wit, Fun, and Satire.” 1893. In The Function of the Poet and Other Essays, edited by Albert Mordell. 1920. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1967. Mencken, H. L. A Book of Burlesques. 1916. Rev. ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921. Norris, Frank. “Perverted Tales.” 1897. In Novels and Essays. New York: Library of America, 1986. Twain, Mark, and Charles Dudley Warner. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. 1873. In The Gilded Age and Later Novels. New York: Library of America, 2002. Secondary Works

Dane, Joseph A. Parody: Critical Concepts Versus Literary Practices: Aristophanes to Sterne. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. Elliott, Robert C. The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960. Richard Fusco

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY In many ways—political, sociological, economic, and technological—the end of the nineteenth century marked a decisive turning point in American history. Irrevocably shaping the understanding of “modern times,” the decades after 1870 were crucial for the A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

shift in American society from a weak agrarian republic in 1800 to a powerful industrial nation at the dawn of the twentieth century. SCIENCE, INDUSTRIALIZATION, AND ACCELERATION IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The population of the United States exploded from roughly five million in 1800 to more than seventy seven million in 1900. At the turn of the nineteenth century only 322,000, or a mere 6 percent, of all Americans lived in cities. A hundred years later, the proportion was 40 percent or more than thirty million people. Simultaneously, new technological devices rapidly and dramatically altered the lifestyle of almost every American. Earlier inventions such as the power loom, the sewing machine, the steam-driven flatbed press, the steamboat, the locomotive, the telegraph, the camera, and the spectroscope had strongly influenced the attitudes and mind-sets of nineteenth-century Americans. The large-scale application of these devices to industrial processes and further insight into their underlying scientific principles led to a number of complementary innovations during the final decades of the century (the telephone, the phonograph, moving pictures, the steam turbine, the internal combustion engine, the airplane, and so on) and transformed the physical and psychological conditions of life in America. The second half of the century, then, saw the implementation of the groundbreaking, major discoveries made by the end of the 1850s. The later phase systematized and applied the sciences to industry and technology on a large scale. By the end of the century, technology became the primary model for progress. Scientific invention based on systematic research and experimentation replaced the older, republican tradition of ingenious tinkering, which depended on tedious trial-and-error procedures or more often, sheer luck. In keeping with this new orientation, and despite its obvious elitist underpinnings, progressive Americans increasingly embraced a culture of technological expertise that valued highly specialized knowledge and favored scientific solutions for practical, everyday problems. Every area of life now demanded “expert” wisdom, from the conservation of nature, agricultural development, mining and steel production, or factory administration and office organization to railroad and street building, city planning, welfare programs, the domestic economy, and even leisure and sports. If, as Carolyn Marvin points out, the retooling of American industries from steam to electricity fostered “a new class of managers of machines and techniques” (p. 9), the idea behind such specialization, namely, that in a complex social system


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1007


science holds a remedy for every individual and societal problem, became a national creed. This crucial period in American history was also about speed and acceleration, which some saw as the most distinctive characteristics of American society, and about how they became a determining factor in scientific, industrial, and cultural production. The invention of faster means of transportation such as the train, the automobile and, somewhat later, the airplane, decisively altered the way people perceived the world. Physically, these modes shaped and transformed the landscape by requiring an extensive grid of tracks and roads; psychologically, they changed human perception by destabilizing the relation between the fast-moving passenger and the world outside. The impact of these inventions clearly went beyond their physical existence to challenge perceptions of both self and the world. In 1925 the philosopher of science Alfred North Whitehead reflected that “in the past human life was lived in the bullock cart; in the future it will be lived in an aeroplane; and the change of speed amounts to a difference in quality” (p. 137). Yet to many of his contemporaries, firsthand experience with rapid movement had already become commonplace. By the early 1920s they were riding on turbine-driven high-speed trains, eating fast food in streamlined diners, or rushing to work in the latest Ford or GM models. By that time also, Albert Einstein (1879–1955) had articulated his special theory of relativity (1905), predicated on a universe in fast motion, and Frederick Winslow Taylor (1865–1915), in response to what he perceived as the deliberate hampering of the speed of industrial production by inefficient workers, had published The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), a manifesto that turned workers into virtual human machines. Although much of the modern preoccupation with speed was associated with twentieth-century machine technology, the enthusiasm inspired by airplanes or internal combustion engine automobiles that set new records for speed was anticipated in the final decades of the preceding century by increased attention to rationalization and the shrinking of time and space in practically all areas of American culture. Communication and voice recording are a good case in point. Driven by new scientific insights into the nature of electromagnetic waves (Hans Christian Ørsted, James Clerk Maxwell, Heinrich Rudolph Hertz), experiments in rapid communication finally led to the invention of the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell), the phonograph, and the dictating machine (both developed by Thomas Edison). These inventions in turn facilitated the rapid growth of modern cities, whose administrations and office networks depended on instant communication without the delays of hand-carried messages and documents. The

1008

A M E R I C A N

telephone, according to Stephen Kern, “accelerated business transactions by increasing the liquidity of securities and the speed of fundraising. J. P. Morgan averted a financial panic in 1907 when, over the telephone, he extended $25 million credit to several major banks threatened with excessive withdrawals” (p. 114). By 1900 Americans so thoroughly and efficiently put to use the new time-saving electrical devices that one stunned English traveler remarked, “Life in the United States is one perpetual whirl of telephones, telegrams, phonographs, electric bells, motors, lifts, and automatic instruments” (quoted in Mowry, pp. 1–2). Artists and writers confronted, and quite frequently subverted, the shifting attitudes, mores, and behavioral patterns of Americans living in a culture dominated by science. Far from being a mere reflection of the larger society and its sociohistorical dynamics, art served to register the subtle changes that marked the dawn of a new era and helped to negotiate the tensions accompanying technological progress and the shift in scientific and economic paradigms. What is more, it gave voice to growing concerns about these developments, even while its own styles and formal structures already betrayed the impact and power of the new system. Although the artistic mind often appeared at odds with new trends and changing material conditions, much of modernist art and literature incorporated the new machine culture and its popular representations in photography and film with astonishing ease. What Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), a prominent voice in the nascent realist movement, represented in his famous painting The Gross Clinic (1875) was not just the wonder, awe, and disgust some felt toward the latest progress in anatomy, but also a formal affinity with scientific methods and objectivity. Eakins’s emphasis on the human body as an object of study and observation was evidently out of sync with dominant Victorian aesthetics and the painting was consigned to the medical section of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, rather than the fine arts section.

VISIONS OF THE PAST, ENVISIONING THE FUTURE

Not all writers, however, adopted the new trend toward “authenticity” and realism to articulate their take on the rampant materiality and fast-paced technological progress of America’s “Gilded Age.” Some used the well-established model of utopian writing, retooling its fantastic elements to launch scathing critiques of the times or to extrapolate a new and better form of society from the wonder-working prospects of contemporary science and technology. One of the most important and enduring examples of a critique is

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


The Gross Clinic, 1875. Painting by Thomas Eakins. © GEOFFREY CLEMENTS/CORBIS

Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889); Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1887) exemplifies the more optimistic view. Both are steeped in the determinist ideologies of Social Darwinism and the “new” behavioral sciences and treat modern technology as a juggernaut, a historical force that cannot be annihilated or reversed. Yet while Bellamy (1850– 1898) stresses the inherent capacity of modern technology to “heal” the widespread social tensions that threatened to divide American society at the turn of the century, Twain (1835–1910) envisions a technological apocalypse with fatal consequences for the future of nature and human civilization. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

James M. Cox has suggested (p. 89) that Connecticut Yankee occupies in Twain’s oeuvre approximately the same position that Pierre occupies in that of Herman Melville’s. But although both works followed towering masterpieces (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby-Dick, respectively), Twain’s satire of nineteenth-century ingenuity and entrepreneurship might more easily be compared to Melville’s The Confidence-Man (1857), also a disturbing, stylistically and structurally flawed critique of corporate America. Even though in Connecticut Yankee criticism of latenineteenth-century progressivist ideology is partly defused by the story’s humorous narrative frame, Twain’s backward-in-time travelogue still stands as


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1009


one of the most radical and deeply analytical revisions of the American technological dream. On the surface a story about an unlikely clash of cultures and historical periods (sixth-century Britain versus nineteenthcentury Connecticut), its thematic scope extends to issues of writing and representation, mass media, communication networks, capitalist economics, ethics in authoritarian society, and, most prominently, science and the mystery of human nature. The novel centers on how a modern American technophile who, after a head injury, loses consciousness and upon reawakening finds himself amid the knights at King Arthur’s court, navigates his cultural alienation and the surplus of scientific knowledge arising from his advanced, nineteenth-century background. Much of its narrative thrust explores the enormous material progress Anglo-Saxon culture had made over the elapsed thirteen hundred years and also engages the changed psychological conditions that such progress entails. What is more, it asks the crucial question: To what degree can these changes be attributed to individual cultural responses? Or are they innate in human beings generally? Especially in the middle parts of the book, where human behavior is thoroughly discussed, Twain juxtaposes diverging concepts of personality that reflect his transitional position between Romantic idealism and late-nineteenthcentury behaviorist social determinism. In one of the most symbolically loaded moments of the text, Hank Morgan, a former superintendent at the Colt arms factory in Hartford, Connecticut, and his sixth-century ally Clarence prepare for final battle with the Roman Catholic church. To this end they rig the cave of their longtime opponent Merlin with modern explosives, turning the site into a veritable technological limbo. What makes this scene important, however, is less the display of fancy weaponry such as a battery of Gatling guns set off by a huge dynamo, or numerous glass cylinder dynamite torpedoes, but the underlying economics of rationalization, which became a major driving force in the history of modern society. Here is Morgan and Clarence’s discussion of the rationale of their various contrivances: “The wires have no ground-connection outside of the cave. . . . Each is grounded independently.” “No-no, that won’t do!” “Why?” “It’s too expensive—uses up force for nothing. You don’t want any ground-connection except the one through the negative brush. The other end of every wire must be brought back into the cave and fastened independently, and without any ground-connection. Now, then, observe the

1010

A M E R I C A N

economy of it. A cavalry charge hurls itself against the fence; you are using no power, you are spending no money, for there is only one ground-connection till those horses come against the wire; . . . Don’t you see?—you are using no energy until it is needed; your lightning is there, and ready, like the load in a gun; but it isn’t costing you a cent till you touch it off.” (P. 421)

Twain’s story abounds in references to eliminating waste and accelerating production, transportation, and communication. While in the above example it seems that the responsibility for ruthless economizing still lies with the person, the rugged, businessminded Yankee, Twain also offers a more universal and much bleaker explanation. Upon finishing his report on how they blow up the cave and its adjacent area, Clarence proudly exclaims: “It’s an innocent looking garden, but you let a man start in to hoe it once, and you’ll see” (p. 422). Once cultivation begins and human ingenuity is put to work, there is no way to avoid the total destruction of both nature and human beings. Influenced by contemporary social science, in particular the determinism of Hippolyte Taine (1828–1893) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), Twain depicts technological societies as essentially destructive and doomed to self-annihilation. The novel ends with a gruesome Armageddon of burnt flesh and a growing pile of dead bodies that foreshadow not only the horrors associated with modern technological warfare but also the ambiguous blessings of yet another late-century invention, the “electric chair.” Whereas in Connecticut Yankee the wedding of science and technology to democratic, republican agendas inexorably leads to disaster (it is, after all, Morgan’s deep aversion to the centralist institutions of church and crown that triggers the final carnage), in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward scientific and technological know-how prove advantageous in creating a truly democratic, Christian socialist society. And where Twain’s bleak cultural critique invokes Melville’s The Confidence-Man as its literary predecessor, Looking Backward follows in the tradition of American utopian reformist writing, associated with authors as diverse as Benjamin Rush, Thomas Paine, Robert Owen, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Like them, Bellamy strongly believed that human beings are rational, eternally struggling to better social conditions and, over the long term, to eradicate tensions arising from ill-conceived notions of class and gender. In its celebration of technology put to democratic, socially stabilizing uses, Bellamy’s utopian novel is a very American text. It tapped into a powerful desire among Americans at the turn of the twentieth century

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


The Progress of the Century. Lithograph by Currier & Ives, c. 1876. The print celebrates nineteenth-century technology in the form of the telegraph, the steam-powered printing press, the locomotive, and the steam paddle-wheel boat. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

to eclipse the negativity expressed in Twain’s and Charles Dudley Warner’s Gilded Age (1873), for example, and to envision instead modern American society in the not too distant future as a “Golden Age,” a technological paradise regained. Although Bellamy initially admits that he “sought to alleviate the instructive quality of the book by casting it in the form of a romantic narrative” (p. 35), Looking Backward is far from a fantastic tale of America’s bright technological prospects. As a former lawyer, muckraking journalist, and political activist, Bellamy took great care to address the social unrest and widespread economic fears lamented by most contemporary Americans. To every conceivable social plight, Looking Backward offers a solution, A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

often backed by modern labor- and time-saving devices. It explores the impact on society of mass media such as radio and introduces a monetary system (including, in a surprisingly visionary insight, the use of credit cards) in which money no longer figures as a substitute for an imagined value but as a representative of everyone’s true share of the gross national product. By merging the socialist convictions Bellamy encountered during a trip to Germany with progressivist technophilia, scientific determinism, the Puritan work ethic, and a millennialist belief that the promises of the New Testament will be fulfilled on American soil, he hoped to overcome the innate contradictions and paradoxes of end-of-century social and scientific discourse.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1011


One of the tensions arising from an ever-accelerating market economy lay in the creation of large, powerful corporations and the growing influence they brought to bear on politics and the future of the nation. Another lay in the adaptation and redefinition of evolutionary social theory to ensure that it would not lead to the disruption of national consensus or spawn an all-out struggle for survival between rugged individuals. Put another way, in Looking Backward Bellamy tried to remedy nagging social problems with the very instruments that many suspected were playing a crucial role in the creation of these problems. And while he was convinced that much in contemporary American society had gone awry, he still believed that “the army of industry” he envisioned for America’s utopian nationalist future would be an “army not alone by virtue of its perfect organization, but by reason also of the ardor of self-devotion which animates its members” (p. 89). His acute awareness of social ills and their underlying economic causes notwithstanding, Bellamy, like many of his nineteenth-century reformist predecessors, turns out to be an indefatigable idealist whose unremitting trust in the natural goodness of human beings led him to design a Christian socialist society where everyone, by dint of diligence in service to the nation, would be granted an appropriate rank and place. Although he abandons formal legislation, his is a system based on a codification of the “law of nature,” or, in his own terms, “the logical outcome of the operation of human nature under rational conditions” (pp. 100–101). Looking Backward exemplifies the ongoing attempt of modern writers and intellectuals to close the widening gap between the specialized spheres of science, technology, and the arts. Bellamy, who considered himself a writer first and only second a political visionary and activist, was careful to design his utopian state as a haven for all professions, including the fine arts, which, according to many of his contemporaries, were of only minor import to the wellbeing and further prosperity of the nation. Time and again, Dr. Leete, the author’s mouthpiece and scientific tour guide of the novel, emphasizes the confluence of material and moral evolution, maintaining that what ultimately distinguishes the “new” from the “old” order is the recognition of merit in all fields of original genius, in science and mechanical invention as well as in music, art, writing, and design. As he tells a receptive Julian West, when Americans pushed on to a “new plane of existence with an illimitable vista of progress, their minds were affected in all their faculties. . . . There ensued an era of mechanical invention, scientific discovery, art, musical and literary productiveness to which no previous age of the world

1012

A M E R I C A N

offers anything comparable” (p. 128). Significantly, Bellamy’s plea for a more encompassing understanding of what it means to be productive coincides with his criticism of the dwindling authority of the “real” in modern capitalist society and the accompanying proliferation of signs that refer only to other signs rather than to material objects (a vicious dilution/ delusion of responsibility he saw at work, for example, in the thriving American credit system). While in the new society all business is executed in direct relation to “real” things, in the old money and credit figured as their “misleading representatives” (p. 174). Rereading evolutionary development as a movement toward greater simplicity and thus authenticity, Bellamy expresses a desire for the “real thing” that became constitutive of modernist culture at large. Although this desire frequently conflicted with the harsh social and economic realities of late-nineteenth-century America, in Looking Backward it becomes the cornerstone of a meticulously reformed, “new” society and, in its wake, a more systematic, that is, scientific use of industrial power.

TECHNOLOGY, GENDER, AND THE ARTS AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

Few of Bellamy’s fellow writers were prepared to view the differences between the reigning scientific materialism and the artistic imagination as anything but insurmountable. This is particularly true of women authors, who often denounced the positivist scientific worldview as in direct opposition to their own agendas. In the classic short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892), by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1850–1935), the clash of science, gender, and the imagination is dramatized in such a way that it becomes the epicenter of mutual misunderstanding and discrimination. The story turns on the male “scientific” obsession with order, regularity, discipline, and self-control as personified by the husband/physician of the female protagonist. It also revolves around the imagery of the wallpaper and its elusive, ever-changing patterns, which introduce an elaborate play on essence versus appearance, on the real as a given versus reality as created by the imagination. And while the physician’s wife represents the imaginative process, the story illuminates the quashing of the imagination by scientific rationalism and the toll such rationalism takes on a woman who does not submit to its limited, gendered propositions. Critics repeatedly claimed that Gilman’s intricately woven, double-voiced text should be read as a testament to the stamina and willpower of the female writer who, under circumstances adverse to her professional career, continued to confront current Social Darwinian

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


stereotypes about differences between men and women and the social roles suitable for each. Gilman’s own life as a mother, writer, and political activist stands as a glaring example of that stamina. A one-time follower of Bellamy and one of the most influential feminist thinkers of the pre–World War I period, Gilman wrote a utopian novel of her own, Herland (1915), based on ideas articulated in her earlier study Women and Economics (1898). Contrary to Bellamy, she believed that to restrict women in their intellectual and professional evolution amounted to hampering the evolution of the species as such. Although she shared his emphasis on the principles of evolution and human progress, hers was a program that included all members of society, regardless of gender or physical ability. Moreover, in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” she repudiated the pervasive positivist worldview (associated with the French sociologist Auguste Comte) by juxtaposing it with the female poetic imagination and female ingenuity. Late-nineteenth-century feminist writers often conceived of the lingering opposition between science, technology, and art in terms of a struggle between the sexes and the respective social roles traditionally ascribed to each. In contrast to these efforts, two of their male contemporaries, Frank Norris (1870–1902) and Henry Adams (1838–1918), posited a more fundamental and ultimately futile battle between the past and the future, between the waning influence of a bygone era and the sweeping forces of the new century. In the first installment of his “epic of the wheat” trilogy The Octopus (1901), Norris dramatized a gigantic clash between nature and culture driven by the worldwide demand for natural resources and the ensuing ruthless exploitation of them. There is neither good nor bad in this novel of the post-frontier American West, only a universe of relentless forces connected to varying degrees with the economic interests of farmers, railroad corporations, and the political machine. Norris introduces, as alienated outsiders to this naturalist universe, two artist figures: Presley, a hopeless romantic aspiring to write the great poem of the West; and his former friend the shepherd Vanamee, who lives close to nature and has developed a poetic attitude by instinct. The two learn different lessons from the new order, yet they both eventually acknowledge their anachronistic marginality in view of the overriding presence of the machine. While in the rapidly industrializing West the creative powers of the imagination are utterly out of place, the merging of nature, machine, and corporate culture has spawned its own generative force: the dynamics of the marketplace and its sole objective, economic growth. Against the inexorable onrush of social evolution, the fate of the individual, which had long been the focus of artistic activity, is but a grain of sand in the cogs of the A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

great organic machinery that constitutes and drives the world. There is no malevolence, no heroism or sacrifice in Norris’s sobering modern American epic, only forces, conditions, laws. The other American writer who came to a devastating conclusion about the future of art in modern society is Henry Adams. Standing amid the aweinspiring machinery at the Great Exposition of 1900, Adams wrote, in an oft-quoted passage of The Education of Henry Adams (1907), that he “began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross” (p. 380). What he finds especially striking in this new electro-mechanical environment is the smooth, noiseless way that the dynamo wields its enormous power: “Barely murmuring— scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair’s breadth’s further for respect of power—while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame” (p. 380). The image of the machine lulling a baby to sleep drives home the writer’s concern about modern technology and his increasing estrangement from latenineteenth- or early-twentieth-century American culture. Adams metaphorically describes the ongoing replacement of the creative power of art by the overwhelming reproductive potential of the machine. In the modern scientific-technological environment, as his distancing stance of third-person autobiographical narration suggests, the writer ceases to be a producer and creator and adopts the role of commentator and disconnected observer. By stubbornly clinging to outmoded aesthetic models such as the female procreative power he saw embodied in both the Epicurean Venus and the Christian Virgin, powers that had never been duly acknowledged by Protestant America, this avowedly nineteenth-century author finally surrendered to having “his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new” (p. 382). To be sure, the authorship, publication, and distribution of literary texts survived well into the days of word processing, e-books, and blogs. Moreover, battles over the role and fate of the writer in a new, fastchanging nation date back at least as far as the American Renaissance and Jacksonian democracy. Yet by foregrounding issues of creativity and the representation of the real within the technological framework of modern society, both male and female end-of-century writers paved the way for modernist debates. The influential German critic Walter Benjamin (1829–1940) described the state of art at the turn of the century as involving a fundamental shift from originality to repetition, from unique, authentic works of art to mechanically reproduced, dissimulating works. “Around 1900 technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1013


thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic processes” (Illuminations, pp. 219– 220). One of the key terms of this essay is “aura,” the ritual function of art, its ongoing negotiation of distance and presence, authenticity and artificiality. Aura, according to Benjamin, is ontologically connected to the original, unique work of art and for this reason does not permit of reproduction or replication. Benjamin is mainly concerned with painting, photography, and film, yet his general argument applies to written texts as well. With technological progress and the concomitant proliferation of forums for amateur writers (newspapers, professional and special interest magazines, dime novels, serials, and so forth), the distinction between author and reader, between the “real” and the “sham” writer, became increasingly blurred. In the age of mechanical reproduction, as Benjamin explains elsewhere, “the reader is at all times ready to become a writer.” Because of the division of labor, the majority of the workforce are “experts” in something (if only in a very circumscribed and specialized area), that is, potential authors: “As an expert—even if not on a subject but only on the post he occupies—he gains access to authorship” (Reflections, p. 225).

See also Centennial; Darwinism; Health and Medicine; Pseudoscience; Psychology; Transportation; Weaponry BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Adams, Henry. 1907. The Education of Henry Adams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. Bellamy, Edward. 1887. Looking Backward, 2000–1887. Edited by Cecelia Tichi. New York: Penguin, 1982. Carnegie, Andrew. 1908. Problems of To-day: Wealth, Labor, Socialism. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1933. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. 1915. Herland. Introduction by Ann J. Lane. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979. Twain, Mark. 1889. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Edited by Bernard L. Stein. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. New York: Macmillan, 1925. Secondary Works

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations: Essays and Reflection. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968.

MODERNISM AND THE NEW AESTHETICS OF SPEED

Inasmuch as Benjamin attributed the disappearance of traditional authorship to technological progress, he evoked a recurring theme in Western cultural criticism: the widespread anxiety about the loss of authorial control in a scientific-technological environment, which resurfaced with every new and more powerful technology. Yet this is only half the story. Along with such anxieties there had always been an effort to co-opt the scientific and technological paradigms in art. And while Adams’s and Norris’s negative stances foreshadow the elegiac disgust with contemporary mass society that informs the later works of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, they in no way reflect the enthusiasm about that same modern environment by the early vorticist Pound, by much of popular literature, dime novels, and books for adolescent readers (such as the widely popular Tom Swift series), or by the many writers, poets, painters, photographers, and musicians committed to forging from an increasingly machine-engineered world a new form of aesthetics. To a large degree this new modernist aesthetics is predicated on the encroachment of science and technology into practically every sphere of society, and, as a result, on the ever-accelerating pulse of everyday life. Eager to respond to the fast pace of modern life, authors presented their own view of the formative and deforming power of speed, translating

1014

the dynamic potential of urban space into an abstract, kinetic verbal construction.

A M E R I C A N

Benjamin, Walter. Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Edited by Peter Demetz. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Cox, James M. “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court: The Machinery of Self-Preservation.” Yale Review 50 (autumn 1960): 89–102. Cummings, Sherwood. Mark Twain and Science: Adventures of a Mind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Golden, Catherine, ed. The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on “The Yellow Wallpaper.” New York: Feminist Press, 1992. Kenner, Hugh. The Mechanic Muse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Kern, Stephen. 1983. The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Licht, Walter. Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SCIENCE FICTION

Mowry, George E. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America 1900–1912. New York: Harper, 1958. Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1934. Orvell, Miles. The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Pacey, Arnold. The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of Technology. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1992. Patai, Daphne, ed. Looking Backward, 1988–1888: Essays on Edward Bellamy. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Tichi, Cecelia. Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. United States Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1975. Klaus Benesch

SCIENCE FICTION In the period following the Civil War (1861–1865), American writers worked in several of the common forms of science fiction. On one hand, they wrote fiction that focused on the growing technological and scientific development; on the other, they dealt with the social consequences of this new knowledge. Some also used science and technology merely as props in tales of romantic adventure. AMERICA’S CONTRIBUTION

America has contributed substantially to the development of science fiction, a literary genre that seems at home in industrialized, scientific cultures. In the nineteenth century, every major American fiction writer of canonical stature wrote works that could qualify as science fiction, given a definition broad enough to include utopian visions. The contribution of Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) is of such magnitude that it is difficult to imagine the shape of science fiction without his influence, and he stands with Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells as an architect of the genre. Writers of the post–Civil War period also had their influence, practicing varieties of the genre that are still recognizable to modern readers. Then as now, “hard” science fiction, focusing on scientific facts and real A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

feats of engineering, occupied one end of the spectrum while a “softer” form based on social developments occupied the other. The early twentieth century saw the appearance of heroic science fiction, a form in which larger-than-life heroes fight monsters and save princesses on alien worlds. MARK TWAIN AS A SCIENCE FICTION WRITER

In at least one case, somewhat “hard” science fiction comes from a surprising source, Mark Twain (1835– 1910), who is often identified with the rural settings of his best-known work. But Twain had an avid interest in science and the newly emerging technologies and it is not surprising that this interest should find its way into his writing. His story “The Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton” (1878), introduces the telephone, a device Alonzo, who is unable to read his own clock, uses to call his aunt to learn the time of day. While on the line, he manages to speak to his aunt’s houseguest, a young lady—Rosannah—with whom Alonzo is soon enthralled. What makes the story science fiction is that Alonzo’s call is long-distance, reaching from frozen Maine to his aunt’s home in rainy and gloomy San Francisco—which comes as a surprise to the reader. Telephones were available for home installation in 1878, but long-distance calling was not available until 1915. The science fiction element makes it possible for people on opposite ends of America to become acquainted and interested in each other. Within weeks—time to exchange photographs—the pair’s conversations flower into full-blown love. Although we first see the positive possibilities of the new technology, events take a disastrous turn. Rosannah’s former suitor, taking exception to the loss of her attention, sets out to foil her new romance. Illustrating the ills that might attend a telephone-only relationship, the disappointed suitor, disguising his voice as Alonzo’s, speaks to her in a way that cools her interest in Alonzo. She never wants to speak to him again. But, as readily as they are parted, the two lovers are reunited by telephone, and, in another surprise development for the reader, they are married by telephone, though Rosannah by this time is in the Hawaiian Islands while Alonzo has never left Maine. The power of the new electrical device to transcend space and time and affect personal relationships is clearly illustrated. In this instance, however, Twain stops short of spelling out the social implications. He puts most of his energy into the literary forms he handles with confidence, parody and burlesque, which he applies here to Victorian courting practices, drawing on the strength of his comedic talent rather than his vision of the future.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1015

SCIENCE FICTION

Readers of today may be surprised that Mark Twain was aware of the awesome dimensions of time and space as they were newly described by science. “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” (published in two parts in 1907 and 1908), which he was working on as early as 1868, would strike even twenty-first century readers as astounding. In this dream tale, the recently deceased Captain Stormfield is on his way to his final destination, about which he assumes the worst. As it turns out, however, he arrives in heaven. The cognitive issue is immediately broached when we learn that the departed Captain Stormfield is traveling at 186,000 miles per second, the scientifically calculated speed of light. In fact, this particular piece of data introduces the novelty at the heart of the story, the awesome scale and diversity of existence in a universe in which humankind occupies only one very small corner. So vast is the universe that a slight navigation error delivers Stormfield at the wrong heavenly gate, billions of miles from the one he should have entered by. Heaven is fathomless, and souls from all parts of the universe are pouring in by the millions. The celestial clerks he encounters have never heard of San Francisco, or California, or, for that matter, America. When he finally identifies his point of origin as the “World,” the clerk scoffs: “There’s billions of them.” At that point, he gives up his place in line to “a skyblue man with seven heads and only one leg” (Twain, Science Fiction, p. 26). When the clerks finally locate Earth on a map, they find that it is designated as “the Wart.” As might be expected, Mark Twain is mindful of the humorous potential of the material. Even his bona fide science fiction masterpiece, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), avoids directly confronting the catastrophic potential of technological know-how wedded to rampant capitalism. Instead, Twain transplants this development to the medieval era, where Gilded Age readers could observe the disastrous consequences without being directly threatened by them. This science fiction device—time travel—allows him to entertain with broad humor (depicting medieval peasants perplexed by modern technology) while presenting a bleak social vision in which, according to contemporary accounts, his readers had less interest. JACK LONDON THE SOCIAL CRITIC

By contrast, Jack London (1876–1916) is more concerned with using science fiction as a means to make his readers directly confront social issues. For example, “The Enemy of All the World,” published in 1908, is set in 1933 to 1941. While London pays lip service to technological gadgetry, he focuses primarily on the predictable actions of human beings. A disgruntled genius, in an attempt to realize the fantasy of ultimate

1016

A M E R I C A N

power, sets out to destroy everyone who has offended him. The agency of destruction is a technique he has discovered by which he can deliver an electrical charge to any location he chooses, thus making it possible to explode rounds of ammunition in firearms that others are holding or ignite explosives stored aboard ships or anywhere else. Eventually, the evil culprit is captured and executed, and the secret of his deadly invention dies with him. As much as this aspect of the story captures the reader’s interest, the story’s thematic strength lies in London’s treatment of the events leading up to the genius’s disgruntlement. He is refused medical treatment by his family, persecuted by the press for statements that they misinterpret, unjustly beaten by a man who suspects him of cheating with his wife, and falsely imprisoned for murder. London implies that the injustices that society inflicts on the unfortunate may have negative repercussions for that society. In “The Scarlet Plague,” London depicts an epidemic, the Scarlet Death, that in the year 2013 will all but wipe out humanity. While he expends some effort to explain the technical aspects of the plague, his interest is in the behavior of the human species, seen without romantic bias. As the plague begins to decimate the population, panic and chaos produce extraordinary selfishness as well as great heroism and sacrifice. But it ends in death to all but the one in a million who, irrespective of social class, are immune. The insight of the oldest survivor is that civilization will rise again, then fall once more, just as past civilizations have come and gone one after another. He accepts the fact that human nature is flawed and will never achieve perfection. In fact, the technologically advanced civilization that has just collapsed was far from perfect. Similar to what we see in The Iron Heel (1907), the ruling property owners have established a new nobility that holds itself far above ordinary workers. In one major scene, the brutish chauffeur of a powerful family is now the lord and abusive master of a woman who was once heir to one of the great fortunes. Culture, the story suggests, can preserve social relationships for the moment, but in the long run, nature will wipe the slate clean. In The Iron Heel, London systematically works out the class conflicts of the world to come. It is a grim future in which worldwide capitalism beats down organized labor (though we are told that ultimately labor will prevail). The science of the story is not drawn primarily from the hard sciences that underlie technology; rather, London bases his projections on the behavioral and social sciences—the “soft” sciences— and in doing so anticipates the utopian visions that mark the rest of the twentieth century.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SCIENCE FICTION

AMBROSE BIERCE AND THE HORROR TRADITION

Ambrose Bierce (1842?–1914), known for his bitter irony and cynicism, was not immune to the allure of science fiction. He wrote a number of stories for straightforwardly sensational purposes—ghost and horror tales—and on at least a few occasions ventured into reasoning about the inexplicable, which led him to science fiction. “Moxon’s Master” (1910) is a remarkably timely story given the current interest in artificial intelligence. In arguing with a friend (the narrator of the story), Moxon presents a series of definitions, theories, and examples to assert that we cannot preclude the possibility of a thinking machine. The story comes to a disastrous conclusion when a chess-playing automaton, enraged at losing a chess match, attacks and kills his creator, Moxon. What Moxon has been arguing in theory, he has, to his misfortune, brought about in fact, the creation of machines that think (and also become angry). While the purpose of the story is to entertain the reader through mystery and terror, Bierce does not take the more direct route to these effects, that is, he does not invoke the supernatural. By appealing to science, he places the terror in our world of possibility, not in a supernatural world of impossibility. In so doing, he enhances the terror of the story. Bierce used a similar strategy in “The Damned Thing” (1893), in which a seemingly supernatural creature mauls and kills a human being. The reader learns, however, that the creature may not be supernatural; it may simply exist in a part of the color spectrum that human beings cannot detect. Thus, the story raises the fear that dangers lurk in the completely real, but totally unperceivable, domain outside human sensory perception. Bierce’s use of scientific explanation to increase the terror—an approach drawn from Poe, among others—remains one of the standard techniques of science fiction. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS AND THE POPULAR FORMULA

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) is the science fiction writer who found the most receptive audience during this period, and it is therefore instructive to consider the nature of his ideas. In A Princess of Mars (1912), the first of his ten Martian tales, his hero, John Carter, travels to his destination in a most unscientific fashion (essentially, he wishes himself there). Burroughs’s Mars—known by the Martians as “Barsoom”—is consistent with many of the “facts” available at the time. In the late nineteenth century, the Italian astronomer G. V. Schiaparelli (1835– 1910) reported seeing through his telescope a Mars covered A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

with “canali,” by which he meant channels, or natural waterways, but many readers saw the word and envisioned constructed waterways, Martian “canals.” No amount of later correction could dispel the popular misconception. Between 1896 and 1911, the American astronomer Percival Lowell (1855–1916) added to the misunderstanding by publishing a series of books—with titles such as Mars as the Abode of Life (1908) and Mars and Its Canals (1906)—building on the notion that intelligent life on Mars could have been responsible for planetwide engineering projects by which an ancient race fought to preserve a dwindling water supply. This is the world Carter finds, a dry and ancient planet that is losing its atmosphere and whose life forms (some of them intelligent) are threatened with extinction. Because there is less gravitational pull, John Carter finds—with scientific plausibility—that his leaping ability is far greater on Mars than on Earth. (Mars’s gravitational pull is about one-third that of Earth.) Thus Carter has a strength and speed advantage because Martians are “muscled only in proportion to the gravitation which they must overcome.” Burroughs populates the planet with the confidence of a trained zoologist (or exobiologist). Carter notes that “a multiplicity of legs . . . is a characteristic feature of the fauna of Mars. The higher type of man and the one other animal, the only mammal existing on Mars, alone have well-formed nails, and there are absolutely no hoofed animals in existence there” (p. 18). Writing with certitude, Burroughs convinced many readers of the concrete actuality of his alien world. When overwhelmed by the absence of facts, however, he appeals to the miraculous technology of a climate machine, which is his explanation for the presence of a breathable atmosphere on what is, scientifically considered, an oxygen-depleted Mars. Burroughs usually did not pursue careful scientific reasoning, and the direction he took made for a popularity and fame that he might not otherwise have achieved. His themes are power, domination, and submission, with some references to love, honor, and revenge. The plots are driven by flight, pursuit, capture, and recapture. While these narratives may serve as dark allegories, they are not the science-based visions that science fiction promises. In the end, it was Burroughs’s intellectually vacuous science fiction that captured the attention of the general population. To this day, nonspecialist readers have to be reminded that Mark Twain, Jack London, and Ambrose Bierce even wrote stories that could be classified as science fiction. See also Mystery and Detective Fiction; Ghost Stories and Gothic Fiction; Pseudoscience


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1017

S C I E N T I F I C M AT E R I A L I S M


Bierce, Ambrose. Ghost and Horror Stories. Edited by E. F. Bleiler. New York: Dover, 1964. Burroughs, Edgar Rice. A Princess of Mars. 1912. New York: Modern Library, 2003. London, Jack. The Iron Heel. 1907. New York: Sagamore Press, 1957. London, Jack. The Science Fiction Stories of Jack London. Edited by James Bankes. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing Group, 1993. Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. 1889. Edited by Bernard L. Stein. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Twain, Mark. The Science Fiction of Mark Twain. Edited by David Ketterer. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1984. Secondary Works

their system in any rigorous way. Instead they lived, as James phrased it, “vaguely in one plausible compartment of it or another to suit the temptations of successive hours” (p. 5). Nevertheless the building-block philosophy of scientific materialism contributed in a hundred subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways to the disquieting erosion of faith and conviction throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. In a lecture in 1913 the historian of ideas A. O. Lovejoy observed that a “mechanistic cosmology and a quasi-mechanical biology bred much of that mid-Victorian melancholy which is so conspicuous a phase of the English literature of the past century” (p. 30). Lovejoy quoted from James Thomson’s despairing poem “The City of Dreadful Night” to convey the troubling implications of a universe in which all is but “mouldering flesh / Whose elements dissolved and merged afresh” (p. 30):

Alkon, Paul K. Science Fiction before 1900: Imagination Discovers Technology. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994.

Infinite aeons ere our world began, Infinite aeons after the last man Has joined the mammoth in earth’s tomb and womb. (P. 30)

Franklin, H. Bruce. Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Ketterer, David. New Worlds for Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American Literature. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1974.

William Vaughn Moody, in “The Menagerie” (1901), put the matter more comically but no less pungently: Helpless I stood among those awful cages; The beasts were walking loose, and I was bagged! I, I, last product of the toiling ages, Goal of heroic feet that never lagged,— A little man in trousers, slightly jagged. (P. 580)

Steve Anderson

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM In the first chapter of his Pragmatism (1907), “The Present Dilemma in Philosophy,” the American philosopher William James (1842–1910) sought to define the terms of the reigning intellectual debate of the day by dividing the members of opposing camps into two temperaments: the “Tender-Minded” and the “ToughMinded.” Members of the first camp were “intellectualistic,” “idealistic,” “religious,” and “dogmatical”; those in the second were “sensationalistic,” “materialistic,” “irreligious,” and “sceptical.” In practical terms, the contest between the two was in fact quite lopsided, however, for the tough-minded crew had at its disposal, or so it seemed, the entire scientific community, a mountainous array of “facts,” a stock of immutable “natural laws,” and the almost daily disclosure of some technological innovation or improvement that constituted a latter-day miracle of progress. The tender-minded, more often than not, were forced to retreat behind genteel “principles” or established social convention or to take comfort in some vague religious feeling or idealistic absolute. But most men and women, insofar as they had a philosophy at all, never straightened out

1018

A M E R I C A N

How such a bleak outlook should gain so much as a toehold, much less the ascendancy in the temperament of a natively hopeful people, is an interesting chapter in American cultural history. THE CONSERVATION OF FORCE

Two scientific discoveries in the nineteenth century combined to make a mechanistic point of view of the universe not merely plausible but seemingly comprehensive. The first was the law of conservation of force, arrived at independently by several scientists in the 1840s. This law, combined with the related law of the conservation of matter, provided a systematic framework that paved the way for scientific advances that were both theoretically consistent and practically beneficial. Scientific discovery and technological innovation enjoyed the mutual advantage of not merely studying phenomena but creating them, both in the laboratory and in the marketplace. The mechanistic regularity of the heavens was replicated in steam engines, threshing machines, and interchangeable parts, and the concrete application of these principles seemed to corroborate a mechanistic physical

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


theory at the same time that it created a self-validating environment. The law of the conservation of force had important social as well as scientific implications. As Ronald E. Martin has observed, “One of the most pervasive and oppressive consequences of nineteenth-century science and its theory of force conservation was the force-cause-determinism it forged out of mechanics and metaphysics” (p. 30). This law enabled one to treat inorganic matter with meticulous calculation, for it allowed one to suppose that in any particular system the amount of matter and energy was constant and that change could be considered as the predictable transformation of matter and the distribution of force according to demonstrable physical laws. Organic matter posed a different problem, and chemists and biologists often found it necessary to bring in some concept of a vital inner principle to account for the biological transformations of adaptation, growth, regeneration, and repair. With the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), however, there appeared an avenue of inquiry that might reconcile the incompatible laws of inorganic and organic matter. For the principle of natural selection proposed that the evolution and function of life could be entirely explained in terms of environmental conditions, without reference to any internal life force. For Herbert Spencer and others this meant that life could be studied empirically and at last be shown to participate in the universal laws of the redistribution of matter and energy. SPENCER’S SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY

More than Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer (1820– 1903) enjoyed widespread popularity and exerted enormous intellectual and social influence in America. Between 1862 and 1903, authorized editions of Spencer’s works sold some 370,000 copies. A civil engineer by training, Spencer, as self-appointed philosopher and moralist, had been concerned with evolutionary principles, especially as they related to human psychology, well before Darwin published his revolutionary findings. But with the assistance of Darwinian principles converted to his own purposes, Spencer constructed a vast architecture of the universe based on evolutionary principles, but he did so in ways that did not seem to challenge religious orthodoxy, at least in no deliberately confrontational ways. His First Principles (1862) had consigned God or any other transcendent explanation of the cosmos to the realm of the “Unknowable” and then had proceeded to sketch out with great particularity, but also with great vagueness, his own “synthetic” philosophy. In subsequent works he would extend the reach of his vision into such diverse areas as sociology, A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

psychology, politics, and ethics and find them all to be consistent with his overarching explanation of evolutionary change. It was in the universal application of his philosophy to diverse fields and disciplines that his thinking acquired its “synthetic” character. Though himself an agnostic, Spencer did not challenge religious sensibility the way that Darwin had done, particularly in The Descent of Man (1871), by detecting a simian ancestor in the great family tree. To the contrary, a host of Spencerians gladly adopted the evolutionary point of view and assisted in the work of claiming new intellectual and cultural territory and reconciling the claims of science with religious faith. Among others, John Fiske, in Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (1874), Henry Ward Beecher, in Evolution and Religion (1885), and Lyman Abbott, in The Theology of an Evolutionist (1897), were able to embrace a Spencerian evolutionary perspective without severely damaging religious orthodoxy. Fiske and Abbott in fact insisted that Darwinism and evolutionism were not synonymous, whereas Spencerism and evolutionism were. More concretely, the laws of physics and biology could, with some finesse, be introduced to the average man or woman in ways that reinforced rather than disturbed religious conviction. J. Dorman Steele, in his Fourteen Weeks in Natural Philosophy (1872), one of a series of his high school textbooks in the sciences, insisted that nature is “interwoven everywhere with proofs of a common plan and a common Author.” Steele moved effortlessly from the explanation of particular laws of mechanics to spiritualized observations, such as that the “confused” noises of nature, softened by distance, adjust to the key of F and therefore combine in an “anthem of praise which Nature sings for His ear alone” (p. 182). Similarly, in the concluding paragraphs of the book Steele echoes the synthetic, mechanistic philosophy but with an evangelical tang added: No force can be destroyed. A hammer falls by the force of gravity and comes to rest, but its motion as a mass is converted into a motion of atoms, and reveals itself to the sense of touch as heat. Thus force changes its form continually, but the eye of philosophy detects it and enables us to drive it from its various hiding-places still undiminished. (P. 316)

“The Correllation of the Physical Forces” is the grand and inspiring law of nature and, at the same time, palpable evidence of a “Divine Hand” at work in the universe. Thus might scientific materialism be adjusted to existent, and transcendent, prepossessions. But Spencer’s appeal, particularly in the United States, was the result of other factors as well. First, he was accessible in ways that Darwin was not. William


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1019


As the following passage, published in 1857, makes clear, Herbert Spencer had certain ideas about progress and evolution even before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859). Darwin gave Spencerian notions a certain legitimacy, however, and encouraged the philosopher to give ever broader application to evolutionary principles in what became known as Social Darwinism. Among Spencer’s more influential and controversial works are The Study of Sociology (1873), Man versus the State (1884), and The Principles of Ethics (1892). Spencer was even more influential in the United States than in Europe, and his reputation was at its highest point in the 1870s and early 1880s.

We believe we have shown beyond question, that that which the German physiologists have found to be the law of organic development, is the law of all development. The advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive differentiations, is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe to which we can reason our way back, and in the earliest changes which we can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic evolution of the Earth, and of every single organism on its surface; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated in the civilized individual, or in the aggregation of races; it is seen in the evolution of Society in respect both of its political and economical organization; and it is seen in the evolution of all those endless concrete and abstract products of human activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. From the remotest past which Science can fathom, down to the novelties of yesterday, that in which Progress essentially consists, is the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous. Herbert Spencer, “Progress: Its Law and Causes,” Westminster Review 67 (April 1857), p. 465.

James once remarked that Herbert Spencer was the right philosopher for those who had no special interest in philosophy. Second, despite certain leaps in logic, his work was saturated with “facts,” and these facts in turn were enlisted on behalf of an overarching argument that, on the one hand, seemed particular enough to be convincing and, on the other, capacious enough to be recognizably harmonious. Finally, Spencerian evolution was decidedly upbeat—it was

1020

A M E R I C A N

progressive, reassuring (if not altogether hopeful), and confident. It became, in T. J. Jackson Lears’s words, a “secular religion of progress, a social scientific version of the optimistic, liberal Protestantism which pervaded the educated bourgeoisie” (p. 22). And, one might add, it occasionally appealed to the self-educated proletariat as well. The naturalist writer Jack London (1876–1916), in the largely autobiographical character of Martin Eden, spoke his admiration unmistakably: Here was the man Spencer, organizing all knowledge for him [Eden], reducing everything to unity, elaborating ultimate realities, and presenting to his startled gaze a universe so concrete of realization that it was like the model of a ship such as sailors make to put into glass bottles. . . . All the hidden things were laying their secrets bare. He was drunken with comprehension. (Pp. 99–100)

Quite as much as Émile Zola, Herbert Spencer was an important influence on several American literary naturalists. The unified vision of scientific materialism articulated a universal philosophy undergirded by a single principle that evolved inevitably and progressively forward, a philosophy that could be wholly understood in terms of matter, motion, and force. In fact, for Spencer, progress of any sort should not be measured by the degree to which it contributes to human happiness; instead, progress was in and of itself constant differentiation and a movement toward more and more complex forms. Spencer’s law of evolution was stated straightforwardly, if rather obscurely, in his First Principles: It was “an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation” (p. 396, his italics). Thus, for example, the homogeneous fertilized egg of a mammal, through ongoing differentiation, multiplies not only in mass but also in its several distributed functions (sight, digestion, circulation, and the like) to become a coherent and complex organism capable of acting efficiently in the world. This same process is evidenced in the development of societies—from “primitive” tribes, wherein its members perform more or less the same functions, to “advanced” industrialized societies in which individual members perform highly specialized tasks that contribute to a complex and heterogeneous (and hence progressive) civilization. For the idealist philosopher Josiah Royce (1855–1916) this definition illustrated the “beautiful logical naïveté” of the synthetic philosophy: “If you found a bag big enough to hold all the facts, that was a unification of science” (p. 115). More

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


jocularly, William James translated Spencer’s definition of evolution as a “change from a no-howish untalkable all-alikeness to a somehowish and in general talkaboutable not-all-alikeness by continuous sticktogetherations and somethingelseifications” (Miller, p. xxxv). SOCIAL PROGRESS

For the less skeptical (or the more canny), however, scientific materialism provided a foundation for a uniquely Western version of progress, one that might be extended as a warrant for the way things are and should be. It could be applied as the sanctification of industrialization, the division of labor, and the concentration of capital and energy in the hands of the “fittest” (Spencer’s word, not Darwin’s). It could justify colonial imperialism that forcibly dragged “primitive” (which is to say homogeneous) peoples and whole cultures into the “modern” (highly specialized and therefore heterogeneous) world of the nineteenth century. It might serve to reinforce a “scientific racism” that declared the inferiority of nonwhites as self-evidently a matter of evolutionary law, not social justice. On the other hand, the same system could be enlisted on behalf of social reform; for if natural organisms are shaped by external surroundings, then one should seek to improve the social and natural environment of the woe-begotten instead of making vain appeals to Christian redemption or moral suasion. Jacob Riis in How the Other Half Lives (1890), for example, revealed in prose and in photographs the appalling condition of life in the slums, and in blueprints and diagrams he documented the crowded spaces and unhealthy lack of ventilation and natural light. Stephen Crane was affected by Riis’s work, and as he wrote on the cover of the copy of Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893) that he presented to Hamlin Garland, he sought in that novel to show that “environment is a tremendous thing in the world and frequently shapes lives regardless.” Less grandly, perhaps, it could provide the premise for science fiction, as in Ambrose Bierce’s (1842–1914?) fanciful tale of a chess-playing robot, “Moxon’s Monster” (1893). Bierce in fact quotes Spencer’s definition of life as a way of overcoming the reader’s disbelief in the animating principle of any machine, organic or inorganic, natural or contrived. Consciousness, insists Moxon, is merely the “rhythm” of matter, and the full significance of that remark dawns upon the narrator: “If consciousness is the product of rhythm all things are conscious, for all have motion, and all motion is rhythmic” (p. 131). In the right hands, the same system could supply the stuff of comic advocacy, as in Mark Twain’s (1835–1910) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). Hank Morgan undertakes A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

to transform Arthurian England into a thoroughly efficient, technologically sophisticated republic, a “man factory.” Morgan clearly sees opportunities for such changes all about him. When he comes across a famous religious hermit who for some twenty years has been on a high pillar ceaselessly bowing up and down, Hank deplores the wasted energy: I timed him with a stopwatch, and he made twelve hundred forty-four revolutions in twenty-four minutes and forty-six seconds. It seemed a pity to have all this power going to waste. It was one of the most useful motions in mechanics, the pedal movement; so I made a note in my memorandum book, purposing some day to apply a system of elastic cords to him and run a sewing machine with it. I afterwards carried out that scheme, and got five years’ good service out of him. . . . I worked him Sundays and all; he was going Sundays the same as weekdays, and it was no use to waste the power. (Pp. 259–260)

In later works, such as What Is Man? (1906), Twain was not so sanguine about the implications of a materialistic world in which there was no room for soul or even individuality, much less the sorts of values (loyalty, courage, honor, or free will) that dignified human purposes. For the British poet T. E. Hulme, this sort of world was a “nightmare”; for Joseph Conrad, it seemed a “tragic accident” in which nothing matters except perhaps matter itself. Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935), refusing the materialism of the day, still perceived that current wisdom would have it that one has embarked on some blind atomic pilgrimage Whereon by crass chance billeted we go Because our brains and bones and cartilage Will have it so. (P. 143)

The felt oppressiveness of a mechanical explanation of the universe was not an overt rejection of science, of course. Most people were willing to concede that this positivistic system explained something, but what was disturbing was that it purported to explain everything, from one-celled organisms to entire galaxies. THE LAW OF ENTROPY

Spencerian materialism was deterministic, but like classical Newtonian physics itself, it was also unified and comprehensive, even elegant. It was progressive and therefore provided a basis for measured optimism, and it was grounded in natural laws. Even so, there existed another scientific law that absolutely contradicted a progressive model of evolution. The second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, had been demonstrated in the 1850s, and even though the disturbing


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1021


implications of this discovery were pointed out to him, Spencer chose to ignore them. The law of entropy holds that, though the amount of energy remains a constant throughout the universe, in any conversion process that same energy (in a steam engine, say) tends to dissipate and therefore become unusable to humans. In his Pragmatism, William James quoted the British philosopher and statesman Lord Balfour on the apparent degradation of the universe: The energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. . . . “Imperishable monuments” and “immortal deeds,” death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as if they had not been. (P. 40)

The lower, not the higher forces of the universe will eventually prevail; in the meantime, human beings are living on borrowed time. Why this worm at the core of Spencer’s system should have slept there for nearly forty years and not received the attention that Lord Balfour and others gave it at the end of the century is something of a mystery. Perhaps this neglect, even willful blindness, says more about the common tendency to accept and be convinced by positive formulations over those that, like the law of entropy, offered such dire prospects. At any rate the idea had sufficient currency in the early years of the twentieth century for Sherwood Anderson (1876– 1941), in Winesburg, Ohio (1919), to dramatize in antic fashion a prophet of bad news in the character of Joe Welling, a “man of ideas.” Not so coincidentally Welling is an agent for the Standard Oil Company and therefore makes his living by supplying energy to his neighbors. But his real passion is for ideas, which he in turn eagerly foists upon his fellow townspeople. Among those ideas is his belief in ceaseless energy depletion, that the whole world is on fire: “Now what is decay? It’s fire. . . . This sidewalk here and this feed store, the trees down the street there—they’re all on fire. They’re burning up. Decay you see is always going on. It don’t stop” (p. 106). Robert Frost took up the same theme in his poem “The Wood-Pile” (1914). By the close of the nineteenth century a unified, mechanistic explanation of the universe was beginning to break down under the weight of recent scientific disclosures. Studies of light and electricity had years before indicated that light was not mechanical but electromagnetic and had undermined the attendant assumption of classical physics that there existed a cosmic ether through which light passed. Marie and Pierre Curie’s experiments with radium called into question the conservation of force and the indivisibil-

1022

A M E R I C A N

ity of matter. In 1905 Albert Einstein deduced that time, space, and mass could not be absolutes. Around the same time, several philosophers and scientists were even beginning to question whether the “laws” of science in fact were either absolute or immutable: Might not these laws themselves evolve over time? Henry Adams (1838–1918), more assiduously than most nonspecialists, had attempted to keep up with the science of his day, and he was more troubled by the evident chaos that the twentieth century promised than by the material uniformity that had characterized the nineteenth. As a historian he could comprehend the shifts of the past so long as the “swerves” were part of a continuous movement. But as he wrote in his third-person autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (printed privately in 1907), in 1900 the “continuity snapped”: Vaguely conscious of the cataclysm, the world dated it from 1893, by the Roentgen rays, or from 1898, by Curie’s radium; but in 1904, Arthur Balfour announced on the part of British science that the human race without exception had lived and died in a world of illusion until the last year of the century. The date was convenient, and convenience was truth. The child born in 1900 would, then, be born into a new world which would not be a unity but a multiple. (P. 457)

The synthetic philosophy of scientific materialism had been scattered to the winds, and Adams’s hypothetical child born in 1900 would be hard-pressed to discover even traces of it by, say, 1920. Even Herbert Spencer himself knew before he died in 1903 that his beautiful system had become nothing more than a monument to dead ideas. See also Darwinism; The Man against the Sky; Naturalism; Philosophy; Science and Technology; Social Darwinism BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. Edited by Ernest Samuels. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. 1919. New York: Penguin Books, 1960. Bierce, Ambrose. Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories. Edited by Tom Quirk. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2000. James, William. Pragmatism. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. London, Jack. Martin Eden. 1908. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1956.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE

Lovejoy, A. O. Bergson and Romantic Evolutionism: Two Lectures Delivered before the Union, September 5 and 12, 1913. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1914. Moody, William Vaughn. “The Menagerie.” In Nation and Region: 1860–1900, edited by Milton R. Stern and Seymour L. Gross. New York: Viking Press, 1962. Robinson, Edwin Arlington. The Man against the Sky. New York: Macmillan, 1916. Royce, Josiah. Herbert Spencer: An Estimate and Review. New York: Fox, Duffield, 1904. Spencer, Herbert. First Principles. 1867. New York: Appleton, 1894. Steele, J. Dorman. Fourteen Weeks in Natural Philosophy. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1872. Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Edited by Bernard Stein. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979.

quickly became a respected quality monthly in the late 1880s, joining the work of the other prominent family house magazines of the period, including Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, the Century Magazine, and the Atlantic Monthly. Associated with the reputable Scribner publishing firm, the magazine was aimed at middleclass readers who were interested in a high-quality monthly at a slightly lower price than its competitors— twenty-five cents per issue and three dollars for an annual subscription, versus thirty-five cents per issue and four dollars for an annual subscription to Harper’s, Century, or the Atlantic. Although some periodical historians have noticed an American emphasis in the magazine, Scribner’s is more accurately characterized as a distinctively cosmopolitan monthly with a particular focus on the arts, one that consistently attracted both discriminating readers and aspiring authors.

Secondary Works

INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY

Boeckmann, Cathy. A Question of Character: Scientific Racism and the Genres of American Fiction, 1892–1912. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000.

Although the Scribner publishing firm had been associated with two earlier monthly magazines—Hours at Home (1865–1870) and Scribner’s Monthly (1870– 1881)—it was with Scribner’s Magazine (1887–1939) that the publisher made its mark in the periodical world. Founded in 1887, just six years after the firm severed its ties with the earlier Scribner’s Monthly, which had been reorganized as the Century in 1881, the new magazine was edited for nearly three decades by Edward Livermore Burlingame (1848–1922). Burlingame brought impressive intellectual rigor, a cosmopolitan perspective, and practical newspaper and publishing experience to the enterprise. Before the age of fourteen, he had attended Harvard University and served as a private secretary to his father, Anson Burlingame, who had been appointed the U.S. minister to China in 1861. Over the next several years, Burlingame not only assisted his father but also continued his education, becoming fluent in French and German and studying in Berlin, Paris, and St. Petersburg before earning a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Heidelberg in 1869. After his father’s death in 1870, Burlingame returned to the United States, where he gained experience working for the New York Tribune and the Appleton publishing firm. He also translated a volume of essays by the German composer Richard Wagner (Roberson, p. 90). Burlingame’s extensive travel, European education, and social connections with world leaders, artists, and writers no doubt attracted the interest of the Scribner publishing firm; his early publishing experience also made him a viable candidate. Charles Scribner’s Sons hired him as a book editor in 1879 and appointed him the editor of Scribner’s Magazine in 1886; the firm was planning the first number of the magazine for

Hofstader, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. Jones, Howard Mumford. The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865–1915. New York: Viking Press, 1970. Lears, T. J. Jackson. No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture. New York: Pantheon, 1981. Martin, Jay. Harvests of Change: American Literature, 1865– 1914. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967. Martin, Ronald. American Literature and the Universe of Force. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1981. Miller, Perry. Introduction to American Thought: Civil War to World War I. Edited by Perry Miller, pp. ix–lii. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1954. Person, Stow, ed. Evolutionary Thought in America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950. Quirk, Tom. Bergson and American Culture: The Worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Russett, Cynthia Eagle. Darwin in America: The Intellectual Response, 1865–1912. San Francisco: Freeman, 1976. Tom Quirk

SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE Remembered chiefly for its comprehensive art criticism, beautiful illustrations, detailed cultural and social studies, and diverse literary offerings, Scribner’s Magazine A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1023


January 1887. Until he retired from this post in 1914, Burlingame and his able staff and contributors created a monthly that was well received both nationally and internationally. He had sound editorial skills and was particularly adept at negotiating with writers to contribute stories, articles, and series to the magazine. During the height of Scribner’s success in the early twentieth century, the Scribner firm sent Burlingame to Europe almost every summer to seek suitable material from writers and artists (Roberson, p. 93). Although the first few years of Scribner’s Magazine were difficult because of the financial strain of offering a monthly at a reduced price, circulation rose to about 110,000 by the early 1890s and continued to grow until it reached slightly more than 200,000 by 1909 (Mott, p. 723). Soon after reaching this peak, however, circulation dropped sharply to 100,000 in 1911, primarily because of increased competition from cheaper periodicals and a shift in the taste of the middle-class reading public. Following Burlingame’s retirement in 1914, the associate editor, Robert Bridges (1858– 1941), took the helm, maintaining most of the successful policies initiated by Burlingame (Mott, pp. 723, 729). Bridges was correct to continue Burlingame’s emphasis on quality contributions and sound editorial standards, but without strategic changes in format or content, it was inevitable that the circulation of Scribner’s would continue to decline. In an attempt to shore up its financial base by making the magazine more attractive to advertisers, the magazine decreased its advertising rate from $300 a page to $250. Despite this adjustment, the magazine was only able to muster about eighty pages of advertising per month, down from the one hundred pages in its most successful period. Circulation fell to about seventy thousand in 1924 and continued to drop during most of the rest of Bridges’s tenure, except for a brief return to seventy thousand in 1930, the year of Bridges’s retirement (Mott, pp. 726, 729). ILLUSTRATION AND ART CRITICISM

Although Scribner’s Magazine did not immediately reach the high standard for quality illustration set by the Century Magazine, within a few years it was attracting almost as much interest from readers and critics. Like the Century, Scribner’s at first featured mostly wood engravings by the new school of American engravers, whose work was praised for its accurate representation of the original. Wood engravers such as W. B. Closson, G. T. Andrew, George Kruell, Frederick Juengling, and Elbridge Kingsley filled the early numbers of the magazine with detailed engravings that often appeared to transcend the restrictions of wood by simulating brushstrokes, crayon textures, or the

1024

A M E R I C A N

Scribner’s Magazine. Advertising poster for the April 1898 issue. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

intricate degrees of light and shade of the work of art it was rendering. In the early 1890s Scribner’s added to its illustration processes halftone engraving and chromolithographs, which allowed it to reproduce the work of many prominent artists, including J. W. Alexander, W. L. Taylor, R. F. Zogbaum, Charles Dana Gibson, Kenyon Cox, Will H. Low, W. T. Smedley, A. B. Frost, Robert Blum, Ernest C. Peixotto, and Maxfield Parrish. In the late 1890s and following, Scribner’s was highly regarded for its color illustrations. One of the most striking examples may be found in John La Farge’s essay “Puvis de Chavannes” (1900), which included full-color plates of the artist’s work. Scribner’s innovative experiments in illustration were highly praised by both readers and critics (Mott, p. 726). Scribner’s was best known in the art world for its art criticism. In 1896 the magazine founded the department “The Field of Art,” which included signed contributions by Russell Sturgis, Frank Weitenkampf,

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Will H. Low, and many others. This department covered the entire range of visual art by including pieces on architectural decoration, portraiture, sculpture, painting, interior design, posters, and even bookbinding. In addition, nearly every number included a substantial essay on either an artist or some aspect of the art world. Scribner’s was strategic in finding ways to reach readers who might not otherwise read an essay focused explicitly on art. For example, Robert Blum’s popular and beautifully illustrated series “An Artist in Japan” (1893) was primarily a travel piece, but it included Blum’s astute visual perspective on the arts and crafts of Japan, even in his description and illustration of a “clog maker.” By blending the discussion of art into other essay topics, Scribner’s gradually introduced readers to the aesthetic aims of the magazine. LITERATURE AND LITERARY CRITICISM

Part of the success of Scribner’s in its first three decades stemmed from Burlingame’s ability to balance challenging literary scholarship, fiction, and poetry with lighter literary fare. In the first several years, for example, Scribner’s printed Jane Octavia Brookfield’s edited series “Unpublished Letters of Thackeray” (1887) and Andrew Lang’s biographical piece “Molière” (1889). These serious offerings were carefully balanced by lighter contributions of fiction and literary biography, including Andrew D. White’s illustrated piece “Walter Scott at Work” (1889) and Margaret Sutton Briscoe’s sentimental story “Apples of Gold” (1892). Scribner’s was especially strong in local color fiction, a mode that nicely complemented its illustrated travel articles. During the same years that Scribner’s printed local color stories by Sarah Orne Jewett, Thomas Nelson Page, Duncan Campbell Scott, Bret Harte, J. M. Barrie, Octave Thanet, and A. T. QuillerCouch, it also printed illustrated travel essays that appealed to readers’ desire for authenticity. For example, Edward Penfield’s “Holland from the Stern of a Boeier” (1903) and Ernest Thompson Seton’s four-part series “The Arctic Prairies” (1910–1911) were both illustrated by the authors, a feature that not only underscored the magazine’s expertise in printing high-quality illustrations but also gave these pieces a realistic, documentary look. Although late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century monthlies are not known for distinguished poetry, Scribner’s printed more than the typical sentimental poems found in other magazines of the period. Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson were well represented in the magazine, as were the poems of Edith Wharton, Henry Van Dyke, David Morton, Arthur Davison Ficke, Andrew Lang, Archibald Lampman, Katharine Lee Bates, and Robinson Jeffers, among others. Drawing on A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

its strength in printing fine illustrations, Scribner’s frequently framed poems with attractive borders and sometimes even with full-color plates. This attention to design suggests that Scribner’s poetry, fiction, travel essays, and other illustrated pieces were connected to the larger visual world that the magazine brought to readers each month. Perhaps the greatest literary achievement of Scribner’s, however, may be found in its fiction. Serialized novels were plentiful, including the work of George Washington Cable, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edith Wharton, F. Hopkinson Smith, John Galsworthy, John Fox Jr., Harold Frederic, and Robert Grant. From a purely literary point of view, the most important serials in the first decade of the twentieth century were Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905), which included a striking frontispiece illustration by A. B. Wenzel, and her novella Ethan Frome (1911). Scribner’s was also strong in short stories, most notably Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” (1897), Octave Thanet’s “Stories of a Western Town” (1892), and Rudyard Kipling’s “.007” (1897). Other important contributors of short fiction included Henry James, Frank R. Stockton, Kate Douglas Wiggin, William Allen White, Robert Herrick, Richard Harding Davis, and Margaret Crosby. Finally, even though the magazine began its long decline in 1911, it continued to bring important literary works to the American reading public. Short works by Thomas Wolfe, Sherwood Anderson, D. H. Lawrence, Conrad Aiken, Langston Hughes, William Saroyan, William Faulkner, and Josephine Herbst filled the pages of Scribner’s with fresh fictional offerings. As mentioned earlier, Burlingame set the tone for Scribner’s in its first three decades by carefully balancing the content. This same principle was applied to literary criticism, with a balance being sought between serious literary essays and lighter domestic commentary on writers. In 1889, for example, Andrew Lang’s essay “Alexander Dumas” stood in contrast to Oscar Browning’s more domestic literary commentary in his essay “Goethe’s House at Weimar.” Scribner’s secured contributions from many other leading literary critics of the day, including Bliss Perry, Brander Matthews, W. C. Brownell, Robert Grant, and Augustine Birrell. CULTURAL AND SOCIAL STUDIES

Although Scribner’s was not as strong as other monthlies in its discussion of social issues, it did print a number of important studies about different cultures and classes. W. C. Brownell’s extensive “French Traits” series (1887–1889) covered everything from “The Social Instinct” to “Intelligence” and “Manners.” There were many features on Japan and Japanese cul-


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1025

THE SEA-WOLF

ture, which reflected a broader interest in Asian art, culture, and politics than was found in the other monthlies of the period. At least in terms of its content, Scribner’s rooted itself firmly in the perspective of the middle- and upper-middle-class reader when it printed essays such as Jacob A. Riis’s “How the Other Half Lives” (1889) and Walter A. Wyckoff ’s series “The Workers” (1898). Just before and during World War I, Scribner’s printed many different perspectives on the war effort, including Price Collier’s “Germany and the Germans” (1913), John Galsworthy’s “Thoughts on War” (1914), and Edith Wharton’s “The Look of Paris” (1915). Regular contributions by the war correspondents Richard Harding Davis and E. Alexander Powell also provided more thorough descriptions of the war than in newspaper accounts. LEGACY

For a little over fifty years, Scribner’s Magazine printed beautiful illustrations, noteworthy art criticism, and important literature and literary criticism. The magazine made a lasting contribution to American life and letters, especially in its consistent attempts to maintain a cosmopolitan perspective rather than a strictly American one. In so doing, Scribner’s Magazine succeeded in creating a unique space in American magazine print culture that acquainted middle-class readers with an intelligent and aesthetically inclined viewpoint of the world, one that avoided the “genteel” label sometimes ascribed to other periodicals. See also Century Magazine; Periodicals BIBLIOGRAPHY Secondary Works

Benert, Annette Larson. “Reading the Walls: The Politics of Architecture in Scribner’s Magazine, 1887–1914.” Arizona Quarterly 47, no. 1 (spring 1991): 49–79. Burlingame, Roger. Of Making Many Books: A Hundred Years of Reading, Writing, and Publishing. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1946. Doyle, James. “Duncan Campbell Scott and American Literature.” In Duncan Campbell Scott Symposium, edited by K. P. Stich, pp. 101–109. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1980.

Magazine Journalists, 1850–1900, edited by Sam G. Riley, pp. 90–93. Detroit: Gale, 1989. Sait, James E. “Charles Scribner’s Sons and the Great War.” Princeton University Library Chronicle 48, no. 2 (1987): 152–180. James Arthur Bond

THE SEA-WOLF On 30 November 1901, an unusually foggy night even by San Francisco standards, the ferry Sausalito collided with the ferry San Rafael in San Francisco Bay in what was the worst ferryboat collision in the history of the bay. Navigating the fog in an era when ferry skippers relied on the sounds of foghorns, bells on buoys, sirens on piers, and echoes of whistles together with compasses and a heavy dose of instinct, the Sausalito never saw the San Rafael before hitting it amidships, the Sausalito’s prow slamming into the dining room of the smaller, older San Rafael. The elegant side-wheel steamer—which had a pair of gilt eagles atop decorative masts—sank in twenty minutes. Three people died as a result of the collision, and an old horse named Dick, who was used to move baggage carts around the ferry, refused to leave and went down with the ship. In the midst of the panic, the two captains managed to lash their vessels together long enough to get the San Rafael’s passengers onto the Sausalito, but the career of the captain of the Sausalito was ruined. Jack London (1876–1916) used this wreck as the basis of the sinking of the Martinez at the beginning of his 1904 adventure novel, The Sea-Wolf. Aboard the doomed Martinez is Humphrey van Weyden, an amateur literary critic, perusing his latest essay in the Atlantic and thinking of “how comfortable it was, this division of labor,” as the sailors toil on the decks of the Martinez so he can spend his time enjoying the repose of his intellectual life (p. 2). But when the collision occurs and the Martinez begins to sink, he is suddenly surrounded not by poetry but by a “screaming bedlam” of terror. The screaming of the women is the worst:

Nash, Andrew. “‘A Phenomenally Slow Producer’: J. M. Barrie, Scribner’s, and the Publication of Sentimental Tommy.” Yale University Library Gazette 74 (October 1999): 41–53.

I realized I was becoming hysterical myself; for these were women of my own kind, like my mother and sisters, . . . [but] the sounds they made reminded me of the squealing of pigs under the knife of the butcher, and I was struck with horror at the vividness of the analogy. These women, capable of the most sublime emotions, of the tenderest sympathies, were open-mouthed and screaming. They wanted to live, they were helpless, like rats in a trap, and they screamed. (P. 7)

Roberson, Patt Foster. “Edward Livermore Burlingame.” In Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 79, American

Van Weyden, half-drowned, finds himself picked up by the sealing schooner Ghost. He is hauled aboard

Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines. 5 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930– 1968. See 4: 717–732.

1026

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE SEA-WOLF

and revived, only to find that this rescue is the beginning of a long and deadly struggle for survival. A new central character emerges in the form of Wolf Larsen, a fierce and ruthless ship captain and, surprisingly, a philosopher. Van Weyden’s soft and weak muscles are put to the test as he is forced to join Larsen’s brutish crew, and his easy gentility is similarly challenged by Larsen’s deterministic materialism and nihilism. To Larsen the question of the meaning of life can be measured in one word, “Bosh!” Life, he says, is mere “piggishness” (p. 97), and no man’s achievements can outlast death. Van Weyden is threatened by the crude bully of a cook, and successfully defends himself. Over time, as he grows stronger, he finds himself admiring Larsen’s strength, both his piercing intellect and muscular body. After the Ghost rescues some refugees near Japan on its sealing expedition, Larsen and van Weyden come into conflict over the poet Maud Brewster, culminating in van Weyden’s successful defense of her when Larsen tries to rape her. Brewster and van Weyden manage to escape to a deserted island together. Yet the Ghost finds them, half-wrecked and without a sail, Larsen having begun to succumb to the pain and blindness of a brain tumor. Van Weyden and Brewster finally manage to repair the ship and sail it away, and Larsen dies the sad and lonely death he expected. They are rescued by a passing ship. In the end van Weyden and Brewster each demonstrate their true natures as moral—and capable—individuals who reject Larsen’s crass individualism for the higher ideals of society. The ending, in which the lovers playfully tease each other about sneaking a kiss—Oh!—before the rescue ship comes, is fraught with tensions between the very raw adventure in which they have been engaged, including the ways it has changed them, and their realization that they must now return to the sentimental parlors of San Francisco.

CORBIS

the Bay Area activist Anna Strunsky, The KemptonWace Letters (1903). In addition to its sea lore, adventure, and romance, the tempestuous pages of The Sea-Wolf are a-brim with important turn-of-the-century cultural and historical conflicts—naturalism versus romance, philosophical individualism versus socialism, conflicting explorations of gender roles, and the advent of modern psychology. TEXTUAL HISTORY

COMPOSITION

The Sea-Wolf, written in the spring, summer, and fall of 1903, was based on London’s experiences as a seventeen-year-old able seaman in the North Pacific aboard the Sophia Sutherland ten years earlier, in 1893. The Sea-Wolf was London’s third novel, written during a burst of creative production impelled by poverty, struggle, escape, and adventure that followed London’s finding of his naturalistic “perspective,” as he called it, in the Klondike gold rush of 1898. This period of productivity also resulted in two collections of stories, Children of the Frost (1902) and The Faith of Men (1904); the world classic The Call of the Wild (1903); London’s sociological exposé of the lives of the British poor, The People of the Abyss (1903); and the provocative study of modern love he coauthored with A M E R I C A N

Jack London. The author writing aboard ship. © BETTMANN/

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

In January 1904 London embarked for Korea, traveling via steamer, junk, and sailboat, to cover the RussoJapanese War for the San Francisco Examiner. Perhaps he was especially eager during this time to travel abroad, given his deteriorating marriage to Bess Maddern London. He left his new love interest and later second wife, Charmian Kittredge, and his close friend, the poet George Sterling, to see The Sea-Wolf through proofs and serialization in Century Magazine from January through November 1904. He returned from the war in time to supervise book publication by Macmillan in October. The novel’s textual history is complex. Among other issues, it seems that London, like Émile Zola, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1027

THE SEA-WOLF

encountered the fusty, outdated censorship of many magazine editors of the day, at just exactly the same time as all of them coped with the enormous rewards of mass-market publication. There are five different versions of The Sea-Wolf from which a modern editor might work to produce an edition, beginning with London’s manuscript. This, however, exists only as a charred hunk on deposit at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, burned in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shortly after London gave it to Sterling as a thank-you gift. Perhaps in order to secure copyright before the novel was to be published in serial form in Century, Macmillan brought out a paper-cover edition based on the manuscript (a disbound copy of which is held in the Clifton Waller Barrett Collection at the University of Virginia Library). For the serial publication, Century enforced a number of changes upon an exasperated London, and when Macmillan brought out its edition (now burdened with three copyrights, a technicality that would come back to haunt London in later legal battles with New York and Hollywood), London heavily revised the page proofs and had to pay for the changes. In the 1964 Riverside edition of the Sea-Wolf, Matthew Bruccoli points out that there are “thousands of differences between the serial and book versions” (p. 1). It is impossible, he avers, to determine which of the changes between the serial and book were deletions ordered by the magazine and which were added by London in that summer of 1904. Using London’s corrected typescripts, galleys, and marked copy of the book, Bruccoli follows the Macmillan text but also restores sixteen changes London made on galleys before the book publication, largely to do with the profanity turned into dashes by Century editors as well as some philosophizing and a few passages of explicit brutality. He also restores London’s daring use of an experimental present-tense style in chapters 6 through 14, which was changed to the past tense by Century. As Bruccoli notes: “In its book form The Sea-Wolf begins as a memoir and becomes a diary, but in the serial it is narrated as a completed story in the past. This change in the design of the book is not the result of carelessness, but a deliberate effect introduced by the author to produce a sense of immediacy” (p. 2). The Sea-Wolf’s “immediacy” of grammatical tense reflects its ties to urgent concerns of its day. RECEPTION AND INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT

The Sea-Wolf remains one of the world’s most popular and critically acclaimed novels, having never gone out of print in multiple editions in over one hundred years, a close rival of The Call of the Wild (1903) and White

1028

A M E R I C A N

Fang (1906) in sales but outdoing them in motionpicture productions. (Hobart Bosworth’s 1913 The Sea-Wolf was one of the very first full-length films and has been remade dozens of times.) It is nearly impossible to walk into a medium-size book store and not find The Sea-Wolf on the shelf. While early reviewers complained of its “excess of brutality” and of London’s habit of portraying “pictures of cruelty and . . . studies of monsters” (“The Sea-Wolf,” New York Times Saturday Review, p. 768), they also praised its vitality, its characterization of Wolf Larsen, and its “irresistible” suspense (“Literary Notes,” San Francisco Argonaut, p. 311). A century after its publication, the novel’s dialectical opposition of “superman” individualism to philosophies of socialistic community and reform, its themes of heterosexual and homosexual desire, and its new notions of masculinity and femininity still attract the interest of scholars—a revival of interest reflected in essays published in American Literature, American Literary Realism, and other leading journals. In The Sea-Wolf, the cruel strength of Wolf Larsen, one of London’s most memorable characters—a herovillain with elements of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, John Milton’s Satan, Herman Melville’s Ahab, Friedrich Nietzsche’s übermensch, and Robert Browning’s Caliban—is pitted against the efforts of the young romantic duo who must mature enough to withstand Larsen’s brutality. It seems improbable, to say the least, that the characters, whom London describes as the “dean of American letters” and the “first lady of American poetry,” Humphrey van Weyden and Maud Brewster, are thrown together by chance. But their ideological status as representatives of contemporary social mores is important. The novel’s attacks upon the eroding values of the Victorians and its doubts about the values of the modern era make it one of London’s most cogent works, transmuting abstract philosophical and literary ideas into intensely physical survival, appealing to many classes of readers. The Sea-Wolf combines heroic vitality with themes of initiation and of death and rebirth through the symbolism of a ship-as-microcosm tossing on the archetypal sea. In trying to weave into the fabric of his adventure tale his multiple responses to late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century philosophers and scientists, especially Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Darwin, London also explores new definitions of sexuality, gender, and androgyny in a Freudian analysis of the modern male personality. Some critics have found the characters unsatisfying because they seem to stand woodenly for ideas, and lengthy portions of the early part of the novel are indeed taken up with long philosophical debates among van Weyden and Larsen

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE SEA-WOLF

and later Brewster. But the novel endures in part because of the magnitude of its conflicting ideas. NIETZSCHE, DARWIN, FREUD

London intended Wolf Larsen, like his later semiautobiographical hero Martin Eden, to be a warning against Nietzschean individualism, but neither was generally read that way. He wrote to Mary Austin: “In the very beginning of my writing career, I attacked Nietzsche and his super-man idea. This was in The Sea Wolf. Lots of people read The Sea Wolf, no one discovered that it was an attack upon the super-man idea” (Letters, p. 1513). The problem is that despite the virtues of van Weyden and Brewster, Larsen steals every scene he is in and seems to inhabit a reality larger than life. Larsen is a transitional figure, reflecting London’s divided mind when it came to socialism versus largerthan-life individualistic heroes. As his counterpart Captain Ahab reflects both the Byronic hero and the modern antihero, so Larsen crosses over genres. Like the suffering Romantic hero, Larsen is sensitive, intelligent, domineering, arrogant, uninhibited, actively rebellious against conventional social mores, and—above all— alone. An early version of the alienated twentiethcentury man, he lacks purpose and direction, except for his course of revenge against his brother, Captain Death Larsen. With no meaningful relationships to appease his tremendous vitality, he brutalizes his crew and revels in nihilism. The animalistic Larsen is a forecast of Eugene O’Neill’s brutish Yank Smith in The Hairy Ape (1922) and T. S. Eliot’s “apeneck Sweeney” in Sweeney among the Nightingales (1920), but psychologically he has more in common with Eliot’s Prufrock and Gerontion, similarly cursed with hyperrational sensibility. Larsen’s gradual deterioration—his headaches, blindness, paralysis, and death from a brain tumor—is symbolic of a modern type of antisocial superman psychopathically alienated. As Charmian London describes him: “The superman is anti-social in his tendencies, and in these days of our complex society and sociology he cannot be successful in his hostile aloofness” (2:57). Larsen has not learned, as Conway Zirkle observes, that “strength was increased by cooperation, by union” (p. 331). The atavistic individual, the lone wolf, is doomed to extinction. Larsen is also “transitional” in the sense that as modern technology had made steamships possible (like his brother Death’s sailing steamer, Macedonia), sailing captains like Wolf Larsen are soon to be obsolete (Papa, p. 2). In a Darwinian sense, the importance of “the group,” with its evolutionary imperatives of social virtues, altruism, cooperation, even self-sacrifice, is justified in The Sea-Wolf as providing the foundation of the real “strength of the strong.” The “sissy” Hump van Weyden does not seem destined for greatness, but A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

he turns out to be a hero in a very different sense than Larsen because of his latent adaptability, intelligence, optimism, and capacity to love. As Larsen is drawn toward Death, van Weyden is propelled into self-sustaining maturity; Larsen declines as van Weyden correspondingly becomes a man, the two courses converging when he saves Maud Brewster from Larsen when he attempts to rape her. From this point on Larsen’s power declines as the couple embark upon their survival on Endeavor Island. By the time van Weyden again encounters Wolf, they have reversed positions. Larsen has lost his crew and is blind and partially paralyzed; van Weyden has gained a mate. Van Weyden’s development also clearly reflects the ideas of Sigmund Freud. As Thomas R. Tietze has pointed out, the novel follows a full-grown man— who has been raised by women and supported by his father’s money—coming into conflict with a father figure, a “self-made individuality.” Van Weyden has never seen raw masculinity, but London delineates a classic Oedipal struggle, as described by Tietze: Here we have the infant drawn from a liquid environment (following screams of women on the sinking ferry) rubbed into life by an effeminate male, hurting himself when “a puff of wind” throws him down, learning to walk all over again, and defeating a bully by sitting opposite him and whetting the blade of his phallic knife until the other retreats in fear. (Is it too obvious a symbol that Hump has obtained his knife by trading some milk for it?)

Van Weyden certainly seems to experience his emergence onto the deck as his birth: I seemed swinging in a mighty rhythm. . . . My rhythm grew shorter and shorter. . . . I could scarcely catch my breath, so fiercely was I impelled through the heavens. The gong thundered more frequently and more furiously. I grew to await it with a nameless dread. Then it seemed as though I were being dragged over rasping sands, white and hot in the sun. . . . I gasped, caught my breath painfully, and opened my eyes. Two men were kneeling beside me, working over me. My mighty rhythm was the lift and forward plunge of a ship on the sea. The terrific gong was a frying-pan, hanging on the wall, that rattled and clattered with each leap of the ship. The rasping, scorching sands were a man’s hard hands chafing my naked chest. . . . “That’ll do, Yonson,” one of the men said. “Carn’t yer see you’ve bloomin’ well rubbed all the gent’s skin orf?” (P. 12)

Van Weyden’s adolescence is figured by his initial crush on Larsen, who shows himself naked to van Weyden and invites him to touch his muscles. “Now,” observes Tietze, “whether the intrusion is ‘believable’


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1029

THE SEA-WOLF

or not, Hump’s psychological development requires the miraculous introduction of Maud.” Significantly, she first appears dressed as a boy. GENDER AND ANDROGYNY

Defending Brewster from Larsen in the rape scene, van Weyden brandishes his knife and “slays” the “father.” As to the often-criticized Endeavor Island housekeeping scenes, which London had to censor heavily for Century, including the separate huts they build, Tietze argues for the serious purpose of these scenes: “Hump cannot become a full person until he forms a community—in this case, a man and a woman working together to survive.” Ironically, given his own initial effeminacy, van Weyden recognizes that it is unhealthy to be as far separated from the community of women as someone like Larsen is. There must be a sensible equipoise of both worlds. Until taken aboard the Ghost, van Weyden is only a half-man, lacking in virility because he has been reared in a woman’s world. Not until he has viewed woman from a man’s world is his perspective complete, for only then may he assume his role in society as a male—as mate and father. As Sam Baskett has stated, he expresses the need for psychic androgyny—and his need explains Brewster’s place in the novel. Interestingly, at the time of the composition of The Sea-Wolf, London was writing in letters to Charmian Kittredge and Anna Strunsky about his own need for an ideal mate of an androgynous nature who would help him express “the woman in me” (Baskett, p. 9). Despite the censor’s blue pencil, London smugly managed to insert erotic elements, as with the comedy in the erecting of the mast in chapter 37: I called to her, and the mast moved easily and accurately. Straight toward the square hole of the step the square butt descended; . . . Square fitted into square. The mast was stepped. I raised a shout, and she ran down to see. In the yellow lantern light we peered at what we had accomplished. We looked at each other, and our hands felt their way and clasped. The eyes of both us, I think, were moist with the joy of success. “It was done so easily after all,” I remarked. “All the work was in the preparation.” “And all the wonder in the completion,” Maud added. “I can scarcely bring myself to realize that that great mast is really up and in; that you have lifted it from the water, swung it through the air, and deposited it here where it belongs. It is a Titan’s task.” (Pp. 349–350)

Though one well-known early reader, Ambrose Bierce, rejected the love element altogether, “with its absurd suppressions and impossible proprieties” (Foner, p. 61), the Darwinian and Freudian contexts make clearer why Brewster must enter the story.

1030

A M E R I C A N

Much has been made of Maud Brewster as a “New Woman,” but it is also accurate to say that Humphrey van Weyden also stands for a “New Man.” When one meets van Weyden, his capacity as a man seems limited merely to reading his own reviews in the Atlantic Monthly—an activity that serves as a fitting image of the backward-looking qualities of the old century, which the lovers must abandon to live in the new. As he gains the abilities that the circumstances require of him, however, Van Weyden becomes a man of the new century, able to face all of its intellectual, moral, social, and technological changes. Van Weyden and Brewster embody a modern relativism that comprehends both the meanness and magnificence of human potentiality. See also Naturalism BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

London, Jack. The Letters of Jack London. 3 vols. Edited by Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz III, and I. Milo Shepard. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988. London, Jack. The Sea-Wolf. New York: Macmillan, 1904. All references cited in text refer to this edition. London, Jack. The Sea-Wolf. Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. Riverside editions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964. Secondary Works

Baskett, Sam S. “Sea-Change in The Sea-Wolf.” American Literary Realism, 1870–1910 24, no. 2 (1992): 5–22. Bender, Bert. “Jack London in the Tradition of American Sea Fiction.” American Neptune 46 (summer 1986): 188–199. Boone, Joseph. “Male Independence and the American Quest Genre: Hidden Sexual Politics in the All-Male Worlds of Melville, Twain, and London.” In Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminist Criticism, edited by Judith Spector, pp. 187–217. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1986. Derrick, Scott. “Making a Heterosexual Man: Gender, Sexuality, and Narrative in the Fiction of Jack London.” In Rereading Jack London, edited by Leonard Cassuto and Jeanne Campbell Reesman, pp. 110–129. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996. Dooley, Patrick K. “‘The Strenuous Mood’: William James’s ‘Energies in Men’ and Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf.” American Literary Realism, 1870–1910 34, no. 1 (2001): 18–28. Foner, Phillip S., ed. Jack London, American Rebel: A Collection of His Social Writings Together with an Extensive Study of the Man and His Times. New York: Citadel Press, 1947. Gair, Christopher. “Gender and Genre: Nature, Naturalism, and Authority in The Sea-Wolf.” Studies in American Fiction 22, no. 2 (1994): 131–147.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SELF-HELP MANUALS

Heckerl, David K. “‘Violent Movements of Business’: The Moral Nihilist as Economic Man in Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf.” In Twisted from the Ordinary: Essays on American Literary Naturalism, edited by Mary E. Papke, pp. 202–216. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. Kingman, Russ. A Pictorial Life of Jack London. New York: Crown, 1979. Labor, Earle, and Jeanne Campbell Reesman. Jack London. Rev. ed. New York: Twayne, 1994. See pp. 58–63. “Literary Notes: Jack London’s Remarkable Book.” Review of The Sea-Wolf. San Francisco Argonaut 55 (14 November 1904): 311. London, Charmian Kittredge. The Book of Jack London. 2 vols. New York: Century, 1921. Mitchell, Lee Clark. “‘And Rescue Us from Ourselves’: Becoming Someone in Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf.” American Literature 70, no. 2 (1998): 317–335. Nolte, Carl. “Foggy Ferry Crash Remembered.” San Francisco Chronicle, 1 December 2001. Available at http://www.sfgate.com. Oliveri, Vinnie. “Sex, Gender, and Death in The Sea-Wolf.” Pacific Coast Philology 38 (2003): 99–115. Papa, James A., Jr. “Canvas and Steam: Historical Conflict in Jack London’s Sea-Wolf.” Midwest Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1999): 1–7. Qualtiere, Michael. “Nietzschean Psychology in London’s The Sea-Wolf.” Western American Literature 16, no. 4 (1982): 261–278. “The Sea-Wolf.” New York Times Saturday Review of Books and Art, 12 November 1904, pp. 768–769. Tietze, Thomas. “A Reply to ‘Yuletide on Endeavor Island.’” Jack London Foundation Newsletter 6, no. 2 (April 1994): n.p. Watson, Charles N., Jr. “Lucifer on the Quarter-Deck: The Sea-Wolf.” In The Novels of Jack London: A Reappraisal, pp. 53–78. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Woodward, Robert H. “Jack London’s Code of Primitivism.” Folio 18 (May 1953): 39–44. Zirkle, Conway. Evolution, Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959. Jeanne Campbell Reesman

SELF-HELP MANUALS Books intended to provide instruction that would allow individuals to advance socially, financially, or educationally proliferated during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The popularity of this genre might best be explained by what the histoA M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

rian Thomas Schlereth has called a “cultural ethos . . . [of] striving” that characterized the period (p. 254). While Schlereth specifically identifies this attitude as the basis for self-improvement programs sponsored by groups like the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (p. 253), it was also the basis for the philosophy of success articulated by and about America’s selfmade men of the period. While the designation “selfhelp manual” is most typically used to denote handbooks on business success like the journalist Orison S. Marden’s The Young Man Entering Business (1907), manuals on topics as diverse as household maintenance, etiquette, physical education, proper dress, conduct, and choosing and reading books also fall within the parameters of this genre. The thousands of titles aimed at self-improvement appealed to nineteenth-century Americans, who generally believed quite strongly in the individual’s potential to advance through self-discipline and self-education. Illiteracy fell from 20 percent to 6 percent in the years between 1876 and 1915, and with rising literacy came a demand for a variety of texts on a variety of topics (Schlereth, p. 253). At the same time, traditional ways of obtaining skills—apprenticeship and home training— were breaking down as people moved from rural to urban areas, leaving artisanship, the farm, and small trades behind. “How-to” books became a practical way to gain knowledge. Self-help manuals, whether treatises on success or instruction in decorating the home, held out the promise of advancement in a social class structure believed to be open and fluid. As the historian John Kasson has pointed out, the proliferation of instructional literature during this period made knowledge once reserved for the gentry available to all: “With proper drive, knowledge, and success, an individual or family might climb the social ladder to new heights” (p. 43). Yet as Kasson and others have shown, the manuals served cultural functions beyond those that appear on the surface. During this period, members of the urban upper class were at the center of power, but a new class of managers, planners, clerks, engineers, financial experts, and other professionals was demanded by an expanding entrepreneurial capitalism. With this new whitecollar middle class ever aspiring upward, success manuals, as well as etiquette and dress manuals, helped point the way. Changes in the workplace in combination with other trends like consumption and the formation of middle-class neighborhoods came to provide this new class with a distinct social identity. Because these groups often had wealth but little or no land, their efforts to carve out a social identity entailed distinguishing themselves from the working class, a process often propelled by aspirants’ own working-class roots.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1031

SELF-HELP MANUALS

Conduct, manners, and dress became marks of distinction, helping to define the middle class, and readers of the period sought within self-help manuals both instructions for advancing and assurances that, while life was changing, traditional values still prevailed. APOSTLES OF SELF-HELP

Among the better-known self-help manuals of the nineteenth century were manuals for success, which instructed young men in the virtues and mind-set of the self-made businessman. Following in the tradition of Cotton Mather’s Two Brief Discourses, One Directing a Christian in His General Calling, Another Directing Him in His Personal Calling (1701), which argued that men should succeed at their vocations in order to secure salvation, these manuals viewed self-improvement as next to godliness. The historian Irvin Wyllie has noted the precursors of nineteenth-century self-help in his analysis of the genre, including both Mather and Benjamin Franklin, whose Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732–1757), Autobiography (1791), The Way to Wealth (1758), and Advice to Young Tradesmen (1748) publicized the maxims-to-prosper-by and philosophy of thrift, hard work, and rise that has made Franklin America’s quintessential self-made man. The 1850s saw the publication of titles like Freeman Hunt’s Worth and Wealth (1856), Edwin Troxell Freedley’s Practical Treatise on Business (1852), and Charles C. B. Seymour’s Self-Made Men (1858), documenting the lives and paths to success of American men of wealth. From the 1880s through the 1920s self-help advocates published hundreds of books and articles, all with the aim of explaining the tenets of success to a public eager to rise. Before the turn of the twentieth century, these “apostles of self-help,” as Wyllie calls them, forwarded a gospel of success and wealth that focused on character and the development of willpower, industry, perseverance, and frugality. According to these writers, self-improvement implies moral superiority, and the young man aimed toward success must display moral deportment, punctuality, reliability, indispensability, obedience, and thoroughness even as he begins working his way up from messenger boy to clerk to manager to owner. Among the most influential of the late-nineteenthcentury self-help writers were representative Protestant clergymen who proposed that success came from God, whose gifts to all included the opportunity to rise. These latter-day Cotton Mathers saw economic salvation as analogous to spiritual salvation, and they modeled their books on sermons, logically organizing their arguments and presenting in detail the virtues needed for success. Instruction always appeared on how to resist temptation, including weaknesses of the flesh and the propensity to speculate on the stock market, which

1032

A M E R I C A N

these moral leaders equated with gambling. Among the clergy who headed up the cult of self-help were Daniel Wise, who wrote Uncrowned Kings (1875); Francis E. Clark, who wrote Our Business Boys (1884) and Danger Signals: The Enemies of Youth from the Business Man’s Standpoint (1882); Lyman Abbott, who wrote How to Succeed (1882); and Wilber F. Crafts, who wrote Successful Men of Today and What They Say of Success (1883). All major Protestant denominations offered a clerical spokesperson who saw no schism between the pursuit of wealth and Christian virtues. While many of the self-help writers of the late nineteenth century abandoned the sermon form in favor of biography combined with advice, traditional values continued to prevail. Some, themselves selfmade businessmen, revealed the supposed secrets of success as they related their own experiences. Thomas Mellon, the founder of the Mellon banking fortune, for example, offered Thomas Mellon and His Times (1885), while John D. Rockefeller offered Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1907), a variation on the theme of wealth through virtue. The most often quoted of these texts, Andrew Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth” (1889) and The Empire of Business (1902), outlined the traditional values of self-help. Carnegie likened an honest day’s work to prayer, and he advocated a philosophy whereby the wealthy would endow libraries and museums that would benefit the common good. Other writers offering advice alongside biographical sketches and anecdotes of the rich and successful were journalists turned self-help proponents. The most prominent of these were Edward W. Bok with The Keys to Success (1898) and Successward (1895) and Orison S. Marden, whose Pushing to the Front (1894) went through 250 editions. The historian John Cawelti explains all of the above nineteenth-century texts in terms of their underlying purpose, that of explaining to their readers “the dynamic changes of American life in terms of badly shaken traditional verities” (p. 47). During this period urban centers were growing at a staggering rate, and an economy of abundance made material objects increasingly important in the day-to-day lives of people in all social classes. Amid all this change, Cawelti contends, the proponents of self-help eased the public’s fears about the breaking up of the traditional social order, which brought new groups into power. They coupled economic success and traditional values, a rhetorical move that made change much less threatening. “Perhaps these works of popular ethics,” Cawelti writes, “constituted a literature of reassurance rather than of inspiration and guidance” (p. 55). At bottom, he argues, the gospel of self-help allayed fears as it preserved the traditional social hierarchy.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SELF-HELP MANUALS

Andrew Carnegie’s essay “The Gospel of Wealth” appeared in the journal North American Review in June 1889. Following in the tradition of Benjamin Franklin and other purveyors of advice on success, Carnegie linked wealth with superior character. Viewed as a classic, the essay advocated that the wealthy use their riches for the good of society.

The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are to-day where civilized man then was. When visiting the Sioux, I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to-day measures the change which has come with civilization. Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth,” North American Review 148, no. 391 (June 1889), pp. 653–654.

While character and the development of moral superiority were the centerpieces of nineteenth-century self-help manuals, those of the early twentieth century had as a central theme the importance of personality. The historian Walter Susman summarizes his reading of manuals by Orison S. Marden written in 1899 and 1921. The 1899 text, he says, stresses “the basic values necessary in a producer-oriented society, including hard work and thrift” while the 1921 manual urges men to develop “the aura and power of personality that can ‘sway great masses’” (p. 279). Susman has gleaned the following list of characteristic words from his reading of manuals from the early twentieth century: the nouns efficiency and energy and the adjectives fascinating, stunning, attractive, magnetic, glowing, masterful, creative, dominant, and forceful (p. 277). According to Susman, “The social role demanded of all in the new culture of personality was that of a performer” (p. 280). Manuals on effective speech, grooming and beauty, clothing, and personal appearance supplemented the reading of men bent on success. Confirming Susman’s view, Cawelti shows that the idea of “personal magnetism” replaced the ideal of self-improvement, and energy, initiative, and confidence replaced the more traditional emphasis on industry and perseverance. Self-help titles that reflect these post-1900 attitudes include The Progressive Business Man (1913) by Orison S. Marden, The New Day (1904) by Russell Conwell, Personality: How to Build It (1915) by Henry Laurent, and Power of Personality (1920) by B. C. Bean. WOMEN AND SELF-HELP

PHILOSOPHERS OF SUCCESS

Sometime during the first decade of the twentieth century a subtle shift in advice and purpose occurred in these self-help manuals, making them less focused on traditional values and more focused on the pursuit of wealth. Identifying this shift, Cawelti argues that while writers before 1900 balanced religion and secular values, showing a direct relationship between individual effort and the resultant product, their philosophy was warranted by their view of a static society of farmers, artisans, and petty capitalists that in actuality no longer constituted the dominant culture. Cawelti argues that nineteenth-century philosophies of selfhelp gradually gave way to a philosophy of success, a stance that implies competition and the successful man as a dynamic competitor. Because the large corporation had prevailed over the small business—over fifteen thousand of the latter had failed in 1893 alone (Schlereth, p. 33)—and because corporation needs were quite different from those of the small business, new kinds of self-help literature emerged. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

The spirit of striving that infused self-help and success manuals for men likewise infused the manuals written for and consumed by women. Focusing on the particulars of housewifery and motherhood, many works bear titles illustrating the traditional roles fulfilled by the majority of women of the period: Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery (1873) by Marion Harland, Perfect Womanhood for MaidensWives-Mothers (1903) by Mary Ries Melendy, MD, and Household Elegancies: Suggestion in Household Art and Tasteful Home Decoration (1875) by Mrs. C. S. Jones and Henry T. Williams. This self-help literature for women represented the home as both haven from the public sphere and the carrier of morality and cultural values. Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe addressed this function in The American Woman’s Home (1869) when they wrote that the “aesthetic element” of a home “holds a place of great significance among the influences which make home happy and attractive, . . . and contributes much to the education of the entire household in refinement, intellectual


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1033

S E X E D U C AT I O N

development, and moral sensibility” (p. 84). Other self-help manuals, however, suggest the changes besetting women’s lives as colleges for women opened their doors and as women began entering the professions. Titles like The Woman’s Book: Dealing Practically with the Modern Conditions of Home-Life, Self-Support, Education, Opportunities, and Every-Day Problems (1894) and Lida Rose McCade’s The American Girl at College (1893) appealed to the New Woman, the term used to suggest the self-assertiveness, independence, and energy of the new generation of women interested in education, athletics, social reform, or pursuing a professional life. Books like Know Thyself; or, Nature’s Secrets Revealed (1911) gave instruction in “self-development with right conduct toward others” (p. 3) as well as instruction on birth control or “limitation of offspring” (p. 177). Manuals for women cut both with and against the grain of traditional women’s roles, allowing modern-day readers a clearer understanding of the competing versions of womanhood during this period. Whether written for aspiring businessmen or for women assuming traditional or nontraditional societal roles, self-help manuals provide a lens for examining the lives and aspirations of late-nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century Americans. While the texts for success strike contemporary readers as repetitious and formulaic, they enable historians and literary scholars to understand the cultural mind-set that made these books among the most popular of their day. By reading these texts, twenty-first-century readers come closer to capturing that “ethos of striving” that might otherwise prove elusive. See also Success BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. 1791. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1996. Franklin, Benjamin. Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1733. 1933. Bedford, Mass.: Applewood, 1969. Franklin, Benjamin. The Way to Wealth. 1758. Bedford, Mass.: Applewood, 1986. Hunt, Freeman. Worth and Wealth: A Collection of Maxims, Morals, and Miscellanies for Merchants and Men of Business. 1856. The Making of America project, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1996. http://www.hti.umich.edu. Marden, Orison S. Pushing to the Front. Petersburg, N.Y.: Success Company, 1894. Marden, Orison S. The Young Man Entering Business. 1907. New York: Lightening Source, 2003.

1034

A M E R I C A N

Seymour, Charles C. B. “Self-Made Men.” The Making of America project, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1996. http:// name.umdl.umich.edu/ABE2870. Secondary Works

Cawelti, John G. Apostles of the Self-Made Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965. Kasson, John. Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1990. Schlereth, Thomas. Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1875–1915. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Susman, Walter I. Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century. New York: Pantheon, 1984. Wyllie, Irvin G. The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954. Carolyn L. Mathews

SENTIMENTAL FICTION See Domestic and Sentimental Fiction

SEX EDUCATION In a society that compartmentalized everyday life into public and private “spheres,” sex in the nineteenth century was considered an extremely private matter. Sex education programs did not exist in schools. It was the role of parents or older siblings to impart sexual information to younger family members. Public discourse on the subject was welcome only if the message was consistent with culturally held ideas about gender roles and the purpose of sex. Challenges to these ideas were subject to suppression and even prosecution. SEX EDUCATION AND THE FAMILY

It must be said that, in general, American families failed in their role as sex educators. Inhibited by a strong sense of modesty, parents and siblings were often circumspect in telling children “the facts of life” if they broached the subject at all. Consequently many young people acquired their sex education on the sly from pornography or from furtive discussions with members of the working class, such as servants, who generally were more open about sex than the middle class. Those with no access to such resources often entered marriage knowing very little about reproduction and birth control. Some were in the dark about the sex act itself.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


True, the diaries and letters of some middle-class Americans reveal the details of richly satisfying erotic lives. Especially in large cities such as New York, couples often prided themselves on having a sophisticated attitude toward sex. But much more frequently, personal writings speak of sexual ignorance and anxiety. Middle-class women were expected to be virgins before marriage. Virginity in men too was valued, although a double standard existed which could excuse a man if, for example, he had visited a prostitute to gain “experience.” Many couples faced their future as sexual partners with fear and trepidation. The historian Peter Gay, in his monumental study of the nineteenth-century middle class, The Bourgeois Experience, cites the letter of one man, writing to his fiancée, who anticipates her “terror” at seeing him naked on their wedding night (p. 291). A memorable scene from Frank Norris’s (1870–1902) 1899 novel McTeague illustrates this “terror” that many young women felt upon being alone with their husbands for the first time. The wedding party is breaking up, and as the newlywed Trina McTeague watches her family leave, she begins to panic: “They were going, going. When would she ever see them again? She was to be left alone with this man to whom she had just been married. A sudden vague terror seized her; she left McTeague and ran down the hall and caught her mother around the neck” (p. 101). Many marriages went days, and often much longer, before being consummated. Often marriage resulted in a sexual mismatch, pairing a libidinous, demanding husband with a wife who had been taught little about sex except that (1) its sole purpose was procreative and that (2) women were supposed to be submissive and assumed to be passionless—that is, they found no pleasure in sex for its own sake. Such was the upbringing of Annie Besant, who would enjoy a distinguished career as a scholar of religion and philosophy. In her autobiography, published in 1893, she wrote of a marriage that ended in separation, a marriage that she had entered “with no more idea of the marriage relation than if I had been four years old instead of twenty” (p. 70). Victimized by a conspiracy of silence on the subject of sexual intimacy, and thus unprepared to understand her own sexuality, she speaks for many daughters of her generation in regarding her initiation into the mysteries of sex as a “rude awakening.” In the scene from McTeague, Trina’s mother, who speaks in the heavily inflected English of a German immigrant, calms her daughter with empty assurances (“Poor leetle scairt girl, don’ gry—soh-soh-soh, dere’s nuttun to pe ’fraid oaf ”), before essentially advising her to submit to her new husband (“Dere, go to your hoasban’,” p. 101). For many American women, this is where their sex education began and ended. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

In 1872 and 1873, Congress enacted laws against the publication and dissemination of obscene materials. Commonly known as “the Comstock laws,” these statutes in effect made sex education an illegal activity. The following postal statute was used to prosecute doctors who wrote about birth control:

No obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, paper, print, or other publication of an indecent character, or any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion, nor any article or thing intended or adapted for any indecent or immoral use or nature, nor any written or printed card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information directly or indirectly, where or how, or of whom, or by what means either of the things before mentioned may be obtained or made, nor any letter upon the envelope of which, or postal card upon which indecent or scurrilous epithets may be written or printed, shall be carried in the mail; and any person who shall knowingly deposit or cause to be deposited, for mailing or delivery, any of the herein before-mentioned articles or things, or any notice or paper containing any advertisement relating to the aforesaid articles or things, and any person who, in pursuance of any plan or scheme for disposing of any of the herein before-mentioned articles or things, shall take or cause to be taken, from the mail any such letter or package, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, for every offense, be fined not less than one hundred dollars, nor more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned at hard labor no less than one year nor more than ten years, or both. Comstock, Frauds Exposed; or, How the People Are Deceived and Robbed, and Youth Corrupted, p. 401.

SEX EDUCATION FROM THE EXPERTS

Outside the family, certain experts enjoyed a cultural mandate to educate Americans about sex. Signaling a shift from an earlier time, when the clergy was the recognized public authority on all matters pertaining to sex, Americans in the latter part of the nineteenth century entrusted doctors with this role. The rise in popularity of sexual advice literature attests to a hunger among those who could afford to buy it—mainly middle-class Americans—for sexual information. By


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1035


and large these sex manuals were written by male doctors. Appealing to a growing public faith in science, these medical professionals would cite scientific evidence to support basically the same arguments made by clergymen a generation or two earlier. The dangers of sex were cataloged in full: venereal diseases could kill, so young men were urged to be continent. Young women, reminded of their duty as future mothers, were cautioned to avoid any activity that could jeopardize their reproductive systems. The intensity of these familiar arguments rose as challenges to the social order presented themselves. For example, arguments asserting scientific “proof” of the delicacy of the female reproductive system became more strident as the woman’s rights movement grew in strength. The years after the Civil War saw a vocal minority of women call for the same rights and privileges that men enjoyed, including access to higher education, which was the gateway to careers in medicine, law, and business. In this context Dr. Edward Clarke’s alarmist treatise Sex in Education must be read. Published in 1873, Sex in Education was reprinted eleven times in its first year alone. The volume spawned a number of treatises by other authors, most of whom rushed to agree with Clarke. Citing half a dozen case studies of young women who had fallen ill or collapsed from stress while attending women’s schools such as Vassar College, Clarke asserted that the college regimen was “out of harmony with the rhythmical periodicity of the female organization” (p. 79). In other words, woman was a delicate organism, and she who subjected herself to the rigorous demands of a higher education ran the risk of throwing her menstrual cycle out of balance. According to Clarke, the consequence of prolonged stress to a woman’s reproductive system would be infertility. With credentials that included ties to Harvard, Clarke could not be dismissed as a quack. His conclusion—that America could see the day when it would have to import its mothers-to-be from foreign countries—frightened many people. Clarke was not alone in reaching faulty scientific conclusions in the name of educating the public about sexuality. A whole body of medical literature appeared contemporaneously with Sex in Education that treated such subjects as masturbation. Again, citing case studies, these reports linked masturbation—or “onanism,” “selfabuse,” or “self-pollution”—to any number of symptoms, from lethargy to much more dire effects such as epilepsy and insanity. Having studied the nineteenthcentury panic over masturbation, Peter Gay comments: “The vice of ‘self-abuse’ or ‘self-pollution’ propelled learned men, and some learned women, into postures

1036

A M E R I C A N

of perspiring alarm; they flooded the literatures of medical advice and moral uplift with macabre case histories and desperate, repetitive pleas for action before it was too late” (p. 295). “Action” included depriving young men of all enticements to masturbation, such as warm baths, tight clothing, French novels, and stimulating drinks like tea and coffee. Cures of strict exercise, bland diet, and medicine were prescribed. In extreme cases male masturbators were fitted with restraining devices such as straitjackets and penile rings. Although the medical experts were wrong about a good many topics they addressed, these doctors were probably not trying deliberately to mislead the public. If a doctor encountered a mentally ill person who masturbated frequently, he could draw the conclusion that masturbation had caused, or at least contributed, to the disease. Psychoses were not well understood in the nineteenth century. Moreover, although doctors believed that they were drawing their conclusions from science, they were often in reality moralists who saw masturbation and other expressions of sexual passion as vices or evils. In other words, they were not able to shed cultural values when studying their patients. At the top of the list of values in the nineteenth century was that of doing one’s duty: a man’s duty was to sire offspring while contributing productively to a thriving capitalistic economy. Masturbation, then, was regarded as evil because it threatened social order. It amounted to a draining of the vital energy that a man would need to father strong, healthy children and to become a good citizen. Female masturbation was disturbing on an even more profound level. A woman found engaged in “self-gratification” was acting contrarily to the virtually sacred idea that a woman was passionless. Among women, only prostitutes were thought to be unable to control their sexual desire. Clitoral amputation was one method of treatment for both young girls and adult women who were caught masturbating. ANTHONY COMSTOCK AND THE SUPPRESSION OF SEXUAL DISCOURSE

Absent from virtually all sexual advice literature of the nineteenth century were invitations to enjoy and explore one’s sexuality. Erotic pleasure was a private matter between married couples, a topic not open to public discussion. Reproduction was the only goal of sex to be acknowledged publicly. With the rise to prominence of Anthony Comstock and his New York– based Society for the Suppression of Vice, Americans were protected by sexual police that tenaciously pursued anyone who crossed the line between private and public. Progressive doctors who published educational information about contraceptives were fined under the

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


so-called Comstock laws, since the very mention of birth control implied a purpose for sex besides that of reproduction. Anthony Comstock began his career in the early 1870s, cracking down on sellers of obscene material such as pornography. Comstock held no elected office or official position within the law enforcement community. His campaign against obscenity was very much a private crusade that rapidly gained political endorsement and the public’s trust. Soon obscenity came to be defined as anything that Comstock believed threatened the public by speaking too frankly about sex. Although many of those arrested by Comstock’s agents were indeed involved in the thriving pornography industry, he also hounded people who could hardly be called pornographers. Many were jailed. Ira Craddock was one of Comstock’s many victims. Craddock was a member of the social purity movement, which, with its origins as an antiprostitution league, had a positive impact on society in the last decades of the nineteenth century. During its heyday in the 1880s and 1890s, the social purity movement achieved a number of victories: it reformed many prostitutes; it convinced many middle-class Americans to adopt a single standard that held men just as accountable for prostitution as women; it lobbied successfully for changing the legal age of sexual consent from as low as ten in some states to between fourteen and eighteen in twenty-nine states. Social purists like Craddock became figures of controversy when they went further, calling for sex education that did not avoid discussion of birth control and erotic fulfillment. Craddock’s marital advice tract Right Marital Living (1899) provoked Comstock with, for example, a passage celebrating “the sacred moment when husband and wife shall melt into one another’s genital embrace, so that the twain shall be one flesh, and then, as of old, God will walk with the twain in the garden of bliss” (Stoehr, p. 631). Even though Craddock expresses sexual ecstasy in religious terms, as an experience bringing married couples closer to God, Comstock considered Right Marital Living obscene. Imprisoned for violating the Comstock laws, Craddock would eventually commit suicide. The advocates of free love were another group who tried to extend the boundaries of sexual discourse. They too suffered the wrath of Comstock. Whereas conventional morality held that sex outside of marriage was sinful, free lovers believed that sex without love was the true immorality. Did not many marriages decline into loveless unions? asked the free lovers. Marriage became a form of prostitution or slavery when a husband would “use” a wife he no longer loved for sexual gratification. Several utopian commuA M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

In this excerpt from Anthony Comstock’s book Frauds Exposed (1880), the anti-vice crusader defends his campaign to rid society of those who traffic in “obscene publications”:

The effect of this cursed business on our youth and society, no pen can describe. It breeds lust. Lust defiles the body, debauches the imagination, corrupts the mind, deadens the will, destroys the memory, sears the conscience, hardens the heart, damns the soul. It unnerves the arm, and steals away the elastic step. It robs the soul of manly virtues, and imprints upon the mind of the youth, visions that throughout life curse the man or woman. Like a panorama, the imagination seems to keep this hated thing before the mind, until it wears its way deeper and deeper, plunging the victim into practices he loathes. This traffic has made rakes and libertines in society—skeletons in many a household. The family is polluted, home desecrated, and each generation born into the world is more and more cursed by the inherited weaknesses, the harvest of this seed-sowing of the Evil one. And these monsters—these devil-men, or men-devils—caught in this cursed traffic, and prosecuted legally, and legally placed where they cannot longer strike their deadly fangs into the vitals of the youth, are made martyrs of, and the so-called “liberals” of this land rally to their defence! and, at the beck and call of this band of ex-convicts and co-conspirators, a combined effort is made to repeal these laws! Comstock, Frauds Exposed; or, How the People Are Deceived and Robbed, and Youth Corrupted, p. 416.

nities were founded in the mid-1800s where members were encouraged to form monogamous love relationships without falling into the “trap” of thinking that marriage must be the inevitable outcome. Free lovers occupied a radical fringe in nineteenthcentury society until Victoria Woodhull began, in the early 1870s, to lecture to middle-class audiences on women’s rights. Like other nineteenth-century women with progressive thoughts, Woodhull believed women should be allowed to vote; but her ideas on women’s


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1037


rights, which she expressed not only in lecture halls but also in her own periodical, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, went far beyond the issue of suffrage to include a woman’s right to enjoy and to refuse sex. Comstock arrested Woodhull for publishing obscenity and prosecuted her vigorously, jailing her a total of three times before she finally fled to England to rebuild her life. While radicals agitated for more openness in sexual matters, American writers of the 1880s maintained the status quo. Courtship and marriage were main subjects in the first important American novels of the decade, Henry James’s (1843–1916) The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and William Dean Howells’s (1837–1920) A Modern Instance (1881); however, James and Howells played by the rule of keeping private matters private. Modern literary critics find a rich abundance of sexual symbols and patterns in The Portrait of a Lady and A Modern Instance, but these are not on the surface. They must be uncovered and interpreted by critics schooled in applying Freudian psychology to literary texts. James and Howells were key figures in the movement known as American literary realism, but their sense of realism did not extend to writing frankly about their characters’ sex lives. Bedroom scenes were unheard of. Even when writing of something as common as pregnancy, these authors used circumspection and euphemism. It was not a matter of being held back by fear of prosecution. They were simply representatives of the American middle class writing to an audience whose expectations for serious literature did not include discussion of what went on between a wife and a husband in their bedroom. Although tame by early twenty-first century standards, a few novels of the 1890s did deal with sexual themes. In Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893), Stephen Crane (1871–1900) offers a sympathetic portrait of a young prostitute. The heroine of Kate Chopin’s (1851–1904) The Awakening (1899) is prepared to break free of her conventional marriage and to act upon her passion for another man. The marriage in Norris’ McTeague (1899) deteriorates into a sadomasochistic relationship. But these were isolated examples of novels that took risks; they did not represent a concerted effort by American writers to bring sexual frankness to literature. Moreover, they were not well received but were in fact targets for disdainful reviews. SEX EDUCATION AFTER COMSTOCK

Comstock’s power to intimidate and prosecute those who would attempt to educate and enlighten the public on sexuality would continue until his death in 1915. However, he alone cannot be blamed for the

1038

A M E R I C A N

atmosphere of sexual repression that characterized nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century middle-class life. After all, Comstock went about his business with the blessings of his peers. Thus the lack of reliable sexual information was not only the result of wrong conclusions reached by the medical experts but also the product of a society that willfully allowed itself to remain sexually ignorant. Comstock’s last celebrated arrest was that of Margaret Sanger (1883–1966), whom Comstock detained for distributing her pamphlet on birth control called Family Limitation (1914). The issue of birth control and the name of Margaret Sanger are inexorably linked. She was able to unite the classes over the issue of birth control, arguing that birth control meant sexual freedom for those middle-class women who wished to enjoy sex without becoming pregnant. It also brought control over fertility to working-class women, who often bore child after child. The economic demands of providing for a large family doomed working-class couples to live in poverty. Birth control offered a way out. Comstock would already be dead by the time charges against Sanger were dropped in 1916. His death did not immediately put an end to the policing of sex education—Sanger was arrested again, later in 1916, for opening a birth control clinic in New York that distributed contraceptives to working-class women—but the tide was changing. Sanger’s arrest had prompted some public outcry. Members of the intellectual community even wrote in protest to President Woodrow Wilson. Moreover, enough people wanted to hear what Sanger had to say that her supporters were able to organize a lecture tour of more than a hundred cities. Change did not happen overnight. But as most social historians agree, by the 1920s America had rejected the conspiracy of silence against sex education. A new era marked by a more open attitude toward expressions and discussions of sexuality had begun. See also Adolescence; The Awakening; Feminism; Pornography; Prostitution BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Besant, Annie. An Autobiography. London: Fisher and Unwin, 1893. Clarke, Edward H. Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for the Girls. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1873. Comstock, Anthony. Frauds Exposed; or, How the People Are Deceived and Robbed, and Youth Corrupted. 1880. Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1969.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SHORT STORY

Comstock, Anthony. Traps for the Young. 1883. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1967. Ellis, Havelock. Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Vol. 2, The Evolution of Modesty, the Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity, Auto-Eroticism. 1900. New York: Random House, 1936. Maudsley, Henry. “Illustrations of a Variety of Insanity.” Journal of Mental Science 14 (July 1868): 155–161. Norris, Frank. McTeague. 1899. Edited by Donald Pizer. New York and London: Norton, 1977. Sanger, Margaret. My Fight for Birth Control. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1931. Secondary Works

Bates, Anna Louise. Weeder in the Garden of the Lord: Anthony Comstock’s Life and Career. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995. Beisel, Nicola. Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. Broun, Heywood, and Margaret Leech. Anthony Comstock: Roundsman of the Lord. New York: Literary Guild of America, 1927. D’Emilio, John, and Estelle B. Freedman. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Gay, Peter. The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud. Vol. 1, Education of the Senses. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Kennedy, David M. Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970. Prioleau, Elizabeth Stevens. The Circle of Eros: Sexuality in the Work of William Dean Howells. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1983. Stoehr, Taylor. Free Love in America: A Documentary History. New York: AMS Press, 1979. Walters, Ronald G., ed. Primers for Purity: Sexual Advice to Victorian America. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1974. Paul Hadella

SHORT STORY The latter half of the nineteenth century marked a period of maturity for the American short story. Its growth was due largely to the influence of the realist movement, which professionalized the literary arts, putting them to the service of aesthetic protocols designed A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

to elevate fiction to the cultural status of science, politics, and the law. Emphasizing representational accuracy, tonal objectivity, and the taxonomic organization of fictional modes and styles into distinct categories, realists approached the short story with the intent of formalizing what had to date been at best an amorphous classification. There were short stories before the term “short story” entered the critical vocabulary in the 1850s, of course, but they varied so widely in technique and effect that the consanguinity among them was difficult to specify (Marler, pp. 154–155). The lack of generic unity explains why short fiction was broadly dismissed as a minor form, one suitable for novices needing to “prepare themselves for future and nobler exertions . . . to be worked up in more enduring materials” (Pattee, p. 32). The imperatives of realism redeemed the short story from this animadversion, giving it a critical currency that, despite Edgar Allan Poe’s efforts on its (and his own) behalf in the 1840s, and despite the memorable work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and others, it had not previously enjoyed. By the mid-1880s it would come to be celebrated as a “uniquely” American art form, one whose “supremacy,” in Brander Matthews’s estimation, “any competent critic could not but acknowledge” (p. 49). SHORT STORY FORM AND THE “TRICK ENDING”

That legitimization process was neither uniform nor easy. Initially it involved issues of content and style. Only after 1870 would realists focus upon form to determine how short fiction differed from other literary modes. At the heart of these inquiries lay a basic question: Did the circumscribed space of the short story impinge upon the natural shape of a plot, effectively molding its drama to fit a predetermined structure? Poe had certainly thought so, claiming that “the tale . . . affords unquestionably the fairest field for the loftiest talent” because its abbreviated length expedites a “single effect” through a “preestablished design” that avails itself of “the immense force derivable from totality” (May, pp. 60–61). Yet for many realists, such a prescription smacked of prefabrication, implying that “form” was merely a synonym for “formula.” The fin de siècle marketplace seemingly confirmed this fear by proliferating a type of story whose structure turned on what would come to be known— derisively—as the “trick ending,” in which a concluding twist catches the reader by surprise. One such story to receive wide acclaim was Frank Stockton’s “The Lady, or the Tiger?” (1882), but an English translation of Guy de Maupassant’s “La Parure” (“The Necklace,” 1884) proved the true prototype, inspiring a flood of imitations that reached their commercial


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1039

SHORT STORY

DEFINING THE SHORT STORY The more carefully we study the history of fiction the more clearly we perceive that the Novel and the Short-story are essentially different—that the difference between them is not one of mere length only, but fundamental. The Short-story seeks one set of effects in its own way, and the Novel seeks a wholly distinct set of effects in a wholly distinct way. We are also led to the conclusion that the Short-story—in spite of the fact that in our language it has no name of its own— is one of the few sharply defined literary forms. It is a genre, as M. Brunetière terms it, a species, as a naturalist might call it, as individual as the Lyric itself and as various. It is as distinct an entity as the Epic, as Tragedy, as Comedy. Matthews, The Philosophy of the Short-Story, pp. 73–74.

apotheosis with the popularity of tales by O. Henry. Not every story with a twist was, in the strictest sense, a “trick ending” story: the term typically denotes only those texts that locate the surprise in the final sentence (Gerlach, p. 55; Fusco, pp. 4–5). Yet the prevalence of ironic conclusions perpetuated the notion that the short story was “end-driven,” thereby challenging more literary-minded writers to develop methods for undermining what seemed its determining form. For many other writers, however, particularly those drawing from oral and folkloric traditions of storytelling, a dramatic conclusion was comparable to the punch line of joke and was thus a vital narrative element. Still other writers deployed twists to comment on racial and gender issues, using reversals to debunk cultural stereotypes and undermine social hierarchies. ATLANTIC MONTHLY

The aesthetics of the short story might not even have become a matter of debate had it not been for the Atlantic Monthly, the Boston-based periodical whose founding editor, James Russell Lowell (1819– 1891), discouraged contributors from the romanticized stories popularized by the leading mid-nineteenthcentury mass-market fiction outlet, the New York Ledger. According to Fred Lewis Pattee, Lowell “was attracted by the genuineness and truth of life in a tale, be it high life or low, and he rejected without hesitation the mechanically literary, the artificially romantic, and the

1040

A M E R I C A N

merely sentimental. With the advent of the Atlantic Monthly a healthy realism for the first time decisively entered American fiction” (p. 168). Under his tutelage, a range of writers, including Rose Terry Cooke, Rebecca Harding Davis, Fitz-James O’Brien, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Edward Everett Hale, explored previously taboo subject matter, flouted the obligation to moralize, drew denser psychological portraits, eschewed fantasy for familiar settings, and enjoyed greater stylistic leeway in reproducing the nuances of everyday speech (dialect). Two early Atlantic stories in particular, “Life in the Iron Mills” (1861) by Davis (1831–1910) and “The Man without a Country” (1863), by Hale (1822–1909) infused short fiction with social urgency by examining labor abuse and the responsibilities of patriotism, respectively. Lowell’s influence is perhaps most marked on Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811– 1996), who curbed the didacticism of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851–1852) to produce the tales gathered in Sam Lawson’s Oldtown Fireside Stories (1871), which, along with those in Cooke’s Somebody’s Neighbors (1881), exemplify the New England local color literary tradition. While these early realist stories introduced new possibilities of subject and style, they were not concerned with form. As Pattee writes, under Lowell and his immediate editorial successor, James T. Fields, the typical Atlantic story “might begin with pages of exposition and end in a leisurely sprawl with sermonic applications; it might be loosely told with digressions and it might drag; it might extend through two or even three magazine installments—these facts were not vital. . . . [They were] concerned with matter rather than manner” (p. 173). Manner became an aesthetic issue only with the emergence of Henry James, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich, all of whom, whether as fiction writers or critics, advocated deliberate though not undue plotting. Of them Aldrich (1836–1907) was initially most influential. His epistolary short story “Marjorie Daw” (1873) was “one of the most admired pieces of short fiction of its day” (Voss, p. 115) because it artfully demonstrated how a trick ending could challenge audience expectations of plot development. Over the course of several letters, a young New York man grows increasingly obsessed with the titular heroine evocatively described by his correspondent. Only in the final scene does he discover that the woman is fictitious, invented by the friend to entertain the man during a long convalescence. Despite its popularity, “Marjorie Daw” exemplifies two pitfalls of the surprise ending: according to John Gerlach, the “device exposes the writer to ‘reader backlash,’ resentment at having been taken in” by the trick, while also discouraging a subsequent reading because the surprise is not reproducible

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SHORT STORY

a second time (p. 55). To detractors, “Marjorie Daw” and its innumerable imitators—including Aldrich’s own “Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski”—suggested that the short story was too susceptible to plot contrivances and was therefore less aesthetically viable than the novel. HENRY JAMES AND MARK TWAIN

No major writer of the period struggled more than Henry James (1843–1916) to reconcile realist aesthetics with short-story form. To him the brevity of the genre meant that only two distinct “effects” were possible: “The one with which we are familiar is that of the detached incident, single and sharp, as clear as a pistolshot; the other, of rarer performance, is that of the impression, comparatively generalized—simplified, foreshortened, reduced to a particular perspective—of a complexity or a continuity” (“Story-Teller at Large,” p. 190). The distinction suggests the poles that James would travel between his 1864 Atlantic debut, “The Story of a Year,” and such later accomplishments as “The Altar of the Dead” (1895) and “The Great Good Place” (1900). During the first stage of his career, ending around the time of his most anthologized story, Daisy Miller (1878), he structured his tales around “pistol-shot” incidents—sometimes, literal pistol shots (“My Friend Bingham”). Other stories rely upon similar if less violent twists, including revelations of romantic deceit (“A Landscape Painter”), obscured parentage (“Master Eustace”), and ironic reversals of situation (“A Passionate Pilgrim”). But as James began to plumb his trademark themes—the cultural discrepancies separating Europe and America, the place of art in the everyday, the vagaries of consciousness and self-knowledge— he found incident-oriented stories increasingly artificial and preferred instead to allow his narration to linger upon moments of moral and perspectival growth, often so subtly delineated as to appear abstract and static. This is not to say that, despite his disdain for inorganic gimmickry, James veered toward indeterminate conclusions—far from it. As Gerlach notes, “Poe’s standard for the short story—his emphasis on natural termination, linear progression, and convergence— became more, not less, James’s own standard” (p. 82), an observation substantiated by the number of protagonists who, like George Stransom in “Altar,” either die in the end or, like John Marcher in “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903), undergo a significant conversion experience. What James achieved was a correlation of plot and characterization by which the former did not appear a “detached” or extraordinary occurrence but was instead an inexorable consequence of the latter. James’s devotion to character-driven stories arose from his belief that the donnée of short fiction, its gerA M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

minal idea, should be allowed to assume its natural dimension without being forced to fit such external, market-driven criteria as word length. Significantly, his commitment to “process and duration” coincided with his inability to constrain his fiction within the limits of the periodical industry’s “one-number story,” a work that could be printed within a single magazine issue. In the prefaces to the New York edition of his collected works, James repeatedly complains of the “rude prescription of brevity at any cost” that American shortstory venues insisted upon, even claiming that Daisy Miller was initially rejected because it was a “nouvelle,” his preferred term for “two” and “threenumber” stories (Art of the Novel, pp. 219, 268). To define a short story by any “arbitrary limit of length” that might determine its shape was to oppose “its really becoming a story”: “In that dull view a ‘short story’ was a ‘short story’ . . . shades and differences, varieties and styles, the value above all else of the idea happily developed, languished under the hard-and-fast-rule of the ‘from six to eight thousand words’” (Art of the Novel, p. 220). Not surprisingly, those stories that remain James’s most celebrated—Daisy Miller, “The Lesson of the Master,” “The Figure in the Carpet,” “The Beast in the Jungle,” The Turn of the Screw, and “The Jolly Corner”—measure somewhere between fifteen and thirty thousand words, thereby blurring conventional generic divisions between the short story and the novel. As James would also delight in noting, most of these stories first appeared in British periodicals like the Yellow Book, which allowed each to “absolutely assume” and even “shamelessly parade in, its own organic form” (Art of the Novel, p. 219). Unlike James, Mark Twain (1835–1910) expressed few concerns about the artistry achievable in a short story. Although he considered the genre a “novel in a cradle” (quoted in Messent, p. 3), its abbreviated form was the building block of his imagination, which is why the majority of his novels are episodic in construction, with some even subsuming many memorable accomplishments in short fiction—Roughing It (1872), for example, includes six previously published stories presented as autonomous chapters. Twain’s career as a journalist, coupled with his schooling in the western humor tradition, introduced him to a variety of shorter structures such as the hoax and the burlesque, which allowed him to expose moral hypocrisy and human depravity under the leavening guise of comedy. In “How to Tell a Story” (1895), the closest thing to a structural analysis of the short story he would write, he identifies the “nub, point, [or] snapper” as a tale’s pivotal plot point. Akin to the punch line of a joke, the “snapper” is the humorist’s version of Poe’s “culminating effect”—it is the point toward which the material is organized. Twain employed


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1041

SHORT STORY

the snapper to notable effect in his first widely read story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865), whose ending reveals how a mysterious stranger dupes the inveterate gambler Jim Smiley in a frog race. For some critics, the dominance of the punch line smacked of formula and depreciated Twain’s narrative skills: Pattee, for example, dismisses the story as “a whimsical anecdote” (p. 297). Such judgments vastly underrate Twain’s management of other devices that amplify this whimsy. As “How to Tell a Story” argues, the artistry of a tale for Twain lay in the tension generated when the narration either anticipates, “slurs,” or delays the snapper: “The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories”—what Twain would call the simple joke—“must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, others burst” (Complete Essays, p. 156). As in “The Celebrated Jumping Frog,” Twain often effected this “wandering” through the use of storytelling frames that deepen and disperse the joke, so the object of the humor is not merely Smiley himself but Twain’s own narrator, who ironically proves oblivious to the tale’s artistry by complaining of his friend Simon Wheeler’s “garrulous” and unstructured recitation of the story. In a similar manner, many of Twain’s tales can be read as metacommentaries on story structure: by dramatizing the dissatisfaction of listeners who insist that stories conclude with a discernible point, he demonstrates how successful storytelling often depends upon impeding or even disappointing rather than gratifying audience expectations of form. Snappers, once delivered, also often complicate and sometimes contradict the point they supposedly make, meaning that, as Tom Quirk has noted, Twain’s “narratives tend to end by evasion, not resolution” (p. 32). “Cannibalism in the Cars” (1869) concludes with the revelation that the story of a snowbound group of legislators who must dine upon each other to survive constitutes the “harmless vagaries of a madman, instead of the genuine experiences of a bloodthirsty cannibal” (Complete Short Stories, p. 16). In another writer’s hands, this surprise would be staged at the expense of the narrator, whose willingness to suspend his incredulity and allow himself to be frightened by such a seemingly preposterous tale would mark his essential naïveté. Yet the relief the narrator expresses actually reveals his inability to acknowledge the implications of the supposed monomaniac’s conceit—namely that, despite the pretense of civilization by which humans govern their actions, they are really driven by animalistic survival instincts. The conclusion is thus ironic, with audiences

1042

A M E R I C A N

expected to recognize what the narrator cannot: that the legislators’ verbose efforts to rationalize their cannibalism gratify the same rapacious impulses as their reputed flesh eating. The ending of “A True Story” (1874) achieves a similar effect, though not so absurdly. In this avowedly nonhumorous piece, a former slave describes her reunion with the son who escaped slavery thirteen years earlier. She is prompted to tell her story when her employer, “Mr. C—,” demands to know “how it is that you’ve lived sixty years and never had any trouble.” As Aunt Rachel demonstrates, Mr. C— does not know the troubles she has seen, a point she ironically notes in the closing line: “Oh, no Mr. C—, I hain’t had no trouble. An’ no joy!” (Complete Short Stories, pp. 95, 98). The ending dramatizes, as Twain’s conclusions often do, that the real twist of a story may not reside in the climax or denouement but in the invitation to the reader to ponder the implications of what is narrated. WOMEN’S REALIST SHORT FICTION

Women realists, meanwhile, addressed the question of form in a variety of ways that defies their collective categorization as local color regionalists, whether of the New England school of Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman or of the southern school of Kate Chopin, Grace King, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson. At one extreme is Jewett (1849– 1909), whose stories are comparatively plotless, preferring observation to action. Both in Deephaven (1877), her debut collection, and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), her most celebrated, her stories first record her narrators’ perceptions of an isolated, eccentric character, usually an aging woman content in her spinsterhood, who then relates a tale of local lore back to the storyteller. Jewett’s aversion to plot is perhaps most dramatic in her best-known story, “A White Heron” (1886), in which the climactic moment—a country child’s decision not to reveal the nesting place of a rare bird to a handsome and flattering hunter—is entirely elided. Rather than reveal young Sylvia’s motives, Jewett ends the tale with an apostrophe that imbues the narration with the aura of a subverted fairy tale: “Whatever treasures were lost to her, woodlands and summer-time, remember! Bring your gifts and graces and tell your secrets to this lonely country child!” (p. 679). Jewett’s work frequently keeps its secrets in this fashion. Deceptively nondramatic, her stories locate plot in the nuances of character—though not, as per James, in character development. Rather than force her protagonists to some moment of selfawareness, she prefers to linger upon their habits and customs, which for her are the true indices of identity (Curnutt, pp. 103–104).

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SHORT STORY

buried in a bureau, written by his mother: “I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery” (p. 245). As Pattee writes, “The sentence closes the story, but not for the reader” (p. 327), who ideally revisits the story to discover clues foreshadowing the ending. Although shorter than “Désirée’s Baby,” “The Story of an Hour” (1894) is more structurally complicated. The plot involves two surprises: when Louise Mallard discovers that her husband has died in a train wreck, she is less mournful than relieved, for the accident frees her from a restrictive marriage. Yet the possibilities of new life she has the opportunity to enjoy are negated by the sudden entrance of Brentley Mallard, who, despite initial reports, survived the collision. The shock is so great that Mrs. Mallard instantly dies from what her oblivious doctors diagnose as “the joy that kills” (p. 354). Despite Chopin’s deft use of the trick ending, she was savvy enough, unlike O. Henry, not to overuse the technique. As Richard Fusco notes, “In her first volume of stories, Bayou Folk”—the collection that includes “Désirée’s Baby”—“only four of the twentythree texts end with an unexpected twist,” with the rest tending toward the “unadorned anecdote.” This ratio is indicative of Chopin’s belief that her stories “would have greater impact if readers did not associate the literary practice with her” (pp. 143, 153). AMBROSE BIERCE AND STEPHEN CRANE

Cover of the 1899 edition of Sarah Orne Jewett’s short story collection The Queen’s Twin and Other Tales. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Jewett’s low-key conclusions stand in marked opposition to the surprise endings of Chopin (1851– 1904), the local colorist most identified (unfairly) with the trick ending. The last-sentence revelation of “Désirée’s Baby” (1892) achieves precisely the effect that this device at its best can accomplish. Throughout this story of its Creole heroine’s marriage to the planter Armand Aubigny, the presentation of narrative detail leads the reader to presume that Désirée is of mixed parentage, especially given that, unlike Armand, whose family name is unimpeachable, she is an orphan of ambiguous lineage. Only after she escapes with her “quadroon” child and Armand is burning her belongings does he learn the truth, thanks to a letter he finds A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Another writer known for trick endings is Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914), whose Civil War fictions collected in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891) employ the device, not unlike Chopin in “The Story of an Hour,” to dramatize the crushing obstacles that prevent a protagonist from determining his own fate. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890), Bierce’s most famous fiction, exemplifies a type of trick ending that would inspire much derision in less-talented hands. The plot purports to follow the slaveholder Peyton Farquhar’s escape from Union soldiers, whose noose breaks as they hang the secessionist from an Alabama bridge. On the verge of reuniting with his wife, Farquhar “feels a stunning blow upon the back of his neck” that turns out to be the rope snapping his neck and killing him, revealing that Farquhar in fact never eluded his captors and that his escape was all along a fantasy (p. 43). Such “dream” narratives would become the bête noire of twentieth-century critics, but in Bierce’s case the mode allowed for a skillful, proto-modernist dramatization of temporal perception as Farquhar imagines an alternate destiny at the instant of his death.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1043

SHORT STORY

Emphasizing an inescapable sense of fate was also the aim of such 1890s naturalists as Stephen Crane (1871–1900), whose central themes of environmental malevolence and natural determinism encouraged if not an overt use of trick endings at least ironic conclusions that underscored the powerlessness of his characters. In “The Open Boat” (1897), a fictionalized version of a shipwreck that Crane had survived, four men struggle to survive adrift in the ocean, bitterly resenting the threat of death when, throughout most of their ordeal, land lies just out of reach on the horizon: “If I am going to be drowned,” each cries, “why in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate the sand and trees?” (p. 894). The question is never answered; as Crane implies, there is no explanation for the hostility of the natural world, only its reality, a lesson the men learn when, after their rescue, they discover that one of their party has drowned within swimming distance of shore. That one if not all of the men will die is apparent from the narrative’s beginning; the only mystery is who, and its revelation pales in comparison to the survivors’ subsequent awareness that land offers no securer respite from death, only a “different and sinister hospitality of the grave” (p. 909). REALISM AND RACE

Perhaps the least appreciated end-driven realist short stories are those dealing with race. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. has argued, much African American literature draws from folkloric traditions of verbal “signifyin’” in which “a received racist image” is debunked through the rhetorical device of chiasmus, “repeating and reversing . . . in one deft act” (p. 52). Many exemplars of “plantation fiction”—deceptively nostalgic tales about the antebellum era—employ this device not only narratologically but structurally. They use trick endings to effect what Gates calls “chiastic fantasies of reversal of power relationships” (p. 59) in which slaves undermine their masters’ authority by playing up to prejudicial notions of black docility and passivity. The folkloric roots of this genre are famously evident in the Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox tales collected by Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908) in Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings (1880) and several subsequent volumes. Purportedly literal transcriptions of folk fables that the Caucasian Harris gathered during journalistic interviews with former slaves, stories like “How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox” invariably climax with the former, a trickster figure, wilily escaping the clutches of the latter by flattering his assumptions of innate superiority. Critics have impugned the authenticity of the dialect in which Harris’s narrator, Uncle Remus, tells

1044

A M E R I C A N

these tales to his white interlocutor, suggesting that its uncomfortable echoes of the minstrel show (in which performers acted out racist stereotypes, often in blackface) betray the author’s essential foreignness to the folk language he claimed to preserve (Hoffman, p. 341). Interestingly enough, in other plantation fictions by actual African American authors, that same dialect is the tool by which protagonists of color reverse “received racist images.” “The Passing of Grandison,” by Charles Chesnutt (1858–1932), tricks the audience into presuming that the obsequious loyalty expressed by the slave Grandison is sincere: “Well, I sh’d jes’ reckon I is better off [in slavery], suh, dan dem low-down free niggers, suh! Ef anybody ax’em who dey b’long ter, dey has ter say nobody, er e’se lie erbout it. Anybody ax me who I b’longs ter, I ain’ got no ’casion ter be shame’ ter tell ’em, no, suh, ’deed I ain’, suh!” (p. 133). Such flattery intensifies each time the master’s son, Dick Owens, attempts to dupe Grandison into freedom to win the affections of an abolitionist inamorata. When the slave reappears in Kentucky after having been kidnapped to Canada, Dick begins to suspect a ruse, but, significantly, not a ruse concocted by Grandison himself but by outside “agitators.” His concern proves partially correct, for shortly after his return, Grandison again disappears—only this time with his entire family, whose escape he has all along been engineering through his crafty manipulation of the rhetoric of beneficent slavery. Not only is Grandison a trickster figure; more important, the ending defies black stereotyping to reveal him heroically devoted to his family. In such cases the ending forces readers—most of whom, even in the early twenty-first century, prove all too eager to presume Grandison is a one-dimensional comic figure—to recognize how dialect can encode racial biases. As Dean McWilliams notes, Chesnutt’s title is an ironic nod to the theme of “passing,” in which lightskinned people of color pretend to be white, thereby demonstrating “the artificiality” and “susceptibility to erasure and transformation” of reigning definitions of racial identity (p. 118). Curiously, in many short stories that do not feature trickster figures, chiastic reversals consign characters to stereotyping rather than liberate them from it. In Grace King’s “The Little Convent Girl” (1893), a fatherless child on a steamer traveling from Cincinnati to New Orleans exerts a civilizing influence on the passengers and crew. When the girl’s mother turns out to be “colored,” however, the charmed adults are shocked and immediately withdraw their affection. Unlike in Chopin’s “Désirée’s Baby,” the revelation of race is not a trick ending; the actual conclusion is more shocking, for when the steamer makes a return trip to the South, the girl commits suicide after the ship’s captain snubs her for being one of

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SHORT STORY

“them” (p. 162). Not all racially deterministic stories end this dramatically. Not unlike Jewett’s “A White Heron,” Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s (1875–1935) “Sister Josepha” excises its central revelation, in which the heroine, an adolescent orphan planning to leave the convent where she has grown up, overhears two nuns debating her fate: “It would be hard for her in the world, with no name but Camille, no friends, and her beauty; and then—” (p. 38). Nothing in the story specifies Camille’s ethnicity, although an early description of her skin as “sallow” leads savvy readers to suspect that the nuns know she is a mulatto. (Significantly, King applies this same word to her heroine.) As in “The Little Convent Girl,” the discovery of one’s racial identity is an initiation experience that narrows Camille’s sense of self, leading her to decide to remain in the nunnery. If the ending of “The Passing of Grandison” tricks readers into admitting their superficial assessment of an African American figure, tales such as these ask why, if race is supposedly such a fixed indicator of identity, audiences did not guess the heroines’ ethnicity until it was revealed (or in the case of “Sister Josepha” implied) through a plot twist. EARLY MODERNISM

With the advent of modernism in the early twentieth century, the form of the short story bifurcated into two opposing literary tendencies. On the one hand, James’s insistence that character development was the most organic medium of plot structure led to “epiphany” stories. These are fictions that culminate in dramatic moments of self-insight that significantly alter a protagonist’s sense of self. Although the term “epiphany” is associated with the Irish writer James Joyce, its most notable American practitioner before 1920 was Willa Cather. Her “Paul’s Case” (from her first story collection, The Troll Garden, 1905) is considered a template of the form. An adolescent aesthete embezzles from his employer to finance a quick foray into the luxuriant artistic lifestyle he imagines his province. When his crime is found out, he cannot stomach a return to drudgery and throws himself in front of a train—only to realize at the last irrevocable moment “the folly of his haste” and the “vastness of what he had left undone” (p. 138). As the age of Cather’s deluded hero suggests, epiphany stories typically involve young, naive characters for whom these concluding revelations are melancholy but necessary initiations into adult wisdom. Unlike epiphany stories, what are varyingly called “elliptical” or “impressionistic” short fictions eschew plot in favor of seemingly unmediated bursts of subjectivity. Such stories might negate any trace of story development by foregrounding the experiential immeA M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

diacy associated with modernism through the medium of stream of consciousness. Even more radically, they might do so by the absolute dominance of stylistic devices that announce themselves as linguistic media rather than referents to any recognizably physical realm. Gertrude Stein’s (1874–1946) Three Lives (1909), a triptych about three working-class women, is built exclusively out of techniques such as rhythm and repetition, so that a story like “Melanctha” hypnotizes readers with its intricate rhetorical patterns: “Melanctha had needed Rose always to believe her, Melanctha needed Rose always to let her cling to her, Melanctha wanted badly to have somebody who could make her always feel a little safe inside her, and now Rose had sent her from her” (p. 139). Although Stein was an immense influence upon modernists, most admirers who emulated her experiments aimed for more conventionally symbolic effects. The stories collected in Sherwood Anderson’s (1876–1941) Winesburg, Ohio (1919), while again deferring expectations for resolution, nevertheless dramatize the major theme of modernism (alienation and guilt) through imagistic figurations. In “Hands,” for instance, a putative homosexual’s longing for human understanding is emblematized by his “slender expressive fingers,” which are the “piston rods of his machinery of expression,” allowing him to communicate taboo desires he is otherwise forced to repress (p. 10). Anderson so believed in the use of these metaphorical conceits that he not only employed them as motifs but also hinted at their rationale in a poetic, quasi-methodological preface titled “The Book of Grotesques,” in which he suggests that his characters’ emotional deformities are legible in their physical tics and quirks. Although many critics consider the modernist era the high point of the short story’s development, it is inarguable that realism contributed significantly to its maturation. Realists not only legitimated the genre by aesthetically redeeming the innate brevity of its form; through their individual struggles to resolve the demands of plot and character development with the seeming “end-drivenness” of its structure, they also developed a range of styles and techniques that remain influential. Even the much-loathed “trick ending,” which remained a feature of the commercial short-fiction market for years after O. Henry disappeared from the canon, is not without artistic merit. In building up to a concluding twist, a reversal, or an epiphany, story writers demonstrated how the device could be employed to question reader prejudices about race, gender, and social status. Although the accomplishments of James and Twain have tended to overshadow those of their contemporaries, so many lesser-appreciated talents excelled at short fiction that the genre would never again


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1045

SISTER CARRIE

suffer the ignominy of being considered a “beginner’s art.” Indeed, thanks to the realists, the currency of the short story rose to such an extent that Poe’s insistence that it is a superior art form to the novel no longer seemed a risible claim. See also Atlantic Monthly; The Conjure Woman; The Country of the Pointed Firs; Daisy Miller; Humor; Naturalism; Realism; Regionalism and Local Color Fiction; Tales of Soldiers and Civilians; Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings; Winesburg, Ohio

Fusco, Richard. Maupassant and the American Short Story: The Influence of Form at the Turn of the Century. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Gerlach, John. Toward the End: Closure and Structure in the American Short Story. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985. Hoffman, Daniel G. Form and Fable in American Fiction. New York: Holt Rinehart, 1961. McWilliams, Dean. Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002.


Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Huebsch, 1919.

Marler, Robert F. “From Tale to Short Story: The Emergence of a New Genre in the 1850s.” American Literature 44 (1974): 153–169.

Bierce, Ambrose. Shadows of Blue and Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce. Edited by Brian M. Thomsen. New York: Doherty, 2002.

Matthews, Brander. The Philosophy of the Short-Story. New York: Longmans, Green, 1901.

Cather, Willa. The Troll Garden. New York: McClure, Phillips, 1905.

May, Charles E. The New Short Story Theories. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994.

Chesnutt, Charles W. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899.

Messent, Peter. The Short Works of Mark Twain: A Critical Study. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

Chopin, Kate. The Complete Works of Kate Chopin. Edited by Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969. Crane, Stephen. “The Open Boat.” In Stephen Crane: Prose and Poetry. New York: Library of America, 1984. Dunbar-Nelson, Alice. The Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Stories. New York: Dodd-Mead, 1899. James, Henry. The Art of the Novel. Edited by Richard P. Blackmur. New York: Scribners, 1934. James, Henry. “The Story-Teller at Large: Mr. Henry Harland.” In The American Essays of Henry James, edited by Leon Edel, pp. 186–196. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956. Jewett, Sarah Orne. Novels and Stories. New York: Library of America, 1994. King, Grace. Balcony Stories. 1893. New Orleans: Graham Press, 1914. Stein, Gertrude. Three Lives. 1909. New York: Dover, 1994. Twain, Mark. The Complete Essays of Mark Twain. Edited by Charles Neider. Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover, 1956. Twain, Mark. The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. Edited by Charles Neider. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957. Secondary Works

Curnutt, Kirk. Wise Economies: Brevity and Storytelling in American Short Stories. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1997.

1046

A M E R I C A N

Pattee, Fred Lewis. The Development of the American Short Story. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1923. Quirk, Tom. Mark Twain: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne,1997. Sedgwick, Ellery. The Atlantic Monthly, 1857–1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1994. Voss, Arthur. The American Short Story: A Critical Survey. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973. Kirk Curnutt

SISTER CARRIE Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) published Sister Carrie in 1900, at the meeting point of two centuries. The novel is, in the words of Dreiser biographer Richard Lingeman, “a mixture of the old and the new—a bridge between the nineteenth-century novel and the twentieth” (Theodore Dreiser: At the Gates of the City, p. 275). Appearing at a time of profound social and economic transformation in the United States, Sister Carrie looks forward to an urban, industrial future and backward to a rural, sentimental past. It stands as an American classic, a work utterly representative of its fraught and dynamic time.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SISTER CARRIE

His attraction starts him on a fatal downward slide that parallels Carrie’s rise. Hurstwood’s decline, which Dreiser chronicles in detail that is both excruciating and poignant, lands him literally in the gutter and culminates in his suicide. SOCIAL DARWINISM AND SENTIMENTALISM

Theodore Dreiser. The author in his late twenties, around the time Sister Carrie was published. COURTESY OF ANNENBERG RARE BOOK & MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, MS. COLL. 30, 432.2

Sister Carrie spotlights two characters and holds them up as exemplars of their age. Carrie Meeber resembles a fallen woman of the sort who sparked much prurient interest among social commentators of Dreiser’s time. Her tale is at least partly archetypal: small-town girl comes to the big city and is targeted by predatory men who take advantage of her innocence. But the standard morality tale of this time called for the fallen woman to be severely punished for her sexual transgression. Carrie is not. Instead, she prospers, moving from one lover to another, discarding the second when he weighs her down. By the novel’s end, she has become a star of the New York stage and a sex symbol. Sister Carrie also focuses on George Hurstwood, Carrie’s second lover. When first introduced, Hurstwood is a successful manager of a tony bar in downtown Chicago. His home life is lackluster, but his position in the thriving urban economy is both secure and prestigious. When Hurstwood meets Carrie—who is at that point the mistress of the salesman Charles Drouet—he becomes smitten with her. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Both Carrie’s rise and Hurstwood’s fall exemplify the diminishing power of family ties in the United States at the turn of the century. The postbellum era was one of seismic change in economic and social organization in the United States. During this time, urbanization and industrialization changed the way that Americans lived—and the way that they looked at the world. Before this transformation began in the years following the Civil War, the United States had been a predominantly rural, agriculturally based society. American life before industrialization was predominantly familybased, with the family serving as a basic social unit. It was understood that families took responsibility for the care of their aged, for example, and if someone fell upon hard times, his extended family took care of him—and his children as well, if necessary. Simply put, the family served as American society’s safety net before the Civil War. The relation between individual and community changed as the United States began to modernize, and the family proved an insufficient social support. Extended families fractured as people migrated to the cities. Unattached singles made their own way, and when city dwellers married and had children, these nuclear families were on their own. For millions of immigrants who entered the United States between 1890 and 1920, extended families lay an ocean away, never to be seen again. Neither Carrie nor Hurstwood rely on their families for anything. In fact, they see their families as antagonistic. Carrie moves in with her married sister Minnie when she comes to Chicago, but Minnie shows scarce concern for Carrie’s happiness (and her husband is indifferent to everything but Carrie’s rent money and the effect of her behavior on his reputation). When Carrie abruptly leaves her relatives for an apartment bankrolled by Drouet, they disappear from her life entirely. Carrie recalls the family she left behind in Columbia City only once in the novel, when a memory intrudes upon her of her father “in his flour-dusted miller’s suit” (p. 108). The recollection stands as a symbol of all that she seeks to suppress and surpass. Hurstwood similarly seeks to escape his family, especially his controlling wife. He ultimately abandons his wife and children for Carrie, moving to New York with her and leaving his past life behind. The Hurstwoods


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1047

SISTER CARRIE

prosper in his absence, and Dreiser juxtaposes the scene of Hurstwood’s death with a scene of his now-married daughter and former wife on a European vacation. Dreiser thus stages the breakdown of sentimental ties in Sister Carrie. Sentimentalism had deep ideological roots in nineteenth-century American culture, and it flowered in literature and elsewhere. American women novelists created the genre of sentimentalism in scores of popular novels during the nineteenth century. The sentimental novel looks at society as a family of people joined by emotional solidarity, sharing a faith in others and in nondenominational Christian salvation. This formulation arises not only on plot and story elements but more crucially on the worldview of the genre, which is centered, as Joanne Dobson puts it, on “an emotional and philosophical ethos that celebrates human connection, both personal and communal” (p. 267). Sentimentalism, says Dobson, “envisions the self in-relation” (p. 266). Throughout his career, Dreiser tested this vision of family and community connection in the crucible of the profit-driven, urbanizing, industrial United States. At the time of Sister Carrie, a “semi–welfare state” had replaced the family’s embrace and intimate care of its own unfortunates. Government activity in fighting poverty was indecisive and inconsistent, so reformers offering food, shelter, and support were stepping into a vacuum that the family could not reach and the law would not reach. Reformers could be arch. The moralizing tone behind terms like “deserving poor” conveyed the typical belief that the poor were mastered by indolence, intemperance, and improvidence—and the goal of charity was, as the reformer Jacqueline Shaw Lowell said in 1884, to “elevate the moral nature” of the beneficiary (Katz, p. 74). Poverty was considered to be a moral flaw, even if it was brought on by environment (as progressives believed) rather than innate depravity. Well-intentioned though they were, many reformers treated the poor like moral degenerates even as they offered them food, shelter, and support. Such charity workers were mainly motivated bv didactic religious belief coupled with Victorian morals. Dreiser, whose impoverished background gave him a special insight into these matters, shows these samaritans performing their offices upon the pathetic and destitute Hurstwood at the end of Sister Carrie. Dreiser viewed America’s haves and have-nots through the lenses of Spencerian competition and sentimental sympathy at the same time. Herbert Spencer, the author of the phrase “survival of the fittest,” was the most prominent exemplar of what would later be called “Social Darwinism.” He cobbled together an

1048

A M E R I C A N

entire philosophical system around the idea of brutal and deterministic evolution that discarded the unfit. God was replaced in Spencer’s world by a “great unknowable” that was indifferent to human suffering. Spencer’s works were widely read in the United States, where he became the toast of the moneymaking class. He gained a cadre of followers among the powerful industrial plutocrats, who saw Spencer’s ideas as justifying their own rise. The steel magnate Andrew Carnegie was among Spencer’s most fervent boosters. Dreiser’s reading of Spencer’s First Principles (1862) in 1894 destroyed any youthful idealism arising from his religious upbringing. Spencer is actually mentioned by name in Sister Carrie, and his ideas prominently inform the narrative asides in the novel, as in chapter 8, when Dreiser calls man “a wisp in the wind” (p. 56). The coincidences that transform Carrie’s life and lift her fortunes are likewise consistent with Spencerian evolution. Dreiser later said that his encounter with Spencer’s ideas “almost killed me” (Swanberg, p. 60). This discomfort goes to the heart of his artistic vision in Sister Carrie and throughout his career. Accepting Spencer’s fatalism pained Dreiser because of his own sympathy for the losers in the struggle for existence. This is nowhere clearer than in his rendering of Hurstwood’s slow descent to suicide in Sister Carrie. Hurstwood’s last words, “What’s the use?” (p. 367), cap Dreiser’s deeply felt portrayal of harsh social forces at work. Here and elsewhere, Dreiser combined an unflinching account of a cruel world with a strong identification with those whom it destroyed. If Dreiser could see truth in Spencer’s harsh and inexorable view of life, he also saw the suffering of the victims with what his contemporary Sherwood Anderson called “real tenderness” (Lingeman, Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey, p. 343). The harshness and the tenderness come together in his art, and make Dreiser the most compassionate of America’s naturalist writers. Key to this commentary is Dreiser’s work with sympathy as both a device and an idea. To sympathize, one must literally imagine oneself as someone else, and this forms the basis of what the neoclassical philosopher and economist Adam Smith calls “fellow feeling.” One might say that the project of American sentimental fiction was to provide a sound communal basis for sympathy—and American sentimental writers did this by locating sympathy as a domestic family virtue whose benefits ramify outward to take in the larger community. Dreiser’s sentimental streak has been bemoaned by Leslie Fiedler and other critics over the years but has recently been reconsidered by a new generation of readers, including Amy Kaplan and Clare Virginia Eby, who have appreciated the importance of sentimentalism to

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SISTER CARRIE

Dreiser’s larger vision. Dreiser’s sympathy is everywhere in Sister Carrie (and elsewhere in his work), but he saw no possibility for it to gain purchase in a world governed by fatal indifference. The subtitle of the first chapter of Sister Carrie, “A Waif amid Forces,” illustrates the hopeless hope that defined Dreiser’s view of the new industrial world. DESIRE AND CONSUMERISM

Dreiser recognized that industrialization was shaping new human desires. With Sister Carrie, Dreiser emerged as as the foremost chronicler of the birth of consumerism in the United States. Dreiser’s authority on this subject comes not only from waves of careful description of physical objects—a signature aspect of his style—but also from his deep insight into people’s desire for these things. In chapter 7, aptly titled “The Lure of the Material,” Dreiser shows how Carrie, recently arrived in Chicago and holding money advanced by Drouet, becomes suffused with longing for the things she sees in the Fair department store: How would she look in this, how charming that would make her! She came upon the corset counter and paused in rich reverie as she noted the dainty concoctions of colour and lace there displayed. If she would only make up her mind, she could have one of those now. She lingered in the jewelry department. She saw the earrings, the bracelets, the pins, the chains. What would she not have given if she could have had them all! She would look fine too, if only she had some of these things. (P. 51)

Throughout Sister Carrie, Carrie is drawn by the finery of things. At one point, she even imagines clothing speaking to her. When Carrie meets Drouet for the first time, she notes his “highly polished” patent leather shoes (p. 3). When she later meets Hurstwood, she notices that his shoes are less shiny, but they look better to her. After a while, Hurstwood looks better to her too. For Dreiser’s characters, the material world plays a formative role in the life of the mind and the heart. Dreiser’s interest in things proceeds from a time when the United States began mass-producing them. He came of age as a novelist in an industrializing country that was growing and producing material goods in quantities and speeds never before seen. Efficient large-scale manufacturing—that is, mass production—became possible in America only after the Civil War. Continually operating machines and plants were introduced, through which raw materials proceeded, worked over in a number of well-choreographed stages to emerge as finished products. These innovations contributed to the production of standardized goods at lower costs and higher profits. The development of electricity in the 1880s provided a A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

more stable and flexible power source for factories, and the capstone on mass production during Dreiser’s lifetime was placed by Henry Ford, whose Highland Park plant introduced the moving assembly line beginning in 1913. These industrial shifts were part of wholesale socioeconomic changes taking place in the United States. Nationwide corporations and monopolistic trusts now loomed over the economic landscape. These great corporations, led by titanic industrialists like Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Charles Tyson Yerkes (the model for Dreiser’s financier Frank Cowperwood in The Trilogy of Desire [1912, 1914, 1947]) created great fortunes, widening the gap between the rich and the poor and creating a new bureaucratic hierarchy that gave business its recognizably modern form. Laborers joined unions to assert their claims to the country’s burgeoning riches, and Dreiser documents some of the resultant struggles between labor and management in Sister Carrie. A revolution in mass communication had also begun: new publishing technology made books more affordable; newspapers grew in size, circulation, and influence; and motion pictures became widely available. Paralleling the mass production of things was the construction of the desire for them. Department stores and mail-order catalogs appeared, two new mass retail methods offering an unprecedented array of goods. In Thorstein Veblen’s memorable phrase from The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), “conspicuous consumption” became a national pastime. To stoke consumer desire, advertising outlays increased tenfold to $500 million between 1867 and 1900. Dreiser ties the new consumerism to changing views of sexuality. Carrie Meeber represents a character type that became known in Dreiser’s time as the “New Woman.” The New Woman stood opposed to traditional roles and expectations and thus symbolized the new freedoms that women enjoyed in urban industrialized society. These freedoms were economic (women could now earn their own living and spend their own money) and social (they no longer had to remain under the watchful eyes of their families), but most controversially, they were sexual. The debate over the New Woman at the turn of the century was rooted in the widely held anxiety accompanying women’s increased sexual freedom. The many cautionary tales of “fallen women” that circulated during Dreiser’s time may be read as the traditionalists’ response to these new developments. Dreiser’s Carrie embodies many aspects of the New Woman, and Dreiser’s unconventionally sympathetic portrayal of her gives Sister Carrie a subversive edge. Carrie comes across in Sister Carrie as a social climber


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1049

SISTER CARRIE

THE COURAGE OF A GREAT BOOK It pleased me as well as any novel I have read in any form, published or otherwise. (Frank Norris to Dreiser, 28 May 1900) The story will make all its objectors look small when it gets to the public. (Arthur Henry to Dreiser, 19 July 1900) A great book will destroy conditions, unfavorable or indifferent. (Dreiser to Walter H. Page, 6 August 1900) The sum and substance of literary as well as social morality may be expressed in three words—tell the truth. It matters not how the tongues of critics may wag, or the voices of a partially developed and highly conventionalized society may complain, the business of the author as of other workers upon this earth, is to say what he knows to be true. (Dreiser, “True Art Speaks Plainly” [1903]) Dreiser more than any other man, marching alone, usually unappreciated, often hated, has cleared the trail from Victorian and Howellsian timidity and gentility in American fiction to honesty and boldness and passion of life. Without his pioneering, I doubt if any of us could, unless we liked to be sent to jail, seek to express life and beauty and terror. (Sinclair Lewis, “The American Fear of Literature” [Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1930])

who, like her male counterparts, will get ahead in the world in such ways as she can. Her sexuality is tied to her desire for things, and for gain. Carrie’s willingness to take lovers—and leave them—is a cause (rather than a result) of her very American desire for upward mobility. For Hurstwood, sexual libertinism leads to crime. His deepening desire for Carrie leads him to steal $10,000 in cash from an open safe at his job and trick Carrie into running away with him to New York. The scene of the theft, where Dreiser renders Hurstwood’s conflicted indecision in meticulous psychological detail, is a masterpiece of equivocation that anticipates the arrival of Sigmund Freud’s ideas on American shores some years later (when Dreiser was among those who received them warmly).

1050

A M E R I C A N

The changing expressions and values governing sexual desire created an American mass culture of celebrity. Carrie succeeds on the stage because she has that certain something, a charisma that retails her sexuality on a wide scale to paying audiences. Her pay rises meteorically, and posh hotels compete to offer her free living quarters. Carrie starts out filled with sexualized desire for things in store windows. By the end of Sister Carrie, she has become a sexualized commodity herself. Dreiser approves of many of the changes that allow for Carrie’s rise, but his approbation is by no means total. Not only does Hurstwood’s decline provide ongoing counterpoint to Carrie’s increasing economic freedom; Dreiser also introduces commentary on what has been lost through the character of Robert Ames. Ames, whose name evokes the French word for “soul,” is an electrical engineer with a philosophical bent and an innocent idealism. Though Carrie only meets Ames for a short time, he greatly attracts her. Ames’s morally based aesthetics lead him to disapprove of the riches being flaunted in the New York streets, and his idealism renders him immune to the lure of material gain. He is also immune to Carrie’s charms: “there was nothing responsive between them” (p. 353). Ames’s indifference to Carrie suggests Dreiser’s ambivalence about the myriad changes taking place in the United States. If the new economic freedom enables Carrie’s advance in the world, her failure to connect with Ames suggests that the proliferation of things also gets in the way of emotional connection among people in the world. Consumerism stands then, as one aspect of the wider field of desire, and Carrie’s melancholia at the end of Sister Carrie, along with Hurstwood’s death, point to an enduring conclusion that Dreiser returned to again and again: human beings are eternally wanting creatures who can only temporarily be satisfied. THE RECEPTION OF SISTER CARRIE

Sister Carrie had a difficult gestation and was stillborn at its initial release. Dreiser then revived the novel seven years later, and it has lived a long literary life since. Dreiser began composing Sister Carrie during the fall of 1899. He was well aware of the scandalous nature of his subject matter and readily consented to heavy editing by his wife, Sara, and his friend Arthur Henry. Working separately, the two cut thousands of words from Dreiser’s manuscript before its completion in 1900. After an initial rejection by Harper & Brothers, Sister Carrie was accepted by Doubleday, Page & Company after the novelist Frank Norris, having read the manuscript on behalf of the firm, enthusiastically

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

S L A N G , D I A L E C T, A N D O T H E R T Y P E S O F M A R K E D L A N G U A G E

recommended it. The novel caused a split in the partnership, however: Page wanted to publish it, but Doubleday feared it would not sell. (According to the legend perpetuated by Dreiser and assisted by early, sympathetic commentators such as Dorothy Dudley, Mrs. Doubleday was disgusted by the book and prevailed upon her husband to distance himself from it.) The firm tried to rescind its offer to Dreiser, but the author held firm and insisted that the company follow through and publish the book. It appeared in 1900, but in a drab, cheap binding and with no supporting publicity. The book sank quickly and quietly into obscurity. Dreiser felt betrayed and deeply disappointed, and the commercial failure of Sister Carrie contributed to a nervous breakdown (then called “neurasthenia”) that he suffered soon afterward. In 1907 Sister Carrie was reissued by B. W. Dodge & Company, with Dreiser as the major investor. This time the author’s belief in his novel was rewarded: Sister Carrie gained a second life. It was widely read and reviewed, and it sparked the revival of Dreiser’s literary activity, reputation, and career. Spurred by Dreiser’s extraordinary output during the decade following its reissue, Sister Carrie gained secure purchase in the national literary canon, where it has influenced generations of readers and writers. Recounting his roots as a writer in Black Boy (1945), for example, Richard Wright cited the example of Dreiser. And when Sinclair Lewis became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for literature in 1930 (an award that many felt Dreiser should have gotten), he spoke eloquently of Dreiser’s “pioneering” realism. Sister Carrie received another notable reissue in 1981, as the University of Pennsylvania Press assembled an edition of the novel based on Dreiser’s original manuscript, before it was cut by his wife and friend. The Pennsylvania Edition of Sister Carrie is longer and more frank, offering additional insight into Dreiser’s creative process. The differences between the two editions have inspired much debate and brought new attention to both the novel and an author whose observations of a country in the throes of modernization ring as true today as a century ago. See also City Dwellers; Mass Marketing; Naturalism; Reform; Social Darwinism; The Theory of the Leisure Class BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. Edited by John C. Berkey, Alice M. Winters, James L. W. West III, and Neda M. Westlake. Pennsylvania Edition. New York: Penguin, 1981.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. Edited by Donald Pizer. Norton Critical Edition. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1991. Quotations in the text are from this edition. Secondary Works

Banta, Martha. Taylored Lives: Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor, Veblen, and Ford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Cassuto, Leonard, and Clare Virginia Eby, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Dobson, Joanne. “Reclaiming Sentimental Literature.” American Literature 69, no. 2 (1997): 263–288. Dudley, Dorothy. Forgotten Frontiers: Dreiser and the Land of the Free. New York: Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1932. Eby, Clare Virginia. Dreiser and Veblen, Saboteurs of the Status Quo. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998. Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. 1960. Rev. ed. New York: Stein and Day, 1966. Reprint, Normal, Ill.: Dalkney Archive Press, 1998. Kaplan, Amy. The Social Construction of American Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Katz, Michael. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. New York: Basic Books, 1986. Lingeman, Richard. Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey, 1908–1945. New York: Putnam, 1990. Lingeman, Richard. Theodore Dreiser: At the Gates of the City, 1871–1907. New York: Putnam, 1986. Michaels, Walter Benn. The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Moers, Ellen. Two Dreisers. New York: Viking, 1969. Pizer, Donald. The Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976. Swanberg, W. A. Dreiser. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965. Leonard Cassuto

SLANG, DIALECT, AND OTHER TYPES OF MARKED LANGUAGE Imagine opening a revised edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and reading: “My antics will no doubt remain unknown to you unless perchance you have had occasion to peruse a certain volume entitled The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; nevertheless, it matters not.” The excruciatingly formal prose of this imagined revision sharply contrasts with the familiar language of the novel. Nevertheless, in early drafts Huck’s famous introduction of himself to the reader had been a good


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1051


deal more proper; Mark Twain (1835–1910) wrote “You will not know about me,” and later emended this to “You do not know me,” before he settled on the familiar: “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.” Twain’s language here (and throughout the novel) is distinguished by the use of “dialect” or “slang” as those terms are usually understood. Twain was certainly not the first author to write in this informal language. The tradition of incorporating dialect into literary writing in English goes back at least as far as Geoffrey Chaucer. Even the very dialects Twain was representing had been portrayed by earlier American authors. Nevertheless, the approach to dialect and slang taken by Twain and other authors at this time represented a new direction. Before Twain, Joel Chandler Harris (1848– 1908), and other writers of the period, dialect usually appeared only in dialogue and was typically used for comic effect to suggest a character’s backwardness, vulgarity, or buffoonery. After the Civil War, however, many authors began to treat dialect more generously and sought to incorporate representations of “authentic” speech as part of a broader interest in painting their works with local color. This reformed attitude toward dialect and slang opened new avenues of expression. The authors of this generation broke the molds that typecast dialect-speaking characters and, in the case of Twain in Huckleberry Finn, pushed dialect well beyond the confines of dialogue. This article presents a general framework for approaching dialect, slang, and similar phenomena in literature. The examples discussed come from the period 1870–1920, but the issues are meant to apply to literature of virtually any era. Two main questions are addressed: (1) Why do authors use dialect, slang, and other linguistic forms that stand out from the literary norm? (2) What forms do they use in constructing linguistically unusual writing? WHY USE DIALECT, SLANG, AND SIMILAR DEVICES?

The motivations for incorporating dialect, slang, or similar forms of language clearly vary by author and even by work. Still, most cases fall under the general heading of characterization: the form of a character’s speech is used to signal aspects of who that character is. Authors are keenly aware that language can serve as a powerful marker of identity. In subtle and not so subtle ways we indicate something about ourselves when we speak, not just in what we say but in how we say it. Thus, a character whose language usage differs from that of other characters, or from the narration, is read as socially or culturally different.

1052

A M E R I C A N

An author may use language to mark differences of various types. Perhaps the most familiar of these are regional differences. Characters are often written to signal their geographic origins through their use of a regional dialect. Regional speech patterns can contribute to a sense of place by adding a dimension of local color. Of course, within a given setting dialect usage may vary across characters because authors use dialect to mark social differences as well. These differences may be coded by using distinct features for different social types. Stories set in the South, for example, may include one set of dialect forms for white characters and another set for African American characters. Social difference may also be indicated by varying the relative frequency of dialect in different characters’ usage. Accordingly, the dialogue of a character of lower social status might be filled with dialect markers, while such markers will appear more rarely in the dialogue of a higher status character. Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) adopts this approach in “A Church Mouse” (1891), which is set in rural New England. The speech of the “rich and influential” deacon Caleb Gale certainly includes nonstandard features, but they are not as pervasive as they are in the speech of the penniless Hetty Fifield. Caleb Gale argues: “Don’t you see it ain’t no use talkin’ such nonsense, Hetty? You’d better go right along an’ make up your mind it ain’t to be thought of.” Hetty responds, “Where do you s’pose I’ve got any place? Them folks air movin’ into Mis’ Grout’s house, an’ they as good as told me to clear out. I ain’t got no folks to take me in. I dun’ know where I’m goin’; mebbe I can go to your house?”. Unusual linguistic features are also commonly used to mark a character’s status as a speaker of a language other than English. Given the tremendous flow of immigrants to the United States in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, it is not surprising to find nonnative speakers of English appearing in literature of the time. In “A Providential Match” (1898), Abraham Cahan (1860–1951) represents the speech of a Russian Jewish immigrant in phrases such as “feet him like a glove” and “bishness is bishness.” Nonnative speech is also found in works featuring Americans traveling or living outside the country. In Their Wedding Journey (1872), William Dean Howells (1837–1920) offers a sample of a French accent encountered in Quebec: “There isn’t another ’ole in the ’ouse to lay me ’ead” (p. 169). Dialects and nonnative speech represent linguistic differences across groups of people, but language also varies on the level of the individual user. All people adjust their usage according to context, employing different registers or styles. Compare, for example, the formal style of speech that might characterize a

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


professional meeting with the informal style found in a casual conversation among friends. One common way of indicating register differences is through word choice, particularly the use of slang words and phrases to signal informality. Slang is often used to comic effect, as in Roughing It (1872), where Twain describes an exchange between a local “rough” and a minister that opens with the former asking, “Are you the duck that runs the gospel mill next door?” This informality is contrasted with the extreme formality in the speech of the minister, who describes himself as “the spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose sanctuary adjoins these premises” (p. 310). The humor of this passage stems from the fact that neither party is able to decipher what the other is saying. The distinction drawn here between dialect and register is often blurred in actual usage and in literary representations. A given linguistic form may be associated with particular registers as well as with particular dialects. Consider, for example, the pronunciation of words ending in “-ing,” which for most people is sometimes articulated with the back “ng” sound and sometimes with the front “n” sound. This distinction is often represented as “-ing” versus “-in’.” Studies of linguistic usage by a variety of people in a variety of situations indicate that the front pronunciation is used more frequently among certain groups of people (e.g., the working class) and in informal contexts (e.g., personal conversations). Thus, an author might have a character use forms like “nothin’” and “walkin’” as an indication of the casualness of the context or as a signal of his or her social origins. In fact, the latter intention seems to be more common.

MARKEDNESS

The common thread linking literary representations of dialect, nonnative usages, and registers is their markedness. In linguistics, “markedness” describes the difference between default categories and special cases. The latter are called “marked” because they often contain additional linguistic material. For example, the plural of a noun is considered the marked case because it is generally formed by adding a suffix to the “unmarked” singular form. Markedness reflects how one thinks about language at a fundamental level. For example, the singular of nouns is viewed as the basic form and the plural as a derived form; consider how odd it sounds to describe “child” as the singular of “children” instead of describing “children” as the plural of “child.” Extending this notion to literature, one can see that there is a kind of unmarked language used throughout most works, which might for A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

convenience be called Standard Written English. This language establishes a backdrop against which dialect features, slang terms, and so forth stand out. These marked usages draw attention to themselves as linguistic forms and lead readers to consider why the given form is used. The concept of markedness is especially useful in the examination of literary uses of dialect and slang because markedness relations are inherently relative. One speaks of a given form as marked only in relation to an unmarked counterpart. Moreover, a linguistic form may be marked in relation to one form but unmarked in relation to another. So an author can indicate social differences among dialect speakers by putting in the mouth of one character language that is more marked. A common example in literature of the period is seen in the variation between “goin’ to” or “gonna” and “gwine” or “gwyne to.” These forms are marked relative to the standard “going to,” but “gwine to” is arguably more marked as it deviates more radically from the standard spelling (although not necessarily from the usual pronunciation) and appears almost exclusively in the speech of African American characters. The relativity of markedness relations helps explain why even when the unmarked language of an entire work is a dialect, the author can still use linguistic means of distinguishing characters, as in Huckleberry Finn. HOW MARKED LANGUAGE IS CONSTRUCTED

While authors have various reasons for using dialect, slang, and other types of marked language, some common forms appear in literature of the period. Authors vary greatly in the extent to which they use marked linguistic forms, although they vary less in terms of the forms selected; that is, there seems to be a common pool of forms from which many authors routinely draw. It is important to remember that every author faces certain practical limitations in the use of marked language. One type of challenge is presented by the writing system, which makes it difficult to represent many interesting variations in pronunciation. The reader’s needs bring another set of challenges; authors must bear in mind the potential for frustrating readers with language that deviates from standard orthographic conventions and therefore needs deciphering. Nonstandard spellings are perhaps the most common technique employed in literary dialect. They are most often intended to convey a marked pronunciation. Among the more common forms are “dem” (also “dat,” “dis,” etc.); “fer”; “git”; “jest”; “kin” for “can”; “thar” (also “whar”); and “-in’” for “-ing” (as in


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1053


“fishin’”). Each of these examples involves an alternation between two sounds; it is also common to find representations of deleted sounds, most often indicated with the apostrophe (e.g., “an’” or “’n’”; “’cause”; “’em”; “’round” or “’roun’”; “s’pose”). Although readers may interpret such forms as dialect, each of the pronunciations represented in these examples is heard in the ordinary speech of most people. A more restricted usage, the deletion of the “r” sound, is a recognizable feature of southern and northeastern accents and appears frequently in literary dialect, represented in various ways (e.g., “yo’” for “your,” “heah” for “here”). An unconventional spelling is not always indicative of a variant pronunciation. Forms such as “wuz,” “sez,” and “frum” reflect the usual pronunciations. Examples like these are called “eye dialect” because they are nonstandard only to the eye and not to the ear. It may be difficult for modern readers to determine whether a given form is meant to reflect a marked pronunciation or is simply eye dialect. For example, Joel Chandler Harris and others used spellings like “w’en” and “w’ite.” Many Americans (and most Britons) might interpret these forms as eye dialect because the standard “wh” spelling does not call for a distinct pronunciation in their speech. In the nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, however, many speakers in some regions (especially the South) discriminated between the pronunciations of pairs like “witch” and “which.” For them, a spelling like “w’en” certainly represented a marked pronunciation. Similarly, the pronunciation suggested by the spelling “bin” for “been” does not attract much attention in the early twenty-first century but appears to have been more marked in earlier periods. Nonstandard grammatical usages are another resource on which an author may draw to distinguish marked language. These grammatical variants may be used to represent regional dialects and appear frequently as markers of social status. The form “gwine” (sometimes “gwyne”) mentioned above may be seen as an example of a nonstandard verb form although it is perhaps better classified as a pronunciation variant. Regardless, the form seems to have become conventionalized in representations of African American speech in the nineteenth century. More clear-cut cases of nonstandard verbs include uses of “come” and “seen” as simple past tense as well as forms like “riz,” “cotch,” and “sot” as the pasts of “rise,” “catch,” and “set.” All of these forms had currency in some dialects at one time, and of course, “come” and “seen” remain widely used in the early twenty-first century as past tense forms. Patterns of subject-verb agreement are also known to vary across dialects, and nonstandard agreement types sometimes appear in literature.

1054

A M E R I C A N

Among the more common examples are “you was” and “I weren’t.” Perhaps the most frequently appearing markers of nonstandard grammar relate to negation. Included here are “ain’t” and the forms known as “double negatives” (e.g., “don’t do nothing,” “never go nowhere”). The vocabulary an author chooses may also contribute to a sense of linguistic marking. As do certain pronunciations and grammatical forms, some words convey social information about the people who use them. Compared with pronunciation and grammar, the boundaries between standard and nonstandard and between formal and informal in the area of vocabulary are often fuzzier. Judgments about linguistic registers vary greatly, especially regarding the very informal words and expressions recognized as slang. A word that one person considers slang may strike another as more widely acceptable. Moreover, slang is largely ephemeral; indeed, part of the allure of slang is its freshness. A slang usage may be fashionable for some time and then disappear altogether. Occasionally, an item once seen as slang sheds its informal connotations and passes into general usage. The nature of slang presents special challenges to students of literature. An author’s use of what was a slang term a century ago may baffle modern readers unfamiliar with the term. When a “drummer” appears in Stephen Crane’s (1871–1900) “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (1898), readers in the early twenty-first century might visualize a musician rather than the salesman denoted by the term then. Similarly, readers might be shocked by the frequent references to “making love” in literature of the period if they are not aware that the phrase simply meant flirting or courting. In other cases, the author’s intention to convey informality may be missed because the former slang term has achieved wider currency. Consider, for example, Twain’s labeling of “You bet!” as Nevada slang in Roughing It. Closely connected to slang is jargon, the specialized vocabulary of a given profession. Medicine, the military, and the law are fields well known for terminology that can be impenetrable to outsiders. Twain provides several examples of mining jargon in Roughing It (e.g., “wildcat claim,” “foot,” “flume,” “salting a claim”). The boundary between slang and jargon is often unclear. Consider, for example, the vocabulary of professional baseball as seen in the work of Ring Lardner (1885–1933). Items such as “bunt” and “strike” are clearly jargon while a usage like “pill” for “ball” is perhaps better termed slang, but what of “fungoes” (flyballs hit for fielding practice)? Also in the borderland between slang and jargon lies the vocabulary of the underworld often called

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SOCIAL DARWINISM

cant. The cant of criminals is a particularly fruitful and fascinating lexical arena that remains, by design, largely opaque to outsiders. For example, Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) in Thirty Years a Detective (1886) discusses the pickpocket’s technique of “reefing,” the process of gradually drawing up a pocketbook. Another cant term, “gat,” for “revolver,” is noted by A. H. Lewis, who offers the definition “Gatts is East Sidese for pistols” in Apaches of New York (1914). This word, a shortening from “Gatling gun,” may have inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald in naming his title character in The Great Gatsby (1896–1940). H. L. Mencken offers several other real-life examples of underworld vocabulary in The American Language (1919, 1936), and the numerous citations included there indicate the great interest this topic aroused in the general and scholarly press early in the twentieth century. In particular, the literature of 1870–1920 illustrates how marked language can serve as a powerful tool for bringing characters and settings to life. Authors like those exemplified here took seriously the use of this device and often displayed remarkable sensitivity to “nonliterary” language. Unraveling the way such marked language was constructed can add depth to our understanding of this literature as well as greater appreciation for its creation. See also Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Humor; A New England Nun and Other Stories; Oratory; Regionalism and Local Color Fiction; Short Story BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Freeman, Mary Wilkins. “A Church Mouse.” In her A New England Nun and Other Stories. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891. Howells, William Dean. Their Wedding Journey. 1872. Edited by John K. Reeves. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968. Mencken, H. L. The American Language. 1919. 4th ed. New York: Knopf, 1936. Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885. Secondary Works

Carkeet, David. “The Dialects in Huckleberry Finn.” American Literature 51 (1979): 315–332. Ives, Sumner. “A Theory of Literary Dialect.” Tulane Studies in English 2 (1950): 137–182. Reprinted in A Various Language: Perspectives on American Dialects, edited by Juanita V. Williamson and Virginia M. Burke, pp. 145– 177. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Wolfram, Walt, and Natalie Schilling-Estes. American English: Dialects and Variation. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998. Matthew J. Gordon

SOCIAL DARWINISM Social Darwinism is the theory that individual human beings, social groups, and entire ethnic groups are subject in their societies to the same laws of natural selection that govern the survival and evolution of plants and animals in nature. Just as natural selection eliminates weak, sick, impaired, and maladapted individuals of plant and animal species, so it weeds out weak people and races. Social Darwinism is most closely associated with Herbert Spencer, a biologist, sociologist, and philosopher born in England on 27 April 1820, at the height of British industrialism. Although a sickly child and often a physically and mentally frail adult, Herbert Spencer was the only one of nine children to survive infancy. Schooled at home, Spencer would eventually spend ten years as a railroad engineer, during which time he began writing in his free hours. With a particular aptitude for science and math, Spencer’s intelligent and inquisitive nature would land him in the company of many nineteenthcentury intellectuals, and for some time he was engaged to the Victorian writer George Eliot (1819– 1880), author of The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Middlemarch. Spencer’s intense interest in human behavior focused on elements that comprise any society, including family structure and reproduction, language, education, labor, economic success, political organization, morality, and artistic expression. Early in his career he attempted to explain the natural historic progression of social organization from the individual human being to the family unit, the clan affiliation, the tribal association, and the national identity. Spencer argued that in their natural progression from simple familial units to complex groups, social organizations, like all organisms, become increasingly complicated and therefore are forced to reform not simply by affiliation but by function. For Spencer it logically followed that as social structures become more complex and functionally organized, class hierarchies will form and reform over time, valuing some functions more highly than others. Spencer also saw one crucial difference between social organisms and biological ones: while parts of a biological organism form a unified and concrete whole, different social organisms are free and relatively dispersed. While parts of a biological organism exist to benefit the


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1055

SOCIAL DARWINISM

Herbert Spencer. A biologist, philosopher, and rival of Charles Darwin, Spencer developed a doctrine of social evolution. GETTY IMAGES

whole, Spencer argued that the whole social organism exists for the benefit of the individual. Because Spencer’s primary theoretical premise was that all things progress toward a synthetic and functional organization, the British philosopher’s ideas, which became far more popular and influential in the United States than in England, covered many scientific and sociological areas that he felt interacted dynamically. Moreover, his “Development Hypothesis” (1852) argues, as implied above, in favor of an evolutionary explanation for human development preceding Charles Darwin’s own evolutionary text (On the Origin of Species, 1859) by seven years. The “Development Hypothesis” was instrumental in presenting Spencer’s evolutionary explanation for human development, but its basis in the ideology of inheritance outlined by the early French evolutionist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), which holds that individuals change and adapt to their physical surroundings and that this adaptation passes to their offspring, makes it a dated and obsolete text. Spencer’s related essay, “A Theory of Population, Deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility,” also published in 1852, would prove instru-

1056

A M E R I C A N

mental in the formation of new ideas regarding economic success and social expectations in Europe and even more sweepingly in America. This essay argues that people who invest less energy into reproduction and more into education ultimately prove more economically and socially successful than those who produce more offspring. Consequently those families with fewer and more educated and refined children become the “select” citizens of their generation while those families who produce more prodigiously land squarely at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. This application of the evolutionary process to social organization comprises the essence of Social Darwinism. Spencer was articulating the facts as he saw them, placing no blame on the poor and uneducated for failure to restrict reproduction and therefore become more economically and socially successful. However, a type of cultural primitivism and economic inferiority stigmatized the large poor family, particularly when Spencer’s ideas were embraced by an increasingly wealthy and capitalistic American audience. Effectively the misinterpretation and misapplication of Spencer’s evolutionary theories in the form of American Social Darwinism often resulted in the increased misery of the very individuals the sociologist wished to assist. Even as Spencer advocated the abolition of the poor laws in Britain, his theories of success and social selectivity (as in “survival of the fittest”) were being used in America to support the eugenics movement that wished to limit the rights of the poor, the immigrant, and the mentally and physically infirm in order for America to progress more rapidly into a civilized and economically successful society. CHARLES DAVENPORT AND AMERICAN EUGENICS

While many were involved in popularizing ideas about inherited genetic traits, human evolution and progress, and the close association of genetics and behavior, few were more important than the American zoologist Charles Davenport (1866–1944). Davenport was another curious intellect whose interests spanned the entirety of human society. His early biological focus was human evolution, and he spent the first years of his scientific career tracing human characteristics through genealogical surveys of virtually everyone he met. Although Davenport’s initial premise was that most physical and psychological traits could be attributed to inheritance, his notions of nationality complicated his theory. Like many of his scientific predecessors and peers, Davenport disfavored individuals whose bloodlines originated in eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. His basis for attributing negative behaviors and characteristics to these groups was a

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SOCIAL DARWINISM

quantitative survey of the populations of asylums, penitentiaries, and ghettos, as well as his own personal surveys. This data was compiled and analyzed by Davenport after he helped establish a eugenics laboratory, the Station for Experimental Evolution, at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, in 1904 with the funding of the Carnegie Institution. While Davenport had a keen mind, he seemingly did not recognize the shortcomings of his scientific processes and data. Although his accumulation of quantitative information proved helpful in calculating rates of genetic variation, his attribution of amorality and criminality to those of foreign birth or lower class origins was evidence of his failure to prevent philosophy and ethnocentricity from entering his laboratory. For instance, he “believed that the influx of people from southeastern Europe would make Americans darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, . . . more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape, and sex-immorality” (Caudill, p. 105). Unfortunately the scientific community and the public shared Davenport’s shortsightedness regarding his findings. Drawing upon the work of the Austrian botanist Gregor Mendel, Davenport used Experiments with Plant Hybrids (1866), with its insistence on environmental influences on plant behavior and their subsequent impact on plant offspring, as corroboration of his own findings regarding environmental impact on humans and their offspring. Davenport’s incorporation of Mendelian genetics and theories of inheritance in tandem with his misinterpretation of Spencerian Social Darwinism laid the groundwork for the American sociologist’s arguments against immigration and in favor of the sterilization of the physically and mentally infirm and the lobotomization of the criminally insane. His shallowly researched scientific arguments formed the foundation for the eugenics movement in America and went unchallenged for decades. The scientific association between “bad blood” and criminal behavior, mental inferiority, insanity, and amorality paved the way for legislation limiting the rights of minorities, immigrants, convicts, and the infirm and was likewise responsible for the government’s policies regarding adoption. It also inspired the imagination of a public increasingly interested in evolving into the most prosperous and civilized society on Earth. Inaccuracies, prejudices, and personal preferences would govern the eugenics movement and the beliefs, however faulty, of much of the American public about ethnicity, inherited genetic traits, and human behavior well into the twentieth century. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

SOCIAL DARWINISM AND THE ECONOMICS OF HENRY GEORGE

While numerous ideas inspired by Spencer’s Social Darwinism resulted in negative experiences for American minorities, not everyone who read Spencer’s theories applied or interpreted them so pessimistically. Some social scientists, philosophers, and cultural critics viewed Spencer’s ideas as new ways to approach and ultimately eradicate old social problems, which was ostensibly Spencer’s purpose. One such optimistic cultural voice was the journalist and political economist Henry George (1839–1897), who asserted that social and economic evolution could be achieved through a restructured economy based on a single governing tax. George’s essay “That We Might All Be Rich,” published in 1883, argued that there was no need for poverty to persist. George outlined basic human needs and desires and explained how fair distribution of goods and services, accompanied by fair taxation, would instigate an economy that could provide for all. While many who read George’s ideas regarded the possible eradication of poverty as utopian, there were some who shared his desire for and belief in a more egalitarian social order in America. Among these economic progressivists was the American realist Hamlin Garland (1860–1940), whose story “Under the Lion’s Paw” from Main-Travelled Roads (1891) illustrates the struggle of small individual farms faced with ruthless land speculators and rural hardship. Garland’s fictional text undermines the pastoral myth of rural life and demonstrates the need for a more equitable social and economic order in which the enterprise of hardworking farmers would be rewarded. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS AND AMERICAN REALISM

While Garland was inspired by a desire for social and economic change, other writers focused more on simply observing American life, and this observation was often done through a Social Darwinian lens. Perhaps the most important of these American realists was William Dean Howells (1837–1920), whose prolific works document late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century life in scrupulous detail. In 1865 Howells took a position as assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly. While in this position and later as editor he began to exercise great influence on American taste in literature and culture by including works in the Atlantic by Mark Twain, Henry James, and other realists. As editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Howells also helped to introduce numerous European writers and thinkers to American readers, most prominently the French journalist, novelist, and critic Émile Zola (1840– 1902), whose naturalistic fiction often condemned


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1057

SOCIAL DARWINISM

Victorian cultural values. Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels (1871–1893) portrays the struggles of the Parisian poor, prostitution, and the depravity and injustice rife within the mining industry. Interestingly, while Howells asserted the importance of Zola’s absolute realism in his portrayal of Victorian life, the American critic avoided sordid and explicit scenes in his own works. In fact in his collection of articles on American fiction and culture Howells argued that the presence of detailed scenes of depravity and sexuality had no place in American realism as they would detract from more important thematic elements. Howells’s criticism of graphic depravity in works of fiction illustrates the conflicted nature of his relationship with Social Darwinism and other late-nineteenthcentury social theories. Even as Howells strove mightily to represent reality as he saw it and to advocate reality in the fiction of his contemporaries, his Victorian sensibilities insisted on propriety and etiquette. While he recognized and appreciated the vulgarity that often accompanied everyday life and its habits, he felt strongly that depravity, like purity, was not the norm of American life; far more commonplace were work, courtship, marriage, birth, and death. Howells also agreed that humans were evolving into a more civilized and socially cultured species that engaged less and less in “low living.” Realists should concern themselves therefore with observing more consistent elements of social behaviors, as Howells did, such as ritualized courtship and marriage (Their Wedding Journey, 1872; A Chance Acquaintance, 1873), the focus on and consequence of accumulating wealth (The Rise of Silas Lapham, 1885; A Hazard of New Fortunes, 1889), and the increasing social problems related to divorce (A Modern Instance, 1882). Virtually all of Howells’s thirty-eight novels turned his keenly observant eye to the evolving social scene in America; these works, along with more than sixty other books in varying genres both chronicled and influenced American life. HAROLD FREDERIC AND THE DAMNATION OF THERON WARE

While less prolific and influential than Howells, the American journalist and fiction writer Harold Frederic (1856–1898) was certainly influenced by contemporary theories such as Social Darwinism as evidenced by the topical nature of many of his fictional plots. Although he wrote numerous novels and over 1,500 newspaper articles, The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896) was considered to be his masterpiece. Inspired initially by the conflict Frederic noted between Irish Catholics and Protestants, the novel ultimately questions the tenets of both organized religion and science

1058

A M E R I C A N

as its main character seeks solace in an idealized work that does not exist. Instead Theron Ware realizes too late that the world around him is often hostile, squalid, and tragic. SOCIAL DARWINISM AND THE ISSUE OF RACE

One issue tied inextricably to the Spencerian concepts at the heart of Social Darwinism is that of race equality, yet it is an issue too often absent from the texts of many American writers. Ironically, many realists, insistent as they were that fiction should reflect real life, omitted virtually any discussion of race except as a peripheral element of their plots. However, occupying a rather solitary position in late-nineteenth-century fiction, stood Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932), the educated, financially successful, and professionally developed African American author whose best-known work is the collection of short stories The Conjure Woman (1899). The stories reflect the influence of African American folktales, songs, and trickster stories and use dialect and other devices to depict a realistic vision. While Chesnutt’s short stories are still popular, less well known are his novels, which more clearly articulate his desire for racial equality and widespread opportunities for African Americans. At the heart of Chesnutt’s novels The House behind the Cedars (1900), a text addressing the need felt by many African Americans to “pass” as white, and The Marrow of Tradition (1901), inspired by the Wilmington, North Carolina, race riot of 1898, are the same Georgian economic principles extracted from Spencer’s evolutionary theories. Although nearly forgotten today, these novels of Chesnutt’s were the most dynamic works of fiction that had then been undertaken by an African American writer. SOCIAL DARWINISM AND THE ROLE OF MOTHER

When Henry George articulated his economic theory, based as it was on Spencerian evolution, many writers began to address the role of women and their contribution to economic prosperity in the form of home labor. No one presented this concept more vividly for an American audience than Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930) in her superb short story “The Revolt of ‘Mother’” from A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). In the story Freeman’s long-suffering “Mother” finally takes a stand against her hardworking but selfabsorbed husband, “Father.” After forty years of being promised a new home, the neglected Sarah Penn moves her children and belongings into the beautiful new barn that her husband builds in the place that he so long assured her the new house would be.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SOCIAL DARWINISM

At once meek and devoted yet canny and selfassured, Sarah sees how women have been restricted, repressed, and impaired. While her husband daily leads a full, prosperous, and satisfying life, she is less valued than the horses. She tells her daughter, “You ain’t found out yet we’re women-folks. . . . You ain’t seen enough of men-folks yet.” Then she adds ironically,

young and naive American faced with the old and sophisticated European. This theme reflects James’s ideas of essential national characters. Europe was old, cynical, highly structured, and politically divided, whereas America was young, optimistic, progressive, and united. The cultural difference was vast and led to fascinating fictional possibilities.

One of these days you’ll find it out, an’ then you’ll know that we know only what men-folks think we do, so far as any use of it goes, an’ how we’d ought to reckon men-folks in with Providence, an’ not complain of what they do any more than we do of the weather. (Pp. 123–124)

The novel that perhaps most clearly addresses the cultural naïveté of the nouveau riche American in Europe is The Portrait of a Lady (1881), in which the main character, Isabel Archer, gains sudden wealth from an unexpected inheritance. As was common for marriageable women, the socially conscious Isabel travels to Europe where she is duped into marrying a middle-aged man by an older and much wiser woman, Madame Merle. Forsaking love for social gain, Isabel becomes the prototype for the class-conscious and upwardly mobile American woman. Like other works by James, such as Daisy Miller (1878), The Bostonians (1886), The Wings of the Dove (1902), and The Ambassadors (1903), The Portrait of a Lady presents a tangled web of social expectations, financial obligations, family ties, economic success, and personal happiness. Marriage, from James’s viewpoint, appears to be more a form of strategic positioning than a step toward personal fulfillment. Also worthy of note is the relative absence of children in the Jamesian novel; while numerous characters have one child, very few have more. This fact alone seems to support James’s incorporation of Spencer’s economic hypothesis regarding population and financial success; and the relative absence of children in the novels of numerous writers is a lasting reminder of Social Darwinism’s important influence on American fiction.

Perhaps because it is written with such wry good humor, Freeman’s story is often overlooked as an important portrayal of the oppressed and repressed condition of women alongside the economic value of their work. Unlike Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860– 1935) did not rely on Henry George’s economic schema; instead in 1898 she published her own, Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, which demonstrates how the economic dominance of men and the restriction of women to domestic labors had impaired not only the social evolution of women but of society in general. Because men alone had been the thinkers, artists, inventors, scientists, politicians, and businesspeople, all of these realms had been deprived of the skills, ideas, and personalities of at least half the members of the species. Although primarily known for her story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892), in which the main character is physically restrained and prevented from writing by her husband following the birth of their child, Gilman’s economic treatise is considered her masterwork; it informed all of her later writing and is still cited as an important contribution to the women’s movement. Gilman’s utopian novel Herland (1915) might be viewed as a kind of wish fulfillment that envisions a society devoid of men where the environment is pristine, the customs simple, and the people moral, peaceful, and productive. HENRY JAMES AND LIFE ABROAD

Like Howells and other American realists, Henry James (1843–1916) chronicled the behavior and values of nineteenth-century society; however, unlike his American contemporaries, James set many of his novels in Europe, where he lived for many years. With their detailed accounts of manners, courtship, intrigue, and social climbing, James’s novels are among the most popular and widely read works in the American canon. Often at the heart of his early stories is the A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

The fascinating rise of scientific theory, social science, philosophy, and progressivism known as Social Darwinism had great impact on all of the arts, but it is most obvious and easily recognizable in the literary works of American realism, saturated as they are with social and economic observation and commentary. The texts of William Dean Howells, Henry James, Hamlin Garland, Harold Frederic, Charles Chesnutt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Mary Wilkins Freeman provide a few examples of literature’s response to this persistent trend in American thought and culture. It is safe to claim that most works of fiction created in America between 1870 and 1920 were influenced, to varying degrees, by the evolutionary principles articulated by Herbert Spencer and others who gave voice to the turbulent and dynamic culture of a rising world power. See also The Conjure Woman; Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce; Darwinism; Feminism; MainTravelled Roads; The Marrow of Tradition; A


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1059

SOCIALISM

New England Nun and Other Stories; The Portrait of a Lady; Realism; Reform; Scientific Materialism; Success; Wealth; “The Yellow Wall-Paper”

SOCIALIST COMMUNITIES Friendship Community, Mississippi, 1872–1877 Bennett Cooperative Colony, Mississippi, 1873–1877 Social Freedom Community, Virginia, 1874–1880 Hays City Danish Colony, Kansas, 1877 Mutual Aid Community, Mississippi, 1883–1887 Kaweah Cooperative Commonwealth, California, 1885–1922 Cooperative Brotherhood, California, 1893–1898 Hiawatha Village Association, Michigan 1893–1896 Altruria, California, 1894–1895 Ruskin Cooperative Association, Tennessee, 1894–1899 Home Employment Cooperative Colony, Mississippi, 1894–1906 Christian Corporation, Nebraska, 1896–1897 Freedom Colony, Vermont 1897–1905 Equality, Washington, 1897–1907 Cooperative Brotherhood, Washington, 1898–1908 Ruskin Commonwealth, Georgia, 1899–1901 Friedheim, Virginia, 1899–1906 Niksur Cooperative Association, Minnesota, 1899–1899 Kinder Lou, Georgia, 1900–1901 Freeland Association, Washington, 1900–1906 Southern Cooperative Association, Florida, 1900–1904 Helicon Hall, New Jersey, 1906–1907 Fruit Crest, Missouri, 1911–1912 Llano del Rio Company, California, 1914–1918 Army of Industry, California, 1914–1918 Llano del Rio Company, Nevada, 1916–1918 Newllano Cooperative Colony, Louisiana, 1917–1938


Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man. 2nd ed. London: John Murray, 1879. Reprint, London: Penguin Books, 2004. Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. 1859. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins. A New England Nun and Other Stories. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891. First published under the name Mary E. Wilkins. Reprinted in A Mary Wilkins Freeman Reader, edited by Mary R. Reichardt, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Spencer, Herbert. “Developmental Hypothesis.” Essay Scientific, Political and Speculative. London: Williams and Norgate, 1891. Secondary Works

Caudill, Edward. “Social Darwinism: Adapting Evolution to Society.” In his Darwinian Myths: The Legends and Misuses of a Theory. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Fleming, Donald. “Social Darwinism.” In Paths of American Thought, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Morton White. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963. Gowaty, Patricia, ed. Feminism and Evolutionary Biology: Boundaries, Intersections, and Frontiers. New York: Chapman and Hall, 1997. Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Rev. ed. New York: Braziller, 1959. Young, H. Peyton. Individual Strategy and Social Structure: An Evolutionary Theory of Institutions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998. Deirdre Ray

Brian J. Berry, America’s Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens from Long-Wave Crises, p. 165.

SOCIALISM Socialism had its roots in the social and economic changes wrought by the rapidly increasing industrial capitalism in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. As factory owners became increasingly wealthy and workers grew impoverished, many workers sought a more-collective and less-competitive organization of the means of production and distribution of goods. Whether grounded in the theories of Robert Owen (1771–1858), Charles Fourier (1772– 1837), Karl Marx (1818–1883), or homegrown socialists, America in the period of 1870 to 1920 saw an increasing—and increasingly diverse—array of

1060

A M E R I C A N

socialist movements, which strongly affected American politics, economics, and culture. SOCIALIST ORGANIZATIONS

In October 1883 delegates from a number of American socialist groups, comprised mostly of recent immigrants, gathered in Pittsburgh to form the International Working People’s Association (IWPA).

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SOCIALISM

Their “manifesto” proclaimed opposition to capitalism and promotion of Marxist revolution. Page Smith gauges the effects of the International Working People’s Association, which he says did not result in a mass movement but did spread some of its ideas through the more radical elements of the labor movement (p. 234). In subsequent years the IWPA sponsored meetings and published journals. Less militant and radical was the International Workingmen’s Association, formed in San Francisco in 1881 and devoted to education and self-help; they called for a “scientific system of governmental co-operation of the working-people” (Smith, p. 235). In 1877 the Workingmen’s Party changed its name to the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), and by the end of 1879 it had a membership of ten thousand people. The party’s hopes quickly faded, however, as economic conditions improved; membership dipped to fifteen hundred in the early 1880s when the “Black International,” the anarchist wing of the SLP, split off. Events of 1886, though, occasioned gains for the SLP, which supported Henry George for mayor of New York. His loss led to yet another split in 1888. Daniel De Leon reinvigorated the SLP, which through his efforts nominated a candidate for president in 1892 who received twenty-one thousand votes. Yet De Leon’s leadership led to a split in 1899 when Morris Hillquit, Job Harriman, and Eugene V. Debs formed the Socialist Party. Debs, who had risen to prominence in the Pullman strike of 1894 and who helped form the Social Democratic Party in 1897, was the most popular of the Socialist Party leaders and its nominee for president most years from 1900 to 1920. He presided over what Daniel Bell in Marxian Socialism in the United States (1952) calls “the ‘golden age’ of American Socialism” (p. 55), 1902 through 1912. In Socialism and America (1977) Irving Howe says that Debs’s brand of socialism was very attractive to many workers in that it offered solidarity and tolerance to a wide variety of groups, from strikers to farmers to miners (pp. 18–19). Debs’s popularity as a presidential candidate is indicative of the Socialist Party’s success in the first decades of the century: he received 96,000 votes in 1900; 402,000 in 1904; 875,000 in 1912; and even 920,000 in 1920 while in prison for sedition. Having a more openly and concertedly socialist agenda than many other socialist organizations was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, the “Wobblies”), founded in Chicago in 1905. Its members included the Western Federation of Miners and the more revolutionary elements of the labor movement and were led by William D. (“Big Bill”) Haywood, Debs, Thomas J. Hagerty, and De Leon. The central purpose of the IWW was to unite all workers, skilled and unskilled; as A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Debs said at the founding convention, “Without solidarity nothing is possible . . . with it nothing is impossible.” By 1906, however, the IWW was split between a faction focusing on unionism and one calling for more radical practices. This feud was compounded by events of 1905 and 1906, when Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg was assassinated by a bomb and Haywood and others were dragged to Idaho and tried. The Western Federation withdrew from the IWW, and subsequent conferences of the organization saw a decline in socialist involvement. Bell indicates that the IWW eventually became an organization of unskilled workers, a transformation completed in 1908 with the ouster of De Leon (p. 68). De Leon formed the Detroit faction of the IWW, while Haywood and Vincent St. John formed the Chicago IWW, promoting sabotage and other direct action. SOCIALIST THEORIES

Robert V. Hine outlines the various communitarian experiments of the last half of the nineteenth century and shows the rise of the Social Gospel and Christian socialism (Berry, p. 139). Brian J. Berry discusses the former movement as focused on planning as a means of social justice; its most prominent minister was Rev. Washington Gladden (1836–1918). In The Working People and Their Employers (1876) he summarizes his view of history as follows: “The subjugation of labor by capital is the first stage in the progress of industry; the second stage is the warfare between capital and labor; the third is the identification of labor and capital by some application of the principle of cooperation” (Cort, p. 227). Boston, the center of much Christian socialism, was the site of the founding of the Christian Labor Union in 1872 by Rev. Jesse James, who edited the monthly Equity from 1874 to 1875 and the LaborBalance from 1877 to 1879. The Christian Labor Union advocated mutual benefit societies, support of unions by churches, and an economic system based on labor. Other Christian organizations included the Society of Christian Socialists, which was founded in 1889 and which published the journal the Dawn from 1889 to 1896, and the Christian Social Union, which was founded in 1890. Another advocate of Christian socialism was Richard T. Ely (1854–1943), one of the leading economists of the period. A professor at Wisconsin and Johns Hopkins, Ely based his socialism, which included public ownership of monopolies, on the New Testament’s emphasis on caring for the poor. The controversial (due to his views on sexuality) minister Edward Ellis edited the Christian Socialist from 1905 to 1922. He was, as John C. Cort says in Christian Socialism (1988), a major figure in Christian socialism, one whom the Socialist Party sponsored on


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1061

SOCIALISM

a number of lecture tours (p. 241). Flourishing particularly during the Third Great Awakening of the 1890s, Christian socialism spawned a number of utopian communities across the nation—twenty-four in the period from 1875 to 1920. Secular communes also flourished during this period, connecting socialism to such diverse beliefs as free love, vegetarianism, spiritualism, feminism, and celibacy. Utopian communities also arose out of the “Scientific Socialism” movement, particularly as responses to economic crises of the 1870s, 1890s, and 1907. For example, between 1893 and World War I twentyone socialist communities were established, the most significant of which was likely the Ruskin Colony, founded in 1894 in Tennessee by Julius A. Wayland (1854–1912). Berry traces the development of the Ruskin Cooperative Association, which gave some Americans hopes that a viable communal life could be an answer to the growing problems of urbanization and industrialization. However, with an increased population, the usual quarrels and splits set in, and Ruskin ended in 1899. Berry speculates about “An Epidemic of Socialism?” and concludes: “Having rejected politics, government, and other institutions of society, many reformers adopted some form of cooperative organization as their instrument of change, with the hope that by forming one successful cooperative community they could begin the conversion of a troubled world. Each community viewed itself as instruments of broader social and economic change” (p. 161). Henry George’s Progress and Poverty (1879) argued that rent was the major cause of poverty. Daniel Bell summarizes George’s proposal as based upon the concept that natural and social reasons were the basis of the value of land; therefore, no individual should profit from it. Instead, George favored a single tax as the land’s full rental value, which he thought would lead to more productive use. George’s single tax ideas, which can be traced back to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels’s Communist Manifesto (1848), were popular during the turbulent 1880s. In 1886 the Central Labor Union of New York nominated George for mayor. Incorporating the theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer into their mainly Marxist ideology, many evolutionary socialists of the period were faced with serious contradiction between progressive and revolutionary aims. Mark Pittenger says that “very few Gilded Age socialist evolutionists would join the Socialist Party after its founding” (p. 10). Into the twentieth century more vigorous debates over the possibility of reconciling socialism and evolutionism were held by A. M. Simons, Ernest Untermann, Arthur M. Lewis, and Robert Rives La Monte, whose scientific

1062

A M E R I C A N

socialist theories were highly sophisticated (Pittenger, p. 11). For example, Lewis, working-class and selfeducated, wrote several volumes—most notably Evolution Social and Organic (1908)—that popularized the idea that the sciences could be effectively used by socialists. Pittenger indicates that Lewis’s significance resulted from his effectiveness in conveying complex socialist theories to the working classes (p. 143). SOCIALIST LITERATURE

Much of the socialist theories were disseminated by the plethora of newspapers and magazines devoted to the cause. The Massachusetts Episcopalian minister W. D. P. Bliss became interested in the publications of the British Fabians and formed the Fabian Society of Boston and its magazine the American Fabian in 1895. In it Bliss called for a league of Fabian Societies, which, as Howard H. Quint says in The Forging of American Socialism (1953), aimed to bring together those socialists committed to gradualism, forming a genuinely American version of socialism (p. 121). The journal continued until 1900, directed mainly at the middle class. One of the most effective socialist propagandists was Julius Augustus Wayland, “the One Hoss Editor.” Through his weekly newspapers, the Coming Nation (Greensburg, Indiana, and Ruskin, Tennessee) and Appeal to Reason (Girard, Kansas), Wayland gained a national audience from the 1890s until his death in 1919. In them Wayland promoted what Quint calls “grass roots socialism,” which was generally unconcerned with theoretical consistency but was persuasive in spreading the doctrine of the cooperative commonwealth (p. 209). Also influential was the Masses, which, according to Christine Stansell in American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century (2000), blended socialism with the ideas of the bohemian avant-garde of Greenwich Village (p. 166). Beginning in 1911 under the editor Piet Vlag, the journal was a conventional socialist outlet until Max Eastman took over in 1912, when it became more of a feminist and modernist magazine, though retaining its leftist politics, which led to its suppression by the postal authorities in 1917. Summing up these developments, Morris Hillquit’s History of Socialism in the United States (1903) aimed to provide a thorough and complete account of the rise of socialism in the nineteenth century and its place in turn-of-the-century America. The IWW published six newspapers, the most enduring of which were Solidarity (1909–1917) and the Industrial Worker (1909–1913). Wobbly songs, gathered in the Little Red Songbook: Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent (1909), also helped to popularize the organization. The songwriter Joe Hill (born

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SOCIALISM

Joseph Emmanuel Haaglund) was the most famous of the Wobbly singers from the time of his immigration in 1902 until his controversial execution in Utah in 1915. Called “the hobo’s poet laureate,” Hill promoted through his verse the IWW’s call for solidarity and direct action. One of the most visible of the IWW’s literary enterprises was the 7 June 1913 Paterson Strike Pageant, organized by Haywood along with Mabel Dodge, John Reed, Walter Lippman, and Joan Sloan. The pageant, held to support and help striking workers in the Paterson, New Jersey, textile mills, included poems, songs, essays, and dramatic performances. According to Martin Green in New York 1913: The Armory Show and the Paterson Strike Pageant, the participants “had cast a new truth and a strong demand in the teeth of Manhattan: a truth of class conflict and a demand for radical change, which contradicted the pleasant halftruths of the politicians, theaters, and newspapers of the establishment” (p. 203). Perhaps the most influential socialist work of the period is Edward Bellamy’s (1850–1898) utopian fantasy Looking Backward 2000–1887 (1888), which presents an essentially socialist—though Bellamy terms it “nationalist”—vision of the future. His narrator, Julian West, falls into a coma in 1887 and awakes in 2000. Guided by Dr. Leete, West learns that the trusts have been consolidated and nationalized and the “national organization of labor under one direction” (p. 57) has solved the labor problems of the nineteenth century. Every citizen has a period of “industrial service” from age twenty-one to forty-five. What the service is depends on “natural endowments,” but the administration constantly seeks to equalize the trades and insure that all work is equivalent. In addition to his portrayal of the utopia, Bellamy, through his narrator’s recollections, gives a thorough critique of the social ills of 1880s America. Other writers also promoted socialism through utopian novels. William Dean Howells’s (1837– 1920) A Traveler from Altruria (1894) is structured around conversations among the narrator and others with Mr. Homos, an Altrurian whose socialist utopia is sharply contrasted with conditions in America. Mr. Homos tells the others, “We have found that it is human nature to work cheerfully, willingly, eagerly, at the tasks which all share for the supply of common necessities. . . . It is nowise possible for the individual to separate his good from the common good” (pp. 196– 197). Howells’s more conventional novels Annie Kilburn (1889) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) also take up socialist themes. In the former the title character works to implement a Social Union for factory workers, whereas the latter portrays the socialist Lindau and the violence A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

In his chapter “The Philomaths” (a club), Jack London presents a sustained argument between the “Plutocrats,” primarily Colonel Van Gilbert and Mr. Wickson, and London’s hero, Ernest Everhard. The following is Everhard’s final response.

It is true that you have read history aright. It is true that labor has from the beginning of history been in the dirt. And it is equally true that so long as you and yours and those that come after you have power, that labor shall remain in the dirt. I agree with you. I agree with all that you have said. Power will be the arbiter, as it always has been the arbiter. It is a struggle of classes. Just as your class dragged down the old feudal nobility, so it shall be dragged down by my class, the working class. If you will read your biology and your sociology as clearly as you do your history, you will see that this end I have described is inevitable. It does not matter it is in one year, ten, or a thousand–your class shall be dragged down. And it shall be done by power. We of the labor hosts have conned that word over till our minds are all a-tingle with it. Power. London, The Iron Heel, p. 54.

of a strike by streetcar workers. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s (1860–1935) Herland (1915) depicts a feminist utopia, where children are raised and educated by experts in early childhood development, particular talents are channeled into occupations best suited for them, and they live together communally without private property. In her earlier Women and Economics (1898) Gilman insisted that “the economic progress of the race, its maintenance at any period, its continued advance, involve the collective activities of all trades, crafts, arts, manufactures, inventions, discoveries, and all the civil and military institutions that go to maintain them” (p. 8). Socialism is a prevalent theme in much of Jack London’s (1876–1915) writing but is perhaps most fully represented in The Iron Heel (1908), a futuristic projection of the conflicts between the socialists and the capitalists beginning in 1912. The novel’s hero is Ernest Everhard, a London-like philosopher and author of Working-Class Philosopher. Besides arguing against the Plutocracy (bankers and corporate heads) with textbook Marxist theory, Everhard leads two


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1063

“SOME THOUGHTS ON THE SCIENCE OF ONANISM”

revolts against the Oligarchy, whose Iron Heel mercilessly crushes the revolutionaries. A longtime member of the Socialist Labor Party, London nevertheless had a strained relationship with it. In his resignation letter of 1916, he complains that the party has lost its “fire and fight,” while London “believed that the working class, by fighting, by never . . . making terms with the enemy, could emancipate itself ” (Letters, p. 1538). Like The Iron Heel, Upton Sinclair’s (1878–1968) The Jungle (1906) ruthlessly exposes the abuses workers were subjected to under the capitalist system. Sinclair details the life of stockyard worker Jurgis Rudkus, who experiences all of the effects of poverty, degradation, and despair, finding in the end hope through socialism. See also Anarchism; The Jungle; Labor; Poverty

Howe, Irving. Socialism and America. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977. Johnson, Oakley C. Marxism in United States History before the Russian Revolution (1876–1917). New York: Humanities Press, 1974. Jones, Howard Mumford. The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience, 1865–1915. New York: Viking, 1971. Painter, Nell. Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919. New York: Norton, 1987. Pittenger, Mark. American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought, 1870–1920. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. Quint, Howard H. The Forging of American Socialism: Origins of the Modern Movement. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953. Smith, Page. The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post-Reconstruction Era. 1984. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.


Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward 2000–1887. 1887. New York: New American Library, 1966.

Stansell, Christine. American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland and Selected Stories. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1992.

John Samson

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics. 1898. New York: Harper and Row, 1966. Howells, William Dean. A Traveler from Altruria. 1894. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957.


London, Jack. The Iron Heel. 1904. Ware, Hertfordshire, U.K.: Wordsworth Editions, 1966.

Mark Twain’s speech, “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism,” delivered at a gathering of the Stomach Club in Paris in the spring of 1879, masterfully blends occasion with subject matter. Largely comprised of American writers and artists, including Charles Edward Dubois, Edwin Austin Abbey, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the Stomach Club was dedicated, as Twain noted, to “good times.” Twain’s speech certainly accommodated the club’s disposition. Combining extravagant puns, outlandish double entendres, comic exaggerations, and absurd attributions to historical and imaginary figures, Twain took a satirical thrust at a widespread body of contemporary writings—tracts, pamphlets, and books—committed to the eradication of the scourge of masturbation, otherwise known as self-abuse or the “solitary vice.”

London, Jack. The Letters of Jack London. 3 vols. Edited by Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz III, and Milo I. Shepard. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988. Secondary Works

Bell, Daniel. Marxian Socialism in the United States. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. Berry, Brian J. America’s Utopian Experiments: Communal Havens from Long-Wave Crises. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1992. Chambers, John Whiteclay, II. The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era. 1992. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. Cort, John C. Christian Socialism. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988. Ginger, Ray. Age of Excess: The United States from 1877 to 1914. New York: Macmillan, 1965. Green, Martin. New York 1913: The Armory Show and the Paterson Strike Pageant. New York: Scribners, 1988. Herreshoff, David. Origins of American Marxism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967.

1064

A M E R I C A N

In a letter written to Joseph Twichell, included in Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Twain noted that during his 1879 visit to Paris he had had to grit his “ineffectual teeth” over the “old Masters” that his companions Livy and Clara Spalding were “worshipping.” Twain also had to endure oppressively dingy hotels during an exceptionally raw and rainy spring. Given

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


these conditions, Twain must have found the club’s invitation welcome indeed; it promised him an evening of congeniality with an audience prepared to savor his brand of humor that often veered toward the outré. RIDICULING THE CRUSADERS

In less than 800 words, this speech held up to ridicule most of the familiar alarms that an army of physicians, physiological reformers, ministers, and self-appointed public guardians regularly sounded and the shibboleths they evoked in an effort to terrorize mainly boys and young men into moral and physical self-governance. The literature of this whole mad crusade, combining as it did elements of moral revivalism with hucksterism and lofty exhortation with naked venality, offered Twain a fertile field for satire. The offspring in this country of Sylvester Graham’s Lecture to Young Men (c. 1833), these admonitory works included dramatic narratives that, in strident tones, traced a young man’s inevitable decline from buoyant health, capacious intellect, and ambition to physical debility, mental impairment, heightened depravity, and indolence; from home to asylum and, finally, the grave. When moral suasion or appeals to the self-abuser’s conscience failed or reminders of God’s design for His creation went unheeded, others were prepared to take charge. Entrepreneurs offered remedies gathered, purportedly, from both the primitive and civilized worlds that could allegedly deter a young man from this noxious practice and restore his depleted system to health. R. F. Young offered “The Balm of Vitality” in The Magic Wand and Medical Guide (1866), a nostrum garnered from the so-called Digger Indians of California, while Frederick Hollick in The Male Generative Organs in Health and Disease, from Infancy to Old Age (c. 1849) reassured the stricken that his agents were scouring locales ranging from Arabia to the Andes for a cure. Judging from this literature, most nostrums benefited considerably from an added dose of chemicals from Germany. As John S. Haller Jr. and Robin Haller show in The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America, those entrepreneurs with a more mechanical turn of mind proffered grotesque restraining devices—rings, pressing blocks of wood, bands with spikes, pads, and galvanic battery-operated girdles. It is against such a background that Twain delivered “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism.” Not only did this crusade offer rich comic possibilities, but it offered him an opportunity to exercise what he felt was humor’s most valuable office, that of exposing, as Young Satan says in Twain’s novella The Chronicle of Young Satan (1922), “the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them—and by laughing A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

at them destroy them. . . . [O]nly Laughter can blow it [‘a colossal humbug’] to rags and atoms at a blast” (Gibson, pp. 165–166). “Some Thoughts” can be viewed as Twain’s own modest detonation. The speech’s very title, calling the practice of masturbation a “science,” immediately signals Twain’s satiric intent; it stands in marked contrast to the more decorous titles that the reformers used: John H. Ruttley’s Nature’s Secrets and the Secrets of Woman Revealed (1875), A. E. Youman’s Dr. Youman’s Illustrated Marriage Guide and Confidential Medical Adviser (1876), and Samuel Bayard Woodward’s Hints for the Young, In Relation to the Health of Body and Mind (1838). Twain’s title, rather, is blunt and suggests that his speech is more the by-product of casual musings than a grave exposition of a practice that was said to threaten marriage, mental acuity, buoyant health, and the soul’s salvation. Similarly, his parodic intent is evident in the labels he assigns this vice: “that species of recreation,” “this majestic diversion,” “this gentle art,” “this art,” and “this renowned science.” Gone are the dramatic euphemisms that the moral physiologists normally employed: the American Remedy Co.’s Prescription Book (1874) described this vile practice as the “Queen of the Appetites” (p. 5) and Dr. Youman’s Illustrated Marriage Guide and Confidential Medical Adviser calls it the “King of Terrors” (p. 129). The American Remedy Co.’s Prescription Book enlisted Miltonic imagery to cast temptation as a “seductive angel, but spreads its dragon wings and flies, at the completion of the foul deed, like an imp of darkness” (p. 14). S. F. Salter in Nervous Vitality: A Book for the Male Sex (1874) would have found Twain’s “gentle art” wholly inadequate, comparing masturbation rather to the power of a natural catastrophe: “Tell the hurricane to suppress its wrath before its fury is appeased; say to the thunderbolt to cease while the cloud is yet filled with electricity” (p. 10). QUOTING THE EXPERTS

Twain also holds up for ridicule the familiar tactic that the reformers deployed—that of liberally sprinkling their texts with quotations attributed to a host of pitiless authorities—from ancient Greeks such as Galen, Hippocrates, and Pythagoras to modern authorities that usually included a rather severe national trinity composed of Germans, French, and English. For instance, we learn from Hippocrates, via Archibald Adams in Male Sexual Health (1898), that “the seed of the man arises from all the humours of his body, and is the most valuable part of them. . . . When a person loses his seed, he loses his vital spirit” (pp. 24–25). The American Remedy Co.’s Prescription Book cites a multicultural panoply of authorities. The English Reverend


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1065


Adam Clarke unequivocally declared masturbation several degrees worse than common whoredom. A French student of mental disease was said to have determined that “masturbation . . . [is] the cause of insanity” (p. 5) and that “cretins, idiots and individuals in a state of dementia abandon themselves to it with a sort of fury” (p. 26). A German, Dr. Van der Kolk, similarly concluded: “When we observe in a young man a peculiar shyness, a downcast look . . . to which stupidity, strange prejudice, and weakening of the thinking powers become annexed, then must we ever think of this deplorable vice” (p. 5). References to studies by the likes of Samuel A. Tissot, Sir William Ellis, Samuel B. Woodward, and Dr. William Bell, among others, appear repeatedly in these works. Pretending to no less respect for learning or deference to authority, Twain similarly (mis)quotes the purported findings of authorities, indiscriminately mixing the names of the high and mighty with the low and obscure, the historically famous—Solomon, Caesar, and Brigham Young—with the fictionally absurd— Robinson Crusoe. His tone is also scandalously bawdy. For instance, we are led to believe that Caesar philosophically asserted in his Commentaries that “to the lonely it [masturbation] is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and the impotent it is a benefactor” (“Some Thoughts,” p. 125). Solomon, however, was less enthusiastic about this practice, wisely observing that “there is nothing to recommend it but its cheapness” (p. 126). Brigham Young, an “incontestable authority” given his multiple wives, shared Solomon’s reservations: “As compared to the other thing, it is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning” (p. 126). Queen Elizabeth, however, found it useful as “the bulwark of virginity,” as did Benjamin Franklin who declared it “the mother of invention.” Galen, however, thoroughly disapproved: “It is shameful to degrade to such bestial use that grand limb, that formidable member, which we votaries of science dub the ‘Major Maxillary’. . . . It would be better to decapitate the Major than to use him so” (p. 126). “EXESSIVE INDULGENCE” AND THE ARTIST

Some purity crusaders would have made those with an aesthetic predisposition—the very audience Twain was addressing—particular targets of their scrutiny. In a passage quoted in Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’s Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America, Luther V. Bell avers that “the imagination runs riot; day dreams . . . involving especially the sensual, usurp the place of the practical and common sense views of things” (p. 104). Russell T. Trall, also quoted by Horowitz, resurrected the old chestnut about the dangers of novel reading; he

1066

A M E R I C A N

censured, particularly, “fictitious writings, specially addressed to the amative propensity, full of lewd images, impure conceptions, and lust-engendering” situations (p. 121). Victims of their own artistic bent were as easy to spot, so John H. Ruttley claims, as the striped pole outside a barber shop; shunning the company of others, they turn inward, gradually wearing a sneaking expression or a permanently stupid look. S. F. Salter observed that the hardened masturbator is notorious for talking to himself in his solitary retirement, laughing much and frequently. For Salter, the addicted masturbator was easy to spot: “He will feel meanly and act as though he had plundered a hen roost.” Twain’s own list of incriminating evidences stands in sharp contrast: “The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pasttime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories—and, mainly, a yearning to paint pictures,” the latter a friendly gibe, most likely at Edwin Austin Abbey. Given the nature of the audience and the evening’s program of entertainment, Twain here enjoyed a dispensation denied him a year and a half earlier when he tried a similar effect before a banquet of Boston’s literary Brahmins gathered to celebrate John Greenleaf Whittier’s seventieth birthday. Included among the after-dinner speakers, Twain comically represented three reprobates who, passing themselves off as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (all in attendance at the banquet) invade the cabin of a lonely miner and spend the night drinking, card-sharking, and quarreling, all the while echoing passages from the works of these worthies. Margaret Fuller’s complaint that Emerson was seemingly always on stilts applied equally well to the audience that met Twain’s humor with frozen silence. No doubt, the physiological crusaders also had something much different in mind from the likes of the Stomach Club when they urged young men to join any number of clubs or organizations whose aim, as Haller and Haller point out, was to teach skills and, more importantly, provide moral uplift. They envisioned something along the order, say, of the Captains of Ten, which taught carving and weaving, or the Agassiz Association, which devoted itself to science. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew and the Orders of the Knights of King Arthur aimed at enhancing knightly values while the Loyal Temperance Legion, the Band of Hope, and the Juvenile Good Templars made temperance their special focus. The Epworth League and the YMCA aimed at training the “moral athlete.” To say the least, the goals of such organizations were a good bit loftier than the gustatory, imbibitional, and merely social functions of the Stomach Club.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK

By way of putting a exclamation point on this evening’s spoofing, Twain offered an admonition of his own: “I say, ‘If you must gamble away your lives sexually, don’t play a Lone Hand too much.’ When you feel a revolutionary uprising in your system, get your Vendome Column down some other way—don’t jerk it down” (p. 127). This conclusion conveys the structuring, or lack thereof, of the whole speech, which is largely a series of one-liners whose humor arises from a bawdy play on words. The speech itself reflects Twain’s lifelong penchant for parody. He made fun of Sunday school reform tracts in “The Story of Mamie Grant, the Child-Missionary” (1868) and lampooned sentimental poetry through the writings of the character Emmeline Grangerford in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) (1885). He also skewered Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward’s The Gates Ajar (1868) in his story “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” (1907). That he chose to parody this anti-masturbatory literature is also in character; from his lifelong contempt for politicians to his philippic “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901), he assumed in one form or another the guise of social critic, reformer, satirist, and moralist. In the anti-masturbation crusaders, Twain recognized the same qualities for which he denounced Charles C. Duncan of the Quaker City in the New York World in 1877—“a canting hypocrite, filled to the chin with sham godliness, and forever oozing and dripping false piety and pharisaical prayers” (Kaplan, p. 204). He bridled at this crusade’s moral absolutism and the quackery it fostered that, in turn, gave rise to the torment and, ultimately, the kind of self-hatred that so unnecessarily bedevil mankind. The Stomach Club on that spring evening also provided Twain with an opportunity to pun at the expense of the Old Masters who had collectively subjected him to the agony over the past few months of attending museums and exhibitions. Playing off the term masturbator, Twain maintains that the term Old Masters is “clearly an abbreviation, a contraction” (p. 125). Furthermore, when citing the distinguished lineage of self-abusers, he names Michelangelo as the foremost among them. See also Satire, Burlesque and Parody; Sex Education BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts. Edited by William M. Gibson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals. Edited by Frederick Anderson, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

M. Sanderson. Vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Twain, Mark. “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism.” In Mark Twain Speaking, edited by Paul Fatout. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1976. Secondary Works

Haller, John S., Jr., and Robin M. Haller. The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974. Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Rereading Sex: Battles over Sexual Knowledge and Suppression in NineteenthCentury America. New York: Knopf, 2002. Kaplan, Justin. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. Laqueur, Thomas W. Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. Cambridge, Mass.: Zone Press, 2003. Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain: A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. 3 vols. New York: Harper & Bros., 1912. Arthur Wrobel

THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK In 1903 W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) published his most famous work, The Souls of Black Folk. The book is a foundational text in defining the African American experience. Its continuing significance is demonstrated by the fact that, on the centennial of its publication, a number of scholarly volumes, academic conferences, and new editions were offered to the public. Its importance lies in the author’s articulation of several key concepts and themes, including double consciousness, the need for black civil rights, and the metaphor of the veil. It includes, in addition to historical and sociological pieces, personal essays, biography, short fiction, music criticism, polemic, and moral inquiry. THE ORIGIN OF SOULS

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Du Bois had established himself as an expert on matters of race in the United States. His dissertation, The Suppression of the Slave Trade (1896), had been the first volume of the Harvard Historical Studies Series; his second work, The Philadelphia Negro (1899), had been sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania and was the first truly sociological study of black life. He had done graduate work at the University of Berlin as well as Harvard and was a founding member of the American Negro Academy. He had used his contacts to establish


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1067


shortly after that book’s appearance in 1901. Other pieces had appeared in lesser-known periodicals. All of these articles were significantly revised for inclusion in Souls. Five of the pieces—“Of the Wings of Atalanta,” “Of the Passing of the First-Born,” “Of Alexander Crummell,” “The Sorrow Songs,” and the only work of fiction, “Of the Coming of John”—appeared for the first time. THE UNITY OF SOULS

W. E. B. Du Bois, photographed c. 1904. © CORBIS

himself in the historical profession. He had also published several pieces in major periodicals and was wellenough known that there were serious discussions about his being hired at Booker T. Washington’s (1856–1915) Tuskegee Institute. So it was not surprising that in 1900 A. C. McClurg, a small Chicago publisher, approached Du Bois about putting together a collection of essays from articles he had already published. Du Bois, apparently concerned that such a volume would draw little interest, delayed a commitment to the project. He eventually agreed and included not only pieces published over the previous six years but also unpublished and newly written material. The book, which appeared on 18 April 1903, contained fourteen chapters in various genres. Several of the chapters—“Of Our Spiritual Strivings” (August 1897), “Of the Dawn of Freedom” (March 1901), “Of the Meaning of Progress” (January 1899), “Of the Training of Black Men” (September 1902)—had originally appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” the most controversial essay in the collection, began as a review of Up from Slavery in The Dial

1068

A M E R I C A N

Despite the variety of sources, genres, subjects, and discursive modes and his concerns about his efforts, Du Bois managed to achieve considerable unity in the book. In “The Forethought,” he apologizes to the reader for having presented his material “in vague, uncertain outline.” Eighteen months after its publication, he wrote what amounted to his own review of Souls for the Independent (17 November 1904). He admitted that the diversity of material “leads to rather abrupt transitions of style, tone and viewpoint and, too, without doubt, to a distinct sense of incompleteness and sketchiness” (“The Souls of Black Folk,” p. 1152). In the same commentary, he noted one of the unifying elements of the work, what he calls “the distinctly subjective note”: “Through all the book runs a personal and intimate tone of self-revelation” (p. 1152). This tone can be seen in the changing of the title of the first essay from “Strivings of the Negro People” to “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” This introduction of the firstperson voice carries through even the more academic pieces, which use a generic “we,” implying an identification with the reader. More important than this verbal sign is the introduction of personal anecdotes as a means of illustrating key concepts. Thus, also in the first chapter, he reframes conventional references at the time to “the Negro Problem” by briefly describing moments when he was being defined as “the problem”: They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? They say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? (P. 7)

He follows this immediately with a story of his New England childhood, during which he was socially snubbed strictly on the basis of his skin color. The personal in Souls is also evident in some of the new material he chose to add. “Of Alexander Crummell” takes the form of a reminiscence of and tribute to one of the important black intellectuals of the previous generation. “Of the Coming of John” is one of Du Bois’s early ventures into fiction, and the title character is rather clearly a version of his creator in the sense that

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


John, like Du Bois, has been educated and can no longer fully identify with what he considers the restraints of black life. Finally, in this category is “Of the Passing of the First-Born,” a remembrance of the short life and painful death of his infant son. In each of these pieces, part of what is personal is the racial element: Crummell’s strength of character is linked to his conflicts with white religious authorities, John desires to no longer be seen as simply another black man by racist whites, and Du Bois’s pain over his son’s death was intensified by the bigoted remarks of white observers. A related unifying element is evident in the title of both the first chapter and the book itself. Each selection, from “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” to “The Sorrow Songs” is concerned most fundamentally with the souls of a group of people. One of the things that Du Bois is referring to when he talks about the vagueness of his writing is the complexity of this language. He is not restricting “souls” to religion, though he includes chapters on African American religion and on the spirituals. He has in mind to some extent the views of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Gottfried von Herder concerning the inner meaning of folk and racial identity, an essence that now might be labeled ethnicity or nationalism. From his interest in philosophy at Harvard and his training in Germany, Du Bois had learned of Hegel’s emphasis on spirit as the highest expression of the dialectic and of Herder’s argument that national and ethnic groups were distinguished by spiritual rather than physical differences. But by “the souls of black folk,” Du Bois also means a personal and group psychology that has been shaped by history and social conditions. Because he believes that whites in America are blinded by belief in their own superiority and in black inferiority as a result of slavery and segregation, he seeks to demonstrate not merely black humanity but also black culture and black suffering. Black “culture” here is not only institutions, such as churches, schools, and families, but also values, beliefs, and forms of expression, all of which are covered in his essays. Du Bois repeatedly refers to African Americans living behind “the veil” and considers it his purpose to lift that veil so that the truth of black experience can be seen. This image is rich in meaning because whites have refused to see the full humanity of African Americans and to understand the effects of white supremacy. The examination of the inner life of African Americans involves what Du Bois calls “doubleconsciousness,” a concept he adapts from a variety of sources, including the emergent field of psychology: It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (P. 11)

This sense of being in but not of the nation is a central concern of the book. It shapes his critique of Booker T. Washington; his discussions of work, education, and politics; and the experiences described in the personal essays. Thus, despite its range of topics and modes of expression, The Souls of Black Folk achieved significant unity as a text. DU BOIS VERSUS WASHINGTON

“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” drew the most attention at the time of publication and has been the focus of much of the political and historical commentary on Du Bois. In it he argues that Washington, despite his success at attaining a leadership position, had failed to serve the race in three areas: education, civil rights, and voting rights. He insists that the “Atlanta Compromise” made in Washington’s 1895 speech at the Cotton Exposition surrendered virtually everything of importance to African Americans because it accepted continuing segregation, denial of voting rights, and training in manual skills rather than full education. CRITICAL RECEPTION

Du Bois was concerned with the reception of his work because of its inherent limitations; he prayed in the “After-Thought” that it not be “still-born.” He need not have worried. Though it was largely ignored by the Washington, D.C.–controlled black press and by southern white publications, primarily because of the third chapter’s call for political equality, Souls was elsewhere received with considerable enthusiasm. The philosopher William James, one of Du Bois’s mentors at Harvard, recommended it to his brother Henry James, who later noted in The American Scene (1907) that it was the only significant book to come out of the South in many years. Max Weber, the German social theorist, offered to arrange a translation. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the journalist and anti-lynching activist, and Jessie Fauset, who was to become Du Bois’s assistant at The Crisis magazine, both wrote the author to express their appreciation of his work. Formal reviews in the white press were more reserved, in large part because of Du Bois’s criticism of Booker T. Washington. Even later supporters, such as Oswald Garrison Villard, who eventually joined Du Bois as a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was tentative in his comments. In contrast to these somewhat


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1069

S PA N I S H - A M E R I C A N WA R

lukewarm reactions, John Daniels, in the black periodical Alexander’s Magazine, saw the book as a poem and insisted that it should be judged not for any specific argument but for its overall literary effect (15 September 1903). It was also a book that had lingering effects. Throughout his career, Du Bois would occasionally receive praise or criticism for what he said in 1903. In 1956, for example, after reading the fiftieth anniversary edition of the work, Langston Hughes wrote to tell Du Bois how much he continued to appreciate Souls. In addition to selling nearly ten thousand copies in the first five years, twenty-four editions of The Souls of Black Folk were published between 1903 and 1940. In 1949 Du Bois purchased the plates from McClurg and in 1953 arranged for a fiftieth anniversary edition by Blue Heron Press. For the one hundredth anniversary in 2003, several publishers brought out critical editions and commentaries on the book that has become a key text in both African American and American literary canons. See also Blacks; Civil Rights; Jim Crow; Racial Uplift; Reconstruction; Reform; Up from Slavery


Du Bois, W. E. B. The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois. 3 vols. Edited by Herbert Aptheker. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973–1978. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Terry Hume Oliver. New York: Norton, 1999. Du Bois, W. E. B. “The Souls of Black Folk.” The Independent 57 (17 November 1904): 1152. Reprinted in The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader, edited by Eric Sundquist, pp. 304–305. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Secondary Works

Byerman, Keith E. Seizing the Word: History, Art, and Self in the Work of W. E. B. Du Bois. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994. Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919. New York: Henry Holt, 1993. Rampersad, Arnold. The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976. Sundquist, Eric J. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Zamir, Shamoon. Dark Voices: W. E. B. Du Bois and American Thought, 1888–1903. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR The Spanish-American War is widely misunderstood to be one conflict that began in 1898, lasted about four years, and was fought between the United States and Spain in two locations a world apart from each other, Cuba and the Philippines. While there is an element of truth in this, it is more accurate to think of two wars. The Philippine-American War, doubtless America’s least known war, was fought between the United States and the Filipinos. It was a guerrilla war carried out entirely in the Philippine archipelago. The fighting began in February 1899 and continued for many years. The precursor to this war was the much shorter Spanish-American War, fought with Spain during the spring and summer of 1898 and waged principally in Cuba but also in the Philippines, in a single but decisive naval battle in Manila Bay in May, and in Puerto Rico, when in July the United States Army under General Nelson Miles invaded and occupied that island. This war was declared by the United States in late April, and the two nations signed a peace protocol in mid-August. The short duration and decisive outcome of the engagement with Spain led many U.S. leaders to agree with John Hay, the ambassador to Great Britain, when he wrote to his friend Theodore Roosevelt that it had been a “splendid little war” (Gale, p. 31). The decision to enter the war did not come without significant resistance, however. What course to take in international affairs was not clear for a country just emerging from isolation. Officially, the American government sought to avoid war. But there were those who hankered for a fight as a way of showing that the nation had muscle, and in truth, most Americans did side with the Cubans against the Spanish colonialists. A sensationalist press fanning these hot attitudes helped decide the country’s course of action. The war was a coming-of-age rite for the nation. Its most famous soldier, Theodore Roosevelt, used it to define a national cult of manly patriotism and then rode his battlefield exploits into the White House. He was a thirty-nine-year-old asthmatic who had undertaken a rigorous bodybuilding program of hunting, horse riding, and boxing to overcome his physical limitations. For three years he had worked as a cowboy in the Badlands of the Dakotas. His memoir of the war, The Rough Riders (1899), bore an epigraph from the martial cadences of the 1863 patriotic Civil War poem “The Reveille” by Bret Harte (1836–1902) that captured the valorous and unquestioning rectitude Roosevelt wished to project:

Keith E. Byerman

1070

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

“But when won the coming battle, What of profit springs there from? What if conquest, subjugation,

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


A R C T I C

O C E A N

ATLAN TI C O C EAN Battle of Manila Bay 1 May 1898 Manila captured 13 August 1898 Guam captured 21 June 1898

PHILIPPINES

SPAIN

UNITED STATES

PAC IFIC O C EAN

Puerto Rico invaded 25 July 1898

CUBA PUERTO RICO

U.S. troops land in Cuba 22 June 1898 Battle of San Juan Hill and El Caney 1 July 1898 Battle of Santiago Bay 3 July 1898

IN DIA N OCE A N

Santiago captured 17 July 1898

ATLAN TI C O C EAN N

The Spanish-American War

0 0

1000

Even greater ills become?” But the drum Answered, “Come! You must do the sum to prove it,” said the Yankee-answering drum.

renewed the custom of having American warships pay uninvited visits to the Spanish colony.

CUBAN INDEPENDENCE AND “REMEMBER THE MAINE”

Three decades before this war began, in the late 1860s, Cuban guerrilla fighters had fought for national autonomy from Spanish colonization. Unsuccessful then, they had renewed their efforts in the early 1890s. By that time, though, the United States had also become deeply interested in the island. American investments in the Cuban sugar business had grown to more than $50 million, and annual trade between the United States and Cuba was worth twice that amount. In addition, many Americans lived and worked on the island. These interests were jeopardized by the revolution, and by 1896 strong pressure had built for the United States to either purchase Cuba from Spain or, if Spain could not regain control, to intervene militarily. President Grover Cleveland had maintained a policy of neutrality, but President William McKinley, inaugurated in 1897, was predisposed, cautiously, to intervention. Almost as though to precipitate an incident, McKinley A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

2000 mi.

1000 2000 km

So it was that on 25 January 1898 one of the nation’s newest battleships, the U.S.S. Maine, a pride of the American fleet with its steam-power and its advanced steel construction, showed up in Havana harbor. The Spanish foreign minister, seeing the ship’s presence as an act of intimidation, criticized McKinley in a private letter for being “weak” about neutrality and referred to him as a “petty politician.” The letter was leaked to William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, which promptly printed it under the inflammatory banner headline, “The Worst Insult to the United States in Its History.” McKinley demanded an apology from the Spanish government and he received it, but the situation was tinder. The spark came only days later, on the night of 15 February, when the Maine exploded and sank to the bottom of the harbor. When Hearst heard this, he demanded that the story be spread all over the front page and proclaimed, “This means war!” (O’Toole, p. 34). A Naval Court of Inquiry determined that the cause was a submarine mine, although it took care not to name a guilty party. The jingoists in the United States Senate drew their own conclusion, however,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1071


and rallying to the slogan “Remember the Maine,” blamed the Spanish government. A rebuttal by a Spanish court of inquiry was dismissed out of hand. McKinley ordered a blockade of Cuba, and four days later, on 25 April 1898, Congress declared war, though it promised to leave as soon as the war of “pacification” was over. A European naval authority, using nothing more than the published testimony in the Navy’s own report, later proved that the Naval Court had reached a false conclusion, starting with an incredible, fundamental error—mistaking the location of the explosion. After still more inquiries conducted in the decades following, the true culprits, according to a comprehensive review of a century of debate, were conservative Spanish fanatics loyal to the ruthless and charismatic General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, the colonial governor who had been sent to Cuba in 1895 to quell the nationalist rebellion. “They had the opportunity, the means, and the motivation, and they blew up the Maine with a small low-strength mine they made themselves” (Samuels, p. 310). The shooting war actually began on 11 June with the capture of Guantánamo Bay. The best known and most storied moment in the war occurred on 1 July in the San Juan hills near Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second largest city and a Spanish stronghold. Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt had gathered an assortment of Ivy League polo players and western dead shots who were eager to live a rough and hardy life again. At a crucial moment, Roosevelt took unauthorized command. He spurred his horse up the ridge, pistol in one hand and saber in the other. His Rough Riders, together with an African American regiment, captured the position. It was a turning point in the war. Soon thereafter, when the Spanish agreed to surrender 23,000 troops around the city, the end of the war was near. Four years later, the United States made good on its promise and Cuba received its independence. The war involved 190,000 Spanish troops, while 250,000 American soldiers, 200,000 of them volunteers, were allied with as many as 50,000 Cuban freedom fighters. It cost the United States $250 million and fewer than 3,000 lives—90 percent of whom died from disease and bad food. In the words of G. J. A. O’Toole in The Spanish War, “As wars go this was a cheap one” (O’Toole, p. 17).

feel ebullient and proud. The huge number of volunteer soldiers reflected that pride. The enthusiasm for this war that was mirrored in Harte’s “The Reveille” was also in the imagination of Richard Hovey (1864–1900), and with more righteousness. Hovey’s lineage included five Mayflower Puritan ancestors, and his many poems about this war revealed that moral fervor. Although he is unknown today, no poet more faithfully expressed the religious aspect of the nation’s mood at the time of the war. In “The Word of the Lord from Havana,” written two days after the sinking of the Maine in February 1898, the loss of the ship is viewed as a punishment as well as a message from God warning against America’s neglect of the world’s oppressed. Hovey’s sonnet “America” (October 1898) recalls that the nation was conceived in violence and would not shrink from war to accomplish its holy mission, and “Unmanifest Destiny” (July 1898) concludes with a sure affirmation of the hand of Providence: I do not know beneath what sky Nor on what seas shall be thy fate; I only know it shall be high, I only know it shall be great. (Hovey, p. 17)

Doubtless, such sentiments resonated with writer and publisher Elbert Hubbard (1856–1916), an ardent sympathizer with Roosevelt’s rugged individualism. When he heard about the bravery of Lieutenant Andrew Rowan’s secret mission to meet with Cuban general Calixto Garcia, Elbert wrote an inspirational essay, “A Message for Garcia,” praising duty and initiative. Hubbard published it in February 1899, and it immediately took on a life of its own, with millions of copies distributed to American railroad employees, and later to Russian and Japanese workers, and finally to members of the United States Navy at the brink of World War I. According to the historian Charles H. Brown in The Correspondents’ War: Journalists in the Spanish-American War, the words of the essay “could be recited by most Americans who had heard them come forth in organ tones from high school and college elocutionists for a quarter of a century” (Brown, p. 173). Though Rowan’s exploits received the most attention, equally daring deeds were conducted with much less notice by a dozen correspondents who also carried messages to Garcia and other Cuban leaders or “who engaged in a variety of other espionage” (Brown, p. 173).

STRONG SYMPATHY FOR A JUST WAR

It was a popular one, too. Most of its distinctive features were positive—coming to the aid of a people fighting for their freedom while at the same time defeating a former superpower, remembering the Maine, glorying in Roosevelt’s charge. The war made the nation

1072

A M E R I C A N

THE “CORRESPONDENTS’ WAR”

In this war as in no other, American newspapers and their correspondents were deeply engaged in arousing feelings of patriotism, heroism, and adventure. The press campaigned so forcibly that it “sometimes acted

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


The New York World reports the battleship Maine explosion, 17 February 1898. Drawn from a description by eye-witnesses on the steamship City of Washington who saw the explosion, followed by “a volcano of fire and showers of boats, bodies, iron and guns.” This image helped garner support for the war. THE GRANGER COLLECTION, NEW YORK

as though it were the government” and that publishers such as William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer “usurped the functions of the Department of State” (Brown, p. vi). Before the war began, Hearst’s Journal sent the novelist Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916) to Cuba to write stories about the freedom fighters and their Spanish oppressors. His dispatches coincided well with Hearst’s efforts to pressure McKinley to intervene, for horrified by what he saw, Davis reported on “mass sickness, starvation and death” (Brown, p. 80). Other novelists also transformed themselves into journalists to participate in the adventure. Frank Norris (1870–1902) put aside his nearly finished McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899) to report A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

on the action for McClure’s Magazine. He could hardly contain his eagerness: “You want to see excitement, turmoil, activity,” Norris wrote, “the marching and countermarching of troops, the excited going and coming of couriers a-horseback, the glint of epaulets and brass at street corners” (Brown, p. 170). Once in Cuba, he changed. A dispatch describing a dead Spanish soldier ends in horrified silence: “his face the color of wax; one poor, dirty hand hooked like a buzzard’s claw; his arm was doubled under him, and—but the rest is not for words” (Brown, pp. 349–350). To Norris, Stephen Crane (1871–1900), whom he met in Key West, embodied his idea of a war correspondent: “tanned to the color of a well-worn saddle”


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1073


(Brown, p. 171). Crane was in Key West preparing to write a series on the Cuban revolution for the Bacheller publishing syndicate, which had serialized his novel The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War (1895). His essay “War Memories” (1899) reflected on his experiences in Cuba, which included several battles as well as the action in Havana after the conflict ended. His 1897 writings about the sinking of the Commodore, a ship smuggling arms to the Cuban insurgents on which Crane was a crew member, drew acclaim first as a newspaper report, “Stephen Crane’s Own Story,” and then as a short story, “The Open Boat.” Crane was the first of many to draw upon the country’s enthusiasm for the war and its enchantment with Cuba and revolution. Novels like Kirk Munroe’s “Forward March”: A Tale of the Spanish-American War (1899) romanticized the war and America’s might, and The Rough Riders (1927) by Herman Hagedorn (1882–1964) mythologized Roosevelt’s unit. Hagedorn’s book was adapted as a movie the same year it was published, and a remake appeared in 1997. The Bright Shawl, a spy novel by Joseph Hergesheimer (1880–1954), featured a beautiful young dancer whose shawl represents the youthful dreams of Cuban freedom fighters in the decades before the war. It was published in 1922 and made into a film the following year. By far the best-known, mostsophisticated—and least-favorable—treatment of the war was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum (1856–1919). The novel was popular enough in its own time and it was given considerable additional cultural longevity by the 1939 movie adaptation. Embedded in its fairy-tale narrative is an elaborate criticism of the consequences of the Spanish-American War as well as a satire of contemporary politics and monetary policy.

the New York Journal in March 1899 concluded: “In other words, the Armour establishment was selling carrion” (“The Condemned-Meat Industry, 1906”). The fury over these revelations set the stage for Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), an enormously influential exposé of the filth and corruption of the nation’s beef industry that gained important credibility for muckraking journalism and virtually by itself led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), a benchmark in progressive legislation.

“EMBALMED BEEF” AND THE JUNGLE

O’Toole, G. J. A. The Spanish War: An American Epic— 1898. New York: Norton, 1984.

The war did have other dark features, but some of them led to positive outcomes. Alarmed by the high death rate among the soldiers due to sickness, General Miles accused the suppliers of meat for the troops, the powerful “beef trust” and especially Armour & Company, of sending meat that had become spoiled in the heat. (Since the meat had been “preserved” with chemicals, it was facetiously called “embalmed beef.”) This was the most famous scandal of the war. Miles’s charges, reinforced by Roosevelt’s own first-hand observations, embarrassed McKinley and the army and led to investigations by a specially appointed “beef court” in February 1899 and, in turn, to the forced resignation of the secretary of war, Russell A. Alger. As recorded later by Upton Sinclair (1878–1968), affidavits published in

1074

A M E R I C A N

See also Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism; PhilippineAmerican War; Weaponry BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Hovey, Richard. Along the Trail: A Book of Lyrics. 1903. New York: AMS, 1969. Roosevelt, Theodore. The Rough Riders. New York: Scribners, 1899. Sinclair, Upton. “The Condemned-Meat Industry.” Everybody’s Magazine 14 (1906): 608–616. Available at http://www.wadsworth.com/history_d/templates/ student_resources/0030724791_ayers/sources/ch20/ 20.3.armour.html. Secondary Works

Berner, Brad K. The Spanish-American War: A Historical Dictionary. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 1998. Brown, Charles H. The Correspondents’ War: Journalists in the Spanish-American War. New York: Scribners, 1967. Dighe, Ranjit S., ed. The Historian’s Wizard of Oz: Reading of L. Frank Baum’s Classic as a Political and Monetary Allegory. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002. Gale, Robert L. John Hay. Boston: Twayne, 1978. Linneman, William R. Richard Hovey. Boston: Twayne, 1976. Mansfield, Harvey. “The Manliness of Theodore Roosevelt.” New Criterion 23, no. 7 (March 2005): 4–9.

Samuels, Peggy, and Harold Samuels. Remembering the Maine. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. “The Spanish-American War.” Small Planet Communications. Available at http://www.smplanet.com/ imperialism/splendid.html. “The United States Becomes a World Power: The Spanish American War.” Digital History. Available at http:// www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cf m?HHID=190. “The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War.” Hispanic Division, Library of Congress. Available at http:// www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/.

H I S T O R Y

Terry Oggel

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SPIRITUALISM

SPIRITUALISM Among the pseudoscientific fads of nineteenth-century America were several that had to do with ghosts or spirits. One of these fads, spiritualism, can be distinguished from a more general interest in ghosts (poltergeists) as well as from a more general sense of being religious or spiritual. The nineteenth-century fad called spiritualism, in its narrow sense, refers to the practice of “communicating with the dead,” often during a séance. The fad took hold in 1848 and thrived for a decade, lost some momentum, and then gathered steam in the decades following 1870, both in practice and in various literary recollections of what had occurred a generation earlier. Arguably some spiritualists genuinely believed in their powers to contact dead spirits, but those spiritualists who conducted séances most often were enterprising charlatans who, for a fee, invited gullible or curious sitters into a darkened room, where the spiritualist pretended to be in a trance and posed questions to a “dead spirit.” The spiritualist then claimed that it was the dead spirit guiding his or her hand over a Ouija board to spell out answers to questions, tipping tables, blowing trumpets, or rapping on a table, seemingly in code. Although most spiritualists conducted séances in private settings, a few made public appearances in lecture halls and drew large crowds. Spirit photographers such as William Mumler, Frederick Hudson, and W. H. Harrison claimed that their blurry photographs were pictures of dead spirits, and a spirit postmaster, James Vincent Mansfield, bragged that he had active mail service to heavenly ghosts. Specifically he claimed that in a 30year period he had delivered 100,000 sealed letters to spirits who permitted him to transcribe their replies. The beginnings of the spiritualism movement in 1848 can be traced to a bedroom in Hydesville, New York, where the twelve- and thirteen-year-old sisters Katherine Fox (1836–1892) and Margaret Fox (1833– 1893) discovered that they could make a loud rapping noise when they cracked their toe joints against the bedstead. The girls delighted in telling their superstitious mother that they had contacted the spirit of a murdered peddler, who, they claimed, responded with audible raps. Mrs. Fox flew next door and told neighbors, who told more neighbors and eventually newspaper editors. Having discovered that they were celebrities, Kate and Margaret continued to practice their “talent” in communicating with the dead. An older sister, Leah Fox (1811–1890), living in Rochester, soon got into the act, and the three became a national sensation. Other tricksters decided to capitalize on the Fox sisters’ success. Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910), a A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

shoemaker who had championed mesmerism and established a reputation as the “Poughkeepsie Seer,” soon reported that he too had heard rappings. Among other self-styled spiritualists of the next few decades were Katie King (aka Florence Cook, 1856–1904); Lenora Piper (1857–1950), a Boston housewife who met with some of the leading intellectuals of the day; “Dr.” Henry Slade (1840–1905), a con man who won the trust of a few prominent physicists; and Alexandre Aksakof (1832–1880), a Russian spiritualist and statesman who took Henry Slade to Russia to perform. One spiritualist, J. R. Newton, claimed that he could contact Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Another, Thomas Lake Harris, specialized in contacting “literary spirits,” including those of Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Lizzie Doten, another medium specializing in “literary spirits,” conceded that her awe of Shakespeare interfered with her ability to be a medium for his messages; however, her awe of Robert Burns was sufficiently mild so she could adequately represent his messages. Until roughly 1860 spiritualism thrived, partly because it appealed to a public hungry for some promise that religious faith could be reconciled with new scientific theories. Spiritualism seemed to offer physical proof of a metaphysical reality: the audible or visible “replies” of the “dead spirits” seemed to provide empirical proof of the existence of an afterlife. The public was also at least curious about a phenomenon that combined some of the most interesting aspects of mesmerism, another pseudoscientific fad of the early nineteenth century, with a new technological innovation, the telegraph, which involved tapping messages in code to send over a great distance. To one believer spiritualism also affirmed evolution, if earthly beings evolved to a higher, spiritual status. For some women spiritualism offered something else, an alternative means of having a voice and of making a living in a world that offered women few venues for either. Alex Owen argues in The Darkened Room (1989) that nineteenth-century spiritualism provided women on both sides of the Atlantic with a vehicle for subverting existing power relations between men and women. Indeed many of the early adherents of spiritualism were associated with reform movements of some kind, whether socialism, abolitionism, or women’s rights, though not all feminists were sanguine about spiritualism: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were chagrined that their fellow feminist Victoria Woodhull was a spiritualist who attributed her charismatic speaking skills to a spiritual mentor, Demosthenes. (In 1871 Woodhull was elected president of the American Association of Spiritualists.) Affirmations of the movement were documented in texts such as Emma Hardinge Britten’s


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1075

SPIRITUALISM

Spiritual Materializations: The Spirit Body. Engraving by W. P. Snyder, 1874. The purported appearance of Katie King, thought to be the spirit of the deceased daughter of the pirate Henry Morgan, was a common occurrence at séances during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Snyder’s engraving depicts one such occurrence in Philadelphia in 1874. © CORBIS

Modern American Spiritualism (1870) and Nineteenth Century Miracles (1884). However, from its beginnings, enthusiastic endorsements of spiritualism were mixed with religious denunciations, satirical literary responses, and skeptical calls for investigation, suggesting something about the ambivalence of the age. Rarely, though, did the exposés stifle interest in the movement. For example, in the Cambridge investigation of 1857, three Harvard professors, including Louis Agassiz, exposed the Fox sisters, although the investigation did little to quash the sisters’ popularity. Conjurers were vocal critics of the psychics, but the tattling of cheats on other

1076

A M E R I C A N

cheats did little to dampen public interest. In 1866 P. T. Barnum (1810–1892) called spiritualists the “humbugs of the world,” and in 1876 Washington Irving Bishop (1856–1889), a hawker of quack nostrums, exposed the spiritualist Anna Eva Fay (1851–1927) as a fraud, but neither killed the movement. When Margaret Fox was exposed again in 1888, she recanted her clairvoyant claims but then recanted her recanting and still drew crowds. Although the movement was declining in the closing decades of the century and the first decades of the next, some spiritualists thrived, including Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), who together with

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SPIRITUALISM

Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) founded the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky’s powerful personality attracted many to her blend of occultism, counterfeit miracles, and Asian philosophies. Other adherents of theosophy were simply drawn to neo-Buddhist beliefs in reincarnation and a cycle of life and rebirth. Another clairvoyant and spiritualist, Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), claimed that in previous incarnations he had been a warrior in Troy, one of Christ’s disciples, and an angel predating Adam and Eve. Certainly spiritualism enjoyed a bit of a resurgence in the decades following the 1870s, but it is not spiritualism per se that best marks the period between 1870 and 1920. Rather, it is the boyhood recollections of spiritualism in the fiction of Mark Twain (1835–1910), William Dean Howells (1837–1920), and Henry James (1843–1916). If the heyday of spiritualism in the 1850s was its life, the literary recollections of spiritualism in the next half-century might be considered its afterlife. HOWELLS’S RECOLLECTIONS OF SPIRITUALISM

As William Dean Howells recalls in Years of My Youth (1916), “Spiritualism was rife in every second house in the village with manifestations of rappings, table tippings, and oral and written messages from another world through psychics of either sex but oftenest the young girls one met in dances and sleigh rides” (p. 106). While Howells dealt with spiritualism most directly in his autobiography, he continued to address it in such works as The Landlord at Lion’s Head (1897), Questionable Shapes (1903), and Between the Dark and the Daylight: Romances (1907). His most nuanced depiction of the rise and fall of spiritualism was captured in his 1880 novel The Undiscovered Country, a critical but compassionate portrait of Boynton, a character who eventually discovers that his faith in spiritualism is unfounded. As Howard Kerr persuasively argues in Mediums, and Spirit-Rappers, and Roaring Radicals, the fictional Boynton was most likely modeled on the historical Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), a man who had written a pro-spiritualism article for the Atlantic Monthly, which Howells then edited. Owen, the son of the social reformer Robert Owen, had been skeptical about the claims of some of the most flamboyant spiritualists of the early 1850s. A few years later, when he was exposed to the less dramatic spiritualist techniques of Florence Cook and her “spiritual guide” Katie King (presumably the same person since they were never seen onstage together), Owen dropped his critical stance and developed a “spiritual hypothesis,” which he elaborated upon in A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1860). This, together with his 1871 book The Debatable Land between This World and the Next, helped to rekindle nationwide interest in spiritualism, for Owen was considered a reputable scholar and statesman. He had served in both state and national politics, had advocated for the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution, and had served overseas as a diplomat. His cautious investigation of spiritualism had piqued the interest of scientists, including Alfred Russel Wallace, the naturalist who, like Charles Darwin, developed a theory of evolution. In 1875 Owen wrote an article for the January issue of the Atlantic Monthly explaining why he believed that Florence Cook and Katie King were either outright frauds or supernatural beings, arguably the latter. Just as the magazine was going to press in December, Owen discovered that King was indeed a fraud, and he tried to retract his article. It was too late, however, and his well-established reputation was seriously blemished. Owen died two years later. Howells too had been caught by the unfortunate timing of Owen’s article, unable to halt its publication and unable to protect Owen from considerable embarrassment. Although Howells had always been skeptical of spiritualists’ claims, he had been moved by Owen’s sincere and thoughtful inquiry and his unsuccessful attempt to retract his argument. The Owen-like protagonist of The Undiscovered Country, Boynton, is treated at least as sympathetically as the other characters, especially Mrs. Le Roy, the spiritualist who conducts the séances. Like Owen, Boynton hoped to stave off scientific materialism and to preserve what he could of the ethical basis of organized religion. As Kerr points out, Owen had in The Debatable Land called for proof that “intercourse from beyond the bourn is not forbidden to man” but found out otherwise, as does Boynton, who, at the end of The Undiscovered Country, recognizes the impossible when he quotes Hamlet: “The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns.” As Kerr points out, Howells’s The Undiscovered Country has less in common with other anti-spiritualist satires than it does with earlier psychological studies of single-minded delusion, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) explores in the The Blithedale Romance. For Howells and others, spiritualism provided one vehicle for psychological realism. TWAIN’S WRITINGS CAPTURE THE AMBIVALENCE

From mid-century on, the spiritualism movement provided humorists and satirists with a steady supply


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1077

SPIRITUALISM

of material for their tales. Throughout the 1860s Twain burlesqued “true” ghost stories in his pieces for the Virginia City Enterprise. In one burlesque of the spiritualist Ada Hoyt Foye’s séances, Twain asks for a spirit named John Smith and is answered by the rapping of every John Smith who had ever perished and who is now confined with the others to an infernal Smithsonian Institution. Here and elsewhere the butt of Twain’s humor is usually the spirit and not the spiritualist. Twain, like many skeptics, may have hoped privately that it was indeed possible to contact dead spirits. Justin Kaplan suggests in his 1966 biography that some of Twain’s most vitriolic attacks on séance swindlers may have resulted from his having tried and failed to contact his dead brother Henry. After his daughter Susy’s death in 1896, Twain attended séances with his wife. However, before and after 1896, he burlesqued the fad in his fiction, where he created numerous ridiculous spiritualists, mesmerists, and phrenologists. In 1883 Twain and Howells penned the farce “Colonel Sellers as a Scientist,” in which a scientist attempts to reach a ghost with batteries. Twain developed the story in The American Claimant (1892), where Sellers concocts a cheap and easy way to revitalize the New York City police force: materializing legions of dead police spirits with his electric batteries. Twain’s notebooks identify the character later named Manchester in Life on the Mississippi (1883) as “Mansfield”: arguably both Manchester and the Dauphin in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) were modeled on the spirit postmaster J. V. Mansfield, whom Twain may have visited in real life. JAMES’S WRITINGS SUGGEST KINSHIP

Henry James’s interest in spiritualism is evident as early as 1874 in his story “Professor Fargo,” in which the professor pretends to be a spiritualist medium in order to gain control over a beautiful deaf mute. In this story James, like Howells in The Undiscovered Country, shows his debt to Hawthorne, who used trances in part to explore the tangle of sexual desire and control. A dozen years after writing “Professor Fargo,” James returned to spiritualism in The Bostonians (1886). In this novel a spiritualistic lecturer, Mrs. Ada T. P. Foat, seems to be modeled on the spiritualist Ada Hoyt Foye, who was prominent on the lecture circuit. Basil Ransom, a young skeptic, struggles with Olive Chancellor for control of Varena Tarrant, a woman who has visions but does not quite claim to possess the supernatural powers of mediums such as Miss Birdseye. Here Ransom gives voice to some of James’s literal anti-spiritualist and anti-reform

1078

A M E R I C A N

sentiments and thus provides a bridge between James’s earlier anti-reform satires and his later studies of consciousness. While James treated the spiritualists ironically, he used them to explore his interest in alternate personalities, of interest to him as they were to his brother William James, who wrote about mutations of the self in The Principles of Psychology in 1890. THE PROMISE OF CONSOLATION

Spiritualism, like other pseudoscientific fads of the era, was in part a response to tensions between scientific certainty and religious doubt. It seemed to turn empiricism on its head and use it to demonstrate, not to demolish, a physical basis for faith in an afterlife. Lest one be too smug about the gullibility of those taken in by spiritualists, it is important to acknowledge that one is often most curious about that which one cannot adequately explain. It is also important to remember how badly many Americans needed consolation—for loved ones lost in the Civil War, which had claimed more than a half million lives; for faith shaken after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859); and for faith in any sure thing. Even Newtonian physics was being called into question, especially in the areas of thermodynamics and electromagnetism, and some nineteenth-century physicists speculated that heat flow and energy had spiritual as well as physical significance. For example, both William Thomson, who coined the term “thermodynamics” in 1854, and Rudolf Clausius, who coined the term “entropy” in 1865, subscribed to the idea that physical laws had metaphysical implications. In such a climate it may not be so surprising that Sir William Crookes, inventor of techniques for studying the cathode ray, endorsed the Fox sisters in 1871 and within the next few years published several articles in the Quarterly Journal of Science defending spiritualism on “scientific” grounds. As Frank Podmore suggests in his 1902 analysis Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism, the evidence for spiritualists’ claims was insufficient and often outright fraudulent. Nonetheless, something in their quest to understand spirituality might shed light on the deepest recesses of human consciousness. Podmore cautions us not to forget that “even the extravagances of mysticism may contain a residuum of unacknowledged and serviceable fact” (p. 361). As evidence of Podmore’s point, the American Society for Psychical Research, established by William James, mistakenly endorsed a number of pseudoscientific charlatans, yet the society also pioneered investigations of the unconscious and of mental illnesses. See also Orientalism; Psychology; Scientific Materialism

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SPORTS


SPORTS

Howells, William Dean. Between the Dark and the Daylight: Romances. New York: Harper, 1907.

Between 1870 and 1920, sports in the United States were completely transformed, not as a consequence of but as one agent of the broader transformation of American life. Before 1870, sporting practices in the United States were largely informal, local, and classspecific. The decade that began in 1920 became known, before it even ended, as the Golden Age of Sports, as Americans flocked to huge stadiums; the mass media old and new—newspapers and magazines on the one hand, radio and film on the other—were saturated with accounts of big games and larger-than-life sporting personalities; and stars such as Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange, and Bill Tilden became national celebrities. The period from 1870 to 1920 thus saw the multifaceted development of the highly organized, commercialized, corporate and bureaucratically governed, national (or “popular” or “mass”) sporting culture familiar in the early twenty-first century. The definition of “sport” itself shifted in this period. The word once narrowly referred to traditional activities such as hunting and fishing, to innocent childhood play (the “sport” of sledding and snowball fights), and to such disreputable amusements as the cockfighting and prizefighting of a vaguely criminal underworld (and the men, “the sports,” who indulged in them). Now it began broadly to denote newly organized and widely popular athletic games, both amateur and professional, participatory and spectatorial, such as golf, tennis, baseball, football, and basketball.

Howells, William Dean. The Landlord at Lion’s Head. New York: Harper, 1897. Howells, William Dean. Questionable Shapes. New York: Harper, 1903. Howells, William Dean. The Undiscovered Country. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1880. Howells, William Dean. Years of My Youth. New York: Harper, 1916. Howells, William Dean, and Samuel Langhorne Clemens. “Colonel Sellers as a Scientist.” In The Complete Plays of W. D. Howells, edited by Walter J. Meserve. New York, 1960. James, Henry. The Bostonians. London: Macmillan, 1886. James, Henry. “Professor Fargo.” Galaxy 18 (August 1874): 233–253. Owen, Robert Dale. The Debatable Land between This World and the Next. Philadelphia: G. W. Carleton, 1871. Owen, Robert Dale. Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1860. Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885. Twain, Mark. The American Claimant. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1892. Twain, Mark. Life on the Mississippi. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1883. Secondary Works

Kaplan, Justin. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. Kerr, Howard. Mediums, and Spirit-Rappers, and Roaring Radicals: Spiritualism in American Literature, 1850–1900. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Nye, Mary Jo. Before Big Science: The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Nineteenth Century England. London: Virago, 1989. Podmore, Frank. Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism. 2 vols. New York: Scribners, 1902. Randi, James. An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995. Martha D. Patton

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

THE RISE OF SPORTS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

European visitors to the United States in the 1830s and 1840s routinely noted how little time Americans gave to amusements. Americans’ unplayfulness was only relative—southern planters and backwoodsmen hunted and fished in their distinctive ways, northern merchants and factory workers amused themselves after the manner of their classes—but both religious and economic factors constrained Americans’ indulgence in sport. The Puritans’ Calvinist abhorrence of wasted time persisted in evangelical Protestantism and informed a powerful work ethic, while practical necessities—initially of economic survival, then of revolution, then of nation building—and an accompanying philosophy of civic responsibility continually reinforced the importance of work and duty over pleasure seeking. New forces emerged in the decades following the Civil War. The rise of organized sports can be viewed as a response to the pressures produced by burgeoning cities and the disappearance of meaningful work: both laborers and clerical workers sought release in


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1079

SPORTS

organized recreations and spectator sports from the grind of their now routine-driven daily lives. Those same conditions of urbanization and industrialization were also what made the national sporting culture possible, through developments in transportation, communication, and technology. The railroads, telegraph lines, and popular press that produced a truly national culture created a place for sport within that culture, while manufacturers of sporting goods provided uniform equipment for games to be played in the same way in every part of the country. In the early nineteenth century, sport had been embraced chiefly by the landed gentry on the one hand and by the unruly elements among the lower classes on the other, with the emerging middle class clinging most strongly to the traditional values of self-discipline, sobriety, and industry that were antagonistic to sport. The organization of elite and working-class sport over the final decades of the nineteenth century—in metropolitan athletic clubs and country clubs on the one hand, for example, and in the creation of professional baseball leagues and cycling associations on the other— created profitable industries out of long-standing sporting interests. It was the embrace of sport by the expanding middle class, the group most invested in the older work ethic and its Victorian moral trappings, that marked the greatest change. Here, new social and religious justifications were required. Antebellum health reformers first made the case for physical exercise as necessary to the whole man (and sometimes woman), with attendant ideas about the selfdiscipline and moral improvement that could derive from athletic conditioning. But it was the “muscular Christianity” promoted by Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes in mid-century Britain that provided the rationale for American reformers in the 1860s and 1870s to vanquish the powerful religious antagonism to sport in the United States. Muscular Christianity had little impact on the sports such as baseball, boxing, pedestrianism, and horse racing that emerged in the antebellum period. But its influence on the beginnings of intercollegiate athletics in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s was crucial. The first athletic competitions between colleges—between the crews of Harvard and Yale in 1852, the baseball teams of Amherst and Williams in 1859, the football teams of Princeton and Rutgers in 1869—would have led nowhere had not liberal ministers and public spokesmen such as Edward Everett Hale, Henry Ward Beecher, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and preeminently Thomas Wentworth Higginson championed the ideal of a vigorous, manly, athletic Christianity in religious and secular periodicals. Muscular Christianity effectively wed modern sport to the older Victorian spirit of self-discipline and self-

1080

A M E R I C A N

improvement. And it spoke powerfully not just to the emerging middle class but also to the traditional elites who were accustomed to leadership in American public life but were seeing their power and influence usurped by Gilded Age capitalists. Muscular Christianity undergirded the expansion of sport in religious organizations such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Muscular Christianity plus modern social science undergirded the playground movement, which sought to defuse urban pressures and Americanize new immigrants by providing recreational outlets and organized team sports in gymnasiums and public parks. And muscular Christianity plus Darwinian social philosophy plus Anglo-Saxon racialism plus upper-class anxieties undergirded the development of intercollegiate sports, chiefly football, the most manly of all the manly sports, over the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Psychologists such as G. Stanley Hall, social reformers such as Luther Gulick and Henry S. Curtis, and Brahmin educators and reformers such as Francis Walker, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt in different ways argued that rugged sports were good for individuals, for communities, for the nation, and for “the race.” Their ideas were regularly promoted in popular magazines such as Harper’s Weekly and the monthly Outing by champions of sport such as Caspar Whitney and Walter Camp. By the end of the century those unplayful Americans of the antebellum period now seemed to English visitors obsessed with sports. They participated in activities and on teams organized by civic, social, religious, ethnic, educational, fraternal, and occupational organizations, and they cheered on the performances of others in ballparks and gymnasiums in virtually every community. Much of the world of American sport was still fragmented along lines of age, class, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, occupation, and geography; but there was also a single national sporting culture that registered chiefly in the periodical and daily press. Americans played with their own peers at country clubs or neighborhood parks, but they read the same accounts of major league baseball games, championship prizefights, and intercollegiate football games, of “national champions” and “All-Americans,” in their local newspapers. A powerful and complex sports ethic was part of this national sporting culture, a self-contradictory mix of muscular Christianity and Darwinian competition, of British elitism and American democracy. The values of sportsmanship and “fair play,” and of amateurism more generally, derived from the sporting codes of elite English public schools and ultimately from the

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SPORTS

Catcher of the Ulster Nine. Illustration by Daniel Carter Beard for the 1889 edition of Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. A medieval knight attempts to learn the sport of baseball in Twain’s novel. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

aristocratic code of gentlemen who had “won” at life simply by their birth. The values of gamesmanship, on the other hand—gaining an advantage through trickery rather than superior ability—could seem unscrupulous but were profoundly democratic, making victory possible for weaker and stronger alike and rewarding only the winners in the contests. What could seem mere hypocrisy—paeans to sportsmanship but obsession with winning—was in fact a profound ambivalence that played out not just on athletic fields but in American life generally. SPORT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION

American fiction did not fully explore the world of sport during this period of transformation, but a nascent sport literature did emerge. Much antebellum fiction A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

had unobtrusively incorporated the sporting practices of its times into its fictional worlds. James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales and his Littlepage novels, for example, had their distinctive sports: the pigeon-hunting and salmon-fishing episodes in The Pioneers, the sleigh riding and other winter sports in Satanstoe. Cooper, of course, cast the former scenes as mini-allegories in order to contrast his hero’s sporting code to the reckless and wasteful behavior of the settlers, but these episodes also contributed more simply to the portrait of life in a new community at the edge of the wilderness. In a similar manner, the sporting customs of particular regions or classes were part of the background in a broad range of fiction. Beginning with John Pendleton Kennedy’s Swallow Barn (1832), plantation romances invariably included scenes of foxhunting or horse racing. The tales of southwestern humorists were


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1081

SPORTS

rich with crude backwoods brawling and racing or shooting contests, while the more domesticated western fiction of writers such as Caroline Kirkland included the barn raisings and quilting bees of pioneer settlements. In a strikingly different vein, Rebecca Harding Davis’s “Life in the Iron-Mills” (1861) marked her characters by the sports of their social and economic classes. The deeper spiritual longings of the Welsh puddler Hugh Wolfe are evident in part by his abhorrence of the cockpit that draws his coworkers; the dilettante Mitchell, on the other hand, is an amateur gymnast and “patron, in a blasé way, of the prize-ring” (p. 437). The sporting practices in these novels and stories sometimes bore thematic weight, but they occupied the margins of the narrative, not the center. This sort of casual inclusion of local and classmarked sports continued throughout the period under discussion in novels ranging from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s My Wife and I (1871), in which a croquet match serves as an elaborate metaphor for life as viewed by the different players in her novel; to Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), whose heroine frequents the horse races with her father and pleasure-loving Creole friends; to Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920), whose social milieu is defined in part by the sports (croquet, archery, lawn tennis, yachting, polo) of New York’s untitled aristocracy in the 1870s. The Age of Innocence looks backward to a social world predating the rise of modern sports. So too do those nostalgic evocations of boyhood that thrived in the Gilded Age—novels such as Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s The Story of a Bad Boy (1870), Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (1876), Charles Dudley Warner’s Being a Boy, and William Dean Howells’s A Boy’s Town (1890)—which invariably included, and sometimes centered on, the innocent sporting pastimes of premodern, rural America. The modern sports at the center of the new national sporting culture, in contrast, are not much evident in mainstream American literature before the 1920s. As sport became organized and institutionalized over the late nineteenth century and therefore less organically woven into everyday life, writers had to choose more consciously to deal with it or not. One might argue that the spirit of modern sport saturated American fiction from the 1890s to World War I in the ubiquitous metaphor of “the game.” The idea that business or politics or life itself was a grand and glorious, or crushing and demoralizing, “game” became a literary commonplace in the fiction of Stephen Crane (1871–1900), Frank Norris (1879– 1902), Jack London (1876–1969), Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916), Owen Wister (1869–1938), and the rest of the “strenuous” school of American fiction.

1082

A M E R I C A N

The implied game was often poker or some other form of gambling, as hero after hero played the hand he was dealt in life or risked all on the main chance; but at other times it was a contest of will and prowess, implicitly the athletic games now dominating the sports pages of the daily newspaper. Theodore Dreiser’s Frank Cowperwood, in The Financier (1912), played baseball and football as a boy, before life taught him that fair play had no place in the world of business. Crane, Norris, and Davis had themselves been schoolboy or college athletes. Along with London, all of them also worked briefly as sports journalists for the daily press, and they translated sport, if only metaphorically, into their fiction. Crane claimed to have learned all he knew of war from football, and he used football (as well as boxing and racing) metaphors in the battle scenes of The Red Badge of Courage. Davis’s soldiers of fortune in the novel of that name (1897), and in The King’s Jackal (1898) and Captain Macklin (1902), live their adventurous lives according to a sporting code. In addition to London’s handful of stories and two novellas about boxing, much of his other fiction is laden with metaphors of sport and gambling. In a most highly self-conscious way, “the game” is the central metaphor in Wister’s The Virginian (1902), the ur-text of popular western fiction and Wister’s homage to the values of Theodore Roosevelt, the sportsman president. The relationship of the new popular sports to the emerging view of life as contest poses a chicken-andegg conundrum. What is clearer is that the sports themselves did not fully register in the fictional mainstream. Frank Norris and Richard Harding Davis wrote football stories among their tossed-off productions— Davis’s “Richard Carr’s Baby,” included in his Stories for Boys (1891); Norris’s “Travis Hallett’s Half-Back” (Overland Monthly, January 1894) and “Kirkland at Quarter” (Saturday Evening Post, 12 October 1901)— but neither attempted a full-blown novel centered on the new college game. These stories are significant only as part of an emerging genre of the school sports story, chiefly in popular magazines, which developed the character types and plot formulas within and against which later writers worked. While there are no masterpieces within this considerable body of popular fiction, Owen Johnson’s (1878–1952) Stover at Yale (1912) deserves recognition as the “classic” from this period. THE EMERGENCE OF SPORTS FICTION

Stover at Yale was initially serialized in McClure’s Magazine, where it would have been instantly recognized as a college sports story, familiar since the 1890s as part of the more broadly defined story of college life. Waldron Kintzing Post’s (1868–1955) Harvard Stories

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SPORTS

in 1893, followed by Jesse Lynch Williams’s (1871– 1929) Princeton Stories in 1895, seem to have established the form. With the former dedicated “To the Class of ’90,” the latter “To ’92,” Post and Williams offered their tales of college life to their own classmates, whose recognition of the real-life models for the characters and incidents would bring back pleasant memories, but also more generally to that first generation of young men for whom college became a prerequisite for professional careers. The emphasis in these stories is on camaraderie, youthful escapades, and lighthearted pranks, a view of college life through a romantic haze appealing enough to send Princeton Stories through nine editions by 1900 (and to warrant a couple of sequels from Williams, The Adventures of a Freshman in 1899 and The Girl and the Game and Other College Stories in 1908). Both formal and informal games play an important role in this world, the Frosh-Soph class battles on the one hand, the contests of the varsity crew or eleven on the other. What is distinctive about sports within the larger world of college life is their utter seriousness: school life might be largely constituted of mock-heroic battles and sentimental friendships, but athletics require sacrifice, build character, and create heroes. The fundamentally heroic nature of school sports remained its most distinctive trait in popular fiction into the 1920s. Its purest embodiment appeared fifty-two times a year from April 1896 into 1915 in the pages of Tip Top Weekly, which chronicled the exploits of Frank Merriwell, then his brother Dick, then his son Frank Jr., at Fardale Academy, Yale University, and the wide world beyond. Merriwell’s creator, Gilbert Patten (1866–1945, writing as Burt L. Standish) is rightly considered the father of American sports fiction, but in many ways the Merriwell character can be viewed as a corporate creation. Patten concocted Frank Merriwell out of the “plucky” school of dime novels and Horatio Alger books, settling on a formula that Tip Top’s publisher, Street & Smith, could reproduce endlessly. Success spawned several less successful imitations—Fred Fearnot, Dick Daresome, and Frank Manley for Street & Smith’s publishing rivals (along with its own Jack Lightfoot)—but also a series of long-running periodicals through which Street & Smith itself largely created modern sports fiction. Tip Top Weekly was a juvenile magazine, as was Top-Notch (1910–1937), which Street & Smith started with Patten as editor (and frequently as chief contributor of sports stories and serials). The firm’s Popular Magazine, on the other hand, began in 1903 as another juvenile offering but quickly evolved into a magazine of adventure fiction for young men. A typical issue of Popular in the 1900s and 1910s included a mix of westerns, mysteries, historical romances, political romances, romances of “gentleman adventurers” (out of the Richard Harding A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Davis school), and sports stories—the full range of male adventure genres, with sport occupying a prominent place. In the 1920s, when specialized pulps replaced the general-fiction formats, Street & Smith pioneered here as well, with Sport Story in 1923, the first and for many years only pulp magazine devoted exclusively to sport. Out of Frank Merriwell came the countless heroes in school sports stories in juvenile magazines such as St. Nicholas, Youth’s Companion, American Boy, and Boys’ Life and in novels by Ralph Henry Barbour, William Heyliger, and dozens of other writers (some of them serialized in the juvenile magazines). Out of Harvard Stories, Princeton Stories, and the early efforts of such writers as Richard Harding Davis and Frank Norris came dozens of stories in the great middle-class general-interest magazines of the early twentieth century. Overwhelmingly this fiction concerned the sports of boys and young men. A couple of women’s contributions to the college-life genre—Grace Margaret Gallaher’s Vassar Stories (1899) and Julia Augusta Schwartz’s Vassar Studies (1899)—included a tale of young women at sport (basketball in the former, track and field in the latter), and among the early-twentieth-century series books for girls, two of Jessie Graham Flower’s Grace Harlowe novels, two of Gertrude Morrison’s novels about the Girls of Central High, and the first three of Edith Bancroft’s five Jane Allen novels recounted female athletic heroics. But for all the obvious reasons this body of fiction was dwarfed by the Patten-Williams-Barbour school. SPORTS FICTION IN POPULAR MAGAZINES

The school sports story did not completely dominate the adult magazines. The chief producer of stories about country club and professional sports before 1920 was Charles E. Van Loan (1876–1919), a sportswriter for several western newspapers before placing his first short story with a national magazine in 1909. By the time he died in 1919 at age forty-two, Van Loan’s sports stories from such magazines as Popular, Collier’s, and the Saturday Evening Post—contrary to a common misperception, the pulps and “slicks” were parts of the same publishing world in this period—had been published in eight volumes, four on baseball, two on boxing, and one each on horse racing (Old Man Curry, 1917) and golf (Fore! 1918). Van Loan’s stories recall the humorous sentimental realism of Bret Harte’s western fiction, look ahead to Damon Runyon’s Broadway tales in the same vein, and were instrumental in establishing this as the dominant mode for nonschool sport stories in the popular magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. Ring Lardner’s wit was sharper, his ear for the vernacular more precise, his


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1083

SPORTS

ironies more deeply cutting than Van Loan’s, but Lardner followed in Van Loan’s footsteps. Van Loan wrote no stories about college sport, and his humorous style is strikingly absent from the work of the writers who did. Virtually from the very beginning football in particular was imbued with powerful ideologies, and as the game became the premier intercollegiate sport and a great popular spectacle by the 1890s it was invariably treated in popular fiction with high seriousness. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s (1896–1940) homage to Allenby, the football captain in This Side of Paradise based on Hobey Baker, as well as his acerbic portrait of the privileged and brutish Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, derived from an understanding gained as a Princeton undergraduate in the 1910s of the potent role football played in college life. Post’s Harvard Stories and Williams’s Princeton Stories are affectionately humorous when dealing with most aspects of undergraduate life but reverential when the subject is the mighty football captain or the strivings of an outsider to make the varsity team. Short fiction in the popular magazines, whether the “slick” Saturday Evening Post or the pulp Popular, fully established the formula for the college football story in this same spirit. The college football story overwhelmingly concerned tests or proof of manly character. The hero of Frank Norris’s “Travis Hallett’s Half-Back” uses the physical courage and mental acuity learned on the football field to save his fiancée from a burning theater. The hero of Norris’s “Kirkland at Quarter” puts honor in service of his alma mater ahead of personal interest. Manliness in this fiction was both physical and moral. Eventually the football romance—the hero winning both the girl and the game—became the dominant form, but in this early period football was more often an all-male world, a Darwinian arena incongruously governed by a gentleman’s code of sportsmanship and fair play while endorsing a kind of Anglo-Saxon primitivism. Hard-driving coaches push young men at elite colleges to prove that they have not been softened and overcivilized by the privileges of their class and the comforts of the modern world. The most prolific author of this oft-told tale was James Hopper (1876–1956), a former football player at the University of California who had been a grade-school classmate of Jack London and later became a member of London’s “Crowd.” In eight football stories and a three-part serial in McClure’s, Everybody’s, and the Saturday Evening Post between 1904 and 1918 (with more in the 1920s) Hopper consistently portrayed college football in Londonesque terms. The central football episode in Owen Johnson’s Stover at Yale came directly from Hopper’s 1904 story

1084

A M E R I C A N

in the Saturday Evening Post, “The Strength of the Weak,” a tableau in which the hero punts time after time despite the crushing assaults of an overwhelming opponent, his punts traveling shorter and shorter distances as the young man grows exhausted yet singlehandedly staves off sure defeat. In Johnson’s version, Dink Stover cannot prevent the superior Princeton team from winning, but his heroic self-sacrifice earns him the ultimate reward, the silent acknowledgment of the great men from past Yale teams in the locker room afterward. Johnson’s novel deserves its classic status not for these football scenes alone but also for the larger treatment of undergraduate life centered around the profoundly undemocratic society system. In a novel that grapples with serious class issues in elite higher education (ultimately resolving them too neatly, to be sure), football more simply receives the heroic treatment typical of the popular magazine fiction of the day. Dink Stover had appeared earlier in Johnson’s The Varmint (1910), one of his series of books about prep school life, and in these Lawrenceville stories Johnson dared on occasion to treat football with something less than high seriousness. In “The Run That Turned the Game,” from The Prodigious Hickey (1910), a soft fat boy, “Piggy” Moore, is terrified into playing on the house team, then loses the climactic contest against the rival house when he completes a long desperate run to the wrong goal. A year after this story’s initial appearance in Century Magazine, George Fitch (1877–1915) published the first of his Siwash stories in the Saturday Evening Post (“Ole Skjarsen’s First Touchdown: A Siwash College Story,” 6 November 1909), the humorous tale of a strapping but dimwitted Swede that inaugurated the dumb-jock school of football fiction. It is not at all coincidental that Ole Skjarsen represented a new kind of college football player who would soon be dominating the game: the son not of an Anglo-Saxon gentleman but of an immigrant Swedish farmer. Later he would be the son of an Italian or Polish mill worker. The unambiguously heroic era of the college football story ended with the emergence of a more heterogeneous, multiethnic, and democratic world of college football. This transformed college football world emerged in the 1920s, when the so-called Golden Age of Sports also saw the proliferation of sports fiction and sports films, thoroughly formulaic for the most part, although literary authors also responded more fully to what was becoming an increasingly conspicuous part of American social life and culture. A broader range of themes and narrative formulas emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. The period preceding this Golden Age

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SPORTS

thus marks the beginnings of a sports fiction genre whose full development lay in the future.

Schwartz, Julia Augusta. Vassar Studies. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899.

See also Adolescence; Boxing

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. My Wife and I; or, Harry Henderson’s History. New York: J. B. Ford, 1871.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing, 1876.

Primary Works

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey. The Story of a Bad Boy. Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1870.

Warner, Charles Dudley. Being a Boy. Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1878.

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Chicago: H. S. Stone, 1899.

Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. New York: D. Appleton, 1920.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Pioneers; or, The Sources of the Susquehanna: A Descriptive Tale. New York: Charles Wiley, 1823.

Williams, Jesse Lynch. The Adventures of a Freshman. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899.

Cooper, James Fenimore. Satanstoe; or, The Littlepage Manuscripts: A Tale of the Colony. New York: Burgess, Stringer, 1845. Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War. New York: D. Appleton, 1896. Davis, Rebecca Harding. “Life in the Iron-Mills; or, The Korl Woman.” Atlantic Monthly 7 (April 1861): 430–451. Davis, Richard Harding. Captain Macklin: His Memoirs. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902. Davis, Richard Harding. The King’s Jackal. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898. Davis, Richard Harding. Stories for Boys. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891. Dreiser, Theodore. The Financier. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1912. Fitch, George. At Good Old Siwash. Boston: Little, Brown, 1911. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920. Gallaher, Grace Margaret. Vassar Stories. Boston: R. G. Badger, 1900. Howells, William Dean. A Boy’s Town. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890. Kennedy, John Pendleton. Swallow Barn; or, A Sojourn in the Old Dominion. Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1832. Johnson, Owen. The Prodigious Hickey: A Lawrenceville Story. Boston: Little, Brown, 1910. Johnson, Owen. Stover at Yale. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1912. Johnson, Owen. The Varmint. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1910. Norris, Frank. “Kirkland at Quarter.” Saturday Evening Post, 12 October 1901. Norris, Frank. “Travis Hallett’s Half Back.” Overland Monthly 23 (January 1894): 20–27.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Williams, Jesse Lynch. Princeton Stories. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895. Williams, Jesse Lynch, et al. The Girl and the Game and Other College Stories. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908. Wister, Owen. The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains. New York: Macmillan, 1902. Van Loan, Charles E. Fore! New York: George H. Doran, 1918. Van Loan, Charles E. Old Man Curry. New York: George H. Doran, 1917. Secondary Works

Burns, Grant. The Sports Pages: A Critical Bibliography of Twentieth-Century American Novels and Stories Featuring Baseball, Basketball, Football, and Other Athletic Pursuits. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1987. Cavallo, Dominick. Muscles and Morals: Organized Playgrounds and Urban Reform, 1880–1920. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. Gorn, Elliott J., and Warren Goldstein. A Brief History of American Sports. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993. Haley, Bruce. The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. Higgs, Robert J. Laurel & Thorn: The Athlete in American Literature. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981. Mangan, J. A. Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School: The Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Messenger, Christian K. Sport and the Spirit of Play in American Fiction: Hawthorne to Faulkner. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Mrozek, Donald J. Sport and American Mentality, 1880–1910. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983. Oriard, Michael. “From Jane Allen to Water Dancer: A Brief History of the Feminist (?) Sports Novel.” Modern Fiction Studies 33 (spring 1987): 9–20.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1085

THE SQUATTER AND THE DON

Oriard, Michael. King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, the Weekly and the Daily Press. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Oriard, Michael. Sporting with the Gods: The Rhetoric of Play and Game in American Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Putney, Clifford. Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. Rader, Benjamin. American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2004. Whorton, James C. Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982. Michael Oriard

THE SQUATTER AND THE DON María Amparo Ruiz de Burton (1832–1895) was the first female Mexican American writer to publish two novels in English in the United States, and while they both feature romances between Mexicans and Americans, her narratives denounce U.S. colonialism and Anglo-American racism. Her writings, which include a play based on Don Quixote, copious letters, and legal briefs written to protect her California land claims, debunk nineteenth-century representations of Mexican Americans as monolingual Spanish speakers at best and illiterate at worst. Yet her genteel historical romances trouble Mexican American literary history, which maintains that folktales and corridos (ballads) mark Chicano/Chicana literature’s working-class origins. Ruiz de Burton’s critique of racism in the United States prefigures contemporary Chicano/Chicana writings, but her novels also emphasize the whiteness of upper-class Mexican Americans to distinguish them from mestizos and Native or African Americans. With The Squatter and the Don (1885) in particular, Ruiz de Burton narrates the historical and cultural contradictions of becoming Mexican American in the United States.

Californians generally welcomed the occupying army, and in turn the captain of the invading New York Volunteers, Henry Stanton Burton of Connecticut, promised the Mexicans annexation and U.S. citizenship after the war. When the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war, however, the United States decided to annex Alta California, along with the rest of the present-day Southwest, but leave Baja California to Mexico. So Captain Burton transported over four hundred Mexicans to Monterey, California, and sixteen-year-old María was one of the travelers. She and the captain were in love. Theirs was a romance that embodied the times. He was an invading Yankee officer, a Protestant, and a leading American figure in California; she was a member of a prominent Mexican family, a Catholic, and claimed a large Mexican land grant. Their 1849 marriage symbolized the war’s end and promised a happy merger between Yankees and Californios. They moved to San Diego in 1852, where Burton commanded the army post while María raised Nellie, their newborn daughter, and two years later gave birth to Henry Halleck. Burton also bought Rancho Jamul, a large land grant tract granted to California’s former Mexican governor, Pío Pico, in 1831. The land grant would figure heavily in Ruiz de Burton’s future misfortunes. With the Civil War looming, the Burtons headed east in 1859 and lived at various times in Rhode Island, New York, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. While Burton earned a promotion to brevet brigadier general in the Union army, María grew skeptical of Yankee culture. On one occasion, she met privately with Varina Davis, the wife of the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, and they bad-mouthed the Yankees. In 1869 Burton died of malarial fever, and after a decade’s absence, María returned to California a widowed mother of two. Far from her halcyon days of the early 1850s, she spent the rest of her life fighting economic hardship, land litigation, and the social displacement that turned many Californios into paupers. She died in 1895, destitute and largely unsuccessful in her legal battles. LAWS OF THE LAND

LOVE AND WAR

Born in 1832 in Loreto, Baja California, Mexico, to an elite family, María Amparo Ruiz witnessed the 1847 U.S. invasion of La Paz, Baja California, during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Annexation into the Union appealed to Alta and Baja California’s landed Mexican gentry, who created a regional identity as “Californios.” After several skirmishes, the Baja

1086

A M E R I C A N

Besides the 1848 treaty, several other events fuel Squatter’s historical critique. The 1849 California constitution, for instance, recognized Mexican men as white citizens, a marker of racial privilege that recurs throughout the novel. Even before the convention, Californios emphasized their sangre azul, their pure Spanish blood, to distinguish themselves from mestizos, Indians, and blacks. With California’s annexation,

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


it seemed Californios would maintain the power they enjoyed under the Mexican rancho system. The 1850 Indenture Act, which many Californios supported, mimicked the rancho system by arresting vagrant mestizos and Indians and hiring them out as indentured servants. That same year, though, Californios felt the sting of the Foreign Miners Tax, which forced a $20 tax on all noncitizens—defined as Mexican, Mexican American, Latin American miners—prospecting in California. It was not long before the 1851 Land Act targeted the tenuous citizenship status of Californios, and by 1855 their dispossession is evident by the passage of the Vagrancy Act, the so-called Greaser Act, which, like the previous Indenture Act, charged a vagrancy fine on displaced Californios that could be paid in cash or through indentured labor. As power relations shifted during California’s annexation, property ownership likewise became contentious, especially with the 1851 Land Law. Contrary to the 1848 treaty, the California Land Act considered all Spanish and Mexican land grants as public domain until the Board of Land Commission validated the title. The act devastated many Californios, for it put the burden of proof on them, opened their land to squatters, and made the titleholder in question responsible for paying property taxes and compensating squatters for improvements they made to the land. If the title was verified, attorneys or squatters appealed it to the Supreme Court in a legal maneuver that allowed squatters to remain on the disputed territory until the issue was settled. The land commission eventually upheld many Mexican land grants in California, but after an average of seventeen years of litigation, Californios mortgaged their property to American businesspeople and lawyers to pay legal fees. In 1858 the land commission rejected Pío Pico’s original claim to Rancho Jamul and ruled that the Mexican land grant was public domain, even though members of Ruiz de Burton’s family were living on the property. So when Ruiz de Burton returned to California, she found fifteen squatters on Rancho Jamul, and each of them claimed a 160-acre homestead. She proceeded with the legal battle to remove the squatters, and to raise money she harvested castor beans, started a short-lived cement company, and made plans to build a water reservoir. She even penned a few of her legal briefs to save on lawyer’s fees. All to no avail—even after securing a homestead on Jamul, Ruiz de Burton’s property claim remained caught in a legal and financial quagmire that was unresolved at the time of her death. It is not surprising, then, that as she turned to a literary career for income, her first novel is a caustic critique of Yankees, and after nearly thirty years of legal battles, her second novel takes on the A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

laws and people bent on displacing and dispossessing Californios. WAR OF WORDS

Ruiz de Burton’s first novel, Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) proved too bitter for Yankee tastes. Set during the Civil War, the narrative targets racist abolitionists, materialistic Anglo-Americans, corrupt politicians, and the despotism of the United States’ socalled democratic process. Lola Medina, a wealthy Mexican girl born in Indian captivity, encounters Yankee hypocrisy firsthand when Dr. Norval rescues her in the Southwest and brings her to live with his northeastern family. There she experiences their hatred of blacks, Mexicans, and Indians; she withstands the jealousy and greed of Mrs. Norval and her daughters; and she falls victim to a clergyman’s seduction plot. The narrative extends the Norval duplicity to the rest of Union: Dr. Norval must leave the country for opposing the Civil War; scheming politicians profit from the war; and government policy, rather than representing the best interest of the people, is dictated by self-interest. In the end, the avarice, trickery, dishonesty, and racism of the United States proves too much for Lola, who reunites with her wealthy family in Mexico, where Julian Norval, her Yankee lover, follows her after the war. The Squatter and the Don, published under the pen name C. Loyal in 1885, uses the same satirical edge to expose the lie behind the 1851 Land Act. The novel contends that the act violates the 1848 treaty in an attempt to convert California from a largely Mexican agrarian culture to an Anglo-American industrial state. As the narrator sarcastically explains: “No. 189. An Act to ascertain and settle the private land claims in the State of California,” says the book. And by a sad subversion of purposes, all the private land titles became unsettled. It ought to have been said, “An Act to unsettle land titles, and to upset the rights of the Spanish population of the State of California.” (P. 84)

The land act is a duplicitous piece of legislation designed to profit Anglo-Americans at the expense of landed Mexican Americans. Eventually, the novel warns, the law will also work against Anglos, and indeed Gasbang and Roper, two unscrupulous squatters, use the law to displace the Mechlins, a Yankee family that purchases a grant from Don Mariano Alamar. Similarly, railroad barons and crooked politicians use the law to displace squatters and Californios from their property. The laws of the land, the novel concludes, represent the best interest of monopoly capitalists and a system of governance dictated more by profit than commonwealth


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1087


representation. The people of California, Anglos and Mexicans, will forever remain “white slaves” if they do not throw off the shackles of the nation’s corporate greed and congressional corruption (p. 344).

HISTORICAL ROMANCE

Following in the tradition of European, American, and Latin American narratives, however, Squatter masks its historical content through the veneer of romance. The marriage between Clarence Darrell, son of the eponymous squatter, and Mercedes Alamar, daughter of Don Mariano, functions as an imaginary solution to the historical conflict between squatters and Californios. Indeed, internecine romances abound in the narrative as a way of emphasizing the social, economic, racial, and sexual compatibility of Anglos and genteel Mexicans. While Mr. Mechlin merges his northern banking interests with the Don’s cultural capital, George Mechlin marries the Don’s daughter, Elivra Alamar, and Gabriel Alamar weds Elizabeth Mechlin. In a similar matrimonial double loop, Victoriano Alamar and Alice Darrell enjoy a promising romance against the backdrop of Clarence and Mercedes’s courtship. As Ruiz de Burton’s life indicates, marriages between Anglo men and landed Mexican women during the war years merged Yankee and Californio economic and cultural interests. They were marriages of mutual convenience, for the unions gave Anglos access into California’s Mexican cultural system while it provided Californios a place in the state’s emerging market economy. They were also marriages of colonial compatibility. Before the United States invaded California, Spanish and Mexican colonialisms structured the region’s social, economic, and cultural interactions; with California’s annexation, the Mexican ruling class worked to make itself compatible with, rather than a victim of, the Yankee invasion. With the squatters symbolic of Anglos, and the Alamares representative of Californios, Ruiz de Burton’s novel resolves the historical problem of property rights in California by imagining a happy union between the two competing classes. The narrative is careful to make distinctions, however. Not all Anglo-Americans are alike. The Mechlins, Clarence Darrell, and Darrell’s southern mother respect the claims of Californios. Mr. Darrell and his motley crew of squatters are uncouth, openly racist advocates of their so-called squatter’s rights. Meanwhile, the Alamares welcome the new social order in California as long as it includes them in the state’s new economy. Indeed, even as the novel attacks monopoly capitalism, it clearly advocates class stratification based on laissez-faire capitalism that grants cultured Anglos and Californios equal access to each other and the market.

1088

A M E R I C A N

SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST

As an 1885 novel that takes place near the end of Reconstruction, Squatter connects the South and the Southwest to denounce the federal government and monopoly capitalism. While the residual effects of the United States–Mexico War determine the strained relations between squatters and dons, the emergence of corporate capitalism at the end of Reconstruction pits railroad companies and their bribed politicians against squatters, dons, and any other individual who espouses the United States’ republican ideals. Thus the reference to “white slaves” at the end of the novel: Ruiz de Burton views the dispossession of Californios after the 1848 treaty as a violation of white rights as iniquitous as the displacement of southern whites after the Civil War. The proposed Texas-Pacific railroad in the novel, for instance, would link the South to southern California and open markets for both regions devastated by war. Railroad barons and their politicians, however, block the southern railway in favor of the Central Pacific track, one that connects northeastern financial interest with northern California’s San Francisco Bay, leaving the South and southern California to face economic disaster and exclusion from transcontinental commerce. The collapse of the Texas-Pacific also highlights how northern economic, political, and cultural power consolidates across the country after the Civil War. The South and the Southwest, two largely agrarian regions that respectively employed black slavery and Indian servitude not only as a mode of economy but also as a measure of white privilege, find themselves equally excluded from the North’s control of the nation’s governance and economy. This is the crux of the book’s critique and also the irony of its place in American and Mexican American literary history. The novel condemns the dispossession of California’s Mexican gentry, yet it also narrates the displacement of Anglo-Americans at the hands of monopoly capitalism and corrupt governance. What begins as a novel about Californio rights ends as a narrative about violated white rights. Californio whiteness thus becomes a way for the novel to include Californios alongside southerners and individual Anglos as victimized white citizens of the federal government and its complicity with capitalism. Squatter challenges U.S. colonialism not because it excludes Californios but because it does not include them in the privileged category of whiteness. Of course, the novel must forget that Indians, blacks, and mestizos stand at the margins of white privilege, as Tish, the Darrell’s black servant, and the nameless Indians laborers in the novel indicate.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE STRENUOUS LIFE

RECOVERING RUIZ DE BURTON

Squatter performs an indictment of monopoly capitalism, decries the historical displacement of landed Mexican Americans, and through the narrator’s ironic tone, undermines American ideals that still circulate. It seemingly espouses the politics of contemporary Chicano/Chicana literary production, which might explain why it was republished before Who Would Have Thought It? under the auspices of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage project. As Ruiz de Burton’s editors, Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita, put it, the book provides a “counter-history of the subaltern, the conquered Californio population” (p. 7). Yet her writings are more complex than contemporary Chicano/Chicana studies allows. Following José F. Aranda’s argument in “Contradictory Impulses,” Ruiz de Burton is no subaltern, but she obviously challenges American ideology. Even the construction of whiteness in her novels, which is the focus of Ruiz de Burton scholarship, dislodges the usual Anglo-black binary that characterizes American studies while it simultaneously encourages Chicano/Chicana studies to consider how historical context determines the construction of racial and ethnic difference. Ruiz de Burton’s writings thus establish an ambivalent pattern of critique and complicity in Mexican American literature that characterizes other recovered texts, such as Adina de Zavala’s History and Legends of the Alamo (1917), Miguel Otero’s The Real Billy the Kid (1936), and Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert’s We Fed Them Cactus (1954). As with these early Hispanic narratives, Ruiz de Burton’s life and work highlight the varied, complex, and multiple experiences of Mexican Americans. Indeed, Ruiz de Burton’s writings create a new paradigm for Chicano/Chicana literary scholarship, one that recognizes how history determines the color of ethnic critique. See also Mexican Revolution BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo. 1885. The Squatter and the Don. Edited and with an introduction by Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita. 2nd ed. Houston: Arte Público, 1997. Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo. 1872. Who Would Have Thought It? Edited by Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita. Houston: Arte Público, 1995. Secondary Works

Alemán, Jesse. “Historical Amnesia and the Vanishing Mestiza: The Problem of Race in The Squatter and the Don and Ramona.” Aztlán 27, no. 1 (2002): 59–93. Compares the construction of race in the two California historical romances.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Aranda, José F., Jr. “Contradictory Impulses: María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Resistance Theory, and the Politics of Chicano/a Studies.” American Literature 70, no. 3 (1998): 551–579. Ruiz de Burton’s life and work challenge readings of her as a proto-Chicana writer. Crawford, Kathleen. “María Amparo Ruiz de Burton: The General’s Wife.” Journal of San Diego History 30, no. 3 (1984): 198–211. A brief, informative biography of Ruiz de Burton. Goldman, Anne E. Continental Divides: Revisioning American Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Discusses Ruiz de Burton’s novels as regional and transnational literature. Haas, Lisbeth. Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769–1936. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. History of the shifting ethnic identities in California. Montes, Amelia María de la Luz, and Anne Elizabeth Goldman, eds. María Amparo Ruiz de Burton: Critical and Pedagogical Perspectives. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. A collection of essays on Ruiz de Burton’s life and writings. Jesse Alemán

THE STRENUOUS LIFE By the dawn of the twentieth century the United States was coming of age. Still a young nation bustling with ceaseless energy and brimming with seemingly unlimited resources, the emerging American Republic had taken its rightful place on the global stage as both an economic giant and a military power to be reckoned with. A manufacturing and mechanical marvel poised to tower over the modern world like a colossus, the United States had grown at a breathtaking pace into the mighty engine of industry and a cradle of inventive genius that had become the envy of the entire Western world. Restless, ambitious, daring, even imperious, the United States waited only for the arrival of a leader who could summon forth the best in its people. It was almost as if the nation—and history—beckoned such a prophet who could best articulate the lofty ideals of a new nationalism, a modern-day oracle and warrior of Olympian reach who could inspire millions of Americans to embrace the muscular patriotism that he or she preached and practiced, a leader who could persuade the people that it was their Manifest Destiny to rule a global empire and extend a Pax Americana from the Caribbean Basin to the distant Pacific Rim. Just such a titan stood at the threshold of a new century, an American Century. His name was Theodore


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1089

THE STRENUOUS LIFE

Theodore Roosevelt. Addressing a crowd in Evanston, Illinois, 1903.

TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY

IMAGES

Roosevelt (1858–1919). At the age of forty his own destiny seemed to mirror that of his growing nation. Youthful, pragmatic, physically strong, compassionate though brash, and at times stern and moralistic, Roosevelt was unpredictable and on occasion even reckless. His character had been tempered by adversity, forged by the hardships of the frontier experience, and chiseled, too, by the hard realities of the Industrial Revolution and the festering corruption of the “spoils politics” that it spawned. Intensely loyal to his friends and partners, he was equally steadfast, even tenacious in the face of his enemies. But perhaps above all else Roosevelt personified the unrelenting spirit of national progress—a spirit born of optimism and bound up in a

1090

A M E R I C A N

people’s collective hopes for a brighter and more glorious tomorrow. Roosevelt was a man so right for his times. Hailed widely in 1898 for gallantly leading his Rough Riders on their storied charge up San Juan Hill and into history, Colonel Roosevelt had already entered the pantheon of American heroes. Had he done nothing more than return home to New York and to the deafening cheers of a grateful nation, his place as a human meteor in the annals of America would surely have been secure. Yet the word “secure” was not even in the vocabulary of the adventuresome and restive Theodore

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE STRENUOUS LIFE

Roosevelt. In the autumn of 1898 he campaigned successfully for the office of governor of New York (or perhaps it should be said that fellow New Yorkers and Republican Party bosses in Albany campaigned for him). After all, he was the most famous man in America, and he knew it. On 10 April 1899 Governor Roosevelt delivered an address before the Hamilton Club in Chicago. In a manner characteristic of a crusading evangelist, he pronounced a new national gospel, which he termed the “doctrine of the strenuous life” (“The Strenuous Life,” pp. 319–320). For both the individual in society and the nation as a whole, he proclaimed, the “highest form of success” comes not to those who desire a life of ease and comfort but to those bold and hardy souls who never “shrink from danger, from hardships, and from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph” (“The Strenuous Life,” pp. 319– 320). He extolled the virtues of work and self-help, though he also uplifted the values of community and civic duty. He defended the necessity of “righteous war” in the cause of liberty. He called his countrymen and countrywomen to awaken from their national slumber and collective contentment and to seek “the higher life of toil and risk” (“The Strenuous Life,” pp. 319–320). Only then might individual citizens reach their full potential, and more importantly, might their nation achieve the promised greatness that awaited America. “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much, nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat,” Roosevelt affirmed (“The Strenuous Life,” pp. 322– 325). With an almost religious conviction, he called upon his fellow Americans to cast off the long-held illusion of isolation. “We cannot sit huddled within our own borders,” he reasoned, “and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond” (“The Strenuous Life,” pp. 322–325). Roosevelt implored his listeners to disavow the temptations of hedonism and the tendencies of self-indulgence and to redirect their collective energies away from materialism and the pursuit of personal gain and toward a shared commitment to the common good. In so doing, Roosevelt pronounced the faith of other fellow progressives that together, and only together, could Americans build a better future and make a better world. But first, he insisted, a mightier navy and a stronger and reorganized army must be elevated as the highest of national priorities. Otherwise, he prophesied, the United States would surely be forever relegated to the status of a weakling among nations. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

The American Republic would thus be consigned to the dustheap of human history, unable to impose its will and, more importantly, unable to fulfill its destiny by blessing the world with liberty and prosperity (no matter whether or not others chose to be “blessed” with “superior” American institutions and ideals). To Roosevelt the issue was simple—perhaps too simple. And the stakes could not be greater, he warned. Like it or not, the American people were destined to play a central role in the greatest movement of modern history, that of the ongoing struggle between civilization and what he termed “savagery.” As for the outcome of this clash, Roosevelt maintained, it would not be in doubt, not if the American people accepted a legitimate leadership position in the family of nations. “Let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical,” he demanded, “provided we are certain that the . . . [cause] is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of national greatness” (“The Strenuous Life,” pp. 331–333). Then he punctuated his comments with the pronouncement that “cowardly peace may be worse than any war” (“The Strenuous Life,” pp. 331–333). Just as Roosevelt called upon his countrymen and countrywomen to leave behind a life of leisure and the lethargy of traditional isolationism, he also enjoined his generation to reject the time-honored principles of laissez-faire, the tired doctrine that held that government should refrain from any interference in the “natural” processes of the free market economy. Only implied, therefore, was Governor Roosevelt’s rejection of Social Darwinism and thus the gospel of greed and indifference that explained the existence of both poverty and prosperity in terms of “survival of the fittest.” The future of the United States, and the hope for a better world, thus rested not upon the quiet dogmas of the past but upon a bold new nationalism, an ideal built upon the labors of a proud people and their unwavering faith in something far greater than themselves. And this new spirit of progress, Roosevelt insisted, must ensure that all Americans share in the nation’s advancing wealth. Roosevelt’s rousing and inspirational address would soon be shared with a much larger audience. Before 1899 came to a close the Century Company published a collection of Governor Roosevelt’s speeches under the title The Strenuous Life (1900). The following year a second printing would be turned out on the eve of President William McKinley’s selection of the renowned Rough Rider as his vice presidential running mate. Early in 1901 yet another reprint was rushed off the presses when Roosevelt assumed the


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1091

SUCCESS

second highest office in the land. More reprints were soon to come, including translations into Italian, German, French, and Japanese. Perhaps the series of addresses would have gone largely unnoticed had it not been for a single event that changed the course of American history. On 6 September 1901 an assassin mortally wounded President McKinley while he stood greeting visitors at the World Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Eight days later the forty-two-year-old Roosevelt was sworn in as the twenty-sixth president of the United States.

Roosevelt translated those ideals into actions. In so doing, he transformed not only the presidency but also the nation, which he believed was destined for greatness.

Nothing would be the same. During the next seven and a half years President Roosevelt guided his country away from the old-school dogmatism of laissezfaire. He steered his people from traditional isolationism and toward a new acceptance of global responsibility and leadership. His “Big Stick” diplomacy portended the rise of the United States as a world power, and his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which projected the American Republic as the policeman of the Western Hemisphere, heralded the coming of a new day for U.S.–Latin American relations. Of course, Roosevelt’s acquisition of a ten-mile-wide canal zone slicing through the narrow isthmus of Panama likewise trumpeted the dawn of American imperialism.

Roosevelt, Theodore. “The Strenuous Life.” In The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 13. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926.

The institution of the modern American presidency also began to emerge with the appearance of the charismatic and vigorous young leader. From his loose constructionist view of the Constitution to an unprecedented activist role in the legislative process, to his passion for reform, to his obsession with physical fitness, to his hands-on approach to foreign policy, and to his public accessibility (he was the first president to hold press conferences), Roosevelt brought both a different style and a different substance to the White House. He was the first chief executive to press for conservation initiatives to protect the environment, the first to promote much-needed consumer protection measures, the first to enforce existing antitrust laws. His warlike face, walrus-like mustache, squinting eyes, and toothy grin all became national trademarks; one contemporary described the feisty and demonstrative Roosevelt as looking like “a wild bull about to charge” (Morris, p. 420).

Michael L. Collins

In his essay “The Strenuous Life,” Roosevelt had challenged his fellow Americans to “dare mighty things” (p. 475). He had also encouraged them to rediscover and redefine their sense of national purpose and to accept the Platonic precept that the individual is the foundation of any great republic. And he argued convincingly that every individual can make a difference and that each citizen should strive tirelessly to that end. Indeed, as president of the United States,

1092

A M E R I C A N

See also Political Parties; Reform BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Roosevelt, Theodore. An Autobiography. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926.

Secondary Works

Brands, H. W. T. R.: The Last Romantic. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Harbaugh, William H. Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961. Miller, Nathan. Theodore Roosevelt: A Life. New York: Morrow, 1992. Morris, Edmund. Theodore Rex. New York: Random House, 2001.

SUCCESS Religion underlay much of nineteenth-century success literature, just as it infused American political discourse and thought. Early-nineteenth-century advice manuals and stories for the young warned of the temptations of worldly-mindedness and material riches, exhibiting a deep ambivalence that reflected the Puritan orientation toward worldly success. As new opportunities for material acquisition arose with the expansion of commerce, industry, transportation networks, markets, and communication, literature turned increasingly toward the world. Embracing worldly success, however, did not mean simply praising economic success and social advancement. The literature dealing with success was engaged in assessing what values and persons deserved to prosper. By the Civil War (1861–1865), sacred and secular rewards were becoming increasingly linked in fiction and sermons. Stories, secular anecdotes, and colorful illustrations were invading the pulpit. Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) was noted for filling his sermons with lively stories. Fiction that used facts, events, and places with which readers would be familiar was

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SUCCESS

now seen as the way to capture the attention of the young and to influence them. The author most closely associated with success literature, “the American dream,” and the celebration of the “self-made” man was Horatio Alger Jr. (1832–1899). The Alger story was not simply secular or materialistic. Alger, a Harvard College and Divinity School graduate, was greatly influenced by his Boston Unitarian heritage. His spirited, optimistic tales were designed to influence the young. One of his heroes meets his mentor only after falling asleep during a boring sermon. The Alger hero had a strong moral compass, was guided by sentiment as an aid to conscience, and took his responsibilities toward other members of society seriously. While Alger later became associated with the rags-toriches formula, in part because his later, more sensational stories of wealth were those most frequently reprinted in the twenty years after his death, his formula more often featured characters who rose to attain comfortable circumstances. Over a hundred of Alger’s juvenile novels appeared as serials or books before the author’s death (some published under pseudonyms), and others were completed over the next decade by Edward L. Stratemeyer (1862–1930), founder of the Stratemeyer Literary Syndicate (1906). The typical Alger story can be read as an allegory of the adolescent republic, where the young person’s rite of passage was vital to the welfare of the community. The character of the young and the character of the republic were inextricably bound. Character formation was possibly the centerpiece of political concern because the viability of the republic depended on virtue, as both the Alger story and many moral guardians and cultural elites of the nineteenth century suggested (Nackenoff, p. 34). Alger never argued that everyone could become rich, nor did he pretend that the rich were necessarily virtuous. Greedy squires, pretentious sons, and the idle rich were constant foils. His heroes almost always encountered rich young men who insisted on what was owed them by virtue of their family station. Wealth and merit were juxtaposed; social distinctions were condemned; the natural was preferred to the artificial; and the author bestowed rewards on the worthy and punishments on the unworthy. Alger attacked even “self-made” men who forgot their roots. The promise was rather that there were predictable paths to middle-class comfort and sometimes more wealth would follow—especially for those with the proper character, which was a kind of capital that did not fluctuate with changes in the labor market. Alger merely asserts that plenty succeed and his hero wants to join them, a sentiment expressed by the hero in Sink or Swim (p. 111). Disparities between rich and poor did A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Title page of Horatio Alger’s novel Ragged Dick. Alger’s heroes invariably gain success through hard work and moral rectitude. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

not disappear, but there were opportunities for social and intergenerational mobility. The American dream was about rising through the ranks—ending up in a better place than one began. And in the justice Alger arranged, this was sometimes accompanied by the rich being brought low—a zero-sum game when the undeserving rich and the deserving poor changed places. The hero of Alger’s Ragged Dick (1867), Richard Hunter, is a plucky young bootblack with a good heart and sense of humor but many bad habits. He is one of the New York street children featured in Alger’s early stories, and like all but a few of his heroes is of unmistakable Anglo-Saxon heritage. A good deed, such as saving a stranger from an accident, often brings the Alger hero to the attention of a benefactor, who then sets the hero on the right path with encouragement, moral example, and a new job. Despite the role of chance in these tales, it is the hero’s worthiness and good character that allow him this new opportunity in life. Striving in the face of adversity and early poverty,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1093

SUCCESS

even the roughest Alger hero has a chance to rise. Alger wrote stories about the vital role that one’s own manly effort, character, and mettle played in economic advancement and saw to it that character would be recognized and rewarded appropriately. Alger heroes help re-create familial relations among strangers, have regard for other deserving people, and believe in charity. They are self-disciplined and hope to succeed, but they do not look out only for themselves. Taking responsibility for one’s character means avoiding temptations and pitfalls that the young encounter in unfamiliar environments. As William Makepeace Thayer (1820–1898) wrote in the early 1890s, “Beware of companions whose moral character is below your own, unless you associate with them only to reform them. Avoid those who depreciate true worth, and speak lightly of the best class of citizens, and sneer at reforms” (n.p.). Alger provides good moral influences for youthful heroes and heroines who are set down in the middle of the city and removed from the positive influences of family and clergy. For girls and very young boys, leaving the city is the best way to avoid its pitfalls; boys such as the hero of Mark, the Match Boy, too young to fend for himself, and young girls such as the heroine of Tattered Tom, find adoptive or long-lost families. Sometimes the boys are provided with older and wiser youth as mentors, roommates, and guides (Moon, pp. 87–110). At a time of orphan trains and the Children’s Aid Society, an occasional hero from the dangerous classes is shipped off from the city to the healthful environment of the farm, such as the illiterate hero of Julius, the Street Boy. Charles Loring Brace’s Newsboys’ Lodging House becomes the means of salvation for some of them in various Alger stories. While Alger’s novels taught boys how to recognize the various pitfalls and confidence games practiced in the urban environment, how to survive, and how to maintain their integrity, some young people the reader meets along the way succumb to temptation and join the class of criminals and paupers. SUCCESS AND ITS RELATION TO PROGRESS

The idea of success was often linked to particular conceptions of progress. Inspired by Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), American Social Darwinists pondered America’s historical evolution. The discourse of social evolution was steeped in certain understandings of race, ethnicity, and class. The evolutionary hierarchy was thought to run from primitive to civilized races. AngloSaxons stood at the top of the evolutionary scale, and women in the more advanced races were considered to be more chaste, intelligent, and refined than those of lower races. Unrestrained, brute male passion was a

1094

A M E R I C A N

marker of primitive races, and higher races protected their women from hard labor. Blacks were “Africans,” regardless of their culture or heritage, as distinguished from “Americans,” namely, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) and Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) collaborated on a pamphlet attacking the Columbia Exposition of 1893 for its failure to incorporate American blacks in the paeans to progress in the White City and for its equation of dark races with Dahomean savages on Chicago’s Midway Plaisance. Where white scholars were prone to use the language of Social Darwinism in arguing for the association of progress and civilization with whites and of barbarism with blacks and the other so-called lesser races—a theme prominently displayed at the 1893 Columbia Exposition—Wells-Barnett inverted that scheme. Lynching was proof that the white race was barbaric and uncivilized. Wells-Barnett and Douglass argued that the United States had shown itself powerless to protect the rights of its own citizens; instead of the rule of law, there was violence and anarchy. Social Darwinism spawned a famous book by the Yale Professor William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883). Sumner (1840– 1910) asked: Does any class in society have the burden and duty to fight the battles of life for any other class or solve its social problems? He argued that individuals have the duty to take care of themselves; unless mankind aggressively takes on the hardships of life, civilization will regress toward barbarism (pp. 59–61, 64, 98). Self-control and self-denial are the price of advancement, and most people do not practice them. Within the same civilization are lower and higher types; civilization did not advance by holding back the best to bring up the least. Therefore, society only harms its own progress by pandering to the weak. Such views were based on the assumption that obstacles were of one’s own making or flowed from innate abilities and proclivities, and that material rewards were readily available. For the preacher and inspirational lecturer Russell H. Conwell (1843–1925), there were “acres of diamonds” available to whomever would see and pick them up. Lecturing over six thousand times between roughly 1875 and 1925, Conwell argued that riches were frequently waiting to be plucked from the ground; one had no right to be poor. It was a young person’s duty to seek wealth, for the one who eschews money says in effect “I do not wish to do any good to my fellowmen” (pp. 11–12). In such essays as “The Gospel of Wealth,” the steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1935– 1919) affirmed the obligation of the upper class to uplift the deserving poor. As civilization advances, so

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SUCCESS

does social differentiation; society pays a price for competition, but great benefits accrue as well. “While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department” (p. 655). The man of wealth is the one best equipped to determine the beneficial uses to which surplus wealth should be put. Charity should be designed “to help those who will help themselves” and to foster self-improvement but should rarely or never do everything for a person (p. 663). Accumulated wealth does no favors to the children of the rich, for they do not learn to rely on themselves or learn the habits of industry. CRITICS AND NAYSAYERS

not remain unchanged. A loss of wealth or of illusions can be linked to a rise in morality and real value. Howells is also interested in the extent to which we are responsible for one another; it seems clear that the fate of his characters is not totally in their own hands. The Minister’s Charge has also been read as a satire targeting Alger’s tendency to rehabilitate young boys from the dangerous classes (Scharnhorst, p. 106). Opportunity in the world of the streets was not available to young women. Generally, women’s aspirations were to be fulfilled in the private sphere, even though more young women were entering the workplace and upper middle-class women were joining women’s organizations and pressing for social reform. Leaving small towns and farms for the city was considered far too dangerous for young girls, who were seen as more likely to be corrupted. There was a need to provide wholesome influences for some of the girls working in the needle trades or garment industries in Chicago, and the largely female settlement workers of Hull-House were attentive to this need. Carrie Meeber in Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900) leaves home to make her way in Chicago in 1889. As Dreiser editorializes:

Critiques of success literature came from various directions. In his stories “Good Little Boy” and “Bad Little Boy” (1875), Mark Twain (1835–1910) lampooned Sunday school fiction along with the notion that rewards are bestowed on those of good character. These tales make patently clear the author’s belief that worldly rewards and punishments are not correlated with worthiness. The good little boy obeys his parents, goes to Sunday school, is scrupulously honest, and finds that no good deed goes unpunished. The bad little boy grows up to kill his wife and children and engages in all manner of rascality, and is universally respected. As more Americans began to read for amusement, moral elites in the late nineteenth century worried that readers were not keeping good company in their reading matter. Fiction that led the young to leave their homes in search of fortune or adventure was perceived as dangerous, and the American Library Association waged war on writers for boys such as Horatio Alger Jr., Oliver Optic, Harry Castlemon, and Edward S. Ellis, along with dime novel authors. Even if their moral values were acceptable, the books gave false ideas of life and made young people discontent with the uneventful and the everyday. Many of these books were purged from public and Sunday school libraries in the last decades of the nineteenth century, spurred on by the Comstock crusades. (In his antivice crusades, Anthony Comstock [1844–1915] successfully pressed for federal legislation against the transportation or delivery of literature or other material judged obscene or immoral.)

Some early-twentieth-century feminists, however, argued that work outside the home was vital to woman’s emancipation and equality. Women, too, needed economic self-sufficiency and fulfillment. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) strongly advocated women’s economic independence and joined the equal rights amendment architect Alice Paul (1885–1977) in pressing this route to women’s equality. Success was partly measured by the extent to which women’s voices, experiences, and values could be brought into the public sphere.

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was among the late-century authors to cast doubt on the materialistic values and impractical aspirations of the era. Self-improvement did not lead to economic rewards but often followed a character’s loss of status or financial resources. In The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) and The Minister’s Charge (1886), the character of those who come to the city in search of success or status does

Gilman was among the feminist writers and activists who developed a stinging critique of materialism, militarism, and the industrial ethic. The diseases of the industrial order were even deemed male diseases. Women were more attentive to the needs of the community and more focused on conserving life. Along with the Hull-House founder Jane Addams (1860–1935), Gilman saw increasing interdependence of individuals in

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. . . . Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of sound, a roar of life, a vast array of human hives, appeal to the astonished senses in equivocal terms. Without a counselor at hand to whisper cautious interpretations, what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear. (P. 2)


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1095

SUCCESS

the modern city and nation. Gilman argued that cooperation had to replace a misguided emphasis on individual responsibility if problems of the modern city were to be successfully addressed. Addams argued that self-centeredness and individualism must yield to social consciousness and concern for others: “Much of our ethical maladjustment in social affairs arises from the fact that we are acting upon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to the larger social relationships to which it is bunglingly applied” (p. 221). Gilman’s utopian novel Herland (1915), features an allfemale society that is nurturant, practical, efficient, cooperative, and peaceful. Criticisms of excessive materialism and the culture of consumption developed alongside the cult of success. The most pointed and prominent of such critics during this period was Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929). Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) attacked individualistic, pecuniary, predatory, businesslike, and warlike activities, in contrast to those that were communitysustaining, industrial, workmanlike, and peaceable. Deploring conspicuous leisure, conspicuous consumption, and the waste of wealth, Veblen found virtue in the “archaic survivals” of conscience, invention, equity, truthfulness, and the instinct for workmanship. Dominant indicators of status and success generally stood in inverse relationship to value. The Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James (1842–1910) was critical of the emphasis on expediency and the absence of idealism or concern for abstract justice in American culture. He wrote H. G. Wells in 1906 that this was “a symptom of the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That—with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success— is our national disease” (p. 260). RACE, CLASS, ETHNICITY, AND SUCCESS

The success that Alger and other authors envisioned was defined against the backdrop of a world that was being rapidly transformed by economic development. Fathers, often dead or weak, were unable to provide for families or protect them from the effects of economic changes. They had no trades, farms, or viable businesses to pass along to their sons; they were not able to help them enter the emerging order. Sons were freed from the land to go to the city to seek their fortunes and supplanted their fathers as breadwinners and providers. There was no success in Alger’s universe without manliness and yet industrial work, corruption, and corporate practices were threatening the capacity to maintain independence. Production of the self was what made someone a man or conferred moral personhood. As power and control shifted away from individuals, a clear, class-based tension emerged in Gilded Age fiction. For

1096

A M E R I C A N

genteel moralists such as Alger, industrial wageworkers were dependent on employers, had lost control over their activities, performed simple and undifferentiated tasks, found themselves unemployed when times were hard, lost the capacity to exercise their own judgment, and were often interchangeable in the workplace with women and children. Since the factory did not illustrate Alger’s principle that through application, hard work, cheerfulness, loyalty to one’s employer, and honesty, any boy could hope to be noticed for his effort and advance, Alger’s heroes needed to be saved from factory work. Not all success authors agreed. Thayer, whose illustrated advice manual Success and Its Achievers (1891) was sold door-to-door by subscription in the early 1890s, thought there were opportunities to rise in the factory as well and related the story of a young man who rose through the ranks in a straw hat factory. Alger sent a copy of Thayer’s book to at least one young friend. With the rise of the dime novel, however, new working-class symbols of potency and manhood were created. Working-class heroes created by Frederick Whittaker (1838–1889) such as John Armstrong, Mechanic (1886) and Larry Locke (1886) were participants in a battle to retain control over the meaning of masculinity in the Gilded Age. They were virile and simple and engaged in occasional acts of physical violence. In an era that often saw violent industrial battles, “unionization represent[ed] a historically significant possibility for shifting the material bases of power and control. It also offer[ed] real possibilities for reconceptualizing masculinity as solidarity and mutuality rather than individual self-agency” (Catano, p. 13). This literature often maintained a tension between expectations of individual agency and opportunities for collective action in the industrial setting. An acute focus on manhood—a veritable crisis of masculinity—appeared in middle-class publications near the turn of the twentieth century. There was a perceived need to redefine manly power in the context of real forces, both economic and social, that threatened traditional understandings of this power. Men sought to reinvent their image in the new processes of economic production, distribution, and exchange; they rethought their potency and humanity in relation to machines. In his novels, Frank Norris (1870–1902) considered issues of manhood and success in the new era. Norris meted out justice to those who failed to struggle against the brute within and sought to prove that “undoing follows hard upon unrighteousness” (Responsibilities, p. 28). Self-restraint and hard work are important virtues in his novels. Hoarding, valuing money for its own sake, gambling, and speculation all interfere with real and natural values; the rush to get rich quickly rather than agreeing “to wait, to be

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SUCCESS

“Aspirations.” Illustration from William Makepeace Thayer’s Success and Its Achievers, 1891.

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY/RARE

BOOKS DEPARTMENT, COURTESY OF THE TRUSTEES

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1097

SUCCESS

patient, to achieve by legitimate plodding” tends to be punished (Octopus, p. 298). For Norris, gamblers and speculators were antisocial because they added no value to the community. Participating in nativist and antiSemitic narratives about who is responsible for greed and exploitation, Norris casts Polish Jews and other characters in skullcaps in unsavory roles. Especially in McTeague (1899), Norris links fate to race and ethnicity. The mixed-breed and animal-like inhabitants of Polk Street are of new immigrant stock; despite the good in McTeague, there ran in his veins “the foul stream of hereditary evil, like a sewer. . . . The evil of an entire race flowed in his veins” (McTeague, p. 19). Those capable of the discipline to transcend the brute within tend not to come from such stock. Norris also grappled with the question of the payoff for integrity and effort in the era of “the new order of things” (Octopus, p. 399). His poet-observer, Presley, declares after many of the central characters have been shot down: “They [our task-masters] swindle a nation of a hundred million and call it Financiering; they levy a blackmail and call it Commerce; they corrupt a legislature and call it Politics; they bribe a judge and call it Law; they hire blacklegs to carry out their plans and call it Organisation; they prostitute the honour of a State and call it Competition” (Octopus, p. 551). Failure is associated with the loss of some part of one’s character, while manly protagonists are aligned with instinct, action, and agency as they attempt to do battle with chance and the forces of nature. Nevertheless, it is not obvious that real men will be successful in these battles. In addition, Norris’s real men are domesticated by women and come to value connection to others. African American writers were only too aware of the institutional, structural, and attitudinal barriers to their participation in the American dream—barriers that only grew more formidable when Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow legislation segregated blacks and whites. For some writers, self-help meant vocational education and moral rehabilitation; recognition and acceptance would come as African Americans took responsibility for improving the race. The self-help route to respectability was considered universal. For Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), writing nearly half a century after the Civil War, it was appropriate that ignorant and inexperienced people begin at the bottom, prosper through the dignity of common labor, and receive privileges in proportion to their contribution to the overall prosperity of the nation (pp. 59, 60, 63). Some middle-class African American women writers accepted white feminist arguments that it was women’s mission to uplift and civilize the men of the race because they were mothers and had a distinctive

1098

A M E R I C A N

feminine perspective. Anna Julia Cooper (1858– 1964), the author of the novel A Voice from the South (1892), argued that if higher education were encouraged among women, they would be able to convey their mercy and truth to the world, allowing different and complementary sides of the truth to be heard (pp. 57–60). The African American activist Frances E. W. Harper (1825– 1911) claimed that character had to be built. Even if enfranchised women could make special contributions to the good of mankind and the glory of God, Harper did not “believe in unrestricted and universal suffrage for either men or women” but instead “in moral and educational tests” (p. 40). In this, she seems to have had an ally in the Harvard-educated activist and writer W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909). For Du Bois, success for the race would come through the leadership of classically educated elites. Slavery and prejudice had caused degradation, and there was much self-reformation to accomplish. Nevertheless, all honorable people in the twentieth century should assure “that in the future competition of races the survival of the fittest shall mean the triumph of the good, the beautiful, and the true” (p. 188). Efforts to purge the voting rolls of the ignorant and of paupers and criminals might indeed be legitimate, but Du Bois saw clearly that these southern efforts had been aimed only at the disenfranchisement of blacks (pp. 197–198). African Americans must insist on their rights. The thinking classes among African Americans are “absolutely certain that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them; that the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves; that, on the contrary, Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season, that voting is necessary to modern manhood, that color discrimination is barbarism, and that black boys need education as well as white boys” (p. 91). African Americans had unique contributions to make and needed the opportunity to make them. Race, class, gender, and ethnicity all figure as backdrops in defining success. Manhood, independence, character, and agency were central to the meaning of success. Those defined as successful participated in the vitality and energy of the emerging order without losing their souls, finding ways to hold onto the values that connected them to an earlier era. Critics of the cult of success were sure that values were being inverted and perverted in an overly individualistic, materialistic age. Even those who, like Gilman and Du Bois, believed that women or African Americans had distinct values and

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

SUCCESS

abilities to contribute to the world insisted that they not be shut out from its opportunities.

Alger, Horatio, Jr. Sink or Swim; or, Harry Raymond’s Resolve. Boston: Loring, 1870.

CONCLUSION

Carnegie, Andrew. “Wealth.” North American Review 148 (June 1889): 653–664.

By the early years of the twentieth century, it had become much harder to maintain that one was or could be self-made. Fewer individuals worked for themselves and more worked behind desks or retail counters or on assembly lines. With the rise of the administrative state in the Progressive Era, many worked in public administration. In large-scale corporate enterprises or in bureaucratic organizations where there was a considerable distance between employer and employee, it was not easy to assert that character would be rewarded. Success stories left two legacies for American political and social thought. The more conservative was the argument that success was the individual’s responsibility. One could pull oneself up by the bootstraps; self-help was imperative and would yield rewards. It required good habits and self-control and produced good character and success far better than did handouts. So long as one could point to individuals who had risen through the ranks, success was available to anyone. While individuals or organizations might lend a helping hand to the deserving, government intervention was unwise and usually unproductive. The market was a just allocator because it would reward good character and worth. The other legacy was allied more with the social ethic of the progressive tradition and with the rise of the social welfare state. Social progress was possible only if all people had the means to develop their abilities and talents. In this sense, success was a collective responsibility. There was a positive role for the state in ensuring that disadvantages did not become permanent and insurmountable. Markets needed direction and correction. There was a collective, public responsibility to make sure that opportunities—including opportunities for higher education, which was becoming essential—were available to all. For supporters of both arguments, opportunities for material advancement remained vital to the meaning of America. See also Poverty; Self-Help Manuals; Social Darwinism; The Theory of the Leisure Class; Wealth BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics. 1902. Edited by Anne Firor Scott. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964. Alger, Horatio, Jr. Ragged Dick. Boston: Loring, 1868.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Conwell, Russell Herman. Acres of Diamonds. 1873. Philadelphia: Winston, 1959. Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice from the South. 1892. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. 1900. New York: Modern Library, 1917. Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. New York: New American Library, 1969. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. 1915. New York: Pantheon, 1979. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Home, Its Work and Influence. 1903. New York: Source Book Press, 1970. Harper, Frances E. W. “Woman’s Political Future.” In Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought, edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall, pp. 40–42. New York: New Press, 1995. Howells, William Dean. The Minister’s Charge. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1886. Howells, William Dean. The Rise of Silas Lapham. 1885. New York: Modern Library, 1951. James, William. Letter to H. G. Wells, 11 September 1906. In The Letters of William James, 2 vols., edited by Henry James, 2:260. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920. Norris, Frank. McTeague: A Story of San Francisco. 1899. Edited by Donald Pizer. New York: Norton, 1977. Norris, Frank. The Octopus: A Story of California. 1901. New York: Penguin, 1986. Norris, Frank. The Responsibilities of the Novelist. 1903. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Doran, 1928. Sumner, William Graham. What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. 1883. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1952. Thayer, William Makepeace. Success and Its Achievers. Boston: A.M. Thayer, 1891. Twain, Mark. “Story of the Bad Little Boy.” 1875. In Sketches, New and Old, foreword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, introduction by Lee Smith, and afterword by Sherwood Cummings, pp. 51–55. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Twain, Mark. “Story of the Good Little Boy.” 1875. In Sketches, New and Old, foreword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, introduction by Lee Smith, and afterword by Sherwood Cummings, pp. 56–61. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class. 1899. New York: New American Library, 1953.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1099

SUCCESS

Washington, Booker T. 1895. “Atlanta Exposition Address.” In What Country Have I? Political Writings by Black Americans, edited by Herbert J. Storing, pp. 58–62. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970.

Secondary Works

Washington, Booker T. 1896. “Our New Citizen.” Address delivered before the Hamilton Club, Chicago, Illinois, 31 January 1896. In What Country Have I? Political Writings by Black Americans, edited by Herbert J. Storing, pp. 62–65. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970.

Catano, James V. Ragged Dicks: Masculinity, Steel, and the Rhetoric of the Self-Made Man. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.

Wells, Ida B., and Frederick Douglass. The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbia Exposition. 1893. Edited by Robert W. Rydell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Whittaker, Frederick. John Armstrong, Mechanic. Beadle’s Dime Library 378 (20 January 1886). Whittaker, Frederick. Larry Locke, the Man of Iron. Beadle’s Dime Library 412 (15 September 1886).

1100

A M E R I C A N

Block, James E. A Nation of Agents: The American Path to a Modern Self and Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Moon, Michael. “‘The Gentle Boy from the Dangerous Classes’: Pederasty, Domesticity, and Capitalism in Horatio Alger.” Representations 19 (summer 1987): 87–110. Nackenoff, Carol. The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Scharnhorst, Gary, with Jack Bales. The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

H I S T O R Y

Carol Nackenoff

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

T

TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS

When Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?) published Tales of Soldiers and Civilians in 1892, he took the literary world by surprise and instantly raised the bar for realism. From remote San Francisco, a continent’s width away from the literary center of the United States, came the book. Wherever it reached, critics reacted strongly to it. Not all liked the book—some felt it was too brutal, too gruesome, or too cynical—but almost all respected it and understood that it was exceptional. Most of the nineteen stories it contained shocked readers with vivid depictions not seen since Edgar Allan Poe of human beings pushed by horror and terror to their limits and beyond. Half of the stories recalled the Civil War. These were immediately recognized as the best stories ever written of that war, indeed some of the best stories ever written about any war, and several became instant classics. A Bierce scrapbook of review clippings in the Library of Congress documents that the book quickly spread throughout the English-speaking world. By the late 1890s foreign translations began to appear. One or more of its stories are regularly reprinted in anthologies, and the book is represented today wherever American literature is studied. Authors around the world have appreciated that the stories are so skillfully wrought that they are models worth studying, and an incomplete but impressive list of obvious or probable indebtednesses can easily be compiled. The influence of Bierce on other writers of fiction began in his own times and continues. George Washington Cable borrowed an incident from the story “Chickamauga” in

his 1894 novel John March, Southerner. Stephen Crane and, to a lesser extent, Frank Norris and Jack London accepted Bierce as a new standard of realism and branched off from the trail Bierce had blazed. It is possible that William Dean Howells’s famous story “Editha” (1905) owes something to Bierce’s “Killed at Resaca.” In Japan, Ryunosuke Akutagawa wrote “In a Grove” and “Rashomon,” two of his best stories, in the mode of Bierce. Both Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (1935) and William Golding’s novel Pincher Martin (1956) have echoes of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” and Bierce also influenced Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar. But the author of this notable collection was, in his own lifetime, and has remained until now one of American literature’s most controversial and least understood writers. There are several likely reasons for this. One is that Bierce is a “loner” in that his works do not fit conveniently into critical pigeonholes. Another is that the austere but audacious personality he cultivated made him a legend. He was famous—or notorious—for a weekly column of commentaries on people and events that was often written in elegant and witty but corrosive irony or vituperation. His targets appear to be many: government, organized religion, the masses, capitalism, socialism, anarchism, utopianism, feminism, democracy, as well as personalities in the news. This extreme variety makes him seem a curmudgeonly iconoclast to whom nothing was sacred, but his real targets in each one of those categories are the same: fools, rogues, and what he perceived as error or deception. He was fearless in his attacks, and in an age when journalists might be called upon to back themselves with

1101

TA L E S O F S O L D I E R S A N D C I V I L I A N S

It is an unusual fact that although the Civil War was America’s most convulsive event in the nineteenth century and sucked into its furious maelstrom the cream of American manhood between the late teens and middle age, no first-rank author fought in it. Of those authors who did serve in the military, Bierce is the best and the one with the most extensive experience. He fought in many battles from April 1861 to January 1865, when he was discharged because of wounds, and rose in rank from private to lieutenant. The war shocked and horrified Bierce and left him with terrible memories that haunted him for the rest of his life. Insofar as these experiences were incorporated into his fiction, Vincent Starrett astutely observed in Buried Caesars: Essays in Literary Appreciation that Bierce’s tales about war should more accurately be considered antiwar stories.

Ambrose Bierce. THE GRANGER COLLECTION, NEW YORK

fists or guns, his reputation as a dead shot restrained potential intimidators. Many anecdotes have survived that depict him as a cynic, and The Devil’s Dictionary, his collection of wittily irreverent definitions, has reinforced this impression. But the most probable reason for his reputation is the stories themselves. In the way they confront gruesome realities fully and with unsparing honesty, their surface levels are, characteristically, so shocking and dazzling that few critics have gotten beyond them, and most have consequently addressed only the surface features of plot and characterization. In addition, the stories are often narrated with an ironic tone, which is often mistakenly assumed to be that of the author and not the narrator. Because of this, while the stories are generally conceded to be skillfully written, Bierce is often described as “bitter” or “mocking” or “heartless.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. RESPONSE TO WAR

As the title indicates, there are two groups of stories in the book: those about soldiers and those about civilians. But the authorial philosophy that underlies both groups originated in Bierce’s participation in the Civil War.

1102

A M E R I C A N

Bierce lost in the war whatever religious faith he had and rejected any belief that life or nature was benevolent. After the war, he searched for a formal philosophy that could make sense out of what he had experienced. He never found one that fully satisfied him, but classical Stoicism came closest, and he adopted the Stoic doctrine of vivere est militare, to live is to be a soldier. If war is the true state of life, he reasoned, then it makes most sense to become a soldier, that is, one who understands that life is deadly and who learns how to fight. All will eventually lose the fight, but the civilian, that is, the unprepared or inept, will be most likely to die needlessly early. The two groups of stories in the book, therefore, represent not social roles so much as two mental orientations: those who are disciplined to fight and those who are not. For Bierce, humanity’s most valuable weapon in the battle of life is reason. Without it, an individual has little hope of surviving, but the possession of it does not guarantee survival. Nor, for that matter, is survival necessarily an end it itself. To his credit, Bierce was honest enough to recognize that life is more complicated than his philosophy; that sometimes the civilian is lucky and that sometimes the soldier is in an impossible situation; and that reason can neither account for nor equal other goods, such as love, bravery, virtue, or happiness. Underlying most of Bierce’s work is a basic compassion for humanity. He does not criticize individuals for being victims of circumstances beyond their control. Tragedy, in his stories, occurs when an innocent individual’s best is not good enough and when reason becomes a liability. The stories in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians examine the limitations as well as possibilities of reason and assess how well or poorly it serves both civilian and soldier types. All of the stories in Tales were first published in San Francisco periodicals. With one exception (“A Holy

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


FROM “THE SUITABLE SURROUNDINGS” Colston here puts Marsh to the test. He questions Marsh’s courage and dares him to read a ghost story under conditions that are favorable to the superstitious fears the story will evoke. “The Suitable Surroundings” will demonstrate how human nature can turn reason into a liability.

Colston turned suddenly and looked him squarely in the eyes as they walked. “You would not dare—you have not the courage,” he said. He emphasized the words with a contemptuous gesture. “You are brave enough to read me in a street car, but—in a deserted house—alone—in the forest—at night! Bah! I have a manuscript in my pocket that would kill you.” Bierce, “The Suitable Surroundings,” in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, p. 235.

Terror,” which appeared in the Wasp in 1882), the stories were written for the San Francisco Examiner, which employed Bierce in 1887. He occasionally substituted these stories for his regular feature column, “Prattle,” which usually appeared once a week on the Sunday editorial page. The stories received immediate acclaim, and E. L. G. Steele, a San Francisco businessman and friend, offered to publish them. Bierce gratefully accepted the offer. The book was copyrighted around September 1891 but not manufactured and distributed until 1892. Despite the book’s dedication, which begins “Denied existence by the chief publishing houses of the country, this book owes itself to Mr. E. L. G. Steele, merchant, of this city,” there is considerable doubt about the extent of Bierce’s efforts to publish the book, especially since three of the stories first appeared in 1891. By 1891 Bierce had been publishing fiction for over twenty years. Almost all of it is thoughtful and at least technically competent, much of it is good, and some of it is surprisingly good. The early fiction tends to be quite short—“sketches” would be an accurate description—and it is apparent that Bierce began early to experiment with pushing the envelope of form and with finding distinctive themes he intended to pursue. He entered upon what may be called his mature period in the middle 1880s, and all the stories in Tales A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

of Soldiers and Civilians date from this time. Ideas and memories that had been percolating in his mind since his war years at last ripened and coalesced and impelled him to express them in an intense burst of composition. If he wrote quickly, however, the skills he learned over the previous twenty years ensured that he wrote well. Even so, he was a perfectionist and edited the stories he collected for Tales. As a result, there are some significant differences between the periodical and book versions of the same stories. He continued, in fact, to make stylistic changes in the stories when subsequent editions of them came out, even as late as the Collected Works edition he prepared between 1909 and 1912. In general, his editing resulted in improvement, and a study of those editorial changes provides an interesting record of the growth of his mind and art. “OWL CREEK” AS A HOAX

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is an excellent example of how information from the editorial process can assist in interpretation. “Owl Creek” is definitely the most well known of the stories in Tales, and from its enduring popularity and frequent reprintings, it may justly be regarded as one of world literature’s classic stories. Anticipating the zoom lens, the story zooms from a distant perspective into the mind of the protagonist and thereafter switches almost undetectably between the protagonist’s thoughts and the omniscient narrator’s comments. The tale requires extremely close attention to language and careful reflection, for it is aimed directly at the reader. Almost everyone who reads the story is caught up by what appears to be its surprise ending, the realization that its last section was the hallucination of a hanging man. Insofar as readers identify with that man, Peyton Farquhar, they feel an uncomfortably close encounter with death. The story is a complex and subtle hoax in which Bierce allows Farquhar and sympathetic readers to conspire to put themselves in an untenable position. Most readers regard Farquhar as the story’s tragic hero, a patriotic Southerner who was tricked into a fatal trap. But Farquhar is more of a fool and hypocrite than a hero, is patriotic only in his mind, and is solely responsible for putting his neck in the noose. Only a few sentences in the story are actually complimentary of Farquhar, and they describe his facial features and his family. Most of what we learn of him is negative, although not obtrusively so. Ominously, we are told early that “he was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit.” “Habit” (“dress” in the Examiner version), of course, refers to his accustomed actions and inclinations as well as his clothes.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1103


The truth is that Farquhar acts and thinks like a civilian, and his fatal mistake is to play at being a soldier against real soldiers. Although he regards himself a patriot, he did not join the Confederate forces, even when the South was in dire need of every able-bodied man. He helped incite the war but sat it out on a rustic bench on his lawn, speciously rationalizing his inactivity. When a “grey-clad soldier” rides up to his home one evening, Farquhar suddenly conceives the notion of sabotaging the Owl Creek Bridge. The text shows that the soldier only answers truthfully questions that Farquhar puts to him, questions which reveal Farquhar’s plan to the Union soldier, for the soldier is a Federal disguised as a Confederate, a professional example of what Farquhar amateurishly intends to be. Farquhar foolishly undertakes a military mission in a civilian habit. He plans to kill an unsuspecting sentry and burn the bridge but fundamentally overestimates his abilities and underestimates the enemy’s. When he is caught and about to be hanged, his mind desperately conceives of an escape scenario. It is implausible, but in the fraction of a second of consciousness that is left him after his neck is broken, his mind tries to spin it out, adjusting a fantasy to physical symptoms of hanging. Ultimately, Farquhar gets what he deserved: for inciting the war, for evading military service, for being an “assassin” and attempting sabotage, and for thinking that war is a game to whose rules he is superior. The revised ending of the story is grim enough, but the last sentence of the Examiner version criticizes Farquhar with overt irony in a long phrase deleted from the book version: “Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body with a broken neck and suspended by as stout a rope as ever rewarded the zeal of a civilian patriot in war-time, swung gently” (italics added). Bierce’s compassion in “Owl Creek” is not for Farquhar, but for the reader, who can learn from the story that romantic fantasies can be fatal in wartime. THE LIMITS OF REASON

Bierce’s compassion is more direct in other war tales. In “Chickamauga,” for example, a deaf and mute child playing at soldier is caught in a rout of wounded and dying soldiers, and, with them, in a forest fire kindled by the battle of Chickamauga. He of course does not hear the battle sounds, and he is too young to fully comprehend what he sees. The handicapped child and the retreating invalids are alike victims of nature and of war. In “A Son of the Gods,” a heroic scout attempts to save his fellow soldiers from ambush by bravely risking his life to reveal where the enemy is hiding. He is almost successful, but the sight of him being shot down so inflames his comrades that they rush from their cover and charge—and are needlessly killed. Ironically, the scout’s brave self sacrifice has the opposite of its intended effect.

1104

A M E R I C A N

An example of Farquhar’s self-deceiving claptrap. Although it sounds impressive, it is specious reasoning that is impossibly loaded with qualifications and fallacious assumptions. Up to the present, he has rendered the South no service at all, but other men fight the war he had helped cause. What he is contemplating is a villainous but foolish sneak attack that underestimates his enemy’s abilities and overestimates his own.

No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war. Bierce, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians p. 27.

In “A Horseman in the Sky,” the impending Civil War splits a Virginia family. The father joins the Confederacy, the son the Union. Later in the war, the son on sentry duty spots a Confederate horseman on a cliff observing an exposed Union force. The sentry draws a bead on the horseman, only to realize it is his father. In the split second he has to make a decision, he recalls his father’s parting admonition to do his duty, and the son obeys. But he lowers his rifle slightly to shoot the horse, which leaps with his father into space. The merciful gesture dooms his father, but it is all the son can do, and it suggests a civil war within the son that allows for no victory; reason only intensifies his anguish. “The Affair at Coulter’s Notch” puts Union artillery captain Coulter, from the South, under the command of a malicious and imperious general. Coulter is ordered to shell what he knows to be his own home, with his wife and child inside, and he cannot refuse the command. Again, there can be no victory for Captain Coulter. There is evidence that this story was adapted by Bierce from a story about the Franco-Prussian War that was reprinted in the Examiner. This therefore uncouples Bierce from a dependence on personal experience and shows him capable of developing his themes more imaginatively. The stories about civilians also show reason in opposition to human nature. In “The Suitable Surroundings,” a man proud of his rationalism takes a dare from a friend to read a frightening manuscript alone at night in a haunted house. The situation, plus some unexpected

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

TA R Z A N O F T H E A P E S

coincidences, frightens him to death. Reason, in short, is shown to be of limited efficacy; in this case it augments superstition. “The Man and the Snake” displays what M. E. Grenander in Ambrose Bierce called “ironical terror,” a situation in which reason leads a character to misplace apprehension and make it worse. “Haïta the Shepherd” is a paradoxical parable whose point is that happiness is such a great good that a man would be wise to forfeit his wisdom to get it. Subsequent editions of Bierce’s work added stories to both the soldier and civilian categories, but the original edition remains the core of his fame and encapsulates the philosophy he ambivalently held at the time of its composition. Not all of the stories in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians are Bierce’s best, and not all of his best stories are in Tales, but on the whole the book is outstanding and it nevertheless established Bierce as a brilliantly original author and an American classic. See also Century Magazine; Civil War Memoirs; Realism; Violence BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Bierce, Ambrose. A Much Misunderstood Man: Selected Letters of Ambrose Bierce. Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2003. Bierce, Ambrose. Skepticism and Dissent: Selected Journalism, 1898–1901. Edited by Lawrence I. Berkove. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1986. Bierce, Ambrose. A Sole Survivor: Bits of Autobiography. Edited by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998. Bierce, Ambrose. Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. San Francisco: E. L. G. Steele, 1891. Secondary Works

Berkove, Lawrence I. A Prescription for Adversity: The Moral Art of Ambrose Bierce. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002. Gale, Robert L. An Ambrose Bierce Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. Grenander, M. E. Ambrose Bierce. New York: Twayne, 1971. Joshi, S. T., and David E. Schultz. Ambrose Bierce: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. Logan, F. J. “The Wry Seriousness of ‘Owl Creek Bridge.’” American Literary Realism 1870–1910 10 (1977): 101–113. McWilliams, Carey. Ambrose Bierce: A Biography. N.p.: Archon Books, 1967.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Owens, David M. “Bierce and Biography: The Location of Owl Creek Bridge.” American Literary Realism 1870– 1910 26 (1994): 82–89. Starrett, Vincent. Buried Caesars: Essays in Literary Appreciation. Chicago: Covici-McGee, 1923. Wilt, Napier. “Ambrose Bierce and the Civil War.” American Literature 1 (1929): 260–285. Lawrence I. Berkove

TARZAN OF THE APES When Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) submitted the story “Tarzan of the Apes: A Romance of the Jungle” to the pulp magazine All-Story in 1912, he was desperately lacking money and confidence. At that time Burroughs was an inexperienced fiction writer struggling to support his wife and two small children. Burroughs had graduated from Michigan Military Academy, had failed entrance examinations to West Point, was discharged from the army due to a heart murmur, and was rejected as a volunteer for Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War. He then failed as a storekeeper; worked in his father’s battery company; served as a railroad policeman; dredged for gold in Idaho; and sold lightbulbs, patent medicines, and salesmanship courses. While checking ads for pencil sharpeners that he had placed in pulp magazines, Burroughs began reading the fiction published there and decided that he could write just as badly and more entertainingly. In October 1912 “Tarzan of the Apes” appeared in All-Story. Fan letters poured in, and Tarzan was published in book form in June 1914. Escape was a prime ingredient of Tarzan’s appeal. Readers living in an increasingly dehumanizing and regimented world could live vicariously through this English lord who solved problems instantly with muscles and a knife. As Roderick Nash and Gary Topping have noted, books such as Tarzan became popular at a particular time in U.S. history. In 1893 the historian Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932) wrote his influential essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Turner’s essay centered on data from the 1890 census that suggested that the American frontier no longer existed. Turner asserted that the wilderness had fashioned those who lived among it into an American prototype—hardy, independent, resourceful, self-reliant, democratic. Without the frontier, America was still a man’s world, but it was a world that entrapped and emasculated the man. The option of escaping into the wilderness, such as was available to James Fenimore


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1105


Cover illustration for the 1912 publication of Tarzan of the Apes in All-Story magazine. E. R. BURROUGHS, INC. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION

Cooper’s fictional character Natty Bumppo and Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, was lost to history. The American Adam was dead, the Garden of Eden subdivided. Topping suggests that one manner by which Americans attempted to compensate for this loss of frontier was to re-create it in popular fiction, and he identifies Tarzan as a prime example. Indeed, Burroughs creates the ultimate frontier, as Tarzan is orphaned at age one on a deserted jungle coast and is raised by a female ape. Through crude naturalism, Burroughs also recreates the corollary identity of the ideal man; however, this identity and its role in the world are troubling constructs built upon Social Darwinism, colonialism, racism, and gender selection. Nature and heredity provide Tarzan the physical, mental, and moral powers necessary to dominate. Nurtured beyond the realm of corruption and mechanization, Tarzan by age ten “was fully as strong as the average man of thirty, and far more agile than the most practiced athlete ever becomes” (Burroughs, p. 40).

1106

A M E R I C A N

His genetics act as an evolutionary sieve through which only superior traits filter, and he evolves from ape to aristocrat in one generation, complete with noble brow, well-shaped head, and majesty of carriage. Heredity is responsible for Tarzan’s natural attraction to the artifacts of civilization left behind by his dead father, his desire to read and write, and his ability to do both with no knowledge of phonetics. Heredity also accounts for his English bravery, the chivalry he displays to Jane, his affinity for upper-class whites, and his refusal to eat human flesh. In the end, these naturalistic forces create an individual who could serve as the ideal fantasy self for American males who were increasingly fettered and controlled by the demands of the modern world. Even though Tarzan is a physically superior human, he cannot match the brute strength of the apes and is viewed by them as an inferior being. Yet Tarzan’s genetics make him lord of any society in which he is placed by providing him the bravery and reasoning to apply such technologies as his lasso and hunting knife. A pivotal scene in which he socially ascends is during the apes’ “Dum-Dum” ritual. The tribe gathers to celebrate their killing of a member of a rival tribe, and they pound drums, dance, and devour the corpse of their foe. During this feast Kala, Tarzan’s ape mother, is viciously attacked by Tublat, Tarzan’s ape father, and Tarzan intervenes to protect her. Tublat is a giant bull ape, and Tarzan is still a boy. But Tarzan is not a passive recipient of technology, for he has made the knife part of his person by creating a sheath like one pictured in his father’s books. Tarzan kills Tublat, and the Dum-Dum ritual suddenly serves as Tarzan’s initiation ceremony. While battling Tublat, Tarzan exhibits the viciousness and bravery the tribe had gathered to celebrate, and by killing Tublat, Tarzan earns the acceptance and respect of the apes. Tarzan takes a significant step here toward humanness—he must become an ape to become a man. He is also now symbolically poised to become human, for he has vanquished the ape father so that his lineage to a human father can later be established. Tarzan’s social ascent may be read as an allegory asserting that the upper classes of white civilization are capable of being perfected and that they have an inherent right to colonize other societies. Soon after validating himself as a member of the ape tribe, Tarzan encounters the black Africans through whom he will demonstrate his superiority among humans. Described with the conventional racist rhetoric of Burroughs’s era, these blacks are shown to be not only Tarzan’s inferiors but also to be his absolute others. To create an idealized self, such as Tarzan, a totally abhorrent other must be created—and these blacks are everything Tarzan is not. They are identified by their kinky

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


hair, bulging eyes, protruding lips, large noses, and ebony darkness, and this caricatured exterior is used to signify their darker interiors as they are immediately shown to be violent and cowardly as they kill Kala and flee from the vengeful Tarzan. At the plot level, the killing of Kala provides Tarzan a righteous motive for slaughtering the blacks; however, as a cultural act, this killing reinforces their otherness. Tarzan, as a symbol of perfected white civilization, must have no biological link to this tribe of darkness. Burroughs’s description of the blacks’ physical appearance make it almost inconceivable that they are humanly related to Tarzan, and their killing of Kala disallows any connection to Tarzan through the tribe of apes. Tarzan performs the ultimate act of domination and colonization by lynching the warriors responsible for Kala’s death. He then colonizes the blacks further by haunting their village. He plays pranks on them and steals their weapons, prompting them to worship this unseen, yet white, visitor as a forest god. Tarzan’s reaction to the blacks is a frightening reflection of the violence perpetrated against African Americans. His lynching of the warriors calls to mind similar attacks in the southern United States, which had increased sharply in the early decades of the twentieth century. Yet perhaps an equally insidious example of racism is the depiction of Jane’s servant, Esmeralda. This character becomes the stereotypical “mammy” figure depicted in countless works of minstrelsy when she is introduced as a huge black woman dressed in bright colors and fearfully staring at the jungle with large, rolling eyes. She is condescendingly cast as the devoted servant who has “earned” the trust of the whites she serves, and she is intended to be a source of comedy with her exaggerated dialect and animated fear. Yet even with these examples it is difficult to discover Burroughs’s true views on race. In Tarzan, Burroughs points out that the blacks had entered the jungle to escape the abuse of white soldiers, and in his poem “The Black Man’s Burden” (c. 1898) Burroughs condemns white culture for its abuse of the African race; however, these egalitarian views are placed aside throughout most of Tarzan. Tarzan’s entrance into Western civilization allows him to make his final evolutionary strides. In a matter of weeks after his first contact with whites, Tarzan speaks French and English, acquires the dress and manners of an English gentleman, and learns to drive a car. This rapid evolution was due in part to Tarzan’s natural aversion to lower-class whites and their influence; for example, he immediately recognizes the inferiority of the mutineers abandoning Jane and her companions on the beach of his jungle. His evolution also involves the establishment of his superiority over Jane. In their A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

first face-to-face encounter, he rescues her from Terkoz, a bull ape who was planning to make Jane the mother of his own tribe. As Tarzan slays Terkoz, Jane is shown helplessly and sexually pressing herself against the phallic form of a tree with her bosom heaving in excitement. Tarzan carries Jane into the middle of the jungle, where her dependence upon him becomes absolute. She is placed in a protected but dependent position as he brings her fruit, builds her a hut, gives her his knife to hold while she sleeps, and stations himself outside the door of the hut. In this scene the giving of the phallic knife emphasizes that his role as her protector is a sacrificial role—he relinquishes the symbol of his gender superiority for her welfare. Jane is reduced to a dependent object that provides the man with the identity of sacrificing protector. Another stride in Tarzan’s social evolution is his dominance over white males. While in the jungle he rescues several civilized whites from the beasts and cannibals. After entering civilization, he defeats a giant, drunken black man with one blow, wins a bet of ten thousand francs by killing a lion with only a rope and a knife, rescues Jane from a forest fire when all other men proved ineffectual at saving her, and lifts an unscrupulous suitor of Jane’s by the throat to convince him to release Jane from a promise of marriage. Tarzan makes his final stride when it is confirmed that he is Lord Greystoke. Although he chooses not to capitalize upon this fact in the conclusion of the novel, it provides him an identity to reveal at will. Burroughs and Tarzan have been largely ignored by scholars; however, an increasing number of social critics are recognizing that popular literature’s mass appeal makes it a relevant source of cultural expression. In his essay “The Tarzan Theme” (1932) Burroughs observed that Tarzan was popular because he provided wish fulfillment and escape by allowing readers to turn from the complexities and demands of modern society. Burroughs maintained that such entertainment was the sole intent of his fiction, and he added that he found it almost impossible to take his Tarzan stories seriously and that he hoped no one else would. Unfortunately, as Tarzan illustrates, writings that have been dismissed as harmless entertainment may have been potent forces by which minorities, women, and entire cultures were stigmatized and marginalized. See also Darwinism; Genteel Tradition BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Work

Burroughs, Edgar Rice. Tarzan of the Apes. 1914. New York: TOR (Tom Doherty Associates), 1999.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1107

TEMPERANCE

Secondary Works

Berglund, Jeff. “Write, Right, White, Rite: Literacy, Imperialism, Race, and Cannibalism in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes.” Studies in Fiction 27, no. 1 (1999): 53–76. Esscoe, Gabe. Tarzan of the Movies: A Pictorial History of More Than Fifty Years of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Legendary Hero. New York: Citadel Press, 1968. Fenton, Robert W. The Big Swingers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967. Heins, Henry Hardy. A Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs. West Kingston, R.I.: D. M. Grant, 1964. Holtsmark, Erling B. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Holtsmark, Erling B. Tarzan and Tradition: Classical Myth in Popular Literature. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. Lupoff, Richard A. Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure. New York: Ace Books, 1968. Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. 3rd ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982. Porges, Irwin. Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1975. Taliaferro, John. Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Creator of Tarzan. New York: Scribners, 1999. Topping, Gary. “The Pastoral Ideal in Popular American Literature: Zane Grey and Edgar Rice Burroughs.” Rendezvous: Idaho State University Journal of Arts and Letters 7, no. 2 (fall 1977): 11–25. Utz, Richard J., ed. Investigating the Unliterary: Six Essays on Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes.” Regensburg, Germany: Verlag Ulrich Martzinek, 1995. Phillip Howerton

TECHNOLOGY See Science and Technology

TEMPERANCE Since the founding of the thirteen colonies, the robust consumption and at times equally vigorous regulation of alcohol have coexisted in uneasy tension. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries alcohol was served at nearly every occasion and workers regularly drank

1108

A M E R I C A N

beer or wine while on the job. Benjamin Franklin, for example, writes in his Autobiography (1771) that his coworkers relied on an alehouse boy to bring them beer several times a day because they believed that strong beer led to a strong body. Founders of early towns often erected the church and tavern first, suggesting townsfolk’s equal devotion to the Spirit and spirits. Scholars estimate that in 1830, the average U.S. citizen drank an astonishing 7 gallons of alcohol per year; in comparison, statistics from 1985 suggest Americans drink 2.6 gallons per person annually (Lender and Marin, p. 95). Such a reduction in alcohol consumption certainly owes much to the technological innovation of drinking-water purification (beer and wine offered a more hygienic option than untreated water). But the temperance movement, with its moral suasion techniques and legal ramifications, also helped convince people to put down the bottle. The temperance crusade expanded in the early-nineteenthcentury United States and swept through the country as a result of the nation’s long history of overindulgence in alcohol. The drive eventually led to the twentiethcentury national ban on the liquor trade and helped shape American identity as anti-liquor reformers strove to make self-control and public virtue issues of national concern. Temperance workers’ arguments were many: that inebriation enslaved the body and will as perniciously as did the slave trade, that alcoholism caused men to lose their jobs and impoverish their families, that too much drink degraded one’s health, and that drunkenness indicated a sinful life. With its emphasis on restriction and control of the self, the temperance movement appeared traditional and conservative compared to the liberal and progressive campaigns of suffrage and abolition. Whereas temperance advocated the retraction of rights, the suffrage and abolition efforts championed the expansion of rights. Nonetheless, the women’s movement stemmed from the organizational skills that women honed in their temperance work. Susan B. Anthony, a foundational member of the women’s suffrage movement, began as a temperance worker; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another pivotal early suffragist, wrote the temperance story “Henry Neil and His Mother” (1849–1850). Anthony, Stanton, and others argued that women needed the ballot in order to defeat the bottle. LITERARY IMAGES AND USES OF ALCOHOL

Because alcoholism and efforts to combat it have been so pervasive in American culture, the images and passions associated with both intoxication and sobriety

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

TEMPERANCE

have appealed to numerous writers. Authors have used drink to structure plots, to signal character types, to embellish a theme, to teach a lesson, and to espouse a cause. The American Temperance Union, an organization devoted to the dry cause, recognized the capability of temperance fiction to disseminate anti-alcohol propaganda to large numbers of readers. In 1836 members voted to endorse the use of such literature, especially didactic tracts, to spread its message. By 1865 the National Temperance Society had become a publisher of temperance fiction, which assured it a public voice in the fight against intemperance. Much, although certainly not all, antebellum temperance fiction enjoyed success by adhering to a formula: a country boy who moves to the city in search of work and excitement, or a struggling or unemployed father, tastes alcohol for the first time and slides down the slippery slope to drunken degradation, poverty, and death. Such a formula ingrained U.S. literature with anti-liquor imagery. Often didactic, and sometimes intolerably so, temperance literature exhorted the values of a dry republic and denounced the lifestyle of the drunkard. In contrast to the twentieth-century conception of alcoholism as a disease, nineteenth-century temperance stories understood inebriation as a sign of moral weakness and the drinker as the bearer of a moral defect. Temperance literature tried to identify and expose the ills of alcohol and convince drinkers to turn to a life of prosperous and virtuous sobriety. Such moralistic messages tried to influence the behavior of droves of unmarried men who moved to the cities in search of work. These young men generally lived away from rectifying home environments, in boardinghouses that, without a mother figure to monitor the men’s behavior, were thought to lead to a gradual loosening of morals. Transient and unsupervised young men thus found themselves susceptible to the big-city temptations, both sexual and alcoholic, of saloons, bars, musical drinking houses, and brothels. Drinking became linked to masturbation since both were considered nonproductive, wasteful, excessive, and indulgent behaviors. THE RISE OF TEMPERANCE FICTION

The decades between 1835 and 1860, commonly known as the American Renaissance, produced two temperance best-sellers, George Cheever’s The True History of Deacon Giles’ Distillery (1835) and Timothy Shay Arthur’s Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1854). Many other authors wrote works that thematized alcohol: Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a popular satiric temperance tale, “A Rill from the Town Pump” (1835), Edgar A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Allan Poe chillingly described alcohol’s depraved powers in “The Black Cat” (1843) and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846), and temperance imagery made its way into various major works of the period, including Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852), Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World (1850), Emily Dickinson’s poems, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life (1845), and William Wells Brown’s Clotel (1853). As well, Walt Whitman wrote formulaic temperance pieces: “Young Grimes” (1840), “Wild Frank’s Return” (1841), “The Child and the Profligate” (1841), “Reuben’s Last Wish” (1842), and Franklin Evans (1842). According to David S. Reynolds, U.S. reformers strategically used what Reynolds terms conventional, sensational, and legalistic discourses to combat intemperance. Conventional discourse, typified by some novels and by some of the sermons of evangelical preachers like Lyman Beecher, featured relatively tame liquor imagery and emphasized the moral and physical rewards of abstinence. Stressing a medical model, Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote about drink’s ill effects on the mind and body. Sensational discourse, according to Reynolds, stemmed from the eighteenth century and was greatly intensified by the Washingtonians, a group of exdrunkards who regularly held “experience meetings” in the 1840s in which they revealed the details of their depraved lives before their conversion to abstinence. Their violent and lurid descriptions of alcohol’s ravages and domestic violence and their titillating confessions provided a fertile source of literary themes and images. People eagerly read and listened to the degeneracy and wickedness they supposedly protested; Whitman’s Franklin Evans exemplifies Washingtonian temperance discourse. Legalistic discourse dominated after the Civil War. Such discourse can be associated with the prohibitionist movement, which produced a series of state laws banning the sale of alcohol, laws that presaged the advent of national prohibition with the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919. The prohibitionary rhetoric of temperance literature aligned it with conservative moral reformist efforts, such as the male purity movement, that sought to limit individuals’ actions. It is also important to consider that many popular temperance authors did not write about alcohol at all. That is, abstinence from alcohol did not constitute the whole of the temperance movement. Temperance women, concerned that their men and boys might someday become drinkers, advocated sobriety and a vision of society in which all members engaged


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1109

TEMPERANCE

in productive, healthful activity. Drinkers were not welcome in fictional worlds that imagined a range of useful opportunities and occupations available to all citizens. A glance through collections of temperance tales, similar to gift books in the 1840s and 1850s, reveals many positive and moralistic stories that portray fulfilling lives free from any references to drink. Temperance collections of stories, poems, and essays demonstrate the value of being temperate in all appetites and the moral benefits to society and the self that result from general sobriety. POST–CIVIL WAR TEMPERANCE LITERATURE

If the temperance movement burned strongly in the antebellum years, it cooled during the Civil War as energies were otherwise occupied with sectional and national issues. Many taverns and saloons took advantage of the distraction and opened unlicensed establishments governed by few restrictions. After the Civil War the temperance crusade became one of innumerable efforts responding to the growth of an urban-industrial America. In many ways the movement was dominated by the issue of prohibition. In 1870 Ohio passed the Adair Law, which granted wives and children of alcoholic men the right to bring suit against saloon owners to recover damages. From 1870 to the 1919 passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, writers used alcoholic themes in various ways: to offer both social satire and social critique, to explore autobiographically their own inner demons, to elevate African Americans’ status, to highlight the modernist sense of alienation, and to contrast a wet Europe to a dry United States. The years 1873 and 1874 witnessed what came to be known as the Women’s Crusades, in which housewives led pray-ins in saloons and successfully drove alcohol out of 250 communities in three months. In the summer of 1874 many women held organizational meetings at Chautauqua Institution in New York State; the following November, in Cleveland, they founded the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) with Annie Wittenmyer as president. Under the leadership of Frances E. Willard and her “Do Everything” campaign, in the 1880s the WCTU became the largest and most important women’s organization. It is still active today. One particular member of the WCTU colorfully directed her own crusade. Carry A. Nation, inspired by her own religious vision, led groups of hatchetbearing women into saloons to smash the symbol of male domination and exclusion. Her “hatchetation” career galvanized the country’s attention even as it landed her in jail over thirty times from coast to coast.

1110

A M E R I C A N

Advertising poster for Carrie Nation. Nation adopted a sensationalistic approach to temperance that led other advocates to distance themselves from her. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Carry Nation founded and published two newspapers, Smasher’s Mail and The Hatchet, and helped found The Home Defender. Yet because of her reputation as a crazy religious fanatic and overly brazen woman, neither religious groups nor the WCTU itself claimed her as their own.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

TEMPERANCE

WOMEN TEMPERANCE FICTION WRITERS

Although the female alcoholic remained largely invisible in temperance literature, alcoholism was very much a woman’s concern: beholden to her husband, a woman’s security depended on having a sober and responsible spouse. Tavern culture lured intemperate husbands away from domesticity and emptied their pockets of the money their wives needed to run a home. Numerous temperance stories, many written by women, contrast the ruin and loneliness of the drunkard’s family with the bliss and strength of the temperate man’s family. Temperance fiction allowed women the socially sanctioned space to explore such sensitive women’s issues as a husband’s infidelity, physical abuse, victimization, and social, legal, and economic injustice. In addition, such fiction established women writers as important bearers of moral culture; the popularity of their titles made them a force to be reckoned with in the literary marketplace. The temperance lecturer John B. Gough strongly believed in women’s power of moral suasion and wrote in his book Platform Echoes (1885) that “Many and many a man has been saved by waking to the consciousness that some tender-hearted, pure woman felt some sympathy for him and some interest in him, though he was debased and degraded” (p. 530). Most nineteenth-century women’s temperance fiction was written in the 1840s and 1850s, but the founding of the WCTU in 1874 renewed interest in the genre. For example, the National Temperance Society and Publication House published many popular works, including Mary Dwinell Chellis’s Wealth and Wine (1874) and Our Homes (1881) and Julia Perkins Ballard’s The Hole in the Bag (1872). Other popular postbellum fiction includes Marietta Holley’s Sweet Cicely (1885), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s Jack the Fisherman (1887), Louisa May Alcott’s Silver Pitchers; and Independence, a Centennial Love Story (1876) and her “Good Templars” (1908). In Alcott’s best-known work, Little Women (1868), she hints at her interest in the temperance cause and develops it further in her other adventures of the March sisters (Jo’s Boys, 1886, and Rose in Bloom, 1876). Whereas many nineteenth-century romance novels end with the heroine’s future blissfully secured by a happy match, temperance fiction often begins with a poor match and details the downward spiral. Nina Baym thus claims a generic difference between woman’s fiction and temperance fiction: “In striking contrast to woman’s fiction, which frequently uses the motif of the drunkard, the temperance novel stresses, as it must, the failure or inadequacy of feminine moral influence to solve this problem. Many women sacrifice themselves and exert influence to no avail. A temperance A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

novel must show woman’s power as insufficient because its purpose is to get temperance legislation passed. Were feminine power all that was needed, the ‘Maine Laws’ would not be required” (p. 267). WOMEN TEMPERANCE POETS

Although women’s temperance fiction dominated the popular imagination, many female writers also wrote anti-alcohol poetry. Lydia Sigourney (1791–1865), one of the nineteenth century’s most prolific poets, protested alcohol abuse in verse. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911) parlayed her temperance activism into meter and rhyme from the 1850s on; her numerous postbellum drink-related poems include the 1886 poems “Signing the Pledge,” “Save the Boys,” and “Nothing and Something” and the 1889 poem “The Fatal Pledge.” Seldom is her message vague; Harper explicitly linked drink to sin and degradation. Another great nineteenth-century poet, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), also drew heavily upon popular temperance imagery. In such poems as “I bring an unaccustomed wine” (c. 1859, first published 1891), “We—Bee and I—live by the quaffing—” (1861, first published 1929), “A Drunkard cannot meet a Cork” (c. 1884, first published 1945), and “The Ditch is dear to the Drunken man” (c. 1885, first published 1945), Dickinson does not advocate sobriety, nor does she condemn inebriation. Rather, she uses images of drinking and drunkenness as metaphors to explore such phenomena as her own relationship to nature and transcendence. Perhaps her most famous poem that uses temperance imagery is “I taste a liquor never brewed—.” In the poem the speaker boasts of her ability to consume huge quantities of alcohol, but the alcohol seems to be spiritual since it is not actually brewed. Instead the poet uses alcoholic imagery to celebrate the intoxicating nature of everyday existence. She literally gets high on life. The poem uses many standard drink-related terms such as “quaffing,” “hock,” “ale,” “burgundy,” “wines,” “drunk,” “pledges” (a reference to the temperance pledge of abstinence), “flagons,” and so on, but the terms are used to describe the natural occasion of bees consuming nectar. Thus Dickinson converts potentially dark and degrading images into a celebration of life. IMMIGRATION AND NATURALISM

The influx of immigrant populations to the United States, especially in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, affected the representation of alcohol. Many European immigrants flooded to the United States from the late 1860s through the early 1900s, with each ethnic group bringing its own drinking culture. After


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1111

TEMPERANCE

In this exuberant poem, the poet celebrates life by converting sensual, immoral drunken imagery into ecstatic, life-affirming moments. The playful, irreverent ending suggests that even heavenly angels approve of the comic narrator who, without drinking alcohol, is drunk on life itself.

novel L’Assommoir (1877), which portrays the bars and abuse of absinthe that contribute to the grinding poverty of the laundress Gervaise. Crane’s novel Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893) clearly links alcohol to slum conditions, abusive families, and prostitution. In keeping with the genre of naturalism, Maggie suggests that certain environmental and social conditions contribute to the abuse of alcohol. Crane was undoubtedly influenced by Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890), which used the new technology of flash photography to document the lives and working conditions of the poor. Both of Crane’s parents fervently advocated temperance; his mother was a WCTU leader and his father, a Methodist minister, published The Arts of Intoxication in 1870, one year before young Stephen was born. Crane continued his interest in the abuse of alcohol in George’s Mother (1896), and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (1898) as well as “The Blue Hotel.” In “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” a parody of westerns, drinking seems to ward off the threat of feminization brought on by marriage. When drunk, Scratchy attempts to “woo” Potter away from his bride through their fraternal gunfighting ritual, which matrimony threatens to destroy. In “The Blue Hotel,” Scully hides whiskey, perhaps suggesting that the hotel’s blue color indicates it is a temperance inn, and the Swede’s excessive drinking leads to his death.

the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, when the United States annexed California and its grape culture, the California wine industry boomed. If antebellum temperance efforts were directed at the native-born citizenry, the postbellum anti-alcohol movement became infused with anti-immigrant agitation against, for example, the Irish Catholic who generally drank quite heavily. For a literary illustration, we can turn to Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel” (1898), which singles out the Swede as the heavy drinker whose erroneous beliefs and drunken behavior lead to his death. The work of Stephen Crane (1871–1900) is often assigned to the literary genre of naturalism, a genre particularly suited to exploring the role and effects of alcohol. Naturalism, perhaps a more pessimistic form of realism, can be thought of as a literary form influenced by scientific principles of objectivity, the determining factors of heredity, the forces of the environment, and the perception of a universe indifferent to human fate. The French naturalist writer Émile Zola greatly influenced U.S. writers, especially with his

1112

A M E R I C A N

TWAIN’S PARODY OF TEMPERANCE FICTION

Whereas Dickinson’s play with temperance imagery stands in contrast to the vast majority of authors who wrote earnestly about alcohol, Mark Twain (1835– 1910) viewed the anti-alcohol movement with skepticism and deliberately satirized it. For example, in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), Pap’s drunken abuse of Huck is real and painful. But Twain spoofs the effectiveness of moral suasion in the scene where Judge Thatcher speaks to Pap about the virtues of sobriety. Seemingly moved by the judge’s insistence on sobriety, Pap consequently swears the temperance pledge: “Then the old man he signed a pledge—made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that” (p. 30). However, Twain subverts the effectiveness of moral suasion and lampoons the power of a pledge to keep drunkards away from alcohol by showing Pap getting viciously drunk only hours later: “Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night sometime he got powerful thirsty and clumb out onto the porchroof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

TEMPERANCE

In Westerns, the saloon figures prominently in the daily life of colorful residents and drifters. Here, the drummer (a traveling salesman) serves as a stand-in for the reader as an outsider unfamiliar with Scratchy Wilson’s ritual of getting drunk and going on a guntoting rampage. In the Weary Gentleman saloon the drinkers both find out about the danger posed by Scratchy and take refuge.

The drummer’s was interrupted by a young man who suddenly appeared in the open door. He cried: “Scratchy Wilson’s drunk, and has turned loose with both hands.” The two Mexicans at once set down their glasses and faded out of the rear entrance of the saloon. The drummer, innocent and jocular, answered, “All right, old man. S’pose he has? Come in and have a drink, anyhow.” But the information had made such an obvious cleft in every skull in the room that the drummer was obliged to see its importance. All had become instantly solemn. “Say,” said he, mystified, “what is this?” . . . “It means, my friend,” he answered, as he came into the saloon, “that for the next two hours this town won’t be a health resort.” Crane, “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” p. 396.

for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places” (p. 30). Twain also satirizes a temperance meeting in Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) where members of the town’s rum party invite Siamese twins, one of whom does not drink, to attend a meeting. To shouts of “Wet them down! Wet them down! Give them a drink!” (p. 68) one of the conjoined twins imbibes while the other refuses. Insults are exchanged, especially regarding the twin who abstains, and mayhem ensues. AFRICAN AMERICAN TEMPERANCE FICTION

Black Americans linked temperance to social acceptance, believing that sobriety and self-control could open the door to economic opportunity. The white working class resented blacks who worked for lower wages. The black temperance movement, which successfully organized, A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

motivated, and elevated its members, threatened white economic dominance even further. Frances Harper, in addition to being a prolific poet, novelist, and orator, battled racism in the WCTU, eventually serving in segregated colored chapters. She held office in the Pennsylvania WCTU in 1876 and the National Superintendent of Work among Colored People for the national WCTU by 1883. Credited with being the first published African American short story, Harper’s “The Two Offers” appeared in the Anglo-African in 1859 and is a temperance tale. “The Two Offers” presents the dilemma of Laura Lagrange, an heiress who receives two requests for her hand in marriage. Her poor cousin, Janette Alston, advises Laura to refuse both men on the grounds that it is better to remain an old maid than to marry a man simply because he makes a good offer. Laura heedlessly marries a drunkard whose lack of affection drives her to an early grave. Janette prevails into old age as a single woman. Harper is best known for her 1892 novel Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted, a novel set in the Reconstruction South that addresses racial politics and some temperance issues. But her novel Sowing and Reaping (serialized in the Christian Recorder in 1876–1877) more explicitly treats the anti-liquor cause. Heavily didactic, the novel focuses on two cousins, Belle Gordon and Jeanette Roland. Belle is courted by the wealthy Charles Romaine but refuses him because she disdains his drinking habit. Instead she marries the poorer but temperate Paul Clifford and happily works with him for the temperance cause. Jeanette marries Charles Romaine, who leads her into a life of misery and eventual widowhood because of his inebriation.

THE RISE OF MODERNISM

The turn of the century marked the rise of modernism, a genre that also accommodated themes of alcohol. In sketchy terms, modernism refers to a movement in art, architecture, and literature generally characterized by a deliberate break with previous forms of expression. Themes of alcohol and alcohol abuse reinforce such characteristics of modernist writing as postwar disillusionment, cynicism, despair, and spiritual malaise— themes that would later find expression in the works of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In John Barleycorn (1913) Jack London (1876– 1916) presents the personal history of his battle with the demon rum, not unlike the way members of Alcoholics Anonymous tell their personal stories at group meetings today. By personifying malt liquor in the title of his memoir, London signals the importance of alcohol to his identity. London also writes about alcohol’s


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1113

T H E AT E R

influence on his literary skills and on his conception of masculinity, which often hinges on one’s ability to drink great quantities. As a modern piece of writing, John Barleycorn uses alcohol to chronicle despair, express a heightened self-consciousness, and explore doubt about the capacity of language to convey truth. The Eighteenth Amendment in favor of Prohibition was the quickest of any amendment to pass the vote, and the United States became a constitutionally dry nation as of January 1920. Individuals had to surrender their right to drink in order to benefit what was perceived to be the good of all. In John Barleycorn, London writes that he voted for women’s suffrage because “When the women get the ballot, they will vote for prohibition. . . . It is the wives, and sisters, and mothers, and they only, who will drive the nails into the coffin of John Barleycorn” (p. 2). The dry victory turned out to last only thirteen years, however, for in 1933 the Twenty-first Amendment overturned the Eighteenth. See also Addiction; Maggie, A Girl of the Streets; McTeague; Reform


Crane, Stephen. The Portable Stephen Crane. Edited, with an introduction and notes, by Joseph Katz. New York: Penguin, 1977. Dickinson, Emily. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Edited by Ralph W. Franklin. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. Gough, John B. Platform Echoes. Hartford, Conn.: A. D. Worthington & Co., 1885. London, Jack. John Barleycorn. 1913. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1885. New York: Signet, 2002. Twain, Mark. Pudd’nhead Wilson. 1894. New York: Signet, 1994. Secondary Works

Baym, Nina. Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and About Women in America, 1820–70. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Clark, Norman H. Deliver Us from Evil. New York: Norton, 1976. Crowley, John W. The White Logic: Alcoholism and Gender in American Modernist Writing. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. Gusfield, Joseph. Symbolic Crusade. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963.

1114

A M E R I C A N

Reynolds, David S., and Debra J. Rosenthal, eds. The Serpent in the Cup: Temperance in American Literature. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. Rorabaugh, W. J. The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Warner, Nicholas. Spirits of America: Intoxication in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Debra J. Rosenthal

THEATER American theater between 1870 and 1920 falls into two distinct but overlapping periods. The last third of the nineteenth century is characterized by an America of booming growth in numbers, size, and commercial activity, and all of those factors affected the theater. As a result theatrical activity exploded, with touring companies taking productions to every city and hamlet. For the most part, American plays continued to hew to a melodramatic format. The first two decades of the twentieth century, by contrast, find American theater searching for new directions, finding inspiration in European models, and taking steps toward international acclaim and influence. POST–CIVIL WAR THEATRICAL CONDITIONS

After the Civil War the United States experienced enormous population growth. In addition, people were moving to the cities, further concentrating the population centers. The country grew in size, as well, with eleven states added between 1870 and 1912. The settling of the western territories turned the public’s attention in that direction, and many plays during the period focused on frontier action, thus developing uniquely American characters and themes. Despite the expanded map, in many ways America seemed to become smaller and more tightly knit as advances in communication and transportation made the populace more immediately aware of what was occurring in other parts of the land. The first transcontinental telegraph line, completed in 1861, drew the east and west coasts together, dramatically increasing the speed of news reporting and business transactions. Other innovations such as faster and larger presses contributed to the popularity and significance of newspapers. Advertising, reviews, and news reports publicized the theater while theatrical trade journals such as the New York Dramatic Mirror disseminated professional information and promoted the business activities of theater.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

T H E AT E R

NOTED ACTORS AND FAMOUS ROLES The following list gives the names of some of the best-known performers of late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century American theater in addition to the role, the play, and the year of the first performance for which the performer was most famous.

Maude Adams (1872–1953). Peter Pan. Peter Pan (1905) Margaret Anglin (1876–1958). Ruth Jordan. The Great Divide (1906) Ethel Barrymore (1879–1959). Madame Trentoni. Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901) Lionel Barrymore (1878–1954). Milt Shanks. The Copperhead (1918) Blanche Bates (1873–1941). Cho-Cho-San. Madame Butterfly (1900)

PRODUCER-DIRECTORS

Edwin Booth (1833–1893). Hamlet. Hamlet. (1865) Leslie Carter (1862–1937). Maryland Calvert. The Heart of Maryland (1895) George M. Cohan (1878–1942). Johnny Jones. Little Johnny Jones (1904) William H. Crane (1845–1928). Senator Hannibal Rivers. The Senator (1890) Minnie Maddern Fiske (1864–1932). Cynthia Carslake. The New York Idea (1906) William Gillette (1853–1937). Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes (1899) Ned Harrigan (1845–1911). Dan Mulligan. The Mulligan Guard Ball (1879) Joseph Jefferson III (1829–1905). Rip Van Winkle. Rip Van Winkle (1865) Julia Marlowe (1866–1950). Barbara Frietchie. Barbara Frietchie (1899) Frank Mayo (1839–1896). Davy Crockett. Davy Crockett (1872) James O’Neill (1846–1920). Edmond Dantès. The Count of Monte Cristo (1883) Annie Pixley (1855–1893). M’liss. M’liss, Child of the Sierras (1878) Annie Russell (1864–1936). Major Barbara. Major Barbara (1905) Otis Skinner (1858–1942). Hajj. Kismet (1911) Denman Thompson (1833–1911). Joshua Whitcomb. The Old Homestead (1886)

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

The importance of railroads to late-nineteenthcentury troupers can hardly be overemphasized. The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, and by the end of the century nearly 200,000 miles of track crisscrossed the land. Ease of transportation changed the way theater was produced: instead of touring stars arriving in town to play with resident companies of actors, as was the norm before the war, postwar theater saw the emergence of “combinations” in which whole productions toured from city to city. The postwar economic boom put discretionary money into the pockets of prospective patrons, which allowed them to take advantage of entertainment opportunities, including not only plays but also lavish circuses and Wild West shows. Another factor that contributed to the flowering of theatrical entertainment was a rapidly changing moral climate. America’s postwar, cosmopolitan attitude accepted entertainment as a valid and worthwhile pursuit, a distinct change from the puritanical, prewar moral code. Two trends that moved together in the last third of the nineteenth century were the emergence of the dominant producer-director, who frequently wrote plays as well, and advances in realism in theatrical production. One of the first of the influential managers was Augustin Daly (1838–1899), who first gained prominence with the melodrama Under the Gaslight (1867), which featured a hero bound to a railroad track, rescued by a plucky heroine. Among his ninetyplus plays, usually written in collaboration with his brother Joseph, were Horizon (1871), which utilized Bret Harte–like characters in a western setting and helped to fashion a vogue for plays set on the frontier, and Divorce (1871), a social comedy based on the impending divorces of two sisters and the shenanigans of a conniving divorce lawyer. Actor-playwright William Gillette (1853–1937) is best known for three plays: Held by the Enemy (1886) involved a sinister spy story set during the Civil War, Secret Service (1895) employed a similar suspenseful situation, and Sherlock Holmes (1899) adapted the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle to create a tense detective drama. Gillette, who played the lead role in most of his plays, incorporated lengthy descriptions of the set and the stage business in his scripts to emphasize realistic detail. A multitalented man of the theater, Steele MacKaye (1842–1894) was a playwright, actor, architect, inventor, and theatrical visionary. His most famous play was Hazel Kirke (1880), an unconventional but extremely popular domestic drama in which Hazel, after a falling out with her father, attempts suicide.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1115

T H E AT E R

The actor, playwright, and producer Ned Harrigan (1845–1911) composed farcical comedies set in the teeming melting pot of New York City. Harrigan’s plays, in which he played the leads—in tandem with Tony Hart, who enacted women’s roles—featured the antics of Dan Mulligan and his Irish friends. Comedies such as The Mulligan Guard (1873), The Mulligan Guard Ball (1879), and The Mulligan Guard Nominee (1880) threw the Irishmen into humorous conflict with the Germans, Italians, Chinese, and African Americans who shared the lower- and middle-class city landscape. At their best, Harrigan’s plays provided a uniquely American comedy, with caricatures based on direct observation of New York life. Perhaps no one is better known for stage realism than David Belasco (1853–1931), who wrote some seventy plays—often in collaboration with other authors— and produced numerous others. Among his most famous works are Madame Butterfly (1900), the touching story of an innocent Japanese woman deserted by her American lover, and The Girl of the Golden West (1905), which paired Minnie, a feisty bartender in a frontier mining town, with her outlaw lover, Ramerrez. Both plays were adapted to opera by Giacomo Puccini. Other important Belasco works include The Heart of Maryland (1895), in which the heroine saves her lover by preventing a curfew bell from ringing, and Zaza (1898), the tale of a saucy music-hall singer. Successful as they were, by the turn of the century Belasco’s plays were regarded as old-fashioned because of their reliance on melodramatic devices. As a result, Belasco is primarily remembered for his realistic staging techniques and for his sophisticated lighting. Two brothers, Charles and Daniel Frohman, were among the most powerful theatrical producers of the time. Daniel (1851–1940) produced fashionable plays in New York from 1880 until his retirement in 1909. He implemented a system of road companies to tour major cities while the original hit was still playing in New York. His brother, Charles (1860–1915), who produced Bronson Howard’s huge hit, Shenandoah, in 1888, was perhaps even more successful. In 1896 he joined with five other men to form the Theatrical Syndicate, a monopoly that exercised control over writers, performers, and theater managers throughout the country. The syndicate proved enormously efficient and profitable until outmaneuvered by the Shubert brothers—Sam S. (1877?–1905), Lee (1875–1953), and Jacob J. (1879–1963). The Shuberts began producing shows in New York in 1900, and by 1916 they had become the most dominant theatrical producers in America, with several theaters in New York and over a hundred more throughout the country under their ownership or control.

1116

A M E R I C A N

Advertising poster for Bronson Howard’s play The Greater Shenandoah, 1894. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

POPULAR MELODRAMA

Between 1870 and 1920 the movement from formulaic melodrama to more realistic presentations is apparent. Early writers followed the lead of Irish-born Dion Boucicault (1820–1890), a master of melodramatic convention, who was still composing plays such as The O’Dowd (1873), in which an estranged father and son both sacrifice to restore their relationship, and The Shaughraun (1874), which features the daring escapades of an Irish hero. In a similar melodramatic vein lay the plays of Bartley Campbell (1843–1888), perhaps the most popular American playwright of the early 1880s. Campbell was especially noted for his flowery, sentimental dialogue, exemplified by his most famous line, spoken by the distraught heroine of The White Slave (1881) as she refuses the villain’s immoral proposition: “Rags are royal raiment when worn for virtue’s

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

T H E AT E R

sake, and rather a hoe in my hands than self contempt in my heart” (p. 227). Campbell also had success with My Partner (1879), a quintessential mining-camp play that owed much to the writings of Bret Harte. Another prolific playwright at the end of the nineteenth century was Owen Davis (1874–1956), who wrote more than a hundred melodramas beginning with Through the Breakers in 1899. After The Family Cupboard in 1913, however, Davis switched styles, abandoning melodrama in favor of a more modern, realistic mode; his 1923 play, Icebound, depicting the disillusionment of a New England family, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Bronson Howard (1842–1908) is credited as the first author in the United States to make his living as a playwright, and that accomplishment earned him the title “Dean of the American Drama.” Howard was one of the first dramatists to use the expanding world of American business as a backdrop for his plays. In Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882), Howard’s heroine feels deserted by her workaholic husband, and The Henrietta (1887) cleverly mixes the business and familial rivalries of a stockbroker father and his two aspiring sons. Some of Howard’s nearly twenty plays were social comedies, such as One of Our Girls (1885), which dramatized differences between French and American women as they looked to become engaged, and Saratoga (1870), whose hero falls into farcical adventures with four women, against the backdrop of a fancy resort. Howard’s most popular and financially rewarding play, however, was Shenandoah (1888). Moving from Charleston at the start of the Civil War to the Shenandoah Valley later in the campaign, Howard skillfully employs the backdrop of the war to follow the fortunes of lovers whose devotion is complicated by sectional allegiances. Although he showed little concern for drama as literature, Howard helped to raise the stature of the playwright by founding the American Dramatists Club (1891) and by advocating better copyright protection for dramatic work. MELODRAMA AND REALISM

The popular melodrama of the late nineteenth century depended on conventional moral standards or ideals— that all mothers should love their children and vice versa, for example, or that all marriages are good and should last. Melodrama employs sentimental dialogue, stock characters, and exciting actions—for example the hero about to be sawn in half in Daly’s The Red Scarf (1868)—which stretch the bounds of logic in order to reinforce the conventional moral world. Realism in theater, on the other hand, emphasized life as it actually existed. Sets and lighting mimicked the real world, A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

aiming at photographic precision; social problems were addressed with unflinching candor; character, language, and behavior were based on an emerging understanding of human psychology rather than on moral guidelines of right and wrong. Hence, in James A. Herne’s Margaret Fleming (1890), the title character refuses to take back her philandering husband. ADVOCATES FOR REALISM

Numerous writers labored to break free of the constraints of melodrama and create a more realistic drama. The leader is this development was William Dean Howells (1837–1920), a novelist, critic, and author of thirty-six plays, a dozen of which were oneact social comedies involving the intertwined lives of two couples, the Robertses and the Campbells. Howells’s witty dialogue and attention to detail satirized the tradition-bound lives of the protagonists. In The Garroters (1885) Edward Roberts mistakenly strangles old Mr. Bemis, and in Five O’Clock Tea (1887) Willis Campbell woos a young widow. Even more than his plays, which garnered only mild success, Howells’s critical writings were instrumental in championing a new style and earning him the designation “The Father of American Realism.” Expounding his theories in Criticism and Fiction (1891), Howells called for a truthful representation of life. He condemned verse drama, old-fashioned devices such as soliloquies and asides, and contrived action. Howells also insisted that drama was a literary form and should be treated as such. Lauded by Howells, James A. Herne (1839– 1901) made the transition from melodrama to realism in his own writing. His first plays were melodramatic collaborations with David Belasco, such as Hearts of Oak (1879), but his most famous work was the controversial Margaret Fleming. Although not a commercial success, Margaret Fleming signaled an important step forward in realistic character and detail. Like Howells, Herne wrote critically about the drama as a literary form. In “Art for Truth’s Sake in the Drama” (1897), Herne argued that drama had a “higher purpose” (p. 370) than mere entertainment, and he encouraged dramatists to pursue “large truth” and “humanity” (p. 362). MOVEMENT TOWARD REALISM

Many dramatists who followed the precepts of realism espoused by Howells and Herne proved more able in the writing than either of them. That was especially true of Augustus Thomas (1857–1934), whose sixtyplus plays featured carefully elaborated scenes of American life. Two of his major works were set in frontier


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1117

T H E AT E R

areas. In Mizzoura (1893) focuses on a good-hearted sheriff whose love interest rejects his attentions for those of a dashing outlaw. In Arizona (1899) a gallant army officer accepts the blame for a theft he did not commit in order to spare the honor of a rancher’s wife. Other prominent works included The Copperhead (1918), in which Lionel Barrymore achieved stardom as an Illinois farmer posing as a Confederate sympathizer, and The Witching Hour (1907), which explored hypnotism and mental telepathy. Thomas often visited the sites of the action to develop authentic characters and details for the scenery and the story. He also pioneered the use of the dramatic anticlimax. While other authors sought to end an act with a dramatic flourish and a riveting tableau, Thomas preferred to close with his characters’ reactions to a dramatic situation. Thomas had his scripts published as literature, a rather novel idea at the time, made possible by copyright legislation passed in the 1890s. In the first years of the twentieth century, theater managers tried to duplicate the success of Arizona, the largest-grossing play up to that time, by producing other frontier dramas such as Edwin Milton Royle’s The Squaw Man (1905), in which a dutiful Indian maiden kills herself in order to liberate her lover—an English lord—and their son. While The Squaw Man gained popular favor, a much more highly acclaimed frontier play premiered the following year. Written by William Vaughn Moody (1869–1910), The Great Divide (1906) immediately raised the bar for native drama. In its startling first scene Ruth Jordan, confronted by three desperadoes, promises herself to Stephen Ghent, the least undesirable of the trio, if he will protect her from the other two. He does, and Ruth goes off with him, but her puritanical upbringing undermines their attempts to create a real marriage. Moody’s great contribution lay in his ability to infuse his drama with intelligent thematic dimension, contrasting the paralyzing inhibitions of the East with the freedom of expression and fullness of life in the West. Another writer known primarily for one play was Langdon Mitchell (1862–1935). The New York Idea (1906) satirizes love and marriage among the upper crust as one couple renews their affection while a second decides to divorce. Mitchell’s sophisticated dialogue and his rather scandalous comments on marriage and divorce caused some critics to compare him to George Bernard Shaw. A much more prolific writer was Clyde Fitch (1865–1909), who, in his nearly sixty plays, wrote on a wide variety of subjects in an almost equally wide range of styles. Nathan Hale (1898) treated historical material, and The Cowboy and the Lady (1899) told a

1118

A M E R I C A N

western story. Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901) starred Ethel Barrymore in a sprightly comedy, and The Climbers (1901) satirized New York social life. In his best work, Fitch focused on individuals whose social vices bring on serious consequences. Jenny Tillman’s jealousy almost leads to her suicide in The Girl with the Green Eyes (1902), and Becky Warden’s constant lying nearly causes the dissolution of her marriage in The Truth (1906). Though a failure in New York, The Truth played successfully in London and in Europe, gaining Fitch an international reputation. In The City (1909) Fitch suggests that the city environment provides an evil influence on susceptible smalltown innocents, as a father’s infidelity results in tragic consequences for his children. Another play constructed sturdily around the vice of the main character is Eugene Walter’s (1874–1941) The Easiest Way (1908), in which John Madison pledges to marry the free-living and free-loving Laura Murdock when he has enough money, providing Laura ends her relationship with wealthy Willard Brockton. Walter’s examination of Laura’s failure to remain true to John demonstrated both structural skill and psychological insight. Edward Sheldon (1886–1946) helped to nudge American drama toward social realism. His early plays included Salvation Nell (1908), a portrait of a faithful woman amid the rough and tumble world of New York’s roughest precincts. Sheldon’s detailed depiction of the squalid conditions of inner-city life earned critical praise. In The Nigger (1909) Sheldon wrote of a southern governor who learns that his grandmother was a Negro slave—a fact that, if known, would doom his political career—and in The Boss (1911) Sheldon dealt with business and politics as his hero, an Irish American labor leader, confronts the aloof, well-connected pillars of society. Sheldon’s attempts to dramatize the plight of the disadvantaged members of society were unfortunately undermined by his reliance on sentimental plot devices. Rachel Crothers (1878–1958) began her playwriting career with The Three of Us (1906), an unusual frontier play in that it was set in a completely developed western town with all the amenities of civilization. Like almost all her plays, it focuses on a fully realized female character who deals with the world on her own terms. Over the next twenty-five years, Crothers offered a new play almost every season. In A Man’s World (1909), which examines the different standards applied to men and women, the heroine learns that her suitor is the father of her adopted child. He and She (1911)—in which sculptor Ann Herford gives her designs to her sculptor husband in order to

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

T H E AT E R

care for her troubled daughter—explores the sacrifices a working woman is forced to make to support her family. Crothers’s body of work presents a virtual case study of the thoughts and feelings of women in the first third of the twentieth century. FARCE AND SATIRE

As in the serious plays and social comedies, farce and satire in the late nineteenth century also developed a flair for local color and careful detail. Charles Hoyt (1860–1900), a member of the New Hampshire legislature, wrote about small-town politics in a series of madcap farces that anticipate George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. He satirized the temperance movement in A Temperance Town (1892) and lampooned home guard companies in A Milk White Flag (1893). In A Texas Steer (1894) he lambasted Washington politics, as newly elected Texas representative Maverick Brander moves with his family to the big city. Much of Hoyt’s political commentary, like that of Will Rogers, retains a surprisingly modern relevance, and his A Trip to Chinatown (1891) became the longest-running play of the nineteenth century (657 performances) by combining his own clever observations with popular songs and setting them against the appealing backdrop of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Writing a few years after Hoyt, George Ade (1866–1944) continued the same tradition by finding humor in middle America. The College Widow (1904) and Just Out of College (1905) used education and football as the subjects for comedy, while in The County Chairman (1903) a love affair plays out amidst a scandalous small-town political campaign. CIRCUSES AND OUTDOOR SHOWS

The rapid expansion of railroad lines in late-nineteenth-century America made possible the development of large-scale outdoor circuses and extravagant special shows. Phineas T. Barnum (1810–1891) joined up with James A. Bailey (1847–1906) in 1880 to create the three-ring Barnum and Bailey circus, the selfproclaimed “Greatest Show on Earth.” The five Ringling Brothers challenged the supremacy of the Barnum and Bailey circus and eventually bought it out. During their heyday, the circuses brought incredible entertainment to virtually every town and hamlet in the United States. One of the most influential and successful of the huge outdoor extravaganzas was the Wild West show assembled by William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846– 1917). From its inception in 1883 until Cody’s death, the Wild West regaled audiences in America and A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

throughout Europe with its exciting view of frontier events and activities. AMERICAN MUSICAL COMEDY

One of America’s most distinctive theatrical forms— musical comedy—developed during this period after the 1866 production of The Black Crook, a forerunner of the genre with its combination of lavish sets, music, and chorus girls in revealing costumes. Several influences on the American musical were foreign imports. The music in operettas by Jacques Offenbach (1819– 1880) such as La Perichole (1868) enchanted American audiences in the 1870s and 1880s. After the 1879 American debut of HMS Pinafore, the British team of W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842– 1900) emerged as the most prominent and popular writers of operettas. American musical influences at this time included the minstrel show—a pre–Civil War concoction of song, dance, and blackface comedy that continued to be popular throughout the nineteenth century—and a spate of small-scale pieces that featured a wide range of songs and dances assembled around a loose plot and designed to feature skilled performers. One of the most popular of these sprightly confections was The Brook, cobbled together by Nate Salsbury (1846–1902) and his Troubadours in 1879. The early part of the twentieth century continued to demonstrate European influences on the American musical. The Irish-born, German-educated Victor Herbert (1859–1924) regaled audiences with hits such as Babes in Toyland (1903) and Naughty Marietta (1910). Czech-born Franz Lehár (1870–1948) wrote The Merry Widow, which was so popular in New York in 1907 it created a fad for Viennese operetta that lasted until World War I. Revues—variety shows that featured songs, dances, comic routines, and elaborate sets and costumes but with no real plot or story—also gained popularity at this time. Florenz Ziegfeld (1869–1932) produced his first Follies revue in 1907, and he followed that success with several more editions that introduced talents such as “Funny Girl” Fanny Brice (1891–1951) and the humorist Will Rogers (1879– 1935). Just before World War I new talents emphasizing American musical ideas began to emerge in the musical theater field, as Irving Berlin (1888–1989) wrote his first score for the revue Watch Your Step in 1914 and Jerome Kern (1885–1945) wrote scores for a series of small scale musicals including Very Good Eddie (1915). Other threads that contributed to the development of the American musical included the comedies of Harrigan and Hart and the beginnings of vaudeville.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1119

T H E AT E R

American variety shows after the Civil War had become somewhat disreputable, so when Tony Pastor (1837– 1908) opened a New York theater in 1881, he sought to attract a family audience with clean amusements. The combination of singing, dancing, and comic routines proved enormously popular, and soon vaudeville performers had their own theaters and circuits throughout the country. One of the largest and most influential vaudeville circuits was operated by Edward F. Albee (1857–1930) and Benjamin F. Keith (1846–1914). No commentary on the musicals and comedies of the period would be complete without a mention of George M. Cohan (1878–1942). Cohan wrote some fifty plays, many of them musicals. Among the most notable were Little Johnny Jones (1904), which featured his signature song, “Yankee Doodle Dandy;” Forty-five Minutes from Broadway (1905), and Broadway Jones (1912). Cohan used a brassy acting style to create a distinctive American character—a wisecracking, streetsmart city kid. SHAKESPEARE IN AMERICA

Although many new plays emerged during this period, the classics—especially Shakespeare—were always popular. Noted Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth (1833– 1893) retired for a time after his brother, actor John Wilkes Booth, assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865, but he reemerged to great acclaim with his own theater in 1869 and cemented his reputation as the greatest American tragedian of the mid-nineteenth century. Other well known classical actors in the last years of the century included the physically powerful John McCullough (1832–1885), and Laurence Barrett (1838–1891), who was one of the first Americans to emphasize historical accuracy in sets and costumes. Starting in 1882, the British actor and manager Henry Irving (1838–1905) toured numerous Shakespeare plays throughout the United States, and his careful direction and lavish staging had great influence on American production. The early part of the twentieth century was dominated by Richard Mansfield (1854–1907), an American who staged lavish productions of Shakespeare as well as new scripts; Scottishborn Robert Mantell (1854–1928), who continued the older style of passionate declamation; and especially the engaging team of E. H. Sothern (1859– 1933) and Julia Marlowe (1866–1950), who were particularly popular in the comedies.

NON-ENGLISH PERFORMERS

The exploding immigrant population during this period provided a receptive audience for foreign stars

1120

A M E R I C A N

who played in languages other than English. The Italian actor Tomasso Salvini (1829–1916), who made several American tours, enacted Othello in his native tongue while the rest of the cast spoke English. Salvini’s countrywoman, Eleanora Duse (1859–1924), brought her considerable talents to plays such as Camille and Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts in American tours between 1893 and 1924. The great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923) made numerous profitable and influential tours through the United States between 1880 and 1917. America fostered a variety of non-English companies and performers, one of the most significant being the Latvian native Jacob Adler (1855–1926), who produced plays in Yiddish. Adler also fathered several children who followed him into the theater, the most prominent being the actress and teacher Stella Adler (1903–1992).

TWENTIETH-CENTURY INFLUENCES

The turn of the century brought even more foreign influences to the United States. Plays by George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) and Henrik Ibsen (1828– 1906), at first derided by critics as clownish and unpleasant, began to find an understanding audience. The theories and designs of Adolphe Appia (1862– 1928) and Edward Gordon Craig (1872–1966) gained currency, with a new emphasis on light and shadow, platforms, and abstraction. Theater practitioners learned about the work of André Antoine’s (1858–1943) Théâtre Libre in Paris, the Frieie Bühne in Berlin, and the Moscow Art Theater. Dublin’s Abbey Theatre brought productions to New York in 1911, and Austrian Max Reinhardt (1873–1943) staged the seminal Sumurun there in 1912. The Little Theater movement spread the new ideas, and soon cities throughout the country boasted noncommercial community-based groups that prided themselves on performing contemporary work. Included among the more than fifty such groups in existence before 1920 were organizations such as the Cleveland Play House (1916), the Pasadena Playhouse (1918), and New York’s Washington Square Players (1915), forerunner of the Theater Guild. Universities also initiated serious study of theater and of drama as literature. George Pierce Baker (1866– 1935) began offering playwriting courses at Harvard in 1905, and several of America’s budding playwrights honed their skills under Baker’s tutelage, including Philip Barry, Sidney Howard, Eugene O’Neill, and Edward Sheldon. One of the most famous of the Little Theater groups was the Provincetown Players, which first

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

T H E AT E R

In Bound East for Cardiff, Eugene O’Neill, in one of his first plays based on his own seafaring experiences, strives for realism in character and dialogue. He also seeks a kind of poetic statement as the young seaman, Yank, faces death.

The setting is the seaman’s forecastle on a steam ship. YANK, a young American, is dying of an illness and DRISCOLL, a brawny Irishman, is watching over him. YANK: You must’nt take it so hard, Drisc. I was

just thinkin’ it ain’t as bad as people think— dyin’. I ain’t never took much stock in the truck them sky-pilots preach. I ain’t never had religion; but I know whatever it is what comes after it can’t be no worser’n this. I don’t like to leave you, Drisc, but—that’s all. DRISCOLL (with a groan): Lad, lad, don’t be talkin’. YANK: This sailor’s life ain’t much to cry about

leavin’—just one ship after another, hard work, small pay, and bum grub; and when we git into port, just a drunk endin’ up in a fight, and all your money gone, and then ship away again. Never meetin’ no nice people; never gittin outa sailor town, hardly, in any port; travellin’ all over the world and never seein’ none of it; without no one to care whether you’re alive or dead. (With a bitter smile.) There ain’t much in all that that’d make yuh sorry to lose it, Drisc. DRISCOLL (gloomily): It’s a hell av a life, the sea. YANK (musingly): It must be great to stay on dry

land all your life and have a farm with a house of your own with cows and pigs and chickens, way in the middle of the land where you’d never smell the sea or see a ship. It must be great to have a wife, and kids to play with at night after supper when your work was done. It must be great to have a home of your own, Drisc. DRISCOLL (with a great sigh): It must, surely; but

what’s the use av thinkin’ av ut? Such things are not for the loikes av us.

offered plays in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1915. Founded by George Cram “Gig” Cook, the organization moved to Greenwich Village H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

During this period American drama turned an important corner. Earlier writers had achieved a realism of character, detail, and language but seemed unable to escape the plot conventions and sentimentality of melodrama. But by 1920 O’Neill had composed his first Pulitzer Prize–winning play, Beyond the Horizon, as well as Anna Christie and the surrealistically experimental The Emperor Jones. See also Circuses; Dance; The Emperor Jones; Maggie, A Girl of the Streets; Music; Realism; Satire, Burlesque, and Parody; Sister Carrie


Campbell, Bartley. The White Slave. 1881. In “The White Slave” and Other Plays, edited by Napier Wilt. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941. Herne, James A. “Art for Truth’s Sake in the Drama.” Arena 17 (February 1897): 361–370. O’Neill, Eugene. Bound East for Cardiff. In The Long Voyage Home: Seven Plays of the Sea. New York: Modern Library, 1946. Secondary Works

Bigsby, C. W. E. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Vol. 1, 1900–1940. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University. Press, 1982. Dickinson, Thomas H. Playwrights of the New American Theater. New York: Macmillan, 1925. Fyles, Franklin. The Theatre and Its People. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1900.

O’Neill, Bound East for Cardiff, pp. 48–49.

A M E R I C A N

the next year and achieved immediate prominence producing the early work of Susan Glaspell (1876– 1948) and Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953). O’Neill began to establish his reputation for the realism of his characters and the power of his dramatic situations with a series of one-act plays based on his experiences aboard tramp steamers. Those short pieces, based on his personal seafaring experiences, included Bound East for Cardiff (1916), The Long Voyage Home (1917), and The Moon of the Caribbees (1918). Glaspell wrote Suppressed Desires (1915) with Cook, her husband, and Trifles (1916), both of which explored women’s psychological struggles.

Laurie, Joe, Jr. Vaudeville: From the Honky-Tonks to the Palace. 1953. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1972. Mason, Jeffrey D. Melodrama and the Myth of America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1121

THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS

Mates, Julian. America’s Musical Stage: Two Hundred Years of Musical Theatre. New York: Praeger, 1987.

THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS: ETHNOLOGY, SOCIAL DARWINISM, AND GENDER

Matlow, Myron, ed. The Black Crook and Other NineteenthCentury American Plays. New York: Dutton, 1967.

Considering Veblen’s skillful use of satire, perhaps Socrates combined with François Rabelais would be even closer to the mark. With its omnivorous learnedness and jolting comparisons, Leisure Class is a peculiar book. Readers who expect an analysis of conspicuous consumption and the excesses of the robber barons are often puzzled by the book’s opening tongue-in-cheek ethnology that pits peaceable savages against predatory barbarians. Why Veblen begins his book in this fashion can best be understood by noting that he plots his entire argument along a Social Darwinian graph. The author, who as a Yale graduate student had studied under one of America’s foremost Social Darwinist scholars, William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), well understood the philosophy so beloved by capitalist apologists. Leisure Class holds orthodox Social Darwinism up to a fun-house mirror as Veblen overturns assertions promoted by its leading practitioner, Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). Whereas Spencer says that evolution traces a path from simple to complex organisms, from few to many, from good to better, with the fittest (and best) species inevitably triumphing over the weakest, Veblen construes the increasing complexity of modern life as evidence of Homo sapiens’ fall from grace. Far from celebrating the captains of industry as illustrations of human progress sanctified by God, Leisure Class deflates them to latter-day predatory barbarians. Veblen clearly prefers the peaceable savages, with their “amiable inefficiency when confronted with force or fraud” (p. 7). Dipping again into ethnological terminology, he takes particular aim at the “dolichocephalic blond” (p. 215) of European descent, remarking that this ethnic group is most likely to revert to predatory tendencies—and to dominate over other ethnic groups who are “repressed and pushed into the background” (p. 220). In other words, the dominant Anglo-Saxon male held to be king of the Social Darwinian hill becomes in Veblen’s analysis a raging, grasping yahoo. Like Gilman’s Women and Economics (1898) and Lester Frank Ward’s Pure Sociology: A Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society (1903), Leisure Class reminds one that although evolutionary thought tends to produce conservative views when applied to human society, that outcome is not required.

Moody, Richard, ed. America Takes the Stage. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955. Murphy, Brenda. American Realism and American Drama, 1880–1940. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Quinn, Arthur Hobson. A History of the American Drama from the Civil War to the Present. New York: AppletonCrofts, 1936. Richardson, Gary A. American Drama from the Colonial Period through World War I. New York: Twayne, 1993. Strang, Lewis C. Players and Plays of the Last Quarter Century. Boston: L. C. Page, 1902. Vaughn, Jack A. Early American Dramatists from the Beginning to 1900. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981. Roger A. Hall

THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS When The Theory of the Leisure Class appeared in 1899, Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) was a littleknown professor of economics at the fledgling University of Chicago, one of the country’s first research universities. By his death just before the collapse of the stock market in 1929, Veblen had written ten books, of which Leisure Class would remain the best known, and he was famous—indeed, notorious—as America’s most influential cultural critic and one of its most memorable phrasemakers. References to “conspicuous consumption,” a concept immortalized in Leisure Class, remain obligatory in studies of latenineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America. Veblenian concepts are amply illustrated in countless literary texts, especially those in the realist tradition: from predatory businessmen like Theodore Dreiser’s Frank Cowperwood and Frank Norris’s S. Behrman to the “trained incapacity” (another of Veblen’s memorable phrases) of society women like Edith Wharton’s Lily Bart and the narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to bumbling boosters like Sinclair Lewis’s George F. Babbitt and Dreiser’s Charlie Drouet. Veblen himself appears in John Dos Passos’s The Big Money (1936) in a portrait entitled “The Bitter Drink” that suggests Veblen was America’s Socrates.

1122

A M E R I C A N

Besides providing a putatively scientific way of attacking the status quo, the ethnological underpinning of Leisure Class allows Veblen to speculate about a time before the emergence of private property. The peaceable savages as he imagines them did not conceive of individual ownership. That snake in the

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


women, as useful as trophies for the barbarian men as they are for men in the era of advanced capitalism. The corset is, in economic theory, substantially a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject’s vitality and rendering her permanently and obviously unfit for work. It is true, the corset impairs the personal attractions of the wearer, but the loss suffered on that score is offset by the gain in reputability which comes of her visibly increased expensiveness and infirmity. It may broadly be set down that the womanliness of woman’s apparel resolves itself . . . into the more effective hindrance to useful exertion offered by the garments peculiar to women. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, p. 172.

garden originated with the predatory barbarians. Private property was necessary for the development of a leisure class who own so much that they must conspicuously waste time and resources to show how wealthy they are. The key point for the leisure class is how much wealthier than others they are; the objective is sustaining an “invidious comparison” (p. 31). Because the goal is asserting personal superiority, the process advances the individual’s reputation over the collective good. Human worth becomes increasingly reduced to cash value, and “pecuniary canons of taste” (p. 115) pervade the culture. The ethnological basis also allows Veblen to spotlight the gender dynamics central to his theory. He does so in two ways. First, he says that the distinction between leisure and work originates in an early distinction between men’s and women’s activities. While early barbarian men engaged in ceremonial acts of honorific “exploit,” such as priestly service and warfare (Veblen identifies sports and government as later instances of this category), women did the actual productive work that he calls “industry”—such as harvesting plants and caring for children. Prehistoric women thus exemplify the “instinct of workmanship” (p. 15), and the distaste in which such activity comes to be held illustrates the “irksomeness” of labor (p. 17). (The latter response, again registering Homo sapiens’ fall from grace, is a learned response, in contrast to the former, which Veblen considers a beneficent “instinct.”) Simply put, the propensity to posit “invidious distinctions” (p. 26) originates in gender difference. Second, Veblen says that the idea of private property itself developed out of gender difference: the first “things” recognized as private property were A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

CONSUMPTION, DISPLAY, AND LEISURE

When Veblen extends these concepts to his contemporary period, his most celebrated ideas result. Most of these ideas ring true through the twenty-first century. Leisure Class remains one of the most important studies of the effects of living in a consumer society. Veblen notes that when life grows increasingly urban and the pace quickens, the consequence is a pervasive emphasis on display. Display, of course, is central to merchandising (such as in the windows of department stores, the earliest of them only a generation old when Veblen wrote) and to advertising. Veblen’s enduring insight is that display is also central to the psychology of individuals. Owning goods is not actually the point; being seen with them is the goal. He captures this other-driven, frenzied psychology: “In order to impress . . . transient observers, and to retain one’s self-complacency under their observation, the signature of one’s pecuniary strength should be written in characters which he who runs may read” (p. 87). Moreover, much of this conspicuous display is vicarious: a man needs a wife and other dependents, such as liveried servants and well-coiffed poodles, to help spend—and thus showcase—his wealth. The corseted, delicate, neurasthenic woman clearly cannot do any useful work, and precisely because of that fact, she effectively advertises her husband’s pecuniary strength. Wasteful consumption makes for particularly useful publicity; hence, scrupulously manicured lawns with topiary (tomato plants would hardly confer honor on the lord of the manor). The principle of vicarious consumption holds true for philanthropic gifts (one might think, for example, of the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie’s conspicuous endowment of libraries). An often overlooked point is that, according to Veblen, consumption (as that term is commonly understood) is not what motivates people: consumers do not seek to satiate themselves but rather to emulate their social superiors. In consequence, the process is unending; desire is indefinitely extendable. As Veblen puts it, “The standard of expenditure which commonly guides our efforts is not the average, ordinary expenditure already achieved; it is an ideal of consumption that lies just beyond our reach” (p. 103). An element that he describes as “make-believe” (p. 96) comes to dominate social life; the obsession with appearance encourages people to skimp on necessities to better display the honorific extras. University faculty, he notes in a delicious aside, are especially guilty, as their social status exceeds their salary.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1123


INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIAL CONTROL

The most insidious consequence of life under the regime of the leisure class is that the status quo is effortlessly, and seemingly invisibly, maintained. Chapter 8 of Leisure Class, “Industrial Exemption and Conservatism,” delineates this process. “The situation of to-day,” Veblen explains, “shapes the institutions of tomorrow through a selective, coercive process, by acting upon men’s habitual view of things, and so altering or fortifying a point of view or a mental attitude handed down from the past” (pp. 190–191). The notion of institutions is a key concept in Veblen’s thinking (note the subtitle of Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions). Veblen uses “institutions” to refer to the external organizations that come to mind—legal institutions, educational institutions, and so forth—but as the quotation indicates, institutions are especially important to Veblen for the cultural attitudes and beliefs they perpetuate. Both mind-set and organization are, by definition, handed down from past to present; thus institutions foster conservation of past ways of doing things. If one follows Veblen’s logic, the result is that institutions and habits of thought are inevitably behind the times. (Scholars often refer to this concept as “cultural lag” or “institutional lag.”) Driving another nail in the coffin of orthodox Social Darwinism, Veblen claims that regression is easier than progress. This conservative tendency, hardwired into human thinking, receives further sanction from the leisure class, to whom conservatism itself is a “mark of respectability” and who see innovation as “bad form” (pp. 199, 200). Thus any socially progressive movement (Veblen mentions women’s suffrage and the easing of divorce laws) will appear disreputable and dishonorable. When this process of social control is combined with insatiable consumer desire, the vicious cycle is complete. Consumers who are constantly trying to move up to the next best neighborhood are not going

The leisure class, in the nature of things, consistently acts to retard that adjustment to the environment which is called social advance or development. The characteristic attitude of the class may be summed up in the maxim: “Whatever is, is right”; whereas the law of natural selection, as applied to human institutions, gives the axiom: “Whatever is, is wrong.” Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, pp. 206–207.

1124

A M E R I C A N

to challenge the status quo; rather, their every action will reinforce it. While the leisure class exerts what might be described as a top-down means of social control, consumers contribute from the bottom up. One of Veblen’s most important insights is also one of his bleakest: he says that society under the regime of status, leisure, and consumption is not prone to change, but rather to keep replicating itself, world without end. Rather than the inevitable revolution predicted by Karl Marx, Veblen anticipates more of the same. His theory of social stability ad nauseum is less inspiring, and less glamorous, than Marx’s theory, but Veblen’s ideas continue to provide a powerful interpretive matrix for understanding American life. RECEPTION, INFLUENCE, AND INTERPRETIVE CONUNDRUMS

Perhaps the best expression of the influence of Leisure Class was recorded by the journalist (and later dramatist) Maxwell Anderson in a 1918 letter to The Dial: “I once asked a friend if he had read The Theory of the Leisure Class. ‘Why no,’ he retorted; ‘why should I? All my friends have read it. It permeates the atmosphere in which I live’” (p. 370). The influence of the book was immediate (especially on college campuses) and lasting, but also ambiguous. Anderson’s description of what might be called Veblen-by-osmosis is perceptive, for Veblen is one of those writers who get referenced even by people who have not read him. Perhaps his facility as a phrasemaker is to blame: there is a catchiness to his most familiar concepts that makes them seem familiar even to people who do not really understand them. One challenge for serious readers has always been determining how to classify Leisure Class. Notwithstanding its subtitle, An Economic Study of Institutions, readers are unlikely to experience the book as a work of economics. As promised in the preface, Leisure Class examines all sorts of data commonly overlooked by economists and, for that matter, material ignored by other social scientists. The preface also asserts the impossibility of confining the analysis within commonly observed boundaries. Veblen was an interdisciplinary thinker during a time when modern academic disciplines were beginning to articulate their territories and boundaries. As a social scientist, his interests were qualitative, not quantitative. Yet he refused to make predictions and tried to avoid obvious value judgments, for he believed that neither pursuit was appropriate for scholarly inquiry. Veblen systematically defied epistemological categories, and as Rick Tilman notes, there has never been a consensus regarding either the meaning or the value of his work. His relationship to some of the foundational thinkers

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


of the modern period—particularly Marx and Charles Darwin—continues to be debated. The problem of how to classify Veblen is compounded by his pointedly satirical bent. Characteristically, he disavows any satirical intent several times in Leisure Class: “the term ‘invidious’ . . . is used in a technical sense” only. Likewise, the “term ‘waste’ . . . carries an undertone of deprecation” (pp. 34, 97) that the author claims to regret. As Dos Passos says, “People complained they never knew whether Veblen was joking or serious” (p. 116). There remains a small group of heterodox economists, self-described “institutional economists” who trace their practice to Veblen. But generally speaking, most social scientists eschew satire, seeing the comic impulse as “literary” as opposed to “scientific.” That is the sort of distinction, however, that Veblen would see as insubstantial and “ceremonial” (p. 37). As readers of classic satirists such as Jonathan Swift and Voltaire well know, the comic dimension of satire is not an end in itself. Satire performs serious cultural work, and in the hands of a master, it does so with the precision of a trained surgeon wielding a scalpel. Leisure Class is best understood as a book that is satirical and scientific, literary and critical. Central to Veblen’s satirical vision is the structuring of positive and negative values as a series of contrasts— one might even say invidious contrasts: industry (making things) versus business (making money); useful activity versus ceremonial activity; peaceable savages versus predatory barbarians; the common man versus the vested interests; even women versus men. Moreover, Veblen always values the term that he claims the culture at large despises. When he remarks, for example, that cats are “less reputable” than dogs because they are “less wasteful” (p. 140) and less servile, the reader can safely conclude that Veblen prefers the feline species. Veblen’s investment in satire, so evident in Leisure Class, confirms his lifelong study of language and literature. The first book he completed was a translation of an Icelandic saga into English. It is impossible to know whether, had Veblen managed promptly to secure a publisher for that book (The Laxdaela Saga would not appear until 1925), his career might have taken a more conventional literary path, but it is clear that literature always moved him. Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888), had a great influence on him when he read it as a young man. Veblen’s stepdaughter recalls his saying he wished he could have written “just one good novel” (Eby, p. 5). Yet in his own way, Veblen left a trace on literature and language: as Max Lerner provocatively remarks, “Any anthology of American A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Those members of the community who fall short of this . . . normal degree of prowess or of property suffer in the esteem of their fellow-men; and consequently they suffer also in their own esteem; since the usual basis of self-respect is the respect accorded by one’s neighbors. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, p. 30.

prose in the future and any history of American literature will ignore Veblen at its peril” (p. 141). VEBLEN’S BIOGRAPHY AND OTHER WRITINGS

An irony that Veblen would not appreciate is that for decades after his death, personal anecdotes achieved practically mythic status and permeated discussion of his writings. That is, Veblen became himself something of a celebrity, an unwitting product of the culture of conspicuousness that he despised. One reason is that the foundational work in Veblen scholarship, Joseph Dorfman’s Thorstein Veblen and His America (1934), was itself a biography. The book portrayed its subject as a misanthropic man from Mars and gave authority to the legends that had been circulating— tales of a rustic figure with coonskin cap in the groves of academe, of a man who would not make his bed because it was wasteful effort, of a cynical predator on faculty wives. The Dorfman thesis has influenced the majority of the scholarship on Veblen, and emphasis on personal eccentricities has unfortunately blurred the focus on Veblen’s cultural commentary. A 1999 biography by Elizabeth Watkins Jorgensen and Henry Irvin Jorgensen seeks to redeem Veblen, particularly regarding his relations with women. Thorstein Veblen: Victorian Firebrand uncovers much new information, but Dorfman’s book remains indispensable for tracing the facts—if the reader takes care to disentangle the myths—about Veblen’s life, career, and influences. After a stable midwestern upbringing—his father was a successful farmer in Minnesota—Veblen attended Carleton College. His family, of Norwegian descent, was Lutheran; Veblen was agnostic. An itinerant scholar, he was driven out of the University of Chicago (where he published his first two books) and landed at an institution far more to his liking. But what might have inaugurated for Veblen a halcyon period at Stanford University quickly soured, as his first wife refused to share him with the woman who had followed the couple to California (and who would later


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1125


The desire for wealth can scarcely be satiated in any individual instance, and evidently a satiation of the average or general desire for wealth is out of the question. However widely, or equally, or “fairly,” it may be distributed, no general increase of the community’s wealth can make any approach to satiating this need, the ground of which is the desire of every one to excel every one else in the accumulation of goods.

theory of cultural conservatism central to Leisure Class is elaborated in The Vested Interests and the Common Man (“The Modern Point of View and the New Order”) (1920). The brief analysis of academia in the last chapter of Leisure Class provides an entrée into one of Veblen’s most prescient books, The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men (1918), in which he analyses the corporatization of the university. See also Ethnology; Feminism; Wealth

Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, p. 32. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Work

become his second wife). The ensuing scandal lost Veblen his second academic position. Although Veblen seems to have seen himself as a man fated for unhappiness, he always had people looking after him, and various advocates arranged positions at the University of Missouri and the New School for Social Research as well as helping Veblen secure positions as editor of The Dial and with the Food Administration. Leisure Class was the first book Veblen published and remains his most influential. Unsympathetic critics claim that later works only repeat ideas contained in the first, an assessment that has truncated understanding of one of America’s most important thinkers. It would be more accurate to say that the first book introduces core ideas that the ensuing books further explore. Readers interested in the “instinct of workmanship” (p. 15), the ethnological underpinnings of Veblen’s work, or what he tantalizingly refers to in Leisure Class as “woman’s pre-glacial standing” (p. 356), will find The Instinct of Workmanship, and the State of Industrial Arts (1914) illuminating. Veblen further enumerates his positive values in The Engineers and the Price System (1921), which pits heroic engineers against predatory businessmen and describes the sabotage of industry by business. For elaboration of Veblen’s views of business, The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) and Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times (1923) are essential. The essays reprinted in the collection The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation and Other Essays (1919) spotlight his criticisms of orthodox economists and clarify his relationship to important thinkers on the left, such as Marx. In An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation (1917) and Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915), Veblen traces the activities of predatory barbarians on the international front, providing incisive analyses of modern war and its handmaiden, patriotism. The

1126

A M E R I C A N

Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. New York: Macmillan, 1899. The 1934 edition published by the Modern Library is quoted herein. Secondary Works

Adorno, Theodor W. “Veblen’s Attack on Culture.” In Prisms, translated by Samuel and Shierry Weber. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981. Anderson, Maxwell. “Incommunicable Literature.” The Dial 65 (2 November 1918): 370. Conroy, Stephen S. “Thorstein Veblen’s Prose.” American Quarterly 20 (1968): 605–615. Diggins, John P. The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory. New York: Seabury Press, 1978. Reprinted as Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. Dorfman, Joseph. Thorstein Veblen and His America. New York: Viking, 1934. Dos Passos, John. “The Bitter Drink.” In The Big Money. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936. Reprint, New York: Signet, 1969. Eby, Clare Virginia. Dreiser and Veblen, Saboteurs of the Status Quo. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998. Jorgensen, Elizabeth Watkins, and Henry Irvin Jorgensen. Thorstein Veblen: Victorian Firebrand. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999. Lerner, Max. “Veblen’s World.” In What Veblen Thought. New York: Viking, 1936. Reprinted in Ideas Are Weapons: The History and Uses of Ideas. New York: Viking, 1939. Qualey, Carlton C., ed. Thorstein Veblen: The Carleton College Veblen Seminar Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968. Riesman, David. Thorstein Veblen: A Critical Interpretation. New York: Scribners, 1953.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

T H I S S I D E O F PA R A D I S E

Tilman, Rick. Thorstein Veblen and His Critics 1891–1963: Conservative, Liberal, and Radical Perspectives. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. Toulouse, Teresa. “Veblen and His Reader: Rhetoric and Intention in The Theory of the Leisure Class.” Centennial Review 29 (1985): 249–267. Clare Eby

THIS SIDE OF PARADISE When F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) died on 21 December 1940 at age forty-four, few eulogies remembered him as the creator of the enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby. As the Esquire editor Arnold Gingrich wrote, “In most of the newspaper stories The Great Gatsby was given mere passing mention, if any at all, while most of the space was devoted to This Side of Paradise” (pp. 477–478). The reason is simple: Paradise, published in 1920, was Fitzgerald’s most famous work in his lifetime, selling upward of fifty thousand copies in its first year alone and transforming the twenty-three-year-old Princeton dropout into an emblem of the gaudy era he would go on to dub “the Jazz Age.” There is no greater testament to the novel’s notoriety than the endless puns it inspired. “Fitzgerald Knocks Officer This Side of Paradise” read one newspaper headline after a fracas with a New York City policeman (Le Vot, p. 85). “The Other Side of Paradise” went another in 1936, when the New York Post skewered Fitzgerald as a drunken has-been (Mok, p. 294). Even after Gatsby was recognized as a masterpiece, allusions remained inescapable. The first major Fitzgerald biography was entitled The Far Side of Paradise, and Exiles from Paradise was the name of a later memoir by a former acquaintance. The book remained a touchstone for Fitzgerald’s generation in part because it was its definitive youthculture novel. This genre lies somewhere between the traditional literary classification for coming-ofage narratives, the bildungsroman, and the broader category of “cult fiction” applied to books whose popular impact exceeds their critical standing. A youth-culture novel is distinguished by its ability to inspire an adolescent subculture replete with its own fashion, slang, and pastimes. Such books serve as generational testaments, and their authors usually establish themselves as cultural spokespeople who articulate their cohort’s feelings and beliefs, effectively interpreting them for elders. Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795–1796) is probably the first exemplar of the genre, while Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) is certainly the twentieth century’s A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

most famous. Later, Douglas Coupland’s Generation X (1991) provided the moniker and served as a sourcebook for the post–baby boom generation. This Side of Paradise set the template for this underappreciated literary form. As with subsequent texts in the same tradition, its prominence proved both a blessing and a curse. Although its faddishness vaulted Fitzgerald to renown, the vogue it embodied was doomed to be short-lived, and once its moment passed, its author was haunted by his awareness that his original audience deemed him passé. The youth movement that This Side of Paradise epitomized is remembered through a set of simple time-capsule symbols: the flapper and the flivver, Prohibition and speakeasies, the Charleston and “The Sheik of Araby.” These images merely scratch the surface of the novel’s historical import, however. First and foremost, the book dramatized a new, modern conception of adolescence. Unlike Victorian pedagogy, this view insisted that the teen years were a time of intense identity formation and social adjustment that parents should indulge rather than supervise and regulate. According to modern psychologists such as G. Stanley Hall, the crises endemic to growing up—confusion, moral experimentation, questioning authority—marked the ameliorative process of establishing meaningful values rather than passively accepting those handed down by elders. Thanks to Hall and other maturation authorities, teenagers emerged as a distinct social demographic. Additionally, the virtues of youth and adulthood were reversed. If Victorians considered youth a detriment, moderns celebrated it as a mark of passion and vigor. Hall even encouraged adults to aspire to be more like young people: “It is certainly one of the marks of genius that the plasticity and spontaneity of adolescence persists into maturity,” he asserted in his 1904 study Adolescence. “Gifted people seem to conserve their youth and to be all the more children” (1:547). This Side of Paradise dramatized the Hallsian vision of youth in all its romantic excess. As reviewers recognized, Fitzgerald’s spoiled, troubled hero, Amory Blaine, offered a far more realistic take on the teen years than the youths of Booth Tarkington, Owen Johnson, and other adolescent-oriented authors. One way to read Paradise, in fact, is as a repudiation of the success formulas propagated in books such as Tarkington’s Penrod and Sam and Seventeen (both 1916) and Johnson’s Stover at Yale (1912), all of which Fitzgerald adored during his own youth. As Matthew J. Bruccoli notes, “The novel is divided into two sections,” the first tracing “the inception of [Amory’s] quest for a great destiny,” the second finding him subsequently coming to grips with its failure. Apropos of the modernist tradition,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1127


Dust jacket illustration for the 1921 Scribner’s edition of This Side of Paradise. RARE BOOKS DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Amory’s inability to realize his adolescent fantasies of greatness taunts him as “a form of death-in-life, a mark of spiritual bankruptcy” (pp. 143, 145). Encouraging Amory’s aspirations throughout the first section, “The Romantic Egotist,” are his doting mother, Beatrice (based on Fitzgerald’s own mother, Mollie), his spiritual adviser, Monsignor Darcy (his prep school headmaster, Father Cyril Fay), and most significantly, the books the boy imbibes. Not for nothing did Fitzgerald later describe This Side of Paradise as a “romance and reading list” (Notebooks, p. 158); the names of more than sixty titles and one hundred writers appear in the narration. The majority of the former fall into a category that Amory describes as “‘quest’ books,” in which heroes “set off in life armed with the best weapons” for fulfilling their aristocratic nobility (p. 115). These bildungsromans teach Amory to think of maturation as a simple matter of applying set moral lessons to ethical quandaries; he cannot imagine not rising to a position

1128

A M E R I C A N

of social prominence for the simple reason that none of the heroes of his books ever fails to. Yet the unrealized promise of growing up and the indeterminate nature of adolescence are exactly what Amory must cope with as he suffers through several reversals of fortune in the book’s second half, “The Education of a Personage.” Rather than forge his intellect, Princeton proves a dispiriting stomping ground for pedantry and snobbery. Although he loves the campus atmosphere (most notably emblematized by its spires and gargoyles), Amory eventually flunks out, his only recourse a low-paying entry job at an advertising agency. Nor do his love interests live up to the fidelity and devotion of his novels’ heroines: both Isabelle Borgé (based on Fitzgerald’s 1915–1916 girlfriend, Ginevra King) and Rosalind Connage (a loose facsimile of Zelda Sayre, whom Fitzgerald married shortly after the publication of This Side of Paradise) spurn Amory for wealthier suitors. In compensation for these traumas, Amory indulges in self-destructive behavior—drinking, brawling, even contemplating suicide with an equally disillusioned debauchee, Eleanor Savage. Audiences accustomed to the sybaritic excesses of On the Road or Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City (1984) are apt to forget just how unprecedented Fitzgerald’s representation of adolescent bingeing was in 1920. Writers simply did not boast of their characters’ wastrel ways as Fitzgerald does when, in a section entitled “Experiments in Convalescence,” he describes the successive New York City pub crawls Amory embarks upon to anesthetize his wounds (pp. 185–191). By glorifying the “teenage wasteland” of self-stimulation, Fitzgerald set the tone for later youth-culture fictions, from Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926) to Bret Easton Ellis’s Less than Zero (1985) and Melvin Burgess’s Smack (1998). Equally revolutionary was the novel’s conclusion, which eschewed the dictates of the bildungsroman tradition by refusing to deliver its protagonist safely into the hands of maturity. From Louisa May Alcott to Horatio Alger to Tarkington, writers before Fitzgerald obligingly imposed closure upon their plots with a symbolic entry into adulthood, whether through marriage or a career. This Side of Paradise, by contrast, concludes with Amory unable to find direction for his life. In the book’s most important paragraph, he questions the purpose of adolescence: “Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don’t. They just want the pleasure of eating it all over again. . . . I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again” (p. 239). The passage provides an apt gloss of the

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


youth subcultures that have troubled adults ever since the 1920s. Trapped between doubting the rewards of adulthood and knowing they cannot remain teenagers forever, young people decide that the only recourse for their youth is to squander it through displays of self-wastage. Such spectacles provide a momentary respite from pain and disappointment by allowing them to lose themselves in the pleasures of indulgence. Amory’s final act is to raise his hands to the sky and declare, “I know myself, but that is all—” (p. 260). For readers who shared his frustrated sense of purpose, the statement was a knowing admission that Fitzgerald’s generation could not rely upon adult traditions to guide its future; these young people were in effect charged with forging a new set of ethics that would allow them to cope with the confusions of the modern age. Fitzgerald’s debut is further notable for its treatment of the varying theories with which his generation dabbled as it developed this philosophy. With the major exception of Freudianism, Amory adopts and discards just about every strain of thought fashionable in the postwar era. He does so, furthermore, with dizzying speed: at different points the young man declares himself a Keatsian Romantic, an art-for-art’s-sake aesthete à la Algernon Charles Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, a Nietzschean nihilist, and a socialist. References to philosophical schools come so fast and furiously that Amory’s ponderousness inevitably gives way to pretentiousness. In fact Fitzgerald’s friend and fellow Princetonian Edmund Wilson dismissed Amory as an “intellectual fake of the first order” (Letters, p. 45). Wilson also scourged This Side of Paradise for “not [being] about anything: its intellectual and moral content amounts to little more than a gesture—a gesture of indefinite revolt” (“F. Scott Fitzgerald,” p. 405). There is truth to both accusations. Fitzgerald’s strengths rested in his lyricism and his acute social observances; his dramatic interests left little room for delineating abstractions in anything other than the most superficial of terms. As a result, the gesture that his musings on great thinkers most often resembles is that of simple name-dropping. That said, the peripatetic nature of Amory’s intellect hardly seems atypical of adolescence; as W. Tasker Witham has argued, coming-of-age novels often show “adolescents thinking, searching, and experimenting to find a satisfactory meaning for life; what they come up with is likely to be commendable, but is seldom very striking or original” (pp. 172–173). In this way, the preciousness of Amory’s colloquies on modern ideas only substantiates the realism of his character by dramatizing the grasping quality of the adolescent mind as it seeks to invest itself in some overarching ideology that might explain the chaos of growing up. And despite A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Wilson’s criticism, Fitzgerald’s “intellectual and moral content” is no more egregious than the Hegelian undercurrents of Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel or the primers on Buddhism that mar Kerouac’s Dharma Bums and J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. Like most adolescent fictions, This Side of Paradise shows teenagers confronting issues whose complexities lie beyond their understanding. In fact one might say that the poignancy of maturity narratives arises from precisely this conflict. Another facet of modern adolescence that This Side of Paradise first conveyed is youth’s antiauthoritarianism. Even Wilson, despite his disdain for the book, declared it “animated with life.” A better word might be attitude, for several scenes reverberate with puckish irreverence for adults. Much of Fitzgerald’s initial press focused on his realistic portrayal of “petting parties,” whose shock value he maximized by revealing that his generation viewed sex—or necking, at least—as a recreational activity rather than a marital rite. “None of the Victorian mothers . . . had any idea how casually their daughters were accustomed to be kissed,” Fitzgerald writes in a passage on new teen freedoms. “Amory saw girls doing things that even in his memory would have been impossible: eating threeo’clock, after-dance suppers in impossible cafés, talking of every side of life with an air half of earnestness, half of mockery, yet with a furtive excitement” (p. 61). Indifference later turns to contempt when a hotel detective threatens to prosecute Amory for violating the Mann Act. The young rebel mocks the “aggrieved virtue of the burly man” by telling him first not to lecture the couple because “we don’t need a valedictory” and then to remove his hat in the girl’s presence because she is “a lady” (p. 232). In the novel’s penultimate scene Amory shocks a wealthy capitalist and his unctuous assistant by professing complete indifference toward the adult status quo. “I’m a product of a restless mind in a restless generation,” he asserts, fully aware that his radicalism is a pose. “I and my sort . . . struggle against tradition; try, at least, to displace old cants with new ones” (p. 256). Such passages confirm that there is more than a little Amory Blaine in Holden Caulfield, American literature’s most famous teen discontent; although Salinger cited The Great Gatsby as a pivotal influence, he was clearly familiar with This Side of Paradise, for Amory’s insouciance echoes throughout The Catcher in the Rye (1951). In addition to its generational preoccupations, This Side of Paradise merits attention for its sui generis form. Interpolated throughout the book are epistolary passages, fragments of verse, and closet drama. The novel even includes one section written in the stream-of-consciousness style that would not become


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1129


commonplace until James Joyce popularized it two years later in the Molly Bloom portion of Ulysses. Unfortunately, crediting Fitzgerald with inventing a radical new narrative structure is misleading, for the mishmash of styles and devices was less a product of authorial design than compositional haste. As Fitzgerald hurriedly completed the manuscript over the summer of 1919, he incorporated bits and pieces of past writings, including portions of his rejected Romantic Egotist draft and undergraduate poetry as well as a short story (“Babes in the Woods”) and a play (The Debutante) that had both previously appeared in Princeton’s Nassau Literary Magazine in 1917. As James L. W. West III has demonstrated, consistency was not Fitzgerald’s forte. In stitching these fragments together he allowed both minor contradictions (Amory’s hair color) and major inconsistencies (his character development) to slip into print (pp. 47–48, 69–70). While reviewers kindly ignored these fictive faux pas, they did not excuse the abundant errata that further evinced the writer’s youthful inexperience. Thanks to Franklin P. Adams of the New York Tribune, listing Fitzgerald’s many misspellings became something of a parlor game for newspaper columnists throughout the summer of 1920. As Bruccoli notes, “The sloppy text of This Side of Paradise established the image of Fitzgerald as a careless or illiterate writer”—a prejudice he would spend the rest of his career attempting to overcome. In the end, This Side of Paradise remains that rare example of a work whose historical import overshadows its artistry. Beyond its innovatively frank and realistic treatment of adolescence, it established the themes that Fitzgerald would mine throughout the rest of his career: middle-class inadequacy, the transitory nature of romantic love, the poignancy of failed ambition, the personal costs of indulgence, and the necessity of self-discipline. These anxieties, which would find their fruition in The Great Gatsby, are the core concerns of Amory Blaine’s story. Indeed, reading This Side of Paradise alongside The Great Gatsby, it is not hard to view Amory as a Gatsby prototype (or for that matter to draw parallels between Isabelle and Rosalind and Daisy Buchanan). Like Amory, Gatsby seeks to realize his instinctual individuality in a world that proves crushingly obtuse to men of imagination. In the same manner as Nick Carraway, Amory must also reconcile the moral gap separating personal ideals and ambitions from the social realities of class and caste. Significantly, Nick’s epiphany comes on his thirtieth birthday as he realizes the doom spelled by Gatsby’s hope of winning Daisy (and, more importantly, what she symbolizes). This Side of Paradise strands its protagonist at a much earlier stage of maturation. In doing so,

1130

A M E R I C A N

Fitzgerald’s debut captures what remains a dominant theme in both American literature and culture: the reluctance to define oneself as an adult when adulthood seems only to invite compromise, hypocrisy, and the defeat of dreams. See also Adolescence; Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. Dear Scott/Dear Max: The FitzgeraldPerkins Correspondence. Edited by John Kuehl and Jackson R. Bryer. London: Cassell, 1971. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. 1920. Edited by James L. W. West III. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Secondary Works

Gingrich, Arnold. “Salute and Farewell to F. Scott Fitzgerald.” In F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Own Time, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Jackson R. Bryer, pp. 477–481. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1971. Hall, G. Stanley. Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education. 2 vols. New York: Appleton, 1904. Le Vot, André. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography. Translated by William Byron. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983. Mok, Michel. “A Writer like Me Must Have an Utter Confidence, an Utter Faith in His Star.” In F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Own Time, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Jackson R. Bryer, pp. 294–299. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1971. Smith, Frederick James. “I’m Sick of the Sexless Animals Writers Have Been Giving Us.” In F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Own Time, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Jackson R. Bryer, pp. 243–245. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1971. West, James L. W., III. The Making of “This Side of Paradise.” Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. Wilson, Edmund. “F. Scott Fitzgerald.” In F. Scott Fitzgerald in His Own Time, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and Jackson R. Bryer, pp. 404–409. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1971. Wilson, Edmund. Letters on Literature and Politics, 1912–1972. Edited by Elena Wilson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

TOURISM AND TRAVEL WRITING

Witham, W. Tasker. The Adolescent in the American Novel, 1920–1960. New York: Ungar, 1964. Kirk Curnutt

TOURISM AND TRAVEL WRITING In early June 1867 an eager group of well-to-do Americans boarded the steamship Quaker City and left from New York City Harbor, beginning a five-month tour around the Mediterranean Sea. The much publicized tour included Mark Twain (1835–1910), a rising star at the time who had neither the means nor respectability to rival his shipmates. His record of this auspicious tour—America’s first pleasure cruise—via his highly successful travel book The Innocents Abroad (1869), signaled a transformation in the history of American tourism and travel writing. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, increasing numbers of Americans spread out over the globe, aspiring actors on a world stage. Americans were on the move in unprecedented numbers. Highly publicized and touted as a cultural event of the highest order, the Quaker City Pleasure Excursion, thanks to Twain’s able pen, made the world more familiar and more intellectually accessible to readers and tourists alike. Although most of the participants represented a cultural elite similar to travelers of an earlier age, the trip demonstrated the possibilities for an increasing number of Americans who could travel in a similar fashion. As such, it divides the romantic era of traveling for pre–Civil War Americans and the onslaught of mass tourism, of which the Quaker City Excursion was but a harbinger. This new movement of Americans also implied literary possibilities for numerous writers. No genre of American literature was more crucial to defining the national temperament than travel writing. Not only did it allow innumerable tourists the feasible option of sharing their experiences with a large audience, but it also provided a lucrative outlet for writers who would subsequently become better known for their fiction. In many instances, travel writing made literary careers possible. Mark Twain is a case in point; his travel books formed a consistent source of income that outstripped the earnings of his fiction. Other formidable literary figures benefited in various ways from the popularity of travel writing, including Henry James, William Dean Howells, Richard Harding Davis, Nellie Bly, Henry Adams, and Edith Wharton. Tourism and travel writing share an inevitable symbiotic relationship. The tourism industry needs the valuable publicity afforded by vast numbers of A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

travel narratives; likewise, the writers need the touristic apparatus that makes large-scale travel possible and attractive. Any examination of travel writing of this time period, then, must first consider how the technological and cultural shifts affected how Americans moved around the world. AMERICANS ON THE MOVE

By the post–Civil War era, the travel contagion was a full-fledged social upheaval. The editors of Putnam’s Magazine, in a May 1868 essay titled “Going Abroad,” observed: If the social history of the world is ever written, the era in which we live will be called the nomadic period. With the advent of ocean steam navigation and the railway system, began a travelling mania which has gradually increased until half of the earth’s inhabitants, or at least of its civilized portion, are on the move. (Pp. 530–531)

Indeed, Americans were “on the move” in unprecedented numbers, and as an inevitable result, supply and demand economics gradually took hold. Primary and ancillary business ventures grew to match public interest. For the first time in history, tourism was beginning to become practical for a significantly broader segment of the population, and traveling became associated more often with economic forces rather than the aesthetic ones that defined previous generations. Eric Leed, in The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism (1981), remarks that by the end of the century travel increasingly became not so much a means of differentiating one’s character from others but more a means of reaching the norm. If the basic practicalities of travel created a boom in American tourism and travel writing, the mood of the nation consummated the change. Surviving the cataclysmic challenge of the Civil War, the economic prospects and mood of Americans were primed for a surge in newfound confidence. Although nascent touristic apparatus was developing in Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and South America, throughout the century and even until the First World War, such travel destinations encouraged only the most adventurous or wealthy tourists. The most prominent impulse for Americans was to tour Europe, which not only boasted a formidable tourist establishment but also claimed the largest share of American tourists’ curiosity and affiliation. It was a homing instinct of sorts for Euro-Americans, who made up the overwhelming majority of tourists. As the country itself expanded westward, the desire of tourists to follow along made tourism in the American West nearly equal to Europe in its drawing power. In this context, tourists moving


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1131


westward formed a powerful, if informal, weapon in the conquest of the West for the United States. In Return Passages: Great American Travel Writing, 1780–1910 (2000), Larzer Ziff notes, “The literature of western travel celebrated America’s unique features and in so doing encouraged provincial self-satisfaction in the face of a wider world” (p. 284). To travel through the imposing landscape of the West and witness ample evidence of the deepening imprint of American culture implied that the future was bright indeed.

time had the world open to their peregrinations. They looked longingly eastward to the romantic past of the Old World, and they looked eagerly westward to brilliant possibilities of a New World future. Many of these Americans were travel writers, and the forms and conventions of the genre as they applied it to the new age would record for posterity the vagaries of tourism and national identity in the Gilded Age.

No matter the mood of the country or its curiosity for foreign lands or, for that matter, the skill of travel writers, mass tourism always depends on the technological wherewithal to make movement practical. With its successful applications on land via the locomotive and on water via the steamboat, the steam engine transformed travel, cutting voyage times across the Atlantic in particular—from a matter of weeks in the 1830s to only days in the 1870s. Indeed, by 1907 the Lusitania made the journey in just under five days. As a result of the engineering advances, travel also became safer and more affordable as steamship cruise lines like Cunard and Collins competed for cross-Atlantic tourists. The significantly lower costs of time and money opened world travel to new consumers.

As the ability of Americans to travel the world advanced and the social motivation for them increased, so did the interest of readers to encounter such travel vicariously in travel narratives. If economic forces responded to this movement by recognizing the habits and inclinations of tourists, travel writers, likewise, shaped expectations and in no small measure defined behavior. Travel writing both fueled this cultural transformation and followed it. Travelers to and from the United States had found eager audiences for their narratives throughout the century; however, by the late century readers clamored for travel books not only to revel in foreign tourism as armchair travelers but often to prepare for or reminisce about their own. The market seemed insatiable. Nineteenth-century Americans searching for their cultural identity increasingly turned to travel writing, which served a vital aesthetic and practical purpose by helping readers to understand themselves as they encountered a variety of cultural behaviors and assumptions foreign to their own. Writers and readers of travel sought other parts of the world to learn about themselves, and travel narratives thus voiced the anxieties and assurances, the successes and failures of this massive social quest. To fill this need, travel writers answered with an often formulaic but nonetheless vibrant literary form. Travel literature is a varied and overlapping genre that combines the characteristics of journalism, autobiography, fiction, history, anthropology, and political analysis into a narrative smorgasbord. As a composite literary form, it resists neat categorization and isolation. It does, however, exhibit certain conventions that set it apart from other more focused forms of nonfiction. Throughout the nineteenth century, the travel book was often victimized by its own simple though flexible formula, especially as worked by inferior writers, of which there were many. Its structure yielded to repetitiveness, which eventually created obvious patterns as more and more writers trod the same ground. Their weight, like the weight of their tourist peers, wore down the literary turf underfoot and in doing so created ruts that were all too easy to follow. As the century progressed and the tourists’ numbers expanded, redundancy was inevitable. Nonetheless, travel writers

Likewise, Americans were able to travel extensively within North America because of an ambitious engineering achievement. The transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, linked the two coasts and opened up the vast American interior to tourists, replacing the much slower and arduous overland journey by stagecoach. Other lines and spurs followed at an incredible rate, opening up most of the West in relatively short order. By 1888 over two thousand tourists during a season were visiting Alaska, the most remote territory on the continent, according to Earl Pomeroy in his In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America (1990). Pomeroy also notes that Pullman cars quickly gained prominence and established a standard of high luxury (as well as cost) equal to the finest steamship or European railroad service. As more lines came into existence, more majestic hotels sought to house tourists in opulence, creating tourist hubs in Monterey, San Diego, Pasadena, San Francisco, and the Grand Canyon, among other locations. To capitalize on the growing romanticization of the West by easterners and the expanding of touristic infrastructure, more varieties of accommodations allowed for increasing numbers of excursionists, all clamoring to see the Wild West, a tour made possible, ironically, by its taming. At the cusp of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a significant number of Americans for the first

1132

A M E R I C A N

WRITING WITH AMERICAN EYES

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


on the whole left a vital and often provocative record of how Americans saw the world and themselves. In the late nineteenth century, the travel narrative as a literary form had two basic ostensible requirements: to instruct and to entertain. The two explicit standards simply reflected the assumptions for any nonfiction book, in that readers expected to learn something of value and enjoy the process. Therefore, writers needed to balance factual material with more fanciful fare. As a result, travel books in the nineteenth century were heavily laden with factual information (e.g., heights, weights, distances, populations, expenses, and temperatures), anything from average yearly rainfall in Rome to the number of cats in Constantinople. Travel books were realistic by definition; they purported to reveal exactly what the writer witnessed objectively. However, a travel book that offered straight, dispassionate reportage risked irking readers, so the factual text needed to be counterbalanced by more romantic content, often engendered by enthusiasm for natural beauty or fine art. Even the most realistic and staid writer often provided plenty of romantic rapture throughout the century even after literary tastes had become more restrained. Readers depended on their travel narratives to provide the most fulfilling experience possible; it was not a time for understatement. Mere physical description of any wonder, from Niagara Falls to the Sphinx or the Taj Mahal, would hardly suffice to evoke the emotional reaction preferred by tourists, no matter how sophisticated their tastes. Despite its pretensions toward objectivity, the travel book was a highly subjective narrative form, wholly dependent on the particular pressures of individual circumstances and cultural baggage. This feature added to instruction and entertainment conventions and in the end gives travel writing its vibrancy. In this context, a third major requirement for the travel book becomes evident, if not implicit: to validate. Tourists and travel readers are curious about foreign cultures, but they are rarely disenchanted with their own. Most readers welcomed a two-pronged experience, an experience that introduced them to foreign cultural facts and idiosyncrasies on the one hand and an experience that affirmed their own on the other. Rare was the narrative that did not conclude— at any opportunity—that home was better after all, providing welcome validation for national pride. Twain captured this sentiment ironically in the closing pages of The Innocents Abroad: “We always took care to make it understood that we were Americans— Americans!” (p. 645). Travel writers reorganized the world and defined it on thoroughly American terms. Such complacency may reflect provincialism, but it is also a sign of cultural and political ascendancy. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

MAJOR TRAVEL WRITERS

Although the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century produced a vast array of travel writers with an equally varied range of talent, the major contributors to the literary form remained the canonical Mark Twain, Henry James, and Edith Wharton, three stalwart figures of literary realism who were also masters of travel writing. Mark Twain was the most successful American travel writer of the late nineteenth century; his five travel books—The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), A Tramp Abroad (1880), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and Following the Equator (1897)—evince a quintessential Americanism. His first and best-selling narrative debunked an Old World that had been thoroughly elegized by preceding generations of American travel writers. He would publish a return to Europe in A Tramp Abroad just over a decade later, less brash but thoroughly self-absorbed as a pampered man of leisure, a symbol of gluttony for the Gilded Age in full swing. His domestic tours delved into the heart of American mythology, first with the West of Roughing It, then to the symbolic center of the country with Life on the Mississippi. As with the Old World, Twain saw little to support a quixotic hope for the New. The wide-open landscape and seemingly endless opportunity were both most often overwhelmed, in the end, by human folly. Twain’s last narrative, Following the Equator, provided a bookend for the first thirty years of American mass tourism and marked a significant shift in tone and energy. The days of innocence were gone forever, and the narrative voice resonates with the growing awareness of complicity with American imperialism. He closed his travel-writing career and the first phase of the Tourist Age with a simple observation: “Human pride is not worth while; there is always something lying in wait to take the wind out of it” (p. 712). Henry James (1843–1916) began his travel writing career along with Twain, taking his first adult tour to Europe the same year as the publication of The Innocents Abroad. It was during that tour that James, in a letter to his mother (13 October 1869), defined American tourists as “vulgar, vulgar, vulgar,” thus placing his sensibilities in direct contrast to Twain’s. James thereby offers a distinctive American voice, clearly highbrow to Twain’s more popular appeal. If Twain announced a cultural independence from the Old World, James would argue for an observant emulation of it in order to move toward a perfect completion of New World culture. According to Larzer Ziff, James referred to his first adult journey as a “passionate pilgrimage” (p. 224) and adopted a cosmopolitan


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1133


tone throughout his career, in opposition to Twain’s parochial persona. James published, beginning in 1870, numerous travel sketches, primarily in the Nation, and would go on to publish six travel books: Transatlantic Sketches (1875), Portraits of Places (1883), A Little Tour in France (1884), English Hours (1905), The American Scene (1907), and Italian Hours (1909). Only A Little Tour in France and The American Scene are holistic narratives; the others are collections of his published sketches. Still these travel books make up an essential part of American travel writing, as they establish a firm and unapologetic American intellect that seeks to bridge the Atlantic rather than rejoice in the separation. Still, Henry James, much like Twain, had lost any optimism in the completion of American culture by the end of the century. In The American Scene, the travel work that Larzer Ziff calls “one of the most distinguished analyses of American culture ever written,” James comes home (p. 224). It had been a disappointing journey. Twain circled the globe and came face to face with the ill effects of imperialism and recognized America’s failure to live up to its promise; James returned to a home he had abandoned twenty years earlier and found the same loss—a nation given over to crass materialism and plebeian tastes, lost without the steadfast mooring of high culture. Edith Wharton (1862–1937), a professional travel writer of the first order, achieved an artistry equal to her predecessors. Unlike Twain and James, who traveled with decidedly nineteenth-century conceits, however, she captured a newfound energy of the twentieth century. Wharton embraced yet another technological transformation while also celebrating her own right as a female to enter a traditionally male discourse. Mary Schriber, in Writing Home: American Women Abroad, 1830–1920 (1997), points out that Wharton’s travels were “an intellectual adventure to discover the wonders of art and architecture—a rather bold and confident act for a woman writing in a world in which men were the scholars and arbiters of arts and letters” (p. 196). As such she was able to place women’s travel writing, heretofore largely relegated to the margins, at the center of highbrow culture in the tradition of James. Wharton published six travel books: Italian Villas and Their Gardens (1904), Italian Backgrounds (1905), A Motor-Flight through France (1908), Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort (1915), French Ways and Their Meaning (1919), and In Morocco (1920). A seventh narrative, The Cruise of the Vandilis, was published in 1992. A Motor-Flight through France is an especially important text in that it signals a significant shift in mode of transportation,

1134

A M E R I C A N

the automobile, which would help to define tourism and travel writing in the twentieth century. Wharton argues that the automobile allows for more romantic travel by granting more freedom to the traveler too often tyrannized by rigorous train schedules. Wharton’s two overtly political books on France, Fighting France and French Ways and Their Meaning, in addition to arguing for American involvement in World War I, also imply the cataclysm that would force another shift in the history of American tourism and travel writing. As the world was engulfed in war, the tourism industry—along with the travel writing that fed it—would virtually shut down, ending a golden age of tourism and travel writing in America. The Gilded Age, as it encouraged American political and cultural expansion, depended on a burgeoning tourist industry and travel writing that nourished the seemingly insatiable desire to place the United States at the center of the world. See also Americans Abroad; The American Scene; Transportation


“Going Abroad.” Putnam’s Magazine 1 (1868): 530–538. James, Henry. The American Scene. 1907. Edited by Leon Edel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968. Twain, Mark. Following the Equator and Anti-Imperialist Essays. 1897. Edited with a foreword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad. 1869. Edited by Shelley Fisher Fishkin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Wharton, Edith. A Motor-Flight through France. 1908. Edited by Mary Suzanne Schriber. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991. Secondary Works

Buzard, James. The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800–1918. New York: Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 1993. Caesar, Terry. Forgiving the Boundaries: Home as Abroad in American Travel Writing. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995. Cohen, Erik. “A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences.” Sociology 13 (1979): 179–201. Fox, Stephen. Transatlantic: Samuel Cunard, Isambard Brunel, and the Great Atlantic Steamships. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

TRAMPS AND HOBOS

Leed, Eric. The Mind of the Traveler: From “Gilgamesh” to Global Tourism. New York: Basic Books, 1991. Pomeroy, Earl. In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Schriber, Mary Suzanne. Writing Home: American Women Abroad, 1830–1920. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997. Shaffer, Marguerite S. See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Stowe, William W. Going Abroad: European Travel in Nineteenth-Century Culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. Ziff, Larzer. Return Passages: Great American Travel Writing, 1780–1910. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000. Jeffrey Melton

transformation of the urban United States. With the growth of industrial capitalism, America became more vulnerable to the effects of economic crises. The financial panic of 1873, which resulted from the failure of Jay Cooke and Company, was felt throughout the 1870s and sent thousands of workers on the road searching for jobs. Similarly devastating effects followed the deep and tragic depression that lasted from 1893 to 1897. Paradoxically, however, the existence of a large number of geographically mobile men in search of work also had a positive impact on America’s economy. At a time when the United States was involved in building a national infrastructure of monumental dimensions, the fluid labor supply was an essential prerequisite for the construction of the major transportation networks. It also guaranteed that the seasonal demands in the various industrial, extractive, and agricultural locations of the economy were efficiently met.

TRAMPS AND HOBOS

MOBILITY AND THE PUBLIC PERCEPTION OF THE TRAMP

The American tramp is a figure that established itself in the 1870s with unexpected suddenness in America’s public consciousness. While itinerant laborers and the wandering poor had been part of American life since colonial days, tramping as a mass population movement was an unprecedented phenomenon that sent tens of thousands of men on the road. There were attempts to differentiate between tramps (migratory nonworkers) and hobos (men who traveled in search of work), but there is no consensus on the precise characteristics of these terms. Sociohistorical studies have shown that tramps were predominantly white, American-born, unskilled laborers between the ages of twenty and forty, who traveled on foot but more often used the railroads to cover the distances they traveled. As to the number of tramps in the United States, there are no reliable statistics. In 1877 the Hartford Courant estimated that there were 100,000 tramps in the country. In 1906 and 1911 individual observers spoke of 350,000 and 500,000 vagrants nationwide. Contemporary commentators attempted to explain the explosive growth of the number of mobile homeless people with reference to the effects of the Civil War, which, in their view, had removed men from their normal lives, accustomed them to the rigors of outdoor life, and implanted in them notions of extended mobility. From the vantage point of history, however, it has become clear that the spectacular rise in the number of tramps during the period between the 1870s to the 1920s coincided with the industrial

Although urban enterprises and railroad companies profited from the work done by the migratory seasonal laborers, the American public referred to them as the “tramp evil” or the “tramp nuisance.” Rural and urban communities reacted with antipathy and fear against the arrival of large numbers of strangers who were seen as a serious threat to life, property, morality, and social order. The tramp’s characteristic lifestyle presented an open challenge to a Victorian ideology in which stability, hard work, and the nuclear family were highly valued. As single men removed from the social control of the mainstream communities, the tramps led lives that differed significantly from the approved middleclass standard. The look they cultivated, the particular rules and customs they followed, and the jargon they used helped to divide them from the public at large. Their subculture was characterized by what the average citizen interpreted as indicators of social deviance, such as laziness, a lack of cleanliness, alcoholism, and homosexuality. In their endeavor to protect the citizens, communities ultimately resorted to legal action and passed vagrancy and tramp ordinances that were designed to keep the undesirable element at bay. It was not until the final years of the nineteenth century that reformers began to understand that the existence of a large migrant population was the result of economic processes and could not be blamed upon a pathologic unwillingness to work or an irrational and irresponsible psychic state called “wanderlust.”

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

It is interesting to note that the widespread aversion against the geographical mobility of a substantial


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1135

TRAMPS AND HOBOS

number of individuals occurred at a time when movement was a ubiquitous and defining feature of American culture. Especially in the nineteenth century, life in the United States was characterized by major population shifts brought about by an ever-growing number of immigrants, by an internal migration from rural regions to urban environments, and by a continuous westward advance. For most Americans, these historical phenomena evoked positive associations. Mobility was an obvious prerequisite for the territorial expansion the United States, which had been defined as the country’s Manifest Destiny. It created political power and economic opportunities for individuals and the nation alike and became a cornerstone for a number of ideological themes, including democracy, progress, and modernity. CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS OF TRAMPING

Mobility is a fundamental feature in human societies and manifests itself in a variety of ways. Those forms of movement that are imbued with special cultural meaning—pilgrimages, quests, conquests, explorations, travel—frequently became the object of paintings, songs, literary writings, and other forms of artful representation. Classic examples from world literature and mythology include such mobile characters as Ulysses, Cain, the Wandering Jew, Don Quixote, and others. Medieval writing contains numerous episodes featuring knights-errant, troubadours, and wandering scholars. Romantic literature abounds with the imagery of motion, and its protagonists are often wanderers who symbolize a range of positive characteristics, including optimistic visions for the future, educational desires, and an opposition to a mercantile world with its confining rules. A similarly positive view of the peripatetic existence can also be found in American literature in the years before the age of the industrial tramp began in the 1870s. Tales and songs were told about folk heroes like Daniel Boone who were almost constantly on the move looking for “elbow room,” and vernacular characters such as Simon Suggs, the creation of humorist Johnson Jones Hooper, proclaimed that “it is good to be shifty in a new country” (Hooper, p. 12). Walking was also positively portrayed in the writings of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. Both authors celebrated the freedom found in aimless wandering; Thoreau wrote in his journal that “it is a great art to saunter.” Bayard Taylor’s tremendously popular travel book Views A-Foot (1846) derived its appeal to a high degree from the romantic visions of tramping he set forth in this narrative. In real life, the physical exercise gained in walks or rambles was regarded as beneficial

1136

A M E R I C A N

to a person’s health. In 1894 a contributor to Century Magazine recommended that Americans walk more because it would make them “bigger, happier, healthier, and tougher” (C. M. S., p. 959). Despite the existence of a literary tradition featuring wayfaring protagonists and a social reality that provided countless situations and models for intensive study, the tramp phenomenon was slow to register in the world of writing. The earliest written responses came in local newspapers, which reported about the various activities that the political bodies or the charitable organizations of individual communities initiated to deal with the problems resulting from the growing presence of transients in their neighborhoods. As the topic gained in urgency, periodicals of national reputation opened their pages to a variety of contributors who discussed the issue from different angles. While journalists and public spokesmen of different persuasions addressed a subject that was of obvious relevance to late-nineteenth-century America, literary writers remained curiously silent on the topic. Although Stephen Crane (1871–1900) and other naturalists included the tramp together with other characters from the margins of society in their fictional depictions of life in America, there is no substantial body of literature focusing on tramp figures. In terms of the prevailing literary taste of the time, the tramp was simply not an appropriate subject. Whatever measure one might use, there is no denying that the prevailing economic and social conditions forced the tramp into miserable living conditions. A realistic depiction of tramp life in literature would therefore have to address in detail unattractive and possibly offensive aspects of life in America, which would shed an unfavorable light on a country that liked to think of itself as especially favored by a divine providence. It would also force the writer to take a position in a highly controversial issue and thus make him or her vulnerable to negative reactions from readers and literary critics. According to their own testimony, the guardians of a public taste based on middle-class values were mainly concerned with protecting the large female readership. Since this group constituted the main market for fiction, a commercial aspect was obviously also involved in this issue. William Dean Howells (1837–1920) used his influential position as writer, editor, and critic to encourage his fellow writers “to concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life” (Howells, p. 641). The tramp did not fit the preferred visions of America and was thus relegated a shadow existence in American letters and in sociohistorical research. This situation, according to

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

TRAMPS AND HOBOS

The Tramp Hang-Out. Illustration from “The Tramp at Home” by Josiah Flynt in Century Magazine, February 1894. GRADUATE LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

some social historians, did not change until late in the twentieth century and may explain the relative lack of scholarly work in the field. The first author to devote intensive and sustained attention to the tramp was Josiah Flynt (the penname of Josiah Flynt Willard, 1869–1907). His influential reports on tramp life appeared in periodicals such as Atlantic Monthly and Century Magazine and were widely read. Despite the journalistic coverage the tramp had by then received for more than ten years, Flynt claimed that “comparatively little is known about his real life and character” (“Life,” p. 803). To fill the void, he conducted interviews with tramps and, choosing a participant-observer approach, he gained firsthand knowledge of his subject by living the tramp’s life himself, both in the United States and in Europe. His attention, however, was focused not on “the enforced vagrant, but rather the man who wanders because he desires to, and prefers begging to working” (“Life,” p. 803). It was a crucial decision because this limited perspective left out the socioeconomic dimensions of the issue and thus reduced its complexity. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

As he enthralled the genteel readers of the prestigious magazines with scenes from life on the road, he led them into a strange and exotic world that actually existed not far from their homes but was far removed from the daily experience of their own sheltered, bourgeois lives. Although at times he titillated his audience with episodes of an adventurous life marked by harshness, violence, criminal behavior, and veiled sexual allusions, he left no doubt about his own attitudes toward this class of people. The texts he wrote showed him in agreement with the majority of his contemporaries: The tramp as beggar was a nuisance that needed to be eliminated. In Flynt’s eyes, the origin of the problem lay both with the tramps, who were pathologically unwilling to work, and with the charitable people, whose generosity provided the basis for the tramps’ continued existence. Jack London (1876–1916) took a much different attitude toward the homeless migrants. Although his editor and friends advised him not to write about his own tramp reminiscences because his positive attitude toward the controversial figure might hurt the sales of


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1137

TRAMPS AND HOBOS

his other books, London expressed himself on the subject both in his fiction and nonfiction. He became the major literary voice presenting the life of the American tramp at the turn of the twentieth century. Clearly informed by his socialist convictions, London’s 1902 speech “The Tramp” identified the socioeconomic situation in America as the reason for the troubles of vagrancy. In it, London analyzed the reasons for and the effects of the existence of a “surplus labor army.” He concluded that the tramp was the victim of a situation for which he bore no responsibility but was nevertheless forced into the position of “the scapegoat to our economic and industrial sinning” (p. 487).

Although Jack London dedicated The Road to Josiah Flynt, the two writers differed in their attitude toward the tramp. While London celebrated the freedom of life on the road, Flynt was critical of an existence that appeared to him as socially reprehensible behavior.

He has loafed, seen the country and green things, laughed in joy, lain on his back and listened to the birds singing overhead, unannoyed by factory whistles and bosses’ harsh commands; and, most significant of all, he has lived. That is the point! He has not starved to death. Not only has he been care-free and happy, but he has lived! And from the knowledge that he has idled and is still alive, he achieves a new outlook on life; and the more he experiences the unenviable lot of the poor worker, the more the blandishments of the “road” take hold of him. And finally he flings his challenge in the face of society, imposes a valorous boycott on all work, and joins the far-wanderers of Hoboland, the gypsy folk of this latter day.

London’s best-known publication on the tramp is his pseudo-autobiographical book The Road (1907), in which the author collected, without much effort to achieve narrative unity, nine essays on life on the road that had been previously published in Cosmopolitan Magazine. It was an assortment of memories recalling various incidents from the time when London lived the life of a tramp in his younger years. Writing under financial pressure and severe time constraints, London failed to revise his material and contented himself with the role of a storyteller by jumbling a series of entertaining anecdotes with a folksy appeal. His loosely connected chapters highlight individual episodes featuring characteristic situations from the life of a tramp. The book is pervaded by an atmosphere of competition in which an ambitious protagonist strives to prove himself superior to other tramps and to the representatives of law and order. Despite London’s political convictions, social commentary is slight in this volume, and the emphasis is mostly on the adventures of tramp life and youthful excitement. London’s literary work on the tramp was supplemented by the writings of now forgotten authors whose publications presented the figure of the tramp in a variety of formats, including sociological treatises and manifestos. Most authors chose the pattern of the adventure story, generally framed as autobiographical or pseudo-autobiographical accounts. Among these were titles such as Lee Harris’s The Man Who Tramps (1878), Thomas Manning Page’s Bohemian Life; or, The Autobiography of a Tramp (1884), and Leon Ray Livingston’s Life and Adventures of A-No.1, America’s Most Celebrated Tramp. Written by Himself (1908). The tone of these publications ran from a sharply critical attitude toward the subject to a justification or even celebration of a marginal, disdained existence and an explicit sense of pride in the conscious departure from a normative middle-class life. Hobo songs were another source that provided insights into the life of the nation’s transient population.

1138

A M E R I C A N

London, “The Tramp,” in The Social Writings of Jack London, p. 485.

I must first explain just what I mean by a tramp. Some people think that he is simply a man out of work, a man willing to labor if he has the chance; and others, although admitting that he is not so fond of toil as he might be, claim that he is more a victim of circumstances than of his own perversity. Neither of these opinions seems to me to meet the case. According to my experience,—and I have studied the tramp carefully in over thirty States of the Union,—he is a man, and too often a boy, who prefers vagabondage to any other business, and in moments of enthusiasm actually brags about the wisdom of his choice. There are some exceptions, it is true, but by no means so many as is generally supposed. Not one tramp in fifty of those that I have met could say that he could find no work, and not over ten in a hundred could claim that they had never had a “fair chance in life.” Josiah Flynt, “What to Do with the Tramp?” Century Magazine 48, no. 5 (September 1894), p. 794.

Their thematic structure reflected the tramp’s existence in its various forms. Fatalistic and sarcastic visions of life in America existed alongside songs about

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

TRAMPS AND HOBOS

the pathos of the hobo condition. In spite of many disappointing and cruel experiences encountered on the road, the songs often portrayed the tramp as an optimist who never gave up his dreams about a mythical hobo paradise, a theme that is exemplified in one of the most famous titles, “The Big Rock Candy Mountain.” As the nineteenth century came to a close, the figure of the tramp had established itself most thoroughly in the field of popular entertainment. In the hands of numerous artists and performers, the sad and sometimes tragic circumstances of homelessness moved into the background and were superseded by humorous representations of the carefree aspects of tramp life on the vaudeville stage, in newspaper comic strips, and in early silent films. Beginning in the late 1890s, a large number of “tramp acts” were performed as entertaining comedy sketches that had a significant appeal for large audiences. Together with other popular figures of the time, the tramp became a comic character who provided innocent fun for middle-class urban vaudeville audiences of almost any racial or occupational background. As the vaudeville stage simplified the complex social phenomenon into a hilarious caricature, the national comic weeklies, Puck, Judge, and Life, produced and reproduced endless verbal and visual gags about the tramp’s tattered clothes, his panhandling ways, his jargon, and other stereotypes associated with the figure. Dime publications such as Wehman Bros.’ Tramp Jokes: Monologues and Recitations (1908) collected vaudeville’s most popular lines and comic episodes and distributed them to a large audience for repeated and leisurely consumption in a private setting. The humorous aspect of the tramp figure was also developed in the early comic strips, which frequently featured characters from the margins of American society. The tramp appeared most prominently in Happy Hooligan, a very successful series by Frederick Burr Opper (1857–1937) that first appeared in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal in 1900 and ran for more than 30 years. The character of Happy, in Opper’s words “a favorite son of misfortune” (Goulart, p. 172), was a hobo who was always down and out but persisted in looking on the bright side of life. This touching and ludicrous figure became a prototype for the “little man” in American humor, the unlucky individual overcome by the difficulties of life, yet irrepressible and cheerful in the face of neverending challenges. The situations, the paraphernalia, and the themes that audiences encountered on the vaudeville stage and on the pages of the nation’s humor magazines and A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

comic strips provided a starting point for the newly emerging film productions. This happened most prominently in the work of Charlie Chaplin (1889– 1977), whose Little Tramp character became “one of the most widely recognized popular culture icons in cinema” (Cresswell, p. 130). The process of simplification that the tramp figure had undergone in the various forms of mass-produced humor was reversed in Chaplin’s work. The actor transformed the figure into a complex character who could embody a broad range of meanings that were sometimes contradictory. As a protean modern character, Chaplin’s tramp slid into any role that the necessities of an uncertain existence required of him. Chaplin’s tramp retained the defining characteristics of worklessness and mobility, and quite often his actions were marked by pathos. But as clown, con man, and trickster located in the margins of normality, he highlighted the obstacles, absurdities, and tyrannies of middle-class life while resisting them with his comic subversiveness. That the subject of the tramp kept its relevance in the years after 1920 is borne out by fact that academic studies of hobos as well as more or less authentic autobiographical material continued to appear. Joseph Stamper’s Less than the Dust: The Memoirs of a Tramp (1931), Carl S. Schockman’s We Turned Hobo: A Narrative of Personal Experience (1937), and Ben L. Reitman’s Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Box-Car Bertha (1937) offered personal insights into the life of the tramp. Other writers chose a more scientific approach. The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man (1923) by Nels Anderson proved an influential study. The Hobo’s Hornbook: A Repertory for a Gutter Jongleur (1930) by George Milburn (1906–1966) collected and praised hobo songs as authentic American folklore. Godfrey Irwin compiled a dictionary entitled American Tramp and Underworld Slang (1931). This material was supplemented by the literary work of John Dos Passos (1896– 1970), John Steinbeck (1902–1968), Jack Kerouac (1922–1969), and other writers who developed their own versions of the transient worker. With its connections to modern-day homelessness, the figure of the tramp has remained an uncomfortable topic in American culture. SYMBOLIC MEANINGS OF THE TRAMP

This brief delineation of the various frameworks in which the tramp appeared shows that the figure holds a variety of possible meanings. In the early years, the image of the tramp was dominated by a cultural climate that constructed the figure as a low-down character unwilling to assume the responsibilities expected of a respectable citizen. Indolent, lazy, intemperate, a


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1139

TRAMPS AND HOBOS

danger to personal property and public health, the tramp was seen as a threat to the fundamental values of American life. In this sense, he became the negative counterpart to the classic American hero figure who, at the end of the nineteenth century, had been enshrined in the American pantheon as explorer, pioneer, or successful businessman. This position was sometimes balanced by a more compassionate attitude that regarded the tramp as a victim who was forced out of a secure life by unfortunate circumstances. Writing about tramp life from this perspective provided an opportunity to address the problems arising from a capitalist industrial society dependent on a large pool of cheap labor. The large number of unemployed or underemployed workers in a country of high ambitions appeared as a major contradiction to the belief in unlimited opportunity and called into question America’s ability to provide for its citizens. In this respect, the very existence of the tramp seemed to mock the American ideal of mobility, which was at the heart of individual and national progress. In contrast to the unfavorable view of the tramp expressed in these perspectives, another interpretation highlighted the desirable aspects of life on the road. This attitude was especially common among critics in the second half of the twentieth century, such as Frederick Feied and Kingsley Widmer, who emphasized the idea of the tramp as a counterculture hero engaged in a rebellion against the confinement of conventions and social responsibilities. They characterized the lifestyle of the tramp as that of a nonconformist in search of his own autonomy. In this process, the tramp accepted his own suffering as a necessary prerequisite for the freedom he craved, and his outsider status marked him as an opponent to the establishment and to traditional values. In his refusal to justify his existence in accordance with bourgeois terms, he insisted on his personal freedom in opposition to the bondage of paid labor. This sense of freedom also included visions of life beyond the domestic world of a nuclear family and the civilizing rule of women. Life on the road was a life in the company of men, which required courage and a variety of other so-called masculine skills. Viewed in this way, tramp life can be interpreted as a reaction against a socioeconomic system that emasculated men by forcing them to work in urban settings and imprisoned them by means of a tightly regulated industrial work schedule. In conclusion, it is worth noting that American writers were reluctant to extract literary material from the frustrating social reality that was the tramp’s substrate. While many of the books devoted to tramp life insist on the factuality of the descriptions by dutifully

1140

A M E R I C A N

making reference to the specific features of trampdom, the degree of their accuracy remains doubtful. In fact, most of this material came from the pens of middleclass observers; hardly any of the alleged autobiographies were written by actual tramps. Most of these writers downplayed the reality of the socioeconomic conditions, which lay at the root of the mass industrial tramping, in favor of a romanticized portrait of a protagonist who established his identity by resisting the demands of an industrialized economy. Jack London’s substantial intellectual and literary effort at establishing the subject notwithstanding, there seems to be a consensus among literary scholars that tramp fiction never fully matured. But regardless of how successfully the depictions of the tramp conformed to a literary ideal, the period from the 1870s to the 1920s (and beyond) shows an interesting spectrum of cultural responses to this disturbing character and to the conditions under which he led his marginal life. Further inquiry into this topic is much needed and will provide deeper insights into the way in which American culture struggled to accommodate a phenomenon that stood as a massive contradiction to its capitalist work ethic and rags-to-riches ideology. See also Migration; Poverty BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

C. M. S. “Walking.” Century Magazine 48, no. 6 (October 1894): 959. London, Jack. Jack London on the Road: The Tramp Diary and Other Hobo Writings. Edited by Richard W. Etulain. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1979. London, Jack. “The Tramp.” In The Social Writings of Jack London, edited by Philip S. Foner, pp. 474–487. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1964. Secondary Works

Allsop, Kenneth. Hard Travellin’: The Hobo and His History. New York: New American Library, 1967. Anderson, Nels. On Hobos and Homelessness. Edited by Raffaele Rauty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Browder, Laura. “Passing as Poor: Class Imposture in Depression America.” In her Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities, pp. 171– 201. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Carden, Mary Paniccia. “The Hobo as National Hero: Models for American Manhood in ‘Steam Train’ Maury Graham’s Autobiography.” Autobiography Studies: A/B 11, no. 1 (1996): 93–108.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

T R A N S P O R TAT I O N

Cresswell, Tim. The Tramp in America. London: Reaktion, 2001. Feied, Frederick. No Pie in the Sky: The Hobo as American Cultural Hero in the Works of Jack London, John Dos Passos, and Jack Kerouac. New York: Citadel Press, 1964. Flynt, Josiah. “Life among German Tramps.” Century Magazine 46, no. 6 (October 1893): 803–816. Flynt, Josiah. Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life. New York: The Century Co., 1899. Goulart, Ron, ed. The Encyclopedia of American Comics. New York: Promised Land Productions, 1990. Hooper, Johnson J. Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs. Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1845. Howells, William Dean. “Editor’s Study.” Harper’s Magazine 73 (September 1886): 641. Inge, M. Thomas. “Charlie Chaplin and the Comics.” In his Comics as Culture, pp. 59–67. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990. Monkkonen, Eric H., ed. Walking to Work: Tramps in America, 1790–1935. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Phelps, Richard. “Songs of the American Hobo.” Journal of Popular Culture 17, no. 2 (fall 1983): 1–21. Seelye, John D. “The American Tramp: A Version of the Picaresque.” American Quarterly 15, no. 4 (winter 1963): 535–553. Widmer, Kingsley. The Literary Rebel. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965. Holger Kersten

TRANSPORTATION Transportation underwent a revolution in the waning years of the nineteenth century and the early ones of the twentieth that would irrevocably alter the course of American life. As the period began, the railroad was king, but alternate modes of transportation soon emerged. Starting in the late 1870s, the bicycle offered an unprecedented combination of independence and convenience. The automobile arrived as a viable form of personal transportation at the turn of the century. This new mode of travel combined the bicycle’s independence with the ability to cover considerable distances in ease and comfort. The automobile ideally suited the American national character, and car became king in the twentieth century. Other forms of urban mass transit—the electric streetcar, the elevated train, the subway—were also developed during A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

the period. Though ocean liners remained the only way of crossing the Atlantic, the airplane was approaching viability as a mode of long-distance transportation at the end of the period. THE RAILROAD

On 10 May 1869 the Union Pacific Railroad, building west from Omaha, Nebraska, and the Central Pacific Railroad, building east from Sacramento, California, met at Promontory, Utah, to create the first transcontinental route. Before the completion of this crosscountry railroad, people wishing to travel through the American West had little choice but to take the stagecoach, an uncomfortable, time-consuming, and often dangerous method of transportation. Perhaps no single literary work illustrates the contrast between the two better than Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872). Narrating events that occurred before the completion of the transcontinental route, yet written afterward, Mark Twain (1835–1910), with characteristic hilarity, related the hardships involved with stagecoach travel. For the sake of comparison, he also included a newspaper account written by a traveler who crossed the plains of Nebraska from the comfort of a Pullman dining car, sipping champagne and eating broiled trout. With the transcontinental railroad, Mark Twain implied, travelers gained much in terms of speed and comfort but they lost something, too. The hardships associated with more rugged forms of transportation can help make great stories. The transcontinental route did inspire its share of travel literature, but even the travel writers could not deny that the train had changed the way people experienced the world through which they traveled. Richard Harding Davis’s (1864–1916) The West from a Car-Window (1892), to name one of the most popular travels books of its day, shows how the mode of transportation can shape an author’s perspective. Taking travelers through harsh, intimidating terrain quickly and comfortably, the railroad isolated them from the regions through which they passed. The train changed how travelers saw the towns and cities they entered, limited the variety of people they encountered, and transformed the landscape into a picture to be observed rather than an environment to be experienced. The window of a railway car and, more generally, the railroad itself mediated the travel experience, turning the environment into an abstraction, a phenomenon Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) recorded in his three-line poem “Window”: Night from a railroad car window Is a great, dark, soft thing Broken across with slashes of light.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1141


Given its unprecedented level of comfort, the passenger train gave people sufficient leisure time to let them relax and read. The railroads thus influenced popular literary tastes and shaped the reading process. Reading had been virtually impossible in a stagecoach, but train travel was conducive to reading, and businesses catering to reading passengers emerged. In 1864 William Henry Williams began the Union News Company, an endeavor which grew into an extensive chain of retail stores located at railway stations in major cities throughout the United States. The Union News Company later became affiliated with the publishing and distribution firm the American News Company, and together they significantly influenced the publishing industry. The Union News gave the railway newsstand a professionalism and uniformity that its haphazard

1142

A M E R I C A N

predecessors had lacked. Under its management, the railway newsstand became more lucrative than newsstands anywhere outside the railway station. Aboard the train, passengers could buy cheap pamphlet novels from the newsboys who rode the rails to peddle books. The unique design of the American railway car made the newsboy’s trade possible. Unlike European railway carriages, which consisted of multiple compartments accessed from the side of the train, American railway cars were designed with exits at each end, a long aisle spanning its length, and rows of upholstered seats on either side of the aisle. The newsboys could thus enter a car through the doors at one end, walk down the aisle, easily serve each passenger, exit through the doors at the other end, and repeat the process in the following car. Describing a railway

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


A Limited Express. Currier and Ives lithograph by Thomas Worth, c. 1884. Worth lampoons one of the disadvantages of rail travel. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

journey from New York to Philadelphia and complaining about how often the doors at either end of the railway car were noisily pulled opened or slammed shut, William Howard Russell, a British traveler found that the nerve-jarring nuisance was usually “the work of a newspaper boy, with a sheaf of journals and trashy illustrated papers under his arm” (p. 31). The marketing of cheap books on the train had a significant impact on the retail book trade, too. Describing his American travels, Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) wrote, “I do not know that anything impresses a visitor more strongly with the amount of books sold in the States, than the practice of selling them as it has been adopted in the railway cars” (p. 273). Railroads continued being built on a large scale through the nineteenth century, reaching a peak in the 1880s. To most, they represented the wonder of machinery and the progress of America. Walt Whitman, for one, imagined great possibilities for the A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

transcontinental railroad. In Specimen Days (1882) he beckons readers, “If you want to see what the railroad is, and how civilization and progress date from it— how it is the conqueror of crude nature, which it turns to man’s use, both on small scales and on the largest—come hither to inland America” (pp. 871– 872). Making imaginative use of the transcontinental railroad in “A Passage to India,” Whitman expressed the idea that this connection between the east and west coasts of America represented the final link connecting Orient and Occident. With its completion, all parts of the world could be linked together in universal brotherhood. “A Passage to India” presents one of the greatest celebrations of the transcontinental railroad: I see over my own continent the Pacific Railroad surmounting every barrier, I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying freight and passengers,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1143


I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle, I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world. (P. 532)

To some, however, the numerous railroads symbolized the reach and rapaciousness of the railroad barons who owned and operated them. Perhaps the finest articulation of this idea occurs in The Octopus (1901), the novel by Frank Norris (1870–1902), whose protagonist sees the railroad as the galloping monster, the terror of steel and steam, with its single eye, Cyclopean, red, shooting from horizon to horizon . . . the symbol of a vast power, huge, terrible, flinging the echo of its thunder over all the reaches of the valley, leaving blood and destruction in its path, the leviathan, with tentacles of steel clutching into the soil, the soulless Force, the iron-hearted Power, the monster, the Colossus, the Octopus. (P. 617)

From this perspective, the railroad represented the destruction of the American pastoral ideal and the dehumanization of the American people. The size and power of the railroad showed individuals how puny and insignificant they were in the face of the vast industrial forces that shaped the United States at the turn of the century. THE BICYCLE

The Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia presented multiple exhibits displaying the history of the railroad in the United States and the potential contribution the railroad could make to the future development of the American continent. One exhibit hall was named Machinery Hall, and it served as a vast shrine to the power of machines, especially the steam engine. Many other kinds of machines were exhibited here, but not all were steam-powered. One exhibit displayed a humanpowered, two-wheeled contrivance from Great Britain that had become known as a bicycle. The frame was made of tubular steel and its tires of hard rubber; the front wheel was quite large and the back quite small. The large front wheel, proportionate to the rider’s inseam, allowed the bicycle to cover an impressive distance with every rotation of the pedals. Attending the Centennial Exhibition, Colonel Albert Augustus Pope (1843–1909) became fascinated with these high-wheeled bicycles. Recognizing their commercial potential, he began importing English bicycles in 1877 and arranged for them to be made in America the following year, contracting the Weed Sewing Machine Company in Hartford, Connecticut, for their manufacture. The indigenous manufacture, combined with Pope’s rigorous commercial promo-

1144

A M E R I C A N

tion of the practical yet fun-filled machine and his shrewd legal maneuvering whereby he secured patents that forced other American manufacturers to pay him for permission to make their own high-wheeled machines greatly facilitated the bicycle’s emergence and made Colonel Pope the single most important individual responsible for establishing the bicycle in the United States. The high-wheeled bicycle developed an enthusiastic following among fairly affluent young men in the 1880s. They formed bicycle clubs and established elegant club rooms. Being a wheelman became a way of life. Wheelmen belonged to that class of gentlemenadventurers, sportsmen in the broadest sense of the term, who enjoyed an evening in their club rooms after a day in the wilds, who enjoyed a sumptuous meal but only after working up a good appetite through vigorous outdoor exercise, who appreciated a good cigar as much as they appreciated a lungful of fresh air, who enjoyed a snifter of cognac as much as they did a draught from an icy mountain stream, and who could read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Lord Byron as well as they could read a map. The bicycle inspired some adventuresome wheelmen to attempt long distance travel and, in so doing, made an important contribution to American travel literature, too. Thomas Stevens (1854–1935) crossed the continent in 1884 and went on to circle the globe atop his wheel, a journey he told in Around the World on a Bicycle (1887). Stevens’s adventure encouraged others to attempt long-distance travel, including, most importantly, George Nellis (1865–1948), who set a record in 1887 for crossing the continent by bicycle in seventytwo days. Nellis also a contributed to American travel literature: he financed his trip by writing it up for local newspapers and for the Wheel and Recreation, the most prominent of many cycling magazines that were being published at the time. Nellis’s personal charm, his love of cycling, and his wry sense of humor show through in the delightful letters he published during the course of his trip. West of Omaha, he took a route parallel to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads, but traveling by bicycle, he experienced the nation in a much different way than those who traveled by rail. He saw sights, visited towns, and met people that the passenger trains passed by without stopping. The high-wheeled bicycle remains an icon of the era, but riding one took a fair amount of skill and buying one took a fair amount of money. A goodquality bicycle in the 1880s cost about a quarter of the annual salary of a factory worker. With the invention of the safety bicycle and the pneumatic tire, bicycling gained a huge popular following over the next decade.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Increased demand brought increased production, which decreased prices. As the high-wheeler gave way to the safety bicycle, the bicycle went from being a privileged recreational pursuit to a mode of popular shortdistance transportation and recreation. Whereas the locomotive presented a vast machine that belittled the individual, the bicycle, like the automobile after it, was a machine that empowered individuals and gave them the freedom to travel where and when they wanted. THE AUTOMOBILE

The popularity of the bicycle in the 1890s anticipated the coming popularity of the automobile. That same decade, numerous automobile companies were being formed, and numerous experimental automobiles were being produced. Colonel Pope, for one, shifted corporate operations from bicycle to automobile manufacture in the 1890s. In 1896 Henry Ford (1863–1947) created the lightweight Quadricycle, his first experimental car to use an internal combustion engine. Ford Motor Company sold its first automobile in 1903, two years after what is considered the first commercially successful, American-made auto, the curved-dash Oldsmobile. Whereas Ford and Oldsmobile went on to experience great commercial success, other pioneering automobile manufacturers were less fortunate. The early automotive industry was viciously competitive, and few companies survived the first decade of the new century. Colonel Pope’s company, sadly, went into receivership in 1907. Many bicycling enthusiasts met the automobile with derision. Writing in 1900, a pseudonymous contributor to the Overland Monthly observed: “The automobile puffs its lugubrious way through our streets and byways. The automobile is not pretty; it is not, so far, even effective. It has merely succeeded in being prosaically noisy and vulgarly ostentatious. But the bicycle possesses all the gentlemanly qualities. It is graceful, well-conducted, quiet and modest” (Rotifer, p. 521). Though one was quiet and human-powered while the other was noisy and engine-driven, both the bicycle and the automobile gave Americans what they characteristically desired the most: freedom and independence. Henry Ford recognized what American motorists wanted and understood how to give it to them. After producing several modestly successful automobiles, Ford released the Model T, the first mass-produced car, in 1908. At an initial cost of less than $1000, the Model T was the first automobile many people could afford. Before the last one came off the assembly line in 1927, the price had dropped below $300, and Ford had sold 15 million units. In terms of the history of American literature, the automobile found its first great enthusiast in Edith A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Wharton (1862–1937), whose Motor-Flight through France (1908) begins with a paean to the automobile: The motor-car has restored the romance of travel. Freeing us from all the compulsions and contacts of the railway, the bondage to fixed hours and the beaten track, the approach to each town through the area of ugliness and desolation created by the railway itself, it has given us back the wonder, the adventure and the novelty which enlivened the way of our posting grandparents. Above all these recovered pleasures must be ranked the delight of taking a town unawares, stealing on it by back ways and unchronicled paths, and surprising in it some intimate aspect of past time, some silhouette hidden for half a century or more by the ugly mask of railway embankments and the iron bulk of a huge station. The villages that we missed and yearned for from the windows of the train—the unseen villages have been given back to us! (Pp. 1–2)

For Edith Wharton, the automobile, that most modern of personal contrivances, paradoxically brought back a bygone era—the time before steam locomotives— because it allowed travelers to see what the railroads had obscured. Furthermore, it freed people from schedules and timetables. Wharton’s Motor-Flight through France anticipates the American love affair with the automobile that would develop quickly over the next few decades. Not all recognized such benefits to the automobile as quickly as Edith Wharton, however. She often tried to get Henry James (1843–1916) to come along on her motoring trips, but he disdained the automobile. James often enjoyed bicycling from his English home to visit nearby friends, but he could never fathom Wharton’s passion for the automobile. He nicknamed her “Firebird” and called her automobile the “Chariot of Fire.” To some, the auto became a menace to the city streets and only confirmed impressions that modern urban mass transit was suggesting. In New York, the first mode of rapid urban transit, the elevated railways or el-trains, were constructed from 1867 through 1870. By the early 1890s, elevated lines crisscrossed Manhattan from South Ferry to 155th Street. The noisy, dirty eltrains darkened and polluted streets, made buildings shake, and continually disturbed anyone living at the third-floor level along the elevated routes. The el-trains served as a pervasive reminder of the extent to which industrial technology controlled people’s lives. The development of the electric street cars and subways around the turn of the century presented better alternatives to the el-train, but they, too, served as powerful reminders of the speed, technological advancement, and noise indicative of modern existence.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1145


As more highways were developed, the use of the automobile for long-distance travel became more prevalent, but it would not effectively supplant the railroad until the middle of the twentieth century. Through the early decades of the century, the steamship remained the only method of traveling overseas. Despite disasters like the sinking of the Titanic and the Lusitania, American vacationers visited Europe via steamship in increasingly large numbers before and after World War I. By 1920 a new form of transportation was emerging. Though passenger airlines would not really be developed until the next decade, the invention of the airplane marked the start of the next great transportation revolution. See also Science and Technology; Tourism and Travel Writing BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Davis, Richard Harding. The West from a Car-Window. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1892. Norris, Frank. Novels and Essays. Edited by Donald Pizer. New York: Library of America, 1986. Rotifer. “The Wheel in the West.” Overland Monthly 35 (June 1900): 521–529. Russell, William Howard. My Diary North and South. Boston: Burnham, 1863. Sandburg, Carl. Chicago Poems. New York: Henry Holt, 1916.

1146

A M E R I C A N

Stevens, Thomas. Around the World on a Bicycle. 1887. Edited by Thomas Pauly. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2001. Trollope, Anthony. North America. Edited by Donald Smalley and Bradford Allen Booth. New York: Knopf, 1951. Twain, Mark. Roughing It. 1875. Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and Edgar Marquess Branch. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Wharton, Edith. A Motor-Flight through France. 1908. Edited by Mary Suzanne Schriber. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991. Whitman, Walt. Complete Poetry and Collected Prose. Edited by Justin Kaplan. New York: Library of America, 1982. Secondary Works

Brinkley, Douglas. Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, 1903–2003. New York: Viking, 2003. Conrad, Peter. Modern Times, Modern Places. New York: Knopf, 1999. Hayes, Kevin J. An American Cycling Odyssey, 1887. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. Hayes, Kevin J. “Railway Reading.” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 106 (1997): 301–326. Smith, Robert A. Merry Wheels and Spokes of Steel: A Social History of the Bicycle. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1995.

H I S T O R Y

Kevin J. Hayes

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

UNCLE REMUS, HIS SONGS AND HIS SAYINGS Uncle Remus Brand Syrup was sold during the first half of the twentieth century; in the early twenty-first century B and G Foods sells Brer Rabbit Syrup and Brer Rabbit Molasses. Beatrix Potter, one of several children’s writers in Europe, England, and America influenced by the phenomenal popularity of Joel Chandler Harris’s first book, Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings (1880), privately asked her editor whether he thought anyone would notice if she recycled some of Harris’s animal names in her Peter Rabbit stories; Harris’s Miss Molly Cottontail and other critters suddenly had a new identity. Rudyard Kipling said that when he was fifteen, in 1881, the Uncle Remus stories ran like wild fire through his English public school. One can read Mark Twain’s account of meeting Harris in New Orleans in Life on the Mississippi (1883) before rereading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) and watching for shades of Uncle Remus in black Jim. The sudden international increase in scholarly and popular folktale collecting that started in the 1880s is almost statistically tied to the enthusiastic response to Harris’s first and second collections of Uncle Remus stories. Walt Disney bought all the rights to Harris’s Uncle Remus books and characters in 1939 for $10,000; he would parlay that investment into a 1946 film, Song of the South, that grossed $13 million, including its five releases and at least fifty editions of Brer Rabbit storybooks. The tar baby, like Melville’s great white whale, has evolved into a multilayered,

U

multicultural literary symbol. Harris’s metaphoric legacy, measured simply in terms of Uncle Remus’s folktale expressions that have entered popular language and popular culture—for example, briar patch, Brer Rabbit, laughing place—is immense. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS IN HIGH COTTON

Joel Chandler Harris (1845–1908), the self-conscious and stammering, illegitimate son of Mary Harris and a still-unknown father, could not have imagined that retelling the African American folktales he had heard during the 1860s and 1870s would create such a rich and diverse legacy. Harris was born in Eatonton, Putnam County, Georgia, the geographical center of Middle Georgia cotton country and whose traditions of rich humor and local color were created about the time of Harris’s birth by neighboring authors A. B. Longstreet, Richard Malcolm Johnston, William Tappan Thompson, and Charles H. Smith (“Bill Arp”). Harris learned to write by setting type and composing short pieces from 1862 to 1866 as a printer’s devil at nearby Turnwold Plantation, owned by Joseph Addison Turner, a miscellaneous genius and man of letters who published America’s only plantation newspaper. Harris proved to have a discriminating ear and retentive memory, and at Turnwold he was fascinated by the Brer Rabbit African American trickster folktales told by Turner’s slaves, Aunt Crissy, Old Harbert, and Uncle George Terrell. After the Civil War, Harris began to acquire a regional reputation as a newspaperman, a “cornfield journalist” as he self-deprecatingly styled himself, by holding a series of increasingly visible newspaper positions in Macon, Forsyth, and Savannah.

1147

U N C L E R E M U S , H I S S O N G S A N D H I S S AY I N G S

He retreated to Atlanta in 1876, with his wife, Essie, and their two infant sons, to escape the yellow fever outbreak on the coast; the Atlanta Constitution learned he was in town and hired him immediately. When the staff dialect-writer left the paper on medical leave, Harris took over his regular column and instinctively started retelling some of the trickster stories he had absorbed at Turnwold. He created as his storyteller an amalgam of the Turner slave narrators, whom he named Uncle Remus after an old black gardener he had met in Forsyth. By the end of Harris’s career, Uncle Remus and his fellow storytellers, also modeled after slaves and former slaves Harris had met, would narrate 185 African American trickster tales and other folk stories, collected in a total of nine volumes, three of which appeared posthumously. Richard Chase edited The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus in 1955. Two-thirds of these Brer Rabbit trickster tales and related folk stories—which comprise the largest and most influential gathering of African American folktales published in the nineteenth century—derive their deep structures and primary motifs from African folktales that were brought to the New World and then retold and elaborated upon by African American slaves living in the southeastern United States. The remaining stories have their roots in European and Native American folklore. In addition to his importance as an amateur folklorist and story collector, Harris left four other legacies. He was an important newspaper comedian, for a time as widely read and beloved as his friend Mark Twain. Harris was also a pioneering New South journalist, especially during his quarter-century as associate editor, with Henry Grady, of the Atlanta Constitution, where he relentlessly campaigned for sectional and racial reconciliation after the Civil War. Additionally, he was an influential and popular children’s author and a well-regarded local color short fiction writer and novelist, who created several memorable black and poor white characters. His frequently anthologized short stories include “Free Joe and the Rest of the World,” “Mingo,” and “At Teague Poteet’s.” IN THE SHADOW OF UNCLE REMUS: HARRIS’S LITERARY HEIRS AND PROTESTERS

Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), Harris’s second Brer Rabbit collection, featuring four black narrators and gathering seventy-one tales, is an ambitious and important re-creation of African American folklore as it is performed. But Harris’s most famous and influential work continues to be his first book, Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. This volume, illustrated by F. S. Church and J. H. Moser, anthologized thirty-four

1148

A M E R I C A N

Brer Rabbit stories, seventy Uncle Remus aphorisms, nine plantation songs, twenty-one sketches about Uncle Remus’s disgruntling post–Civil War experiences living in Atlanta, and a short story about how Uncle Remus once saved Marse John from being shot by a Yankee sniper. A. B. Frost became Harris’s preferred illustrator when he created over a hundred drawings for the handsome revised 1895 edition of Uncle Remus. Harris’s first book has never been out of print. In 1926 four hundred high school and college English teachers ranked Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings fifth among the ten most enduring works of American literature. Poe’s tales held the top position, followed by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826). Uncle Remus was next, followed by Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), William Dean Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome (1911), Bret Harte’s tales, and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). In its various editions, Uncle Remus has sold several million copies and has been translated into at least thirty foreign languages; Barnes and Noble lists more than ninety editions of Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus tales and their various adaptations in its online inventory for 2003. As popular as the book has proven to be, it actually took only one story from the 1880 collection to ensure the permanence of Harris’s legacy: the tale of Brer Rabbit and the tar baby. Even if listeners do not know Harris by name, they typically know this widely recycled story. The danger of being caught in a doublebind tar baby trap, where the more you fight it, the worse it gets, and Brer Rabbit’s celebrated reversepsychology pleading with Brer Fox not to throw him into the briar patch—the very place he can find safety— have become internationally recognized metaphors. These metaphors have worked their way into an enduring variety of literary, social, political, and popular culture contexts, as the first section of this essay suggests. Yet paradoxically, the more Harris’s reputation grew, the more his body of work became the center of controversy, especially during the Harlem Renaissance and the height of the civil rights protests. Writers indebted to Harris include Twain, who called Harris America’s “only master” of black dialect. Twain invited Harris and George Washington Cable to accompany him on an ambitious national platform tour, but Harris declined because of the stuttering problem that had afflicted him all his life; with Harris’s blessing Twain took the tar baby tale on the road, later noting that this story was invariably his most-requested performance piece. Harris and Twain exchanged ideas for “The Golden Arm” story with which Twain entertained

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Illustration by J. B. Frost from the 1899 edition of Uncle Remus and His Friends. Brer Rabbit is pouring boiling water on Brer Wolf, locked inside a chest. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

lecture audiences, and Huckleberry Finn shows numerous analogues in characterization and motif with Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings and with “At Teague Poteet’s,” among other works by Harris. Because of their national statures and their mutual interest in folktales, rural life, and dialect, the American Folklore Society made Harris and Twain charter members in the 1880s. When Harris died in 1908 and Twain in 1910, obituaries from around the world mourned these two most beloved of American authors. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Charles Chesnutt launched his career by trying to separate himself from Harris’s legacy and his huge following, arguing that Harris was a storytelling folklorist whereas he was creating his own artful, folklike tales. But Houghton Mifflin, which had also become Harris’s major publisher beginning in the early 1890s, nevertheless helped market Chesnutt’s first book, The Conjure Woman and Other Tales (1899), by holding onto Brer Rabbit’s long ears, as it were—printing on the cover two white rabbits and a bearded old black


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1149


man’s smiling face. In at least a partial validation of this cover design, Uncle Julius’s lucky rabbit foot is an important motif in one story; rabbits, however, living or dismembered, play no other roles in these conjuration tales. The face is by implication Julius’s, yet, down to the three-quarter-face beard shape, Julius also looks suspiciously like James Moser’s 1880 rendering of Uncle Remus, the frontispiece of the first edition of Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. Zora Neale Hurston alludes to and partially retells Brer Rabbit tales in her essays and fiction, Mules and Men (1935) and Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, too, knew Harris. Harris’s legacy is inescapable for southern writers drawing black and poor-white characters. Faulkner uses an elaborate tar baby metaphor throughout Absalom, Absalom! (1936), the plot of which also roughly parallels the storyline of “Where’s Duncan?”— a tale of miscegenation and retribution that is one of Harris’s darkest local color stories. Faulkner even owned a copy of Harris’s virtually unread novel, Sister Jane (1896); if he knew this book, he was certainly conversant in Harris’s more popular works. Fellow Georgian O’Connor liked to send her friends postcards from Eatonton’s “Uncle Remus Museum” (still open to the public in the early twenty-first century), two restored slave cabins bolted together that contain some Harris memorabilia. O’Connor quipped in her cards that this particular structure was the only air-conditioned slave cabin in the South. (Harris’s fully restored West End, Atlanta, Victorian home, the popular “Wren’s Nest,” is his official museum and the Harris Association’s headquarters.) Ralph Ellison refers both directly and indirectly to Harris’s Brer Rabbit tales in Invisible Man (1952), Shadow and Act (1964), and Going to the Territory (1986). Toni Morrison reflected extensively in interviews about the profound, lingering effects of hearing and visualizing in her childhood Harris’s rendering of the tar baby story, and she features tar baby characters in Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981)—which in fact includes four tar babies— and Beloved (1987). But Alice Walker, Eatonton’s other famous literary offspring, begrudges Harris’s influence, arguing that he effectively stole a major part of her black folk legacy from its authentic African American creators. Harris, a white man, added insult to injury by also using the white publishing industry to make a small fortune out of time-honored, traditional, black folk materials. Walker has for two decades been echoing the concerns of other black critics, from the Harlem Renaissance and from the 1960s and 1970s on. Meanwhile, at another point on the literary spectrum, a whole gallery of protagonists in children’s stories—from Kim’s animal friends

1150

A M E R I C A N

in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Books (1894–1895) and Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit (1902) to Howard Garis’s Uncle Wiggly (1912–1940), A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh (1926, 1928), and E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952)—were influenced by Harris’s creation of streetsmart, recognizably human animal characters who speak “de same like folks.” BEYOND THE “FUN” AND “GIGGLE”: THE COMPLEX RHETORIC AND SOCIOLOGY OF THE UNCLE REMUS TALES

Harris embedded his retold animal folktales in a rhetorically sophisticated narrative frame featuring Uncle Remus and a little white boy listener, who is the son of the plantation master. Uncle Remus’s affectionate but also mentoring interrelationship with the boy is an important pairing in the long line of fictional male friends of mixed race—Natty Bumppo and Chinkachgook, Ishmael and Queequeg, and Huck Finn and Jim. In Harris’s second volume, Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), three other black narrators also tell folktales: Aunt Tempy, the uppity and privileged cook in the big house; ’Tildy, the often impertinent housemaid; and Daddy Jack, a sagacious old Gullah Negro from the Sea Islands of Georgia, who performs stories complexly counterpointed with conjuring chants and musical refrains. Uncle Remus himself proves, however, to be the most fully developed and gifted vernacular storyteller of the group. Remus’s character gradually evolves in the later Uncle Remus collections, even as his young white listener grows up and marries, eventually sending his own rather sissified son to learn at the knee of the seemingly ageless old man. On one narrative level, Uncle Remus appears to be telling only entertaining, harmless slapstick animal tales drawn nostalgically from the pre–Civil War, Old South plantation tradition. These stories typically highlight the stupidity of the physically stronger animals, who are almost invariably trapped by their own attempts to ensnare Brer Rabbit. In the introduction to Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, however, Harris acknowledges the allegorical significance of the stories he was retelling. He also notes that he is trying to show a side of black character and experience that Harriet Beecher Stowe does not treat in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Clearly, Brer Rabbit is the black slave’s alter ego and trickster-hero, and the so-called stronger animals represent the white slave owners. On deeper symbolical and archetypal levels, furthermore, Uncle Remus’s role is to initiate his young white listener into the complex realities of adult life. Yet at the same time, Uncle Remus has been educating entire generations of readers—young and old, white, black, brown, red, and yellow—about the destructive power plays and status struggles among members of the animal king-

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


dom who clearly represent socially and ethnically different, jealous, contentious, and even openly warring, members of the human race itself. Regularly, too, Brer Rabbit, as the archetypal trickster, crosses traditional boundaries in order to stir things up and effect changes in the system. As James Baldwin once observed, the artist is an incorrigible disturber of the peace; so, too, Brer Rabbit, who cannot stand for the neighborhood to be too quiet or complacent. Thus Brer Rabbit creates chaos, challenges the power structure, or raises Cain for the sheer heck of it. And he survives his own hair-raising escapades because, as his tricky old shaman creator, Uncle Remus, counsels, he knows how to use his “thinkin’ masheen,” a more powerful weapon than his adversaries’ brute strength. Uncle Remus is an accomplished role-player and trickster himself. While affectionately telling the little white boy superficially entertaining tales, he is also exploring, just below the surface, the precariousness of life in a violent, predatory world of interracial strife and class warfare, with its constant assaults on the human body and spirit. As Uncle Remus, “with unusual emphasis,” once stops to explain to the little white boy and to his fellow raconteurs ’Tildy, Aunt Tempy, and Daddy Jack in Nights with Uncle Remus, “ef deze yer tales wuz des fun, fun, fun, en giggle, giggle, giggle, I let you know I’d a-done drapt um long ago” (p. 290). Uncle Remus’s Brer Rabbit tales celebrate human resourcefulness, courage, and resiliency in the face of oppression. But he also challenges his readers and listeners to find a common ground and common humanity, free from slavery, terror, and violence—where the human spirit can find its best expression, not in trickery and subversion, but in mutual understanding and compassion. See also Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Conjure Woman; Folklore and Oral Traditions; Humor BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Harris, Joel Chandler. The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus. Edited by Richard Chase. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955. Harris, Joel Chandler. Nights with Uncle Remus: Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation. 1883. New York: Penguin, 2003. Harris, Joel Chandler. Told by Uncle Remus: New Stories of the Old Plantation. New York: McClure, Phillips, 1905. Harris, Joel Chandler. Uncle Remus and His Friends: Old Plantation Stories, Songs, and Ballads with Sketches of Negro Character. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Harris, Joel Chandler. Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation. New York: D. Appleton, 1880. New and rev. edition, with illustrations by A. B. Frost. D. Appleton, 1895. Harris, Joel Chandler. Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. Edited by Robert Hemenway. New York: Penguin Classics, 1982. Harris, Joel Chandler. Uncle Remus Returns. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918. Lester, Julius. The Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit (1987); More Tales of Uncle Remus: Further Adventures of Brer Rabbit, His Friends, Enemies, and Others (1988); Further Tales of Uncle Remus: The Misadventures of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Wolf, the Doodang, and Other Creatures (1990); and The Last Tales of Uncle Remus (1994). New York: Dial Books. Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. Modern retellings of the Uncle Remus stories. Parks, Van Dyke. Jump! The Adventures of Brer Rabbit (adapted with Malcolm Jones; 1986); Jump Again! More Adventures of Brer Rabbit (1987); and Jump On Over! (1989). San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Illustrations by Barry Moser. Modern retellings of the Uncle Remus stories. Secondary Works

Baer, Florence E. Sources and Analogues of the Uncle Remus Tales. Helsinki, Finland: Folklore Fellows Communications, 1980. Bickley, John T., and R. Bruce Bickley Jr. “Folklore Performance and the Legacy of Joel Chandler Harris.” Introduction to Nights with Uncle Remus, edited by John T. Bickley and R. Bruce Bickley Jr., pp. ix–xxi. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Bickley, R. Bruce, Jr. Joel Chandler Harris. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. Reprinted as Joel Chandler Harris: A Biography and Critical Study. Lincoln, Nebr.: Authors Guild/Backinprint, 2000. Bickley, R. Bruce, Jr., ed. Critical Essays on Joel Chandler Harris. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981. Bickley, R. Bruce, Jr., and Hugh T. Keenan. Joel Chandler Harris: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1977– 1996; with Supplement, 1892–1976. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997. Brasch, Walter M. Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus, and the “Cornfield Journalist”: The Tale of Joel Chandler Harris. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2000. Cartwright, Keith. “Creole Self-Fashioning: Joel Chandler Harrris’s ‘Other Fellow.’” In Reading Africa into American Literature. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Goldthwaite, John. “The Black Rabbit: A Fable of, by, and for the People” and “Sis Beatrix: The Fable in the Nursery.” In The Natural History of Make-Believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe, and


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1151

U P F R O M S L AV E R Y

America, pp. 251–286, 287–317. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Hemenway, Robert. “Author, Teller, and Hero.” Introduction to Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, pp. 7– 31. New York: Penguin Classics, 1982. Okepewho, Isidore. “The Cousins of Uncle Remus.” In The Black Columbiad: Defining Moments in African American Literature and Culture, edited by Werner Sollors and Maria Diedrich, pp. 15–27. Harvard English Studies 19. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. Roberts, John W. “Br’er Rabbit and John: Trickster Heroes in Slavery.” In From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom, pp. 19–94. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989. Stevenson, Frank. “Remembering Remus.” Florida State University Research in Review 9, no. 1 (1998): 16–27, 40–45. Sundquist, Eric. “Uncle Remus, Uncle Julius, and the New Negro” and “‘De Ole Times,’ Slave Culture, and Africa.” In To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature, pp. 323–359. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993. Turner, Darwin T. “Daddy Joel Harris and His Old-Time Darkies.” Southern Literary Journal 1 (December 1968): 20–41. Reprinted in Critical Essays on Joel Chandler Harris, edited by R. Bruce Bickley Jr., pp. 113–129. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981. Walker, Alice. “The Dummy in the Window: Joel Chandler Harris and the Invention of Uncle Remus.” In Living by the Word: Selected Writings, 1973–1987, pp. 25–32. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988. Werner, Craig Hansen. “The Brier Patch as (Post)modernist Myth: Morrison, Barthes, and Tar-Baby As-Is.” In Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse, pp. 63–83. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Wolfe, Bernard. “Uncle Remus and the Malevolent Rabbit.” Commentary 8 (July 1949): 31–41. Reprinted in Critical Essays on Joel Chandler Harris, edited by R. Bruce Bickley Jr., pp. 70–84. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981. R. Bruce Bickley Jr.

UP FROM SLAVERY Up from Slavery (1901) was Booker T. Washington’s most famous and most important work, in large part because it clearly expressed both the personal and the social meaning of his worldview. By combining the story of his ascent from slavery to spokesman for his race and adviser to presidents with his ideology of accommodation and hard work, the book attracted an international audience interested in America’s racial problems. By the time it was published at the beginning

1152

A M E R I C A N

of the new century, Washington (1856–1915) had established himself as a leader of African Americans, especially in the eyes of whites. He had used his position as founder and head of Tuskegee Institute to promote a philosophy of industrial education for blacks. His 1895 Atlanta Cotton Exposition Address had launched him onto the national scene by linking his educational approach to acceptance of the racial status quo in the South. Up from Slavery was designed to tell the story of the man behind that philosophy. This personal approach had been highly successful on the lecture circuit and proved to work very well in written form. Up from Slavery was the second of Washington’s autobiographies. The first, The Story of My Life and Work, was published by J. L. Nichols and Company in 1900. Intended for the subscription book market, especially among African Americans, Story was incompetently ghostwritten and resulted in some continuing problems with the publisher. The experience with that work affected Washington’s handling of Up from Slavery, which was conceived even before Story was begun. As early as 1896, Walter Hines Page, then with Houghton Mifflin, proposed that Washington tell his life story for a broad, primarily northern, audience. After negotiations with Nichols and various periodicals, it was arranged that Outlook would serialize what Washington was calling at the time “Reminiscences.” While working closely with Lyman Abbott, editor in chief of Outlook, and Lawrence Fraser Abbott, Lyman’s son and publisher of the magazine, Washington shaped the story for its intended audience. He also hired Max Bennett Thrasher, a white Boston journalist, as the ghostwriter. Thrasher was to become the head of publicity for Tuskegee until his death. Even with such a capable assistant, Washington maintained far greater control over this work than over the previous one. He would dictate to Thrasher during his travels and at other times, then write himself from those notes. That material would then be edited by Thrasher. Help was also forthcoming from Lyman Abbott, who made a number of suggestions about both style and structure. Through this correspondence, it is possible to understand Washington’s way of telling his story. The serialization was written specifically to avoid rigid chronology. According to Washington:

H I S T O R Y

My general plan is to give the first place to facts and incidents and to hang the generalizations on these facts—taking for granted that the average reader is more interested in an interesting fact than in a generalization based on that fact, and for this reason I have sought not to use too many generalizations

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Booker T. Washington. At his desk at Tuskegee Institute, 1902.

and when they are used to have them well sugarcoated with some interesting incident. (Booker T. Washington Papers 5:653)

As James Cox has pointed out, such an approach gives Up from Slavery an appearance of simplicity but also of inertia, as though any conclusions are inescapable given the accumulation of fact (p. 249). But it could also be argued that such a method worked effectively in accomplishing Washington’s definitions of himself and his work and justifying his ideology by making them seem the natural outcomes of his experience. Serial publication in the Outlook occurred from 3 November 1900 to 23 February 1901. Lyman Abbott continued to offer advice during this period; he emphasized the importance of narrating personal experiences, including recreation and travel, as well as the more public events associated with founding and running Tuskegee. He also urged some commentary on Reconstruction, a subject about which Washington was A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

especially cautious, given white southern attitudes. The serialization proved very successful. The Outlook had a circulation of over 100,000 and included readers from both the North and the South. Readers from both regions offered praise in letters to Washington. The staff of the magazine held a dinner party in his honor, and Hamilton Mabie, the associate editor, called the story “one of the most important human documents which has come to light in this part of the world for many years” (Washington, Booker T. Washington Papers 6:4). He also expressed the hope that one result would be an endowment for the school. The publication was of such high quality that the only changes made for the March 1901 book publication by Doubleday, Page were British rather than American spellings of certain words and the capitalization of “Negro.” THE WORK

Up from Slavery is a carefully structured work that sought, like the Atlanta Cotton Exposition speech that


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1153


is its climax, to satisfy three audiences: African Americans, southern whites, and northern whites. Washington begins the narrative by describing his birth and early childhood in slavery but is careful not to place blame on white southerners for the conditions of his early life. He suggests that everyone in the South was in fact victim of the peculiar institution. In addition, he frequently makes use of racial stereotypes, going so far as indirectly accusing his own mother of stealing chickens. As he narrates his story of the quest for education and status, he repeatedly gives credit to northern and southern whites for aiding progress toward his goal. His achievements are based on hard work and on the willingness of important people to recognize that effort. In other words, his is a conventional American story, though his own assertiveness and self-reliance are never on display because these would offend white southerners. The culminating event of the autobiography, his speech at the Cotton Exposition in 1895, is also a critical moment for race relations in the United States. He takes the opportunity to articulate a stance of racial accommodation, one that W. E. B. Du Bois (1868– 1963) and other civil rights advocates tried to refute for years. He proclaimed that, as far as the South was concerned, the races could be segregated in social and political life but cooperative in economic progress. In effect, he offered to surrender rights in exchange for opportunity. As he notes in the narrative, this speech won him widespread praise. THE CRITICAL RECEPTION

Up from Slavery was well-received upon book publication. Praise came from the famous and the obscure, northerners and southerners, whites and blacks. Letters came from the southern industrialist Belton Gilreath, the Harvard professor Barnett Wendell (who was W. E. B. Du Bois’s teacher), the African American writer Charles Chesnutt, the former Union army officer John Eaton, and Theodore Roosevelt, who later caused difficulties for Washington by inviting him to lunch at the White House, an invitation that violated southern rules about social segregation. Requests were quickly forthcoming for translations into Spanish and German. Eventually it was available as well in French, Russian, Arabic, Zulu, Hindi, Malayan, Chinese, Japanese, and all the Scandinavian languages; a Braille version was also produced. Key reviews were written by Du Bois and William Dean Howells (1837–1920) shortly after publication. Howells praised Washington’s commitment to education, both his own and that of others; he also took note of his “common sense,” which included a willingness to accept limitations on rights as a temporary condition. Significantly, given later interpretations of both

1154

A M E R I C A N

the autobiography and the life, Howells speculated that Washington, among other African Americans of the time, might be using their “amiability” as a disguise for “something like contempt for us” (pp. 282– 285). Du Bois’s review, later revised for inclusion in The Souls of Black Folk, raised some initial doubts about a “common sense” that could so easily accept accommodation to segregation and restriction of civil rights. The later version of this commentary became a key text in the conflict not only between the two men but also in two profoundly opposed approaches to race relations in the United States. Up from Slavery attracted so much attention in part because of its connections to other key works of American culture. In a time of Jim Crow laws and violent expressions of white supremacy, it offered a sharp contrast to the assertiveness of Frederick Douglass (1818– 1895), who died the same year as Washington’s address. Douglass’s three life narratives consistently pointed toward full civil rights and social equality. Washington (who also published three autobiographies) claims his place as spokesman for the race in part through his demonstration that such demands were not essential to black success; instead his submission to the leadership of significant whites such as General Armstrong and Andrew Carnegie was his route to achievement. A second connection was to Benjamin Franklin as the model of rectitude and diligence. Hard work, whether in gaining an education while working as a child in the salt mines of West Virginia or in getting into Hampton Institute by cleaning a classroom or by sacrificing personal comfort in order to create Tuskegee, was far more important than intelligence or social skills. Finally, Washington offered a black version of the Horatio Alger narrative. Born into slavery, his father a white man who never acknowledged him, he educated himself, impressed those in authority at Hampton and elsewhere, took on the task of creating a school that originally had a chicken house as its only structure, and built a network of social and financial relationships that eventually took him to the pinnacle of national and even international recognition. In constructing his story in this manner, he appealed to blacks as a source of group pride. He also appealed to northern whites by offering an example of a bootstraps philosophy that validated individualism and middle-class values. Finally, he implicitly made the case to southern whites that his race would not challenge white supremacy; his story, after all, was the evidence that a black man could work within the existing order and succeed. THE LEGACY

Much of the modern criticism of Up from Slavery and its author has focused on the self-mythologizing of the

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

UTOPIAS AND DYSTOPIAS

book. Louis Harlan describes Washington’s life as a complex of masks he manipulated to serve his purposes. James Cox emphasizes the control exercised over the text as both style and theme, a point that Houston Baker develops by suggesting that Washington signifies on the minstrel tradition as a means of gaining “mastery of form.” The work had considerable significance in its time in that it enhanced the resources and influence of Washington and of what came to be called the Tuskegee Machine, the network of connections to media, business, and politics that he used to enhance his power and to discredit and weaken his black opponents and their white supporters. Because he had so effectively projected an image of self-effacement and humility, he could manipulate both black and white public opinion in his favor. In doing so, he made it difficult for Du Bois and others to develop a strong civil rights movement and to improve the quality of black education. The book also was one impetus for Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association of the 1920s. During the civil rights and black nationalist movements of the 1950s and 1960s, the autobiography and its author were disparaged as unacceptable compromises with white power. But the work can be said to have continued influence in its arguments for black enterprise and self-improvement. Black neoconservatives and others who insist that black families and communities must take responsibility for making their lives better instead of blaming racism are following the lead of Washington and his book. Thus, Up from Slavery has been a resilient text in American culture and especially in African American life. See also Blacks; Civil Rights; Education; Jim Crow; Racial Uplift; Reconstruction; Reform; The Souls of Black Folk BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Howells, William Dean. “An Exemplary Citizen.” North American Review 173 (1901): 282–285. Washington, Booker T. The Booker T. Washington Papers. 14 vols. Edited by Louis R. Harlan et al. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972–1989. Washington, Booker T. The Story of My Life and Work. Naperville, Ill.: J. L. Nichols, 1900.

Harlan, Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Keith E. Byerman

URBANIZATION See City Dwellers

UTOPIAS AND DYSTOPIAS Just like social protest novels in turn-of-the-century North America, utopian literature is tied to a specific historical context, or so it would appear from countless scholars who have written about the political, social, and economic conditions that seemed to set the stage for the large outpouring of this new genre that followed in the wake of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, published in 1888. Utopian literature in late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century North America provides contemporary readers with both a view of American history through a literary lens and a view of American literature through a historical lens. Both lenses are, of course, skewed in innumerable ways. Perhaps the most prevalent skewing has been many literary historians’ belief that the function of utopian literature has been to serve as literary escape from severe economic problems in the late-nineteenthcentury United States and, in doing so, to act as a fertile ground for attempts at self definition as a nation with problems, surely, but with the spunk and ingenuity to overcome them. But when one looks through both lenses at the same time, one can see how powerful literary conventions shaped the fashioning of both plot and character in myriad ways that allowed both readers and writers to ignore the very real historical fact that women and nonwhite peoples were not equal to white men under the law. Thus a rereading of these utopian (and dystopian) novels from this period gives a clear picture of a nation that prefers to close its eyes to serious problems, a nation that overcomes its problems by pretending they do not exist.

Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery: An Autobiography. New York: Doubleday, Page, 1901. BELLAMY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF A GENRE

Secondary Works

Baker, Houston A., Jr. Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Cox, James. “Autobiography and Washington.” Sewanee Review 85 (1977): 235–261.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Edward Bellamy’s (1850–1898) Looking Backward (1888) was certainly not the first utopian novel published in America, but it acts as both the forerunner and definer of a genre as it flowered over the next


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1155


thirty years. From the nationwide railroad strike in 1877 to the Haymarket riot in Chicago in 1886, the years leading up to the publication of Looking Backward were marked by turbulence, and the years after its publication were marked by a severe economic recession in which a few people made great fortunes while the working class felt the effects of these great fortunes. The prevalent interpretation of Looking Backward and of much of the genre of utopian literature that followed it has been to view it as a palliative to readers who, upset by a severe economic recession and the excesses of the Gilded Age, turned to literature for both escape and for a new way of thinking about the economic problems besieging the country. A reading of Looking Backward seems to give evidence to that interpretation. In Bellamy’s Boston of 2000, the protagonist Julian West awakens to a new egalitarian world full of technological advances. A new economic system called “Nationalism”—a gentle socialism—has eliminated the need for strikes and violence. Merchants and bankers have disappeared, as has money (and private property). Meals are served in central dining rooms or appear miraculously on a dumbwaiter in individual homes. Umbrellas cover the sidewalks automatically when it rains. Without much effort at all, the rich have turned over their fortunes to the state, and everyone shares equally. No wonder that such a fantasy spawned over two hundred novels like it, published between 1888 and 1920—the largest single body of utopian writing in history. Though some well-known authors wrote utopian novels during this time (William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Frank Norris), the bulk of these books were written by unknown, middle-aged male writers who were Protestant, middle class, and white. They promoted, according to the scholar Kenneth Roemer, the virtues of a rural America while lambasting the evils of rampant capitalism. In these books the plot structure was relatively simple: either, as in Looking Backward, a traveler from “here and now” ventures into a utopian (or dystopian) future, or a traveler from another world visits late-nineteenth-century America, as in William Dean Howells’s A Traveler from Altruria (1894). What the American saw in the utopian world or what the visitor revealed to Americans about his utopian world provided a platform for these writers to propound their own pathways to perfection. These two hundred–plus books, of course, reflect more than just the turbulent economic and political era in which they were written. They also reflect, through their plot structures and language, the ambivalences inherent in an American culture that has promised to the world—as a city on a hill—that it is founded in

1156

A M E R I C A N

egalitarianism, when in fact it is not. Thus, what is perhaps most interesting about this genre is that the novels reflect their particular historical time most strikingly by what they lack, by what is absent in the books: any utopian vision for correcting gender or racial inequalities. Like Looking Backward, most of these books promote some sort of de facto egalitarian “nationalism” as a sort of counterpoint to the obvious lack of economic equality in the United States at the turn of the century. Perhaps economic inequality is a safe inequality to take on; after all, well-run capitalism is predicated upon inequalities. But no matter how these stories are told—whether it is the Altrurian in Howells’s novel who describes in abstract terms how his utopian “evolution” was accomplished “without a drop of bloodshed” (p. 181) or whether it is Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her utopian fantasy Herland (1915) describing how a war and revolt killed all the men, leaving only women who grow “stronger and wiser and more and more mutually attached” (p. 56)—a collaborative, sharing, collective economy comes easily and without pain in these books. THE PROBLEM OF GENDER

What seldom happens in the wake of that egalitarian economy is anyone imagining a truly egalitarian gender system. Whether the writers of utopia (primarily those white, middle-class, rural men) did not care much about gender systems or whether such changes simply did not seem as pressing (or as much fun to write about) as the economic ones, one cannot know. One can know that with few exceptions, the male utopian writers accepted their culture’s gender ideology and reflected it in the content and structure of their novels. Men imagined improved economic systems, more spiritual religious systems, and vastly superior educational systems, but most retained their own world’s gender relationships and their concomitant cultural priorities. As Roemer first brought to our attention in The Obsolete Necessity (1976), although these writers certainly might have proclaimed “equal rights” for women, they nevertheless defined women through their relations to their fathers, husbands, and children (p. 130). In Looking Backward, for example, the protagonist Julian West awakens in the year 2000 to a new egalitarian world full of advances. Yet when one looks at women in the book, they are still rooted firmly in the center of a family structure. The book’s egalitarian reform simply reinforces a father’s or a husband’s generosity. Dr. Leete, Julian’s guide, describes how their new system “permits” women to work because “it is fully understood that a certain regular requirement of

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


labor of a sort adapted to their powers, is well for body and mind” (p. 210). One of the benefits of this “generous” male attitude is that women, Leete says, now have “more power of giving happiness to men” (p. 210). Like Bellamy, most of the other writers of utopian fiction glorified a patriarchy with the “male” priorities and privileges that replicated the culture in which they lived. Even most of the women writing utopian literature during this time—and there were at least thirty of them writing between 1890 and 1920—also replicated the culture in which they lived. The best known of the women utopian writers, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), could not imagine her utopias without placing her female characters firmly within a turn-ofthe-century family structure, despite her own personal dislike of that structure. In Herland (1915), one of the narrative highlights is a marriage of the three visiting men with three Herland women, thus affirming the women’s fulfillment by conventional standards, despite the fact that the sexual instinct has been bred out of the Herland women over the centuries without men and despite the fact that the very existence of these three men threatens the welfare of the community. Perhaps the stereotypical family roles of women characters in utopian literature is more linked to literary history than to historical events: most utopian authors latched onto the wildly popular sentimental novel as a vehicle for telling their stories. From Bellamy on, the authors of utopian novels often shaped their narratives in patterns similar to the sentimental novel, quite possibly to compel readers to continue reading through page after page of treatises on the glories of a new economic system. The popular sentimental novel was, of course, a useful way of familiarizing readers with an unfamiliar world. But the sentimental novel, as Jean Pfaelzer (1989) has written, also organized social obligations through idealized gender lines (“The Sentimental Promise and the Utopian Myth,” p. 86). Thus the sentimental novel only affirmed the mainstream culture’s view of women and family. The central literary technique, used by countless utopian writers, was to create pairs of characters that embodied opposing traits: most authors created a “good” heroine, who behaved according to prevailing gender codes, and her foil, a “bad” woman, who did not. The sentimental structure often pitted these women against each other, with the winner marrying and, if she had been particularly “good,” perhaps having a male child. What constituted “good” and “bad,” of course, was linked directly to codes of gender: good women were angels in the house who sacrificed themselves for the men and children in their lives; bad women were those who threatened men for A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

a myriad of reasons, including the women’s superior intelligence or (especially) their sexuality. The conventions associated with the sentimental novel constricted the writers’ plots into a certain shape: the novels had to end in a prescribed way, usually with the marriage of the heroine. Few writers of sentimentalutopian novels were able to escape their audience’s love of a “happy” ending, even when (in the case of Gilman’s novels, for example) the ending subverted and contradicted the utopian message presented. But sentimental conventions also constricted the imaginations of utopian writers in ways that limited their visions of utopia to an abstract, vaguely religious sphere that, at best, was the last place anyone would really want to live and, at worst, contradicted any utopian qualities. In Howells’s Traveler from Altruria, for example, a markedly dull book is made even duller when the visiting Altrurian begins describing his homeland. The spark in the book comes from Howells’s satire of the Society Woman, the Professor, and other types. But when the satire is over and the visitor begins describing his world, the book becomes unreadable: “The truth itself must perish to our senses before it can live in our souls; the Son of Man must suffer upon the cross before we can know the Son of God” (p. 171). Howells couches his imagery in Social Gospel rhetoric, a rhetoric infused with underlying evangelical and spiritual responses to the evils of modern living. Unveiling a Parallel, by Alice Ilgenfritz Jones (1846–1906) and Ella Merchant (1857–1916) was published in 1893, a year before A Traveler from Altruria. Theirs is perhaps the cleverest of the latenineteenth-century utopian novels and the one that goes the furthest in lampooning gender systems, yet it too is affected by the same Social Gospel rhetoric and imagery as is Altruria. Presented by an unreliable male narrator, the story depicts two worlds on Mars— one where traditional “male” values have proliferated and one where “female” values dominate. In the first part of the book, one thinks one sees a utopia where women are equal to men. The main female character, Elodia, is both a banker and the president of the local school board. Wearing white, eating primarily nuts and grains, the people of the city of Thursia look to be utopian. Yet the more one sees of Elodia, the more one sees that she has adopted all of the appropriate characteristics necessary to be a successful male in nineteenth-century America. First one learns that Elodia drinks, often to excess; then one learns that she “vaporizes,” or uses the terrible-smelling valerian root mixed with alcohol, a habit that gives momentary pleasure but can be fatal. Then one learns that she meets lovers at Cupid’s Gardens, a place where male


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1157


The following excerpt is from the utopian creation story Unveiling a Parallel (1893), written by Alice I. Jones and Ella Merchant. Told by a male narrator, the story presents two worlds on Mars, one in which male values dominate and the other in which female values dominate.

the Social Gospel movement (a softened Christianity) and the social hygiene movement (which emphasized chastity) to describe this new world, and their language suddenly becomes abstract and vaguely spiritual. As in so many turn-of-the-century utopian novels, the depiction of an ideal world is a sexless one, where passions of all sort are simply eliminated. THE PROBLEM OF RACE

“What, [asked Severnius] is your theory of Man’s creation?” “God made Man, and from one of his ribs fashioned woman,” I replied catechetically. “Ours is different,” said he. “It is this: ‘A pair of creatures, male and female, sprang simultaneously from an enchanted lake in the mountain region of a country called Caskia, in the northern part of this continent. They were only animals, but they were beautiful and innocent. God breathed a Soul into them and they were Man and Woman, equals in all things.’” Jones and Merchant, Unveiling a Parallel, 1991, p. 32.

prostitutes meet their powerful woman lovers. Finally one learns that Elodia has a six-year-old illegitimate child, with whom she does not live. One of the greatest pleasures of Parallel is that Jones and Merchant have indeed escaped some of the limitations of the sentimental novel. They do not end the book with Elodia’s almost certain death (imagine another late-nineteenth-century book published in the United States in which a main female character smokes, drinks, enjoys sex and power, and is smarter than any man around her but does not die at the end). Instead, they point out through Elodia’s dialogue just how natural it is for her to want the power and pleasures afforded to her as an adult member of society that values material things and sensuous pleasures. Parallel does not end with Elodia, though; the entire last quarter of the novel is a description of a second city on Mars, Lunismar, where people have attained a more perfect state of development than in Thursia (or, by inference, in the United States). In Lunismar the narrator finds another woman with whom to fall in love, Ariadne, a nondescript character who does not even get to speak. It is in this final section of the book, when the “true” utopia is described, that Jones and Merchant fall back on the language of

1158

A M E R I C A N

The conventions of the sentimental novel also helped obfuscate racial problems in the United States at the turn of the century. Perhaps the white, middle-class, midwestern authors lived lives such that race and racial inequalities simply did not register. But Toni Morrison, of course, questions such apparent absences in Playing in the Dark (1992) when she writes that the “tacit agreement” among literary scholars that white, male authors are removed from the presence of black people is simply not true. She posits that an “Africanist presence” is central to the understanding of American national literature (p. 5). Just as the sentimental novel insisted upon opposing characteristics for its “good” and “bad” women, so the national fiction, writes Morrison, is based on an “Africanist other”—a marker for that which is Not White, Not Normal. When these utopian authors did include African American characters (which was not often), the characters almost always reflected what Morrison calls racial “shorthand” (p. x) by using dark-skinned people only as taken-for-granted stereotypes: docile, lazy figures who could improve themselves by becoming “more white.” In Perfection City (1897) by Adela Orpen, for example, the female protagonist has a young male African American servant who loves to sleep and to talk about lynchings. The woman’s response to his quite real fear is to call him a “black savage . . . rejoicing in the vivid details of horrors” (Roemer, p. 74). In Alcanoan O. Grigsby’s Nequa (1900), missionaries, living in some part of Africa, teach the natives “white ways,” and as a result the dark-skinned babies get lighter and lighter until they are finally white (p. 364). The two known African American authors of utopian novels in this period—Dr. Sutton Griggs and Lillian B. Jones—both propose a safe mass migration of blacks to another place: to Texas in Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio (1899) and from Texas to Africa in Jones’s Five Generations Hence (1916). In fact, Jones’s utopian novel is illustrative of the insidious ways that literary conventions barred even African American writers from dealing with race or gender directly in their utopian fiction. Jones’s main character, Grace Noble, is a respectable light-skinned schoolteacher as the novel opens in 1899. When the man she

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


loves marries another, she devotes herself to writing her life’s work: a treatise convincing African Americans who are living in Texas (dystopia for African Americans) that they should emigrate to Africa where, five generations hence, they can live a utopian existence. Rewarded for her years of sacrifice in typical sentimental style, she meets a respectable black man at the end of her narrative and marries him. Ironically, as a married woman she cannot join the other characters emigrating to Africa because her place is now in her (husband’s) home, raising their children. Thus the novel ends with Grace’s personal freedom eliminated and with her advising her daughters to emulate her unmarried best friend, Violet, who is in Africa. Perhaps the most striking example of the period’s utopian literature in terms of race is a novel that, ironically, has rarely been included in the utopian-dystopian genre at all, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912) by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938). The novel, which is anything but an autobiography of Johnson, an African American musician, diplomat, and longtime executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), is the story of an African American man who improves himself by becoming not just “more white” but “white.” At the end of his story the narrator has become rich, has married the whitest of white women (though she does conveniently die), and has fathered two (white) children. He is living the Gilded Age capitalistic dream. The catch is that the narrator can only live this life if he passes for white. In the last line of the book, much debated over the twentieth century, he laments that he has sold his birthright for a “mess of pottage” (p. 211). Indeed, most contemporary literature critics have taken the narrator at his word, missing the irony that undergirds this most dystopian of “utopian” novels. Like Unveiling a Parallel, Autobiography works both as a utopia and as a dystopian satire: as utopias, both function by imagining what true equality would be like in worlds where race and gender barriers are eliminated (black can be white; female can be male). As a satire, the narrator of Autobiography can only succeed (at least in terms of achieving the American dream) if he is “white”—just as Elodia could only succeed by being “male.” What does that say about equality in a so-called egalitarian world? And what is being satirized? The dream itself? The means of getting it? The fact that a black man would want to participate in this world, where all riches are supposedly possible for anyone who just “pulls himself up by his bootstraps”? How can that be satire? The dilemma is furthered by the fact that the narrator of Autobiography is not in the least sorry that he has A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

“turned white”—despite his lamentations in the last line of the book that he has sold his birthright for a “mess of pottage.” His every step in the novel has been a movement toward that “mess of pottage”—that “pottage” is, of course, the American Dream. When his (white) father gives him a coin on a string, he wishes that his father could have found some way of attaching it without ruining its monetary value; when he receives a piano as a gift, he has a “momentary” feeling of disappointment that the piano was not a grand (p. 40). He is content to be treated like a servant-slave to his millionaire “benefactor” until the moment when he realizes that the “new American music” he was playing in Paris for the amusement of his benefactor’s friends might well make him famous and rich in the United States. Returning to the United States, the narrator takes up travels throughout the southern states to appropriate this music. But what keeps him from pursuing this utopian dream of collecting African American sorrow songs is a pivotal event: he witnesses a lynching. After viewing this lynching, the narrator decides not to spend his life “with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead” (p. 190). His response is telling: he feels only shame—instead of outrage—at being identified with “a people who could be treated worse than animals” (p. 191). He is in effect a “white” man, with “white” sentiments. He will continue to become richer and richer as he lives an enviable “white” life, with his racial heritage now invisible to everyone, including to him. CONCLUSION

Autobiography (like Parallel before it) illustrates the great contradictions of the Gilded Age that reading utopian literature through history and reading history through utopian literature make one face: for women and blacks, the American dream is a false one. In “utopian” terms, it appears more appropriate for African Americans to make music (just as it had appeared more appropriate for women to be the passive angels in the house). Johnson makes his point by satirizing his readers’ unquestioning reliance on utopian-sentimental conventions: Despite the fact that the narrator in Autobiography is a money-grubbing twit, one cannot blame him for seeking the American Dream. One is, in effect, by the end of the novel, pulling for him—a man who has become a slum landlord and who earlier had expressed his admiration for a “nigger”-hating white bigot—to “succeed” and to commit miscegenation. It is these tensions, these ambiguities, these gaps where history and literary conventions meet that Johnson makes readers confront. They illustrate quite clearly what could not be said in turn-of-the-century America. Utopia, it turns out, is “nowhere” for African Americans and women. Just where it had always been.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1159


See also The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court; Reform; Socialism BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Arnold, Birch [Alice E. Bartlett]. A New Aristocracy. New York: Bartlett Publishing, 1891. Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backward. 1888. New York: Modern Library, 1951. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. 1915. New York: Pantheon, 1979. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Moving the Mountain. 1908. In The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader, edited by Ann J. Lane. New York: Pantheon, 1980. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. With Her in Ourland. 1916. Edited by Mary Jo Deegan and Michael R. Hill. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997. Griggs, Sutton E. Imperium in Imperio: A Study of the Negro Race Problem; A Novel. 1899. New York: Modern Library, 2003. Grigsby, Alcanoan O. [Jack Adams]. Nequa. Topeka, Kans.: Equity Press, 1900. Howells, William Dean. A Traveler from Altruria. 1894. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957.

1160

A M E R I C A N

Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an ExColoured Man. 1912. New York: Hill and Wang, 1960. Jones, Alice Ilgenfritz, and Ella Merchant. Unveiling a Parallel. 1893. Introduction by Carol Kolmerten. Syracuse N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1991. Jones, Lillian B. Five Generations Hence. Fort Worth, Tex.: Dotson Jones, 1916. Secondary Works

Kolmerten, Carol A. “Texts and Contexts: American Women Envision Utopia, 1890–1920.” In Utopian and Science Fiction by Women, edited by Jane L. Donawerth and Carol Kolmerten, pp. 107–125. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1994. Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage, 1993. Pfaelzer, Jean. “The Sentimental Promise and the Utopian Myth.” ATQ 3 (March 1989): 85–101. Pfaelzer, Jean. The Utopian Novel in America, 1886–1896: The Politics of Form. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984. Roemer, Kenneth M. The Obsolete Necessity: America in Utopian Writings, 1888–1900. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1976.

H I S T O R Y

Carol A. Kolmerten

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

VILLAGE DWELLERS

V

Since the early days of settlement, the village has served as both a microcosm of the larger American society and as a unique place, separate and distinct. When John Winthrop (1588–1649), governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared that New England would be “as a city upon a hill” (p. 83), he suggested that the colonial American experiment was valuable as a purification of old England and, as a consequence, would serve as a model city. Writers from Winthrop on used the village and its inhabitants as a way to reflect on the social anxieties inherent to a changing world. The early Puritan conception of a city on a hill specifically formulates the village as the ideal in contrast to the outside world. From the very beginning, then, the village in American literature is a response to modernity, a return to what is perceived to be both a simpler and a holier life. The nature of the response, of course, varies from writer to writer. From the beginning, the village has functioned in literature as both a utopia and as a dystopia wherein all the depravity of the human soul is revealed and all of the consequent conflicts in human society are probed. Those who live in the village are depicted, according to the temper of the author, as either wise for rejecting modernity or backwards for the same reason. Thus, villagers frequently serve as a means for writers to analyze and critique larger society, or human nature more generally, and become icons for a particular way of life, representing distinct ideologies inherent in a culture governed by a small but growing bourgeoisie who thrive against the backdrop of an

agrarian society. Those who dwell in the village are usually of a certain type appropriate to such a society, and in many literary presentations the village is inhabited not by the simple but by the simpleminded and not by the satisfied but by the self-satisfied. THE CIVIL WAR AND THE VILLAGE

With the end of the Civil War came a renewed interest in village life due to the increased literary importance of dialect writing. Arguably, the best American writing in the postwar era is regional writing. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (1811–1896) Oldtown Folks (1869) and the sequel Oldtown Fireside Stories (1872) feature the rich dialect of the New England village. The tales hearken back to Washington Irving’s Tarrytown tales, for Stowe purposely sets her stories in the pre–Civil War and even pre-railroad past. It is interesting that the writer who penned the incendiary antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly (1852) largely abjured political issues in her writings published after the Civil War. Her New England villagers are imperfect, but there are no figures similar to Simon Legree (the villain of Uncle Tom’s Cabin); indeed, in these post–Civil War works any character flaws serve to make the inhabitants of the village quaint rather than reprehensible. The work ethic so common to New England types in literature is notably absent in Sam Lawson, for example, the narrator of Oldtown Fireside Stories, but this simply gives him more time for what he does best—storytelling. The fictional village of Oldtown is in Massachusetts, and for her later collection Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives (1878), Stowe returns to this setting to create Poganuc Centre,

1161

VILLAGE DWELLERS

a village inhabited by New England types, particularly representatives of religious denominations. The book explores denominational conflict but with historical distance, perspective, and a sense of humor.

Eggleston constructed The Hoosier School-Master (1871), his most successful novel, out of the folkways and dialects he experienced in southern Indiana.

If Stowe’s later work seems to withdraw from the most pressing social and political issues, other writers of the post–Civil War era acknowledge and engage the changes unleashed by the war: industrialization, commercialization, and a decline in the viability of social structures. Relying on the techniques of realism to convey the dialect of the village types, many writers also adopted realist attitudes toward their subject matter, paying closer attention to the deficiencies of small-town life. While Rose Terry Cooke (1827–1892) writes in much the same vein as Stowe and does portray quaint villages, the inhabitants of those villages are, upon occasion, less than quaint. Cooke’s work frequently delves beneath the appealing surface of the village to unearth its hidden secrets and hypocrisy. In the story “Mrs. Flint’s Married Experience” (1880), Cooke relates a horrifying story of a husband attempting to starve his wife to death for her property, all set against the staid backdrop of a New England village. Cooke suggests that the inhabitants of the village have much invested in preserving the appearance of serene tradition; those like Mrs. Flint, who disturb that serene image, are rejected. Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (1852–1930), too, writes of a fictional Massachusetts town in A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Freeman employs perhaps more humor than Cooke, but with a similar satiric sense of how the conservative traits that create the popular image of the village subordinate strong women to the preservation of that image. Her story “The Revolt of ‘Mother’” is one of the best of these.

THE REVOLT FROM THE VILLAGE

The stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909), many of them set in the fictional communities of Deephaven and Dunnett’s Landing, are often nostalgic and wistful in their presentation of those living in the village, but one sees as well the effect the world at large has on the community. In Jewett’s “The Gray Mills of Farley” (1898), the writer shows the effects of the economic depressions of the 1890s on the various inhabitants of the mill village, including Father Daley, families like the Kilpatricks, and even the owners of the mill. The problems are primarily wrought from outside the village, however, and are overcome by a strong community. The work of Edward Eggleston (1837–1902) owes much to the New England models discussed above, though he found in frontier village life a rough antidote to what he perceived as a detached intellectualism in the New England literary establishment.

1162

A M E R I C A N

In 1921 the literary critic Carl Van Doren coined the term “The Revolt from the Village” (p. 407) to describe the group of writers, mainly midwesterners, who wrote novels depicting the dystopic elements of smalltown life. While Van Doren places Sinclair Lewis in the front of this revolt, he rightly notes that the revolt had started in the 1880s. As urban areas extended their influence, and the small towns grew smaller, literary depictions of them often contrasted greatly, some writers longing for their seemingly simpler way of life, others portraying them as increasingly narrow, parochial, intolerant, and even dangerous. While religion was growing more liberal and democratic in larger urban centers, religious life in some small towns seemed to have changed little from the eighteenthcentury era of Jonathan Edwards and early Calvinism. E. W. Howe (1853–1937), for instance, uses his book The Story of a Country Town (1883) to depict the community of Fairview, where people lead bleak, narrow lives governed by religious practice that has become more a matter of repetition than belief; the Sunday sermons bring the villagers no joy, providing rather a theological vocabulary with which to describe their misery. Mark Twain (1835–1910) was the foremost practitioner of village fiction in the late nineteenth century. He once wrote that “human nature cannot be studied in cities except at a disadvantage—a village is the place. There you can know your man inside & out—in a city you but know his crust; & his crust is usually a lie” (Mark Twain’s Notebooks and Journals 2:503). Taking his own advice, Twain’s best writing concerns villages: St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) (1885); Dawson’s Landing in Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894); and even the village of Eseldorf, which is depicted in Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (originally written 1897–1908, published 1969). Inhabitants of the many villages in Mark Twain’s novels and stories adhere to the joyless religion of obligation and hypocrisy. As idyllic as the village scenes often are, Twain lays bare the depravity in human nature. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain depicts the slaveholding theology of Miss Watson and the Widow Douglas as part and parcel of a slaveholding economy. The scenes concerning the feud between the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons further critique a surface religiosity that has no real depth. The Grangerfords

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

VILLAGE DWELLERS

and Shepherdsons attend the same church and nod approvingly during a sermon on “brotherly love” but then leave the church and shoot their white brethren even as they enslave their black brethren. Twain’s “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” (1899) is a devastating critique of small-town hypocrites and morality and shows that village dwellers were not immune to the greed of the “Gilded Age.” (The term, which came to be applied to the latter decades of the 1800s, was coined by Twain and his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner in their jointly written novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, published in 1873.) Twain’s writings also show small-town residents as hostile to outsiders, whom they tend to label and reject. In Pudd’nhead Wilson, David Wilson is called a “Pudd’nhead” for having told a joke that the town residents did not find funny. This same attribute of the village character was later depicted by writers Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson. Harold Frederic (1856–1898) took up similar issues in The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896). It charts the parochial aspects of small-town religious life and the difficulties faced by an outsider coming into the narrow world of the village, in this instance Octavius, New York. Like some of Twain’s work, Frederic’s novel reflects a new era of liberalized religion and even post-Darwinian disbelief, against which the villagers’ tenacious retention of ancient dogma seems even more prehistoric. Indeed, the earlier religious faith that had been embodied in Puritan conceptions of the city upon a hill is frequently depicted as moribund, but nothing has replaced it. The predominant mood in the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) is that of despair. Highly individualized, the inhabitants of his fictional Maine village, Tilbury Town, are yet one in their despair. Robinson’s poem “Richard Cory” (1897) reveals the discouragement beneath the contented surface and the class envy that is increasingly visible in a village economy that is no longer agrarian but yet not thoroughly industrialized. The inhabitants of the village, the collective “we” of the town, view Cory as a “gentleman” and “thought that he was everything / To make us wish that we were in his place.” In what are undoubtedly Robinson’s most famous lines of poetry, the villagers learn otherwise: “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, / Went home and put a bullet through his head” (p. 144). A similar sense of class envy and hidden despair haunts Robinson’s work generally, but other villagers are derelicts, remnants of the past village life that have unaccountably survived while coevals have disappeared. Old Eben Flood of “Mr. Flood’s Party” (1920) is the best of these. His “party” is a solitary, drunken evening when he, alone with his memories, laments the lost village life. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

One sees the appropriateness of Van Doren’s phrase the “Revolt from the Village” in other works of this period, too. From Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology (1915) to Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street (1920), those who live in small towns are depicted as thwarted in their lives and loves and full of a desperate longing to escape. In the works of Zona Gale (1874– 1938), one sees the historical shift continuing—first there’s a nostalgic backward glance to the village, then the village is depicted as backwards. Gale’s earlier works Friendship Village (1908) and Friendship Village Love Stories (1909) celebrate the American village as an ideal. In contrast, her later works Birth (1918) and Miss Lulu Bett (1920) depict young women suffocated by smalltown life and the limited opportunities for fulfillment available to them. As the “New Woman” was already at large in the city, these later works show women in the village beginning to seek the same possibilities for selfexpression and growth. Indeed, it is not too much to say that for some writers the American village was dead. Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950), for example, imitated the epitaphic style of the Greek Anthology to create Spoon River Anthology, his American version of the work. It superbly adapts the concept of individual epitaphs as poems but links the poems together through the interlocking stories of the dead to depict the inhabitants of the cemetery as part of village life. The speakers are all deceased, so the mood is generally one of loss. Masters takes in quite a bit of history as seen through the eyes of villagers. These short, sharp character sketches capture the pain and pathos of the individual lives while also capturing particular historical events, such as the Civil War and the construction of the railways through the countryside. Masters lays bare the thwarted lives hidden underneath the seemingly idyllic town. He often pairs the epitaphic poems to reveal multiple sides of stories. Thus, the poems of Ollie McGee and Fletcher McGee adjoin one another, just as the stones of husband and wife sit next to each other in a graveyard. The dialogue of the dead between husband and wife reveals the way the two manipulated, even tortured, each other during life. Other poems chronicle murder, rape, molestation, alcoholism, prostitution, explosions, and sudden, inexplicable death. The web of interrelating stories paints a picture of the village in all its exterior moralism and interior decay. Those who see the village for what it is are even less happy than those who do not. Writer characters such as John Horace Burleson and Margaret Fuller Slack experience the confines of village life and mores that thwart their art. One of the few truly happy individuals in the village is Lois Spears, blind from birth because her father contracted syphilis from a prostitute. Readers learn from his poem that,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1163

VILLAGE DWELLERS

on the verge of publicly confessing his sin, he sees his blind daughter sitting in the first row. Unburdening himself would necessarily burden her, so he suffers his own spiritual torment to preserve his daughter’s innocence. Fulfilled as a wife and mother, Lois Spears is happily blind to the corruption about her in the village of Spoon River; fittingly, her epitaphic poem ends with heartfelt praise to God. Masters’s collection of poems makes an interesting comparison to Sherwood Anderson’s collection of short stories, Winesburg, Ohio (1919), subtitled A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life. Directly influenced by Masters’s work, Anderson took the concept of small-town types to new heights in his work, using particular characters in the village to represent larger themes about life. In this method, both writers hearken back to Philip Freneau’s collection of poems, The American Village (1772), which takes each type in order—schoolteacher, judge, and so forth. Anderson, however, employs this structure for an even deeper psychological analysis than Masters, focusing on the “grotesques” that inhabit the small town of Winesburg. In his dedication of the book to his mother, Anderson credits her for awakening in him the desire to see “beneath the surface of lives,” and this becomes the dominant feature of his collection. Anderson includes chapters such as “Hands,” about Wing Biddlebaum, a man suspected of being a child molester; “The Teacher,” about Kate Swift, a teacher infatuated with a former student; and “Departure,” about George Willard, a character appearing in many of the stories, who leaves Winesburg for the big city. Anderson is one of the greatest of those writers using village characters, for he extends Twain’s conception of seeing beneath the crust to apprehending psychological truths about individual characters, a practice at which he has rarely been equaled. Indiana features in numerous works of this period, as many writers either from the state or from elsewhere use it as shorthand for “small town.” Although Ring Lardner (1885–1933) was born in Niles, Michigan, his most famous work, You Know Me Al: A Busher’s Letters (1916), features the town of Bedford, Indiana. The novel is really a loosely organized collection of vernacular letters from a baseball player, Jack Keefe, writing home to his friend, Al. The work features interesting sidelight discussions of the inhabitants of Bedford and, most significantly, revelations about Jack’s own growth from a small-town boy to a big-city ballplayer. Ironically, his growth involves learning how to smoke, drink, and swear. A wistful, though slightly ironic, tone predominates in the novel. Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) is perhaps best known for his “Penrod” novels. This trilogy, consisting

1164

A M E R I C A N

of Penrod (1914), Penrod and Sam (1916), and Penrod Jashber (1929), chronicles the misadventures of the eponymous protagonist. The series is really a paean to the lost world of the midwestern village. Penrod causes trouble, but never too much trouble; like Tom Sawyer, he is “the good bad boy” living in a village where nothing really bad ever happens and where the mildest of disruptions cause only temporary dismay. In contrast, Tarkington’s novels The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921) depict the small town in the throes of economic and social upheaval. The new economy ushered in by the Civil War destroys the old values by which the Ambersons had maintained their position in society. The once “magnificent” name Amberson means nothing as the village grows to town and then to city. Even the name “Amberson Boulevard” is changed to “Tenth Street,” all but effacing the charm of the previous era. By focusing on three generations of Ambersons, Tarkington is able to chart the development of the village over time. Tarkington received Pulitzer Prizes for both The Magnificent Ambersons and for Alice Adams; significantly, both end with the failure of past class association and position in the face of economic change. Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) might be best known for the bleak cityscapes of his novels populated by bleak people, but nearly all the important characters in his many novels are, in fact, villagers who move to the city. Carrie Meeber in his first and perhaps greatest novel, Sister Carrie (1900), is one example. Moving to Chicago and later New York City, Carrie hails from Columbia City, Wisconsin, though it is likely Dreiser named the town after Columbia City, Indiana, not far from Warsaw, Indiana, where he spent some of his formative years. Carrie sighs in the novel’s opening paragraph as “the familiar green environs of the village passed in review” (p. 7). The character Eugene Witla of The “Genius” (1915) is a small town boy in Illinois who hears the siren song of the city, leaving his hometown of Alexandria, Illinois. In each case, Dreiser uses the small town to represent the drab and mundane aspects of life, while the city represents possibility and adventure. Still, even though Dreiser’s characters remain in the big city, they are essentially naive individuals who, wiser in the end, still long for that village life they left; the village is for many of Dreiser’s characters both something to escape and an unachievable ideal and object of longing. Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), however, has captured more than any other writer the contrary aspects of small-town life in mid-America. In Main Street, perhaps his greatest work, Lewis set out to write a novel that would capture the essence of America, and he chose for his setting the fictional town of Gopher

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

VIOLENCE

Prairie, Minnesota, noting in his foreword that the novel could be set in Main Street in any American small town. While Van Doren classed Lewis as part of the “Revolt from the Village,” it is interesting to note that the heroine of Main Street leaves the close, parochial confines of Gopher Prairie only to return in the end, disillusioned with the modern life she found in the big city. CONCLUSION

Fiction about the small town includes certain predictable thematic elements. Fiction featuring village dwellers either praises the social cohesion of the village or depicts it as overbearing. A simple faith might be laudable in one novel but be considered parochial and narrow in another. Some villagers escape modernity while others are ignorant and backward. Formally, fiction featuring village dwellers often involves types, even stereotypes. Quaint, compelling, and often horrifying, these residents speak to the dreams of creating a utopian community and to the harsh realities of human nature that prevent true community. More than any other social landscape, the village highlights, particularly in contrast to the nation’s great cities, those eternal verities of character that seem lost in the anonymity of the metropolis.

Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 1885. Edited by Victor Fischer, Lin Salamo, and Walter Blair. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Notebooks and Journals. Vol. 2, 1877–1883. Edited by Frederick Anderson, Lin Salamo, and Bernard Stein. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975. Winthrop, John. “A Model of Christian Charity.” In The American Puritans, edited by Perry Miller, pp. 79–84. New York: Doubleday, 1956. Secondary Works

Cook, David M., and Craig G. Swauger, eds. The Small Town in American Literature. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. DeMuth, James. Small Town Chicago: The Comic Perspective of Finley Peter Dunne, George Ade, Ring Lardner. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1980. Herron, Ima Honaker. The Small Town in American Literature. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1939. Hilfer, Anthony Channell. The Revolt from the Village: 1915–1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969. Van Doren, Carl. “Contemporary American Novelists: X. The Revolt from the Village: 1920.” Nation 113 (12 October 1921): 407–412. Joe B. Fulton

See also The Country of the Pointed Firs; The Damnation of Theron Ware; Farmers and Ranchers; Main Street; Migration; A New England Nun and Other Stories; Regionalism and Local Color Fiction; Winesburg, Ohio BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Viking, 1958. Dreiser, Theodore. Sister Carrie. 1900. New York: New American Library, 1961. Jewett, Sarah Orne. Novels and Stories. New York: Library of America, 1994. Lewis, Sinclair. Main Street. 1920. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1920. Masters, Edgar Lee. Spoon River Anthology. 1915. New York: Macmillan, 1962. Robinson, Edwin Arlington. “Richard Cory.” In Modern American Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer, p. 144. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1936. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Three Novels. New York: Library of America, 1982. Tarkington, Booth. The Gentleman from Indianapolis. New York: Doubleday, 1957.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

VIOLENCE If America was already a violent nation by the time of the Civil War, the war itself, still the bloodiest in the country’s history, did nothing to change people’s habits and attitudes. In truth it served to increase America’s penchant for brutality. One historian of violence in America, Richard Maxwell Brown, has written that the Civil War “had an almost incalculable effect in the following decades. The latter part of the nineteenth century was one of the most violent periods in American history” (p. 47). No less an apologist for America than Walt Whitman (1819–1892) remarked the barbarous effect of the war. He who in the 1850s had celebrated the United States for being “essentially the greatest poem” had by 1870 graphically depicted the obscenity of war. Far from alerting Americans to curtail violence, the war, in which more than 600,000 people died, actually seemed to broaden the field of brutality, not only within the nation’s borders but, for the first time, overseas as well. As it had been with the Civil War, race lay at the bottom of much of the postwar increase in violence, and by then “race” included ethnicity. Racialist attitudes toward Africans held by northern Europeans,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1165

VIOLENCE

THE ASSASSINATION OF JAMES A. GARFIELD The death of President James A. Garfield was the result of bitter in-fighting within the Republican Party. During the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881), the party was divided into two main factions: the Stalwarts, who were violently opposed to Hayes’s efforts to reconcile with the South and supported instead the strong Reconstruction measures of the Radical Republicans, and the the Half-Breeds, whose name had been coined in derision by the Stalwarts and backed Hayes’s lenient treatment of the South. Garfield was affiliated with the Half-Breeds. In hotly contested voting that required 36 ballots, the party convention finally elected Garfield as the presidential nominee. As a gesture of conciliation, the delegates elected a Stalwart, Chester Arthur, as their vice-presidential nominee. Garfield and Arthur narrowly won the general election. In naming key appointments, Garfield seemed to the Stalwarts to slight their faction. On 2 July 1881, less than four months after his inauguration, Garfield was shot at the Washington railroad station as he prepared to board a train for a summer retreat. Charles Guiteau, angered because he had not been appointed U.S. ambassador to

most of whom lived in the South, accounted for much of the barbarism. One image more than any other conjured up the physical and psychological violence caused by America’s anxieties of race: a burning cross, the infamous sign of terror of the Ku Klux Klan, the ruthless vigilante organization first formed in 1868. Similar anxieties existed in other parts of the country, and in the burgeoning northern cities they led to brutalities against new immigrants—Germans and Chinese as well as Irish, Italians, and Jews, where the bigotry was also anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic. These prejudices were heightened by economic turmoil inasmuch as the new Americans found work as unskilled day laborers. Disputes between labor and management became deadly as the country’s commercial forces grew rapaciously, aided by legal and political governance favorable to laissez-faire capitalism. The most storied and romanticized violence in the country’s history occurred on the frontier, in the Wild West, where outlaws like Billy the Kid and the James Gang were proud of their reputations as gunslinging

1166

A M E R I C A N

France, raced from the shadows and fired two bullets into Garfield’s arm and abdomen as he shouted, “I am a Stalwart, and Arthur is President now!” Guiteau’s attack did not immediately endanger President Garfield’s life. Many doctors, eventually sixteen of them, working without the aid of anesthesia removed a rib and repeatedly probed the wound in the abdomen with fingers and dirty instruments, enlarging a relatively harmless three-inch wound into one twenty inches long. In terrible pain, Garfield lingered for eighty days, wasting from 210 pounds to 130. He eventually died on 19 September. The physicians submitted bills totaling $85,000, but the Senate authorized payment of only $10,000, and many Senators referred to the doctors as quacks. At his trial, Guiteau, who had a history of erratic and even homicidal behavior, acted like a madman while his attorney argued his innocence by reason of insanity. The trial, one of the most publicized insanity trials of the century, set precedent in the judgment of the criminally insane. In the years following, psychiatrists generally agreed that Guiteau was truly insane and that the trial had been a miscarriage of justice. Guiteau was executed in 1882. The assassination promptly ended usage of the terms “Stalwart” and “Half-Breed.”

killers. Public violence was usually a male endeavor, male against male, but when it was behind closed doors, violence was often male against female. Violence between whites and Native Americans that had lasted nearly three centuries climaxed in 1890 at Wounded Knee Creek at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The post–Civil War years saw three of the four assassinations of U.S. presidents in the country’s history: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, and William McKinley in 1901. As the old century drew to a close, the nation was engaged in its first international armed conflict, the Spanish-American War, ostensibly to liberate Cuba and the Philippines from Spanish domination but ultimately to gain resources and strategic locations for America’s own commercial and military advantage. By the end of the period, two decades into the new century, the country, just emerging from its embroilment in World War I—the Great War, the War to End All Wars—was so torn by divisions of race and class that in some ways it was more violent than ever.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

VIOLENCE

RACE AND ETHNICITY

Doubtless the most egregious violence in American history was that associated with race-based chattel slavery and its aftermath. So pervasive and systematic was it that despite the Civil War, despite the passage of three “Civil War Amendments,” despite Reconstruction, and despite a Civil Rights Act, de facto enslavement of Africans continued well into the twentieth century. Moreover, with the failure of Reconstruction and the increase of such states’ rights efforts as black codes, a conservative U.S. Supreme Court assured that on the highest judicial levels de facto slavery continued de jure too. In the “Civil Rights Cases” (1883) the Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, calling it unconstitutional, and a decade later, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), with three of the same justices adjudicating, the Court went even further by deciding that Jim Crow “separate but equal” laws were constitutional. For many, early forms of scientific racism made such thinking legitimate. Coinciding exactly with the Court’s action regarding the Civil Rights Act, race-based brutalities increased sharply. The Chicago Tribune drew attention to the outrage by immediately beginning to publish the number of reported lynchings nationwide, a practice the paper continued for more than twenty years. Thousands of African Americans were lynched in the South during the period. No white was arrested for such a crime until 1918. Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) was the most powerful voice when it came to condemning “lynch law.” Born a slave but college educated, she sided with W. E. B. Du Bois’s Niagara movement as one of only two women to sign the call to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, and she explicitly opposed Booker T. Washington’s segregationist strategies. She traveled extensively, speaking against oppressive state laws and the atrocities they permitted against blacks. In print she railed against racial violence in uncompromising newspaper attacks and in her chronicles of lynchings, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892) and A Red Record (1895). Other women of color built on the base Wells-Barnett had established. Frances E. W. Harper (1825–1911), in essays, speeches, and her novel Iola Leroy (1892), and the equally multifaceted Pauline E. Hopkins, in her journalistic work and her novels Contending Forces (1900) and Of One Blood (1902–1903), drew attention to the devastating psychological effects of sexual traumas perpetrated by white men against black women. Equally unique in a different way was George Washington Cable (1844–1925), a former Confederate soldier who was the first southern writer to denounce the smug self-importance of the southern elite. His early fictions, Old Creole Days (1879) A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

and The Grandissimes (1880), and his essays on civil rights, The Silent South (1885) and The Negro Question (1890), identified the aristocracy as the fundamental cause of southern barbarism. Reconstruction novels became a species unto themselves, with the best known coming from the pen of Albion W. Tourgée (1838–1905), a northern attorney who had been a judge in North Carolina during Reconstruction and who used that experience to write a series of novels about the aftermath of the Civil War from the standpoint of a “Radical Reconstructionist.” The most incisive was A Fool’s Errand (1879), where late-night barbarities figure prominently in its critique of both the South’s cavalier attitude toward racial brutality and injustice and the North’s diffidence in not ending the violence and not assuring that Reconstruction succeed. His literary reputation led to his becoming the lead attorney for Plessy in the Supreme Court case, his arguments finding their way into Justice John Marshall Harlan’s lone dissent. Tourgée’s writings about Reconstruction were an intellectual influence on W. E. B. Du Bois, while his use of fiction for social protest served as a model for Charles W. Chesnutt, the first African American writer to have a large northern white readership. Chesnutt’s novel The Marrow of Tradition (1901) was based on a violent event resulting from the Plessy decision—the 1898 race riot in Wilmington, North Carolina, that left many dead, both black and white. Not all postwar writers grieved over the failure of Reconstruction to end violence and gain racial equality, of course. Some sought to keep the Old South alive, and that meant denying that there really ever was any violence. The tales of the friendly old black servant Uncle Remus of Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings (1880) were mildly nostalgic, and violence was but a humorous trope in them. Much more idealistic were the moonlight-and-magnolias fictions of writers like Thomas Nelson Page (1853–1922). His collection of short stories treating the antebellum South, In Ole Virginia (1887), included Marse Chan, a narrative by an old faithful former slave about a young man who had died for the Southern cause, placing duty and honor above personal gain. Most pernicious were the militant fictions, especially those of the prolific Klansman Thomas Dixon Jr. (1864–1946), whose Klan trilogy specialized in depicting violent, “extra-legal” justice administered against blacks in the name of preserving civilization. One of these, The Clansman (1905), became the basis for The Birth of a Nation (1915), the country’s first film epic. In a culture of permissible violence against “others,” the idea of race expanded to include ethnicity.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1167

VIOLENCE

Immigrants—Jews, Slavs, Italians, and others from southern and eastern Europe as well as Chinese— poured into the large cities. Living in squalid enclaves, they were met with aggression paralleling the Ku Klux Klan’s against Africans in the South. Loathing of Catholics, especially Irish and Italians, often took a violent form under the aegis of the bigoted American Protective Association. New York’s famous Five Points shortly before the Civil War was the prototype of the urban immigrant slum, marked by poverty, crime, ethnic and religious strife, and violence. During the following decades, similar slums sprang up in other cities, leading to open warfare, including riots against Chinese in San Francisco (1877), Africans in Wilmington, North Carolina (1898), and others in Atlanta (1906), East St. Louis (1917), and Chicago (1919). The period of riots peaked between 1915 and 1919, when twentytwo riots occurred (Brown, pp. 40–41). In New York City by 1880 more than a million immigrants were crammed into Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in ghettos with names like Jewtown and Bandit’s Roost. The destitution was captured in separate but complementary ways by the documentary photographer Jacob Riis (1849–1914), himself an immigrant twenty years earlier, and Stephen Crane (1871–1900)—Riis in his book of stunning images How the Other Half Lives (1890) and Crane in his novella featuring Irish Catholics, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893). Abraham Cahan (1860–1951), a Russian immigrant living in the Jewish ghetto, depicted in Yekl (1896) and The Rise of David Levinsky (1917) the brutality involved in pursuing the American Dream only to discover that the dream was spiritually empty. Similar conflicts existed on the other side of the continent, where fear and hatred of Chinese led to the Chinese Exclusion Act, first passed in 1882 and repeatedly renewed for more than sixty years. In essays and short stories the first Chinese American writer, Sui Sin Far (pen name for Edith Maud Eaton, 1865–1914), countered the dominant Caucasian attitude that Eurasians were dirty and morally corrupt. Though by appearance Eaton, half-Chinese and half-British, could have passed for white, she asserted her Chinese ancestry, and her stories, collected in Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912), depict Chinese as ordinary humans, though in America they were victimized by discriminatory immigration laws and regularly subjected to ethnic hostilities. Violence between whites and Native Americans peaked in 1876 at the Battle of Little Bighorn, in which Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull led Indian warriors to defeat the flamboyant and glory-seeking George A. Custer and his troops. Contemptuous of the Indians’ bravery, Custer led his men into certain defeat as thousands of Lakota (Sioux), Cheyenne, and Arapaho

1168

A M E R I C A N

warriors surrounded his unit on a ridge at the Little Bighorn River in Montana and killed all 210 of them. Attempts to assure that grievances were redressed invariably failed. Angered by what Chief Standing Bear related in a speech about the forcible removal of his tribe from their Nebraska land, Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) seized upon the government’s mistreatment of Native Americans for her A Century of Dishonor (1881), a copy of which she sent to every member of the U.S. Congress with an inscription: “Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations.” Three years later, hoping to repeat the impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Hunt wrote Ramona (1884), depicting the violence of the Indian experience. The bloody three-century saga culminated savagely in 1890, when U.S. government soldiers massacred three hundred Sioux men, women, and children on the snowy banks of Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota.

FAMILY FURY: FEUDS, THE WILD WEST, AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

In the archetypal Judeo-Christian act of violence, brother killed brother when Cain, a tiller of the ground, rose up and slew Abel, a shepherd. In the United States, in the final year of a war recalling that Genesis fratricide, two families in the southern Appalachian Mountains began to fight obsessively—over no one knows exactly what. The feud between the Hatfields of West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky, sympathizing with opposite sides in the Civil War and including many not related to either family, was only the most captivating and best known among many such vendettas in southern Appalachia in the late nineteenth century. The bloodiest period of that feud was during the 1880s, but it lasted fifty years and entered the folk history of the nation through song and story as a symbol of America’s habit of violence. The feud in Mark Twain’s (1835–1910) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) was based on one along the Kentucky-Tennessee border that Twain had known firsthand while he was a steamboat pilot before the Civil War. In Life on the Mississippi (1883) he recollected that real feud between the Darnells and the Watsons, but in Huckleberry Finn he changed the names to Grangerford and Sheperdson. Whether by families, gangs, or lone gunmen, lawless violence moved West with the frontier. The most famous outlaw of the Old Southwest was Billy the Kid, a cowboy in the New Mexico Territory until the so-called Lincoln County War broke out in 1878. He was deeply involved, siding with the ranchers in a dispute with businesspeople, and he became a primary combatant when he killed the county sheriff and two

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

VIOLENCE

Billy the Kid is shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Illustration from G. Waldo Browne’s novel Dandy Rock, the Man from Texas published by Beadle’s Half Dime Library. The Half Dime line was intended for boys and so frequently exploited the adolescent fascination with outlaws and violence. GETTY IMAGES

deputies. He escaped execution, and while he remained on the loose he killed over twenty others until, not yet twenty-two years old, he was killed in 1881 by another storied gunman, Sheriff Pat Garrett. The James Gang was equally folkloric. It was headed by Jesse James, who in 1863 as a sixteen-year-old, with his older brother Frank, had joined Quantrill’s Raiders, a band of marauding Confederates that had become famous for savagery when they slaughtered nearly two hundred people in Lawrence, Kansas. After the war the James brothers joined forces with another family of outlaws headed by Cole Younger and his brothers to form the infamous gang of murderous bank and train robbers that operated throughout Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, continuing Quantrill’s legacy of bloodshed by employing the same hit-and-run tactics and embellishing the myth of the western outlaw that remains fixed in the popular imagination. The passing of this violent “nomadic, bachelor West,” as Owen Wister (1860–1938) called it in Members of the Family (1911), was depicted by post-frontier writers like Stephen Crane (“The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” 1898), Wister (The Virginian, 1902), Zane Grey (Riders of the Purple Sage, 1912), and Willa Cather (O Pioneers!, 1913, and My Ántonia, 1918), all of whom introduce women, marriage, and home to the West. The result, though, as A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

shown by William R. Handley, did not “civilize the savage male violence of the frontier” but rather “[brought] that violence home” (p. 5). Yet much of the violence of the period was domestic, occurring in ways that could be hidden so as to go unrecorded. The nationwide publicity surrounding the grisly ax killings of Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother in 1892 was exceptional, all the more sensationalistic because the alleged butcher was a “nice respectable girl.” Usually family violence took the form of verbal attacks and physical assaults, as suggested in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Eros Turannos” (1916) about the deep privacy of abuse and codependency, but the brutality could extend to sexual violation and mutilation and even to rape and murder. Police reports might not record it, but narratives imaged the fury in some domestic relations. In two of the most well known, McTeague, in Frank Norris’s (1870–1902) McTeague (1899), batters his wife, Trina, in a frenzy of fear and frustration, leaving her slowly hiccuping to death in a pool of her own blood; and Pap Finn, in Huckleberrry Finn, in fits of self-hate, brawls drunkenly with his son so that Huck stages his own murder, then runs away from home. Secret violence could be the most savage and perverted, involving torture and ritualistic disfigurement.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1169

VIOLENCE

(1862–1937) employed it as a trope, resorting unmistakably to the language of rape in The House of Mirth (1905) to demonstrate the brutal effect of patriarchy on female moral consciousness, all the more disarming when inflicted by a supposed friend in the privacy of home.

A COMPENDIUM OF LITERARY VIOLENCE: THE WRITINGS OF MARK TWAIN

Cover of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 29 June 1893, showing a scene in the courtroom of the Lizzie Borden murder trial. Illustrated newspapers, fairly new in the late nineteenth century, sensationalized violent events and subsequent trials. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Perhaps not surprisingly, early rape scenarios, as Sabine Sielke has demonstrated, occurred within racial narratives—like Thomas Nelson Page’s Red Rock (1898) and Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman—that depict black men as being criminal by nature, irresistibly lusting after white women, and that also include literal or symbolic castration. A rape image by Dixon illustrates the bestiality he employs to promote white anxiety about the sanctity of home and family: “black claws” sink into a “soft white throat.” Works by black writers retaliated against such stereotypes. Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy recasts the brutalities of sexual exploitation by using inversion and mimicry, while Sutton E. Griggs’s The Hindered Hand (1905) depicts in horrific detail the mutilation of a black couple engaged to be married. The image of sexual violence became so compelling that Edith Wharton

1170

A M E R I C A N

Surely no single writer captured the broad range of the period’s violence more comprehensively than Mark Twain, a humorist by fame. From drunken child abuse, duels, and family feuds to lynchings, murders, and massacres to slavery and international war, his writings feature a catalog of distinctly Americanized variations on the age-old theme of brutality. He started early, in the novel he coauthored with Charles Dudley Warner that named the period, The Gilded Age (1873), exposing the devastation wrought by the greed and corruption of American politics and business, especially land speculation and the railroad industry. And he lasted long, in such writings as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (1889), and Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894). Following the Equator (1897) showed that his awareness of abuse had widened to a global perspective. In “The United States of Lyncherdom” (1901), his bitter portrayal of American racial lawlessness is drawn indelibly in a nightmarish vision of the torture by fire of 203 black victims of vigilante justice—the actual number of reported lynchings in America during 1900 and the first part of 1901. Four years later, in King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905), Twain satirized the Belgian king’s system of forced labor that killed an estimated three million Congolese. As late as 1907 Twain was still speaking out against the brutality of imperialism in interviews and public statements. By the time of his death in 1910, his withering ridicule of violence—both within America and around the world—was so well known that his writings about it brought a second distinctive renown to him, matching his earlier fame as a fictionalist and humorist. No one of his time came close to his fervent yet disheartened exposure of the beast in man.

IDEOLOGY OF VIOLENCE: LITERARY, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC

But “the beast in man” was exactly what the new wave of writers averred. Following the lead of writers like Émile Zola in his La bête humaine (1890), they developed a theory of “naturalism” that emphasized humanity’s violent and animal nature. Headed by

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

VIOLENCE

The assassination of President William McKinley. Drawing by T. Dart Walker, c. 1905. The fatal shooting of the president by the self-described anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901 renewed fears about the threat of violence posed by political radicals. GETTY IMAGES

Frank Norris and Jack London (1876–1916), they exploited the “survival of the fittest” ideas of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and Herbert Spencer’s First Principles (1862). Such novels as Norris’s McTeague, The Octopus (1901), and The Pit (1903) and London’s Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), and White Fang (1906) deliberately blurred the line between man and beast and, as a matter of principle, foregrounded the violent in human behavior. A classic early example is Crane’s Maggie, in which gangs of young toughs atavistically fight bloody street battles emulating the brutishness they see everywhere in their environment. Literary naturalism coincided with a growing disillusionment with capitalism that had already produced tension between labor and capital and had become another major source of violence. As the nation became more industrial and urban during the postwar years, distrust and abuse increased until A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

matters reached a head when in 1886 workers, expected to be on the job upward of twelve hours a day for a dollar of pay, united and formed the first national labor union, the American Federation of Labor. Its president, Samuel Gompers, and other leaders were called anarchists and socialists for pressing for national standards for employment, including fair wages and an eight-hour workday, and for developing strategies of resistance, including strikes. The strike was a deadly tactic, already made fearsome by the 1877 railroad strike in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in which dozens of workers and guards were killed or wounded. Through the last two decades of the century, as strikes increased in size and economic force, they also became more violent, most notably the ones in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892 against Carnegie Steel and in Chicago in 1894 against the Pullman Company. Doubtless the most inflammatory and infamous was the Haymarket “riot” in Chicago in


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1171

VIOLENCE

May 1886 at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. As striking workers outside the factory were being addressed by an anarchist, the “scabs” who had replaced them inside came out, and a pitched battle ensued. When police were called and were assaulted with stones, they opened fire on the crowd, indiscriminately shooting men, women, and children, killing six and wounding many more. Frank Harris’s The Bomb (1908), an early “proletarian novel,” focused on the anarchists who were found guilty of inciting the Haymarket riot. In a highly publicized trial, eight men were punished by imprisonment or death sentence on patently weak evidence, a verdict vigorously opposed by many, including William Dean Howells (1837– 1920) in the pages of the New York Tribune. In 1893 Governor John P. Altgeld pardoned the three who were still in prison. Howells’s fictional treatment of the national climate that prompted the event came in 1889, in A Hazard of New Fortunes, which highlighted labor unrest and unscrupulous new wealth as the makings for social revolution. Muckraking novelists, following Howells’s lead, joined Harris in the attack. Norris’s The Octopus detailed the forces of the monopolistic Southern Pacific Railroad, whose grasping tentacles engulfed settlers and drove them from their land. At the center was the Mussel Slough “tragedy,” a deadly 1880 gun battle in Tulare County (now Kings County), California. The most powerful and best-known novel of the movement was The Jungle (1906) by Upton Sinclair (1878– 1968). Strongly influenced by Norris’s novel and his own bitter poverty, Sinclair fashioned a furious exposé indicting the corporate exploitation that was destroying Lithuanian immigrant families in “Packingtown” (Chicago’s stockyards district). President Theodore Roosevelt, after reading the novel, ordered an investigation of the meatpacking industry, leading to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 and a new governmental oversight agency, the Food and Drug Administration. In the wake of the historic Haymarket tragedy, principled and effective opposition to violence increased, concentrating on the dispute between capitalistic democracy and socialism. In the spirit of Whitman’s disillusionment, literature in the decades before and after the turn of the century registered abhorrence of American brutality. The utopian novelist Edward Bellamy (1850–1898), in Looking Backward (1888), looked forward to the year 2000 to project a socialist world that had eliminated strife between management and labor. Another writer exploring these ideological intricacies was Jack London in The Iron Heel (1907), a novel delighting in “ferocious violence” that features a twenty-seventh-century man living in a socialist utopia

1172

A M E R I C A N

who, despite himself, seems to favor capitalism (p. 186). Much less conflicted was Theodore Dreiser (1871– 1945), who relentlessly exposes the brutality of capitalism, first in Sister Carrie (1900) and then in his Trilogy of Desire—The Financier (1912), also the most purely naturalistic of his novels; The Titan (1914); and The Stoic (published posthumously in 1947)—in which he critiques the American Dream of material success. In Leo Tolstoy’s Christian socialism or in the more radical anarchism movement, writers like these found alternatives to the excesses they believed were inherent in capitalism and its attendant militarism. In increasing numbers, philosophers and historians considered violence to be a fit subject for analysis and commentary. Clarence Darrow (1857–1938), concluding in Resist Not Evil (1902) that violence itself was the chief problem of civilization, rejected force altogether. Emma Goldman (1869–1940), in Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), called for a nonauthoritarian organization to replace the state and an end to the existing antagonism between individuals and classes. Jane Addams (1860–1935), founder of the worldfamous social settlement Hull-House in Chicago in 1889, turned her attention to world peace, publishing Newer Ideals of Peace in 1907 and opposing America’s entry into World War I. John Haynes Holmes (1879– 1964), a prominent Unitarian minister and social activist, spoke out against the war at a Unitarian conference in 1917, offering a resolution in favor of reconciliation, peace, and social justice. The former U.S. president William Howard Taft denounced the resolution, and as president of the conference, Taft then proposed an alternate resolution favoring the war as the only way to “stamp out militarism in the world.” Even in such a setting, pacifists were a small minority. Taft’s resolution carried, 236–9. After the war, continuing to advocate a socialist agenda that included nonviolent conflict resolution, Holmes demonstrated in Is Violence the Way out of Our Industrial Disputes? (1920) that the decades-old war between capital and labor was as violent as had been the recent war between nations, naively dubbed the War to End All Wars. THE NEW COLOSSUS

The period was defined by wars to assure freedom, and much of the poetry of the period perpetuated old romantic notions exalting battle. Poems with a different attitude, like Stephen Crane’s “Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War Is Kind” (1896), depicting war’s horror, or Emma Lazarus’s (1849–1887) “The New Colossus,” were rare. Almost forgotten in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Statue of Liberty was given by France to the United States in 1886. To raise funds

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

for the pedestal, works of authors like Mark Twain and Walt Whitman were sold at auction in 1883, and Lazarus, an American Jew, inscribed a poem to honor thousands of Jews fleeing to America following a wave of violent anti-Semitism in Russia in 1881. Titled “The New Colossus,” her poem, recollecting the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the wonders of the ancient world, rejected the Old World glorification of warfare in favor of the New World’s “mighty woman with a torch,” who calls, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The poem aided the fund-raising by selling for $1,500, but its text was lost and forgotten until 1903, when it was rediscovered in a used-book store. Only then was the text of the poem engraved into the pedestal, making the statue perhaps history’s greatest nonviolent symbol of freedom. See also Haymarket Square; Ku Klux Klan; Law Enforcement; Penitentiaries and Prisons; Reconstruction; Weaponry BIBLIOGRAPHY Secondary Works

Brown, Richard Maxwell. “Historical Patterns of American Violence.” In Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, vol. 1, edited by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, pp. 35–64. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969.

Sielke, Sabine. Reading Rape: The Rhetoric of Sexual Violence in American Literature and Culture, 1790–1990. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002. Sundquist, Eric J. To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire: AntiImperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War. Edited by Jim Zwick. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1992. Terry Oggel

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE By the time Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945) published The Voice of the People in 1900, she was already something of a cause célèbre. Three years earlier, her anonymously published first novel, the best-selling The Descendant (1897), had one reviewer speculating that its author was Harold Frederic, whose own novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), made the bestseller list for 1896. When a photograph was published revealing that the author of The Descendant was a twenty-two-year-old female Richmonder dressed and coiffed as if for a ball, the surprised reaction alone was almost enough to assure Glasgow a place in American literary history.

Gottesman, Ronald, ed. Violence in America: An Encyclopedia. 3 vols. New York: Scribners, 1999. Gurr, Ted Robert, ed. Violence in America. 2 vols. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1989. Handley, William R. Marriage, Violence, and the Nation in the American Literary West. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Hunter, Robert. Violence and the Labor Movement. 1914. New York: Arno, 1969. Kowalewski, Michael. Deadly Musings: Violence and Verbal Form in American Fiction. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. Logan, Shirley Wilson. We Are Coming: Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. Lynn, Kenneth. “Violence in American Literature and Folk Lore.” In Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, vol. 1, edited by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, pp. 181–191. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969. Oggel, Terry. “Speaking Out about Race: ‘The United States of Lyncherdom’ Clemens Really Wrote.” Prospects 25 (2000): 115–150. Rice, Otis K. The Hatfields and the McCoys. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1978.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

COMPOSITIONAL AND PUBLICATION HISTORY

Glasgow began her research for The Voice of the People shortly after the appearance of her first novel and in the midst of writing her second, Phases of an Inferior Planet (1898). In Roanoke, Virginia (“Powhatan City” in the novel), in August 1897, Glasgow convinced a doorkeeper to smuggle her into the state Democratic convention, which she apparently observed from backstage. During May 1898, she collected impressions in Williamsburg, Virginia, the model for the novel’s fictional Kingsborough. By late September 1898, Glasgow was seriously at work on The Voice of the People and exploring the possibility of serial publication (which did not transpire). Despite interruptions caused by travel and illness, Glasgow had sent the completed novel to Doubleday by February 1900. By mid-April, Glasgow was receiving fan mail from Williamsburg readers listing their return address as “Kingsborough.” The novel sold well and enjoyed a brief appearance on the best-seller list. Glasgow’s two collected editions, the eight-volume Old Dominion Edition (1929–1933) and the standard twelve-volume Virginia Edition of Works (1938), include The Voice of


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1173


Glasgow’s novel makes clear her belief that present attitudes, not just of individuals but of localities, are inherited from past assumptions difficult to dispel. By evading the truths of the present time and place, Kingsborough can only persist, not progress, in her view.

A facetious stranger once remarked that Kingsborough dozed through the present to dream of the past and found the future a nightmare. Had he been other than a stranger, he would, perhaps, have added that Kingsborough’s proudest boast was that she had been and was not—a distinction giving her preëminence over certain cities whose charters were not received from royal grants. . . . Long ago theirs had been the first part in Virginia, and, as they still believed, theirs had been also the centre of all things. Now the high places were laid low, and the greatness had passed as a trumpet that is blown. Kingsborough persisted still, but it persisted evasively, hovering, as it were, upon the outskirts of modern advancement. Glasgow, The Voice of the People, pp. 13–15.

the People with an author’s preface. The novel has been out of print since its publication in the Virginia Edition. HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Perhaps because of the temporal and topical specificity of the novel’s setting in Virginia during Reconstruction, The Voice of the People has had a less brilliant critical career than its initial reception seemed to promise. In her preface to The Battle-Ground (1902), collected with her other prefaces in A Certain Measure (1943), Glasgow places The Voice of the People third chronologically (although first in composition) in her “social history of Virginia,” which she describes as “history in the semblance of fiction” (p. 3). Set during the years 1870–1898, the novel’s geographical locations—Williamsburg (“Kingsborough”) and Richmond, the colonial and modern capitals of Virginia, respectively—simultaneously suggest progress and stasis. The past center of political power gives way to the contemporary one, but entrenched attitudes remain difficult to shed. Exploiting the tension between old ways and new, Glasgow in The Voice of the People gives readers a snapshot of the social stresses

1174

A M E R I C A N

produced by gender and race relations, class (im)mobility, political processes, and industrialization. Those same issues are crucial in understanding not only latenineteenth-century Virginia but ongoing struggles with social and cultural difference, political events and personalities, and global economies. Expanding industry and commerce in the South (as elsewhere in the United States) in the late decades of the nineteenth century helped to create an increasingly visible middle class that complicated notions of fixed class boundaries and thus also implicitly questioned other social boundaries. The Voice of the People follows the rise of its protagonist, Nicholas (Nick) Burr, from his childhood in a poor farming family to his adulthood as governor of Virginia and potential Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. After his determined march through his formal legal education toward respectability and political success, Burr is no longer the “poor white trash” that Eugenia Battle, the woman he loves, once labeled him. And yet neither is he the aristocratic owner of a family estate, as Eugenia’s father is of Battle Hall, nor can he be “one who is not only a judge of man but a Bassett of Virginia” (p. 4), like his mentor Judge Bassett. Glasgow demonstrates the obstacles to class mobility at the same time that she allows her hero to successfully negotiate them. On the eve of his probable election as Democratic senatorial candidate, Burr is killed as he intervenes in a violent lynch mob’s attack on a black man. Burr’s death ensures the election of the blue-blooded Dudley Webb. The democratic voice of the people, presumably, dies with Burr, as the voices of racist violence and of aristocratic privilege triumph. The limited possibilities for movement beyond one’s narrow social sphere are also evident in the novel’s take on romance and domesticity. Nick Burr first wins and then loses Eugenia Battle because her loyalty to family honor outstrips her romantic love; although Glasgow questions women’s circumscribed roles, she ultimately upholds the notion that women are fulfilled only through serving men in marriage, childbearing, domestic social obligations, and occasional supportive behind-the-scenes politicking. The novel’s exploration of race relations during Reconstruction has continuing relevance. Two crucial events in the nation’s racial history occurred within the time frame of The Voice of the People: the ratification in 1870 of the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited (in theory, at least) discriminatory voting practices, and Plessy v. Ferguson, the landmark 1896 Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation in the form of separate but equal public spaces. The novel begins and ends in Kingsborough, which

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


“dozed through the present to dream of the past and found the future a nightmare” (p. 13). This geographic framework—readers begin and end in the same place— reinforces the resistance to change that helps explain the failure of Reconstruction to realize an equitable society. Structurally, then, with its grounding in historical fact and its realistic setting, Glasgow’s novel confronts the contradictions implicit in the title: How can there be only one “voice” when “the people” so obviously do not exist as a unit? Glasgow acutely perceives the social tensions created in the postwar New South as an aristocratic and agrarian way of life yielded to industrialization, a new middle class emerged, women learned to expect more access to public influence and more avenues to personal fulfillment, and African Americans made their way in a world hostile to social equality. Glasgow’s sometimes progressive vision, however, is subject to her own prejudices. The Voice of the People remains marred by a patronizing attitude toward black characters, a powerful identification with the aristocracy, a sense of loss associated with an agrarian past, and a resignation about women’s restricted spheres that occasionally turns sentimental, offering paeans to motherhood and domesticity. More troubling, by making Burr a martyr when he and not the black man is killed, the novel ultimately constructs lynching as a problem for white, more than for black, citizens. The disturbing sentence that concludes the penultimate chapter—“And [Burr] died for a damned brute” (p. 442)—situates Burr’s heroism in his protection of the legal system, not of the intended victim of a lynch mob. The “brute,” so the logic of the passage argues, should die—but only according to the law. What looks like antiracism is, rather, pro–law and order. Glasgow’s revision of the line in subsequent editions of the novel, where “a damned brute” becomes “that damned nigger,” turns the argument for the justice system back into a baldly racist pronouncement that more overtly supports the logic of differential treatment for citizens based on race. Whether that support is Glasgow’s, the speaker’s, the community’s, or a combination is difficult to decipher. Still, even with its compromised vision—in part because of its compromised vision—The Voice of the People, in reprising a specific history of social change, also exposes the contradictions and ambiguities that make any attempt at social change a volatile project. CRITICAL RECEPTION

As numerous contemporary reviewers of The Voice of the People make clear, her novelty as a young woman author quickly gave way to serious estimates of

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Glasgow’s literary ability. Almost everyone called The Voice of the People the best of her three novels to date. Enthusiastic commentators described it as worthier of the label Great American Novel than any recently published work and as the most realistic portrayal ever of contemporary southern life. One reviewer assigned Glasgow a front row seat in the American school of fiction. Most praised Glasgow’s characterization and her descriptions of place. Others applauded her use of dialogue and the power of her prose. A few asked for faster pacing or for less-inflated descriptive passages. Almost everyone pointed to Glasgow’s impressive treatment of current social problems. Compared to much southern fiction written at about the same time, such as the work of Mary Johnston (1870–1936) or Thomas Nelson Page (1853–1922), which focused on an idealized antebellum past, Glasgow’s more realistic treatment in The Voice of the People of the social issues facing her own generation in the post–Reconstruction New South offered an unflinching assessment of southern society. Realism had crossed the Potomac heading north, as one reviewer put it years later. See also Domestic and Sentimental Fiction; New South; Realism; Reconstruction


Glasgow, Ellen. A Certain Measure: An Interpretation of Prose Fiction. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1943. Glasgow, Ellen. Letters of Ellen Glasgow. Edited by Blair Rouse. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1958. Glasgow, Ellen. The Voice of the People. New York: Doubleday, Page, and Company, 1900. Revised and reprinted in 1933 and 1938. Secondary Works

Godbold, E. Stanly, Jr. Ellen Glasgow and the Woman Within. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. Goodman, Susan. Ellen Glasgow: A Biography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Kelly, William W. Ellen Glasgow: A Bibliography. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1964. Includes descriptions of editions, compositional histories. Scura, Dorothy M., ed. Ellen Glasgow: The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Reprints contemporary reviews of Glasgow’s novels.


Pamela R. Matthews

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1175

WY

WAR WRITING

MEMORIALIZING THE CIVIL WAR

War literature is always late. The most famous novel about the Civil War, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War (1895), was published thirty years after the end of hostilities. Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914), a veteran of the Civil War, explains why in “Chickamauga” (also published late, twenty-five years after the war). At the center of this stark, grotesque short story is an encounter between a young child and a soldier creeping away from the battlefield who has had the bottom half of his face shot off, leaving a red, fringed gap between his upper teeth and throat. The child, unaware of what has happened and imagining he is part of a great new pantomime, tries to mount the soldier like a horse. The dying man wrestles the child off and tries in fury to communicate something to him, but the child, we soon learn, is a deaf mute. He could not understand the message even if there was a tongue to produce it.

Whether or not the reality of the Civil War could ever be expressed, as Anderson doubts, many tried. Up through the 1890s the Civil War remained at the center of the national literary imagination as the culture tried, slowly, to work through its collective trauma. Key popular works of this period include, among others, Memoirs of William T. Sherman (1875); Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (1885); Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891) by Bierce; Century Magazine’s war series (mid-1880s); short stories such as Mark Twain’s “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” (1885) or Henry James’s “The Jolly Corner” (1908); Ellen Glasgow’s The Battle-Ground (1902); and Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (1895). Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut (1823–1886) revised her Civil War diaries for publication between 1881 and 1884, twenty years after the events recounted therein transpired; they were published posthumously more than a decade after that. (A full version of her diaries was published under the title Mary Chesnut’s Civil War in 1981.)

The deep shock of combat produces silent, stunned witnesses and shattered veterans. The story they need to tell is urgent, strange, and desperate for expression but also, like all traumas, difficult to put into clear or adequate language. In Windy McPherson’s Son (1916), Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) represents the war talk of Civil War veterans as “mysterious mutterings,” “chattering and shouting,” “blustering,” and “raving.” “No real sense of [the war],” he writes of this failed communication, “has as yet crept into the pages of a printed book” (pp. 12–14, 23, 16).

Twenty-five thousand American soldiers had served in the War of 1812, 50,000 in the MexicanAmerican War. By the end of the Civil War, an estimated 2.5 million had fought. The numbers of dead and wounded in the Civil War dwarfed anything seen before or after. Much of the literature written in the late nineteenth century tried to grapple with the war’s inhuman scope. How can you ever begin to understand something so vast? How can you tell the story of something when it is itself composed of more stories than can be counted?

1177

WAR WRITING

Writers in this period tried a variety of approaches. Some tried, like Bierce in “Chickamauga,” to cut away all of the background and to pick one brutal, vicious detail that could stand for the whole. Others, like Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885), worked their hardest to capture all of the details. His Personal Memoirs is an attempt to collect all the information he can, as accurately as he can, of the war as he experienced it. Dying painfully from cancer as he wrote the book, Grant sought to achieve a sense of personal control in the present by asserting encyclopedic narrative mastery over the uncontainable traumatic past. Hundreds and hundreds of pages full of body-count charts and battle reports and copies of correspondence stand as a testament to his stubborn refusal to admit that it could not be done. But try as he might to comprehend the whole, Grant was always doomed to failure, as he well knew. Few works reveal the necessity of failure as dramatically as Mary Chesnut’s diaries, which like Grant’s Personal Memoirs seek to create an encyclopedic account of the war, but this time from the perspective of a female war refugee instead of a male battle commander. Recording the details of her domestic world from a period of plantation wealth and security to a final collapse into chaos, Chesnut’s writing simultaneously attempts to preserve the world she loved in all its idiosyncrasies (the songs, the customary meals, the courtships) and to bear witness to its disintegration.

This widely distributed talk (published in book form under the same title) attributed the strength of U.S. democracy to the character-building challenges of frontier life, and closed with the foreboding reminder that the frontier had disappeared. The U.S. Census Bureau had announced the closure of the internal frontier in 1890. Many believed that the key to continued U.S. prosperity and growth could only be found in new frontiers and in new waves of expansion. They pointed for evidence to developing economic troubles stemming from overproduction and to the significant labor upheaval manifest most dramatically in the Haymarket Square Riot that took place in Chicago in 1886. Expansionist policies received further justification from a combination of Social Darwinism, whose logic presented a stark choice between lethal decay or growth through competitive acquisition, and the tradition of Manifest Destiny, which imagined U.S. imperialism as an extension of liberty for all. As a final ingredient, young men dissatisfied with the constraints of Victorian culture and longing to match the heroism of the Civil War generation were eager to hear news of strenuous adventures abroad. In the three decades following Turner’s speech, the United States vigorously pursued its perceived national interests by making military interventions into Cuba, China, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Panama, Nicaragua, and Mexico.

In contrast to both Chesnut and Grant, whose insistent belief that their stories could be told produced impossibly long documents, some writers like Henry James (1843–1916) chose to tell a story about untold and, indeed, untellable stories. In “The Jolly Corner,” Spencer Brydon searches the New York home he has inherited from his family to find the ghost of his alternate self, the self he would have been if he had remained in America as a young man and had fought in the war. When he finally finds the ghost he is overwhelmed and terrified and retreats into a faint. All the stories he could have lived, all the things he will never know, all the experiences he will never understand—it is all revealed to him finally in the face of a specter so damaged and inexplicably aggressive that Brydon’s only possible response is to close himself off from the overwhelming knowledge by losing consciousness. What happened to this veteran who haunts us? We can never know.

The Spanish-American War (1898) was the most celebrated of these ventures. The important writing from this war was inspired by journalism, and the key journalist was Stephen Crane (1871–1900). As a correspondent for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World he saw combat at Guantánamo, Las Guásimas, and San Juan Hill. In his dispatches from the front he represented the war as noble, thrilling, and ruggedly gallant. The stories he wrote after, collected in Wounds in the Rain: War Stories (1900), are little different. In “The Price of the Harness” Crane describes a young staff officer leading his troops into battle. On their way they pass a wounded Cuban whose cries of agony alert the men to the bloodshed and death that await them on the front line. But the officer does not pause, Crane writes. He continues forward with “fidelity and courage.”

IMPERIAL DESIGNS

As literature memorialized, the government imperialized. In 1893 the historian Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932) gave a speech in Chicago entitled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.”

1178

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

And so this young officer in the shapeless hat and the torn and dirty shirt failed to heed the wails of the wounded man, even as the pilgrim fails to heed the world as he raises his illumined face toward his purpose—rightly or wrongly his purpose—his sky of the ideal of duty; and the wonderful part of it is that he is guided by an ideal which he has himself created, and has alone protected from attack. The young man was merely an officer in the United States regular army. (Pp. 1020–1021)

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WAR WRITING

It was “a splendid little war,” as Secretary of State John Hay put it (Zinn, p. 302). It lasted only four months and produced only 385 U.S. battle deaths. Seeing themselves as the liberators of the oppressed Cubans, Americans had managed to join together in a unified and decisive exercise of national power that effectively banished from memory the divisive trauma of the Civil War. It was not only nationalism, however, but also racism that fueled U.S. military enthusiasm. Jack London (1876–1916) wrote a short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion” (1914), that purports to tell the history of a nearly apocalyptic contest between the white races and China in 1976. The narrative engine of the story is a series of arithmetic tallies: How many Chinese people are there in the world in 1970? 1975? Today? When it becomes clear that “there were more Chinese in existence than white-skinned people,” the narrator declares, “the world shivered.” War is inevitable, because China’s ever-expanding population threatens to overflow into Europe and the United States. The white races, facing an enemy that not only badly outnumbers them but also, as the narrator emphasizes, does not value life, seem doomed. But in New York City a scientist named Jacobus Laningdale comes up with a solution. A great truce between nations is called so that a mysterious attack can be organized. Glass tubes are dropped all across the cities and villages of China, releasing deadly biological agents: smallpox, scarlet fever, yellow fever, cholera, and the bubonic plague. China is reduced to a “howling wilderness” and is resettled happily according to a “democratic American programme” (pp. 113, 120). Afterward, the nations gather together in Europe and draft a treaty promising never to use such inhumane tactics against one another.

out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst. . . . Stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of Love, of Him Who Is the Source of Love. (Pp. 159–160)

WORLD WAR I

The United States entered World War I in 1917, three years after the conflict had begun in Europe. The cost to America in blood and treasure was shocking: 50,000 battle deaths and billions of dollars. But the cost to Europe was truly unfathomable: more than 50,000 British troops were killed or wounded in the first day of the Battle of the Somme alone. Well over twenty million soldiers and civilians died during the four-year war.

Widespread popular comfort with the use of lethal force notwithstanding, U.S. militarism also generated vigorous internal opposition. The peace movement grew rapidly in the two decades preceding World War I, and there were notable public condemnations of imperial ventures. But one of the strongest expressions of U.S. antimilitarism, Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer” (written in the early 1900s) was not published until after Twain’s death in 1910 because of the author’s fear of public criticism. The brief and angry story describes how patriotic masses preparing for an unspecified war threaten those who dare to raise questions. It also puts into bitter words the hidden content of the country’s collective prayer for God’s loving blessings on its own army:

The important American literature of this war— by Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, E. E. Cummings, and others—was not published until the 1920s. Two early works by John Dos Passos (1896– 1970) and Edith Wharton (1862–1937) do merit attention, however, even if they are not generally counted among the great works of either author. The sharp contrast between these books offers a unique look at the range of attitudes toward war that prevailed in this period. Edith Wharton’s The Marne (1918) tells the story of Troy Belknap, a rich young man who, having fallen in love with France during his regular visits as a child, enthusiastically volunteers to serve its cause as an ambulance driver. The novella, related from Troy’s idealistic point of view, offers a satirical look at the wealthy and secure Americans who seem incapable of understanding the gravity of war. One American trapped in Paris by the German advance complains of the difficulty of travel: “We’ve really spent enough money in Europe for some consideration to be shown us” (p. 18). Later, Wharton describes “happy American children” sending sugar-plums to Belgian war orphans, “requesting to have their gifts acknowledged” (p. 33). American pacifists are criticized as well. After the sinking of the Lusitania, Wharton writes, they “crept back into their holes” (p. 45) The one attitude not explicitly criticized is Troy’s. His belief in the heroism and romance of combat survives personal loss and a battlefield wound. “A world which no one would die for,” he says, “could never be a world worth being alive in” (p. 44). In the end, he is overjoyed to have participated in the battle of the Marne. As his friend Jacks exclaims: “You lucky kid!” (p. 125).

Help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them

Dos Passos’s One Man’s Initiation: 1917 (1920) follows the exploits of Martin Howe, another young

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1179

W E A LT H

American who has enlisted in the ambulance corps. This, however, is a story of bitter disillusionment: initial joy at going to France is quickly extinguished by the experience of battlefield insanity. “God!” Martin exclaims. “If there were somewhere nowadays where you could flee from all this stupidity, from all this cant of governments, and this hideous reiteration of hatred, this strangling hatred” (p. 81). The only thing good and reliable in Dos Passos’s account of war is the bond among soldiers, among those who have shared the terrible initiation. As one character points out, Martin and his friends are in important ways much closer even to the German soldiers who suffer like them than to their fellow citizens at home. Indeed, the real enemies in this and all wars are not the men facing the guns but rather the lies that brought them to confront each other on the battlefield in the first place. “First we must fight the lies,” one soldier concludes at the end. “It is the lies that choke us” (p. 169). See also Civil War Memoirs; Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant; Philippine-American War; The Red Badge of Courage; Spanish-American War; Tales of Soldiers and Civilians; Weaponry; World War I BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Crane, Stephen. Prose and Poetry. Edited by J. C. Levenson. New York: Library of America, 1984. Dos Passos, John. One Man’s Initiation: 1917. 1920. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969. London, Jack. “The Unparalleled Invasion.” In Curious Fragments: Jack London’s Tales of Fantasy Fiction, edited by Dale L. Walker. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1975. Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire: AntiImperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War. Edited by Jim Zwick. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1992. Wharton, Edith. The Marne. New York: D. Appleton, 1918. Secondary Works

Aaron, Daniel. The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War. New York: Knopf, 1973. Dawes, James. The Language of War: Literature and Culture in the U.S. from the Civil War through World War II. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. Fredrickson, George. The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union. New York: Harper and Row, 1965. Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. Kaplan, Amy, and Donald E. Pease, eds. Cultures of United States Imperialism. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993.

1180

A M E R I C A N

Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. Woodward, C. Vann. Introduction to Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, by Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981. Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States, 1492– Present. New York: HarperPerennial, 1980. James Dawes

WEALTH In 1840 the largest fortune in America was $40 million, held by Cornelius Vanderbilt, but by 1912 it was $1 billion, held by John D. Rockefeller. Median family wealth rose less dramatically during this period, from $500 to $800; thus, the ratio of the largest fortune to the median rose from 80,000:1 to 370,000:1. In Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (2002), Kevin Phillips provides these and other interesting statistics about the Gilded Age, the period he titles “The Rise of the Great American Fortunes, 1865–1900.” Phillips concludes, “wealth and incomes . . . were concentrating, mirroring the huge new centralization of the economy through industrial combines, corporate monopolies, and trusts. One analysis in 1890 argued that more than half of the wealth was held by just 1 percent of U.S. families, up from about 29 percent in 1860” (p. 43). At the top of this scale were the self-styled captains of industry, known more popularly as the robber barons. Among them, Jay Gould (1836–1892) and John Pierpont (J. P.) Morgan (1837–1913) were the most notorious. Gould controlled railroads, the New York World, the New York City elevated train system, and Western Union. Morgan also turned to railroads and in the 1890s controlled the largest group of railroads in the country. In 1901 he then bought out Andrew Carnegie’s steel business and merged with others to form U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation. Many of the other robber barons also involved themselves with railroads, which underwent a huge expansion during the 1870s and 1880s. Great financial battles for consolidation were waged among the robber barons and lesser financiers, prompting accusations of wanton disregard of the public interest and of corruption of the political system. In 1887 the Interstate Commerce Commission was formed to attempt to address these problems, but it had little power. According to Alan Trachtenberg in The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (1982), the age of the robber barons and their

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

W E A LT H

The great American fortunes of 1901–1914: The thirty largest wealth holders of the period Oil John D. Rockefeller Oliver Payne Henry Rogers William Rockefeller Henry Flagler Charles Harkness

$1 billion $100–150 million $100 million $100 million $75 million $75 million

Steel Andrew Carnegie Henry C. Frick Henry Phipps

$400 million $150 million $75 million

Railroads Russell Sage E. H. Harriman James J. Hill John Jacob Astor III William K. Vanderbilt

$100 million $100 million $100 million $87 million $60 million

Finance J. P. Morgan Andrew Mellon Richard Mellon Hetty Green George F. Baker James Stillman

$119 million $100 million $100 million $100 million $75 million $70 million

Municipal transit Peter Widener Thomas Fortune Ryan Nicolas Brady

$100 million $100 million $75 million

Miscellaneous Frederick Weyerhaeuser (lumber) Marshall Field (retailing, real estate) William Clark (copper) James B. Duke (tobacco) J. Ogden Armour (meatpacking) William Weightman (pharmaceuticals) Frank Woolworth (retailing) SOURCE:

$200 million $140 million $100 million $100 million $75–100 million $80 million $60 million

Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, pp. 50–51.

“epic scale of enterprises” also “marked a significant increase in the influence of business in America” (pp. 4–5). In a trilogy of novels—The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic (1947)— Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) created a powerful and extensive portrait of a robber baron, based upon the exploits of Chicago streetcar magnate Charles Tyson Yerkes (1837–1905). THE PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH

The philosophy behind—or rationale for—the increase and concentration of wealth was the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). The historian Stewart H. Holbrook, writing in Lost Men of American History (1946), asserts that Spencer was “the man who had greatest influence on the United States A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

during the last third of the nineteenth century and the first third of the following century” (p. 226). Many aspects of Spencer’s theory are clearly relevant to capitalist America: the idea of competition and progressive increase certainly appealed to corporate America, and the notion of survival of the fittest gave a quasibiological justification to the robber barons and other elites. The idea that Western culture—or more particularly Anglo-American culture—is at the most highly evolved point of human history supported a self-satisfied feeling of moral superiority that was common in the Victorian era. In Social Darwinism in American Thought (1959), Richard Hofstadter writes, “With its rapid expansion, its exploitative methods, its desperate competition and its peremptory rejection of failure, post-bellum America was like a vast human caricature of the Darwinian struggle for existence and survival of the fittest” (p. 44). Spencer’s chief American follower was William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), who from his chair at Yale proclaimed the Social Darwinist doctrine in even stronger terms than Spencer. Sumner extols the virtues of wealth and even argues that capital is the main factor in the origin of civilization. “We know that men once lived on the spontaneous fruits of the earth, just as other animals do. In that stage a man was just like the brutes,” he writes. “At the present time man is an intelligent animal. He knows something of the laws of Nature. . . . he can bring the productive forces of Nature into service and make them produce food, clothing, and shelter. How has this change been brought about? The answer is, by capital” (pp. 59–60). In the course of humans’ development, Sumner continues, “not a step has been or can be made without capital” (p. 62). Another friend and disciple of Spencer, Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), made an equally sweeping claim. The title of his famous 1889 essay, “The Gospel of Wealth,” published in The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays (1962), concisely expresses his view. Like Sumner, Carnegie sees capital as the beginning of civilization: To those who propose to substitute Communism for this intense Individualism, the answer therefore is: The race has tried that. All progress from that barbarous day to the present time has resulted from its displacement. Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have had the ability and energy to produce it. (P. 18)

He continues, “Individualism, Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth, and the Law of Competition . . . are the highest result of human experience, the soil in which society, so far, has produced


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1181

W E A LT H

Andrew Carnegie. Caricature by Albert Levering, 1905. The Scottish-born industrialist is depicted as a jovial philanthropist. THE GRANGER COLLECTION, NEW YORK

the best fruit” (p. 19). As for the disparities in wealth, Carnegie celebrates them: “It is well, nay, essential, for the progress of the race that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization. . . . Without wealth there can be no Mæcenas” (p. 15). Aesthetic values, to Carnegie, are vitally connected to and dependent upon wealth. According to Holbrook in Lost Men of American History, the author Horatio Alger (1832–1899) was “the man who made Spencer mean something to the rising generation of the masses of Americans, not just the college men nor the intellectuals” (p. 228). Alger’s repetitive, formulaic novels generated larger sales than those by any other author in America. In the Alger formula, a young boy, poor but moral, industrious, and intelligent, gets a break from someone in a class above him, works hard, saves money, and rises in the socioeconomic order. The novels, filled with references to money, are an explicit endorsement of the corporate, capitalist culture, as is their unrelenting morality and their portrayal of the spectrum of social classes. For instance, Alger’s early novel, Ragged Dick; or,

1182

A M E R I C A N

Street Life in New York (1868), is filled with respectful and sometimes awestruck references to money. When Dick is showing Frank Whitney, a well-to-do young visitor, around Manhattan, the culmination of the tour is Wall Street, “a street not very wide or very long, but of very great importance. The reader would be astonished if he could know the amount of money involved in the transactions which take place in a single day in this street” (p. 101). At the end of the street is the Custom House, which Frank likens to the Parthenon. The connection between wealth and art is strengthened in the advice that Frank’s father, who becomes Dick’s benefactor, gives him: “save your money, my lad, buy books, and determine to be somebody” (p. 109). Dick does that, gets money, and thereafter thoroughly enjoys contemplating his bankbook, the loss and recovery of which forms the climactic action of the novel. Whether as gospel, myth of cultural origins, or model for contemporary behavior, “The Way to Wealth”—to use Ben Franklin’s title—seems a significant American path many attempted to follow. The prospect of quickly obtained wealth lured many prospectors to the California gold rush (begun in 1849) and the Comstock Lode (begun in 1859) near Virginia City, Nevada. The latter yielded more than $300 million, and both helped build the businesses and mansions of San Francisco. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910) comically detailed his own adventures as a failed fortune seeker in the gold and silver fields in Roughing It (1872). Later, the Klondike gold rush of 1897–1898 brought more than eighteen thousand people to that region, including Jack London (1876–1916), whose experiences formed the material for his initial success as a writer with The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North (1900) and The Call of the Wild (1903). Land speculation, occasioned by the expansion of the railroads and the settlement of the American West, was also seen as a route to wealth. Whether developing towns and cities along proposed rail lines or cultivating the vast natural resources deliverable by rail, the speculators contrived by lobbying or corrupting corporate and governmental authorities to gain their part of the expanding “Incorporation of America,” as Trachtenberg labels the phenomenon in the subtitle to his book. Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1874) details the land speculation of Colonel Beriah Sellers, who gets involved in various schemes and eventually goes bankrupt. THE DISPLAY OF WEALTH

Historians stress one central aspect of wealth in this period: its conspicuous display. In The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post-Reconstruction

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

W E A LT H

Era (1984), Page Smith notes that “perhaps the most noticeable change in the life of the very rich was their ‘conspicuousness.’” The modest facades of antebellum homes went out of fashion, and “now the rich built extravagant mansions that publicly proclaimed their wealth” (p. 853). This was, after all, the Gilded Age, a term borrowed from the title of Twain and Warner’s novel and an apt image for the period. The display of gold, of wealth, in material objects and cultural practices is perhaps the defining factor in the lifestyle of the rich in the late 1800s. The wealthy built castles along the Hudson River and villas in Newport and moored their massive yachts nearby. Ezra Cornell, Leland Stanford, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Carnegie put their names and endowments on universities—what Trachtenberg calls “a conspicuous display of philanthropy” (p. 145) was also a part of the gilding. The wealthy were also busy endowing monumental art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, both established in 1870; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, founded in 1876; and the Art Institute of Chicago, which dates from 1879. In most cases, the ladies of high society were the driving force behind the establishment of these institutions. Trachtenberg argues that “the museums subliminally associated art with wealth, and the power to donate and administer with social station and training” (p. 144). He concludes that the Gilded Age “contained a particular idea of culture as a privileged domain of refinement, aesthetic sensibility, and higher learning” (p. 143). Inside the mansions, opulent display grew proportionate to the increase of wealth. “Silver might have been in dispute as a medium of exchange,” Smith says, “but as a symbol of success it was unchallenged in the domestic setting” (p. 856); dozens of silver implements were devised for use and display. Some household items made the mansions uniquely American; Carnegie commented that “there is no palace or great mansion in Europe with half the conveniences and scientific appliances which characterize the best American mansions” (Smith, p. 856), a reference to modern amenities such as telephones, electric lights, and central heating. The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) by William Dean Howells (1837–1920) exposes this tendency in the title character’s smug satisfaction with the showy improvements he makes to his house. Although wealth was certainly a prerequisite for reaching what Trachtenberg calls the “privileged domain,” certain cultural practices were also required. Eric Homberger gives one example in Mrs. Astor’s New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age (2002): “In this complex transaction toward heightened A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

visibility, the ball was a social weathervane. Charity balls and assemblies were public events, and were treated as such in the press. But when ‘private’ balls began to be held on a newly lavish scale, the newspapers began to take notice” (p. 23). Newport held “subscription balls,” which allowed the public who wanted to subscribe to watch. And the balls of the period were indeed lavish: in 1897 Mrs. BradleyMartin spent $360,000 on a ball, explaining that she was trying to stimulate business during the depression (Smith, p. 853). Occupying a box at the opera or a carriage for the evening procession in Newport were also signs of privileged status. Homberger describes the opening of the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1883 as a carefully designed gala to show off the riches and taste of the wealthy: “A reporter at opening night on October 22, 1883, noted that ‘All the nouveaux riches were there. The Goulds and the Vanderbilts and people of that ilk perfumed the air with the odor of crisp greenbacks. The tiers of boxes looked like cages in a menagerie of monopolists’” (p. 230). In this “age of aristocracy,” as Homberger terms it, the wealthy could further demonstrate their status by showing a connection to European nobility. Most superficially, this involved re-creating or importing English homes, goods, and fashions, affecting English accents, hiring Irish nannies, and so forth. Twain loved to attack such pretensions, satirizing it through the King and Duke, two low-life con men in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and through Colonel Sellers in The American Claimant (1892), who insists he is the rightful earl of Durham. Marrying into European nobility was highly regarded, as can be seen in one of the period’s major social scandals. Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt was so determined to marry off her daughter Consuelo to the ninth duke of Marlborough that she threatened to shoot the young man her daughter was in love with. Alva prevailed, and in one of the biggest social events of the century, Consuelo married the duke, who was also given $2.5 million in railroad stock. Travel to Europe was also a major part of the upper-class regimen. The retinues and entourages of the wealthy travelers—which included maids, nurses, relatives, and so forth—increased their visibility, as did the piles of luggage they brought along, which commonly included twenty or thirty pieces. Smith likens the travelers to “small armies on campaign, to Rome, to Florence, to European spas, and, most desired of all, to English country homes” (p. 858). American writers chronicled and took part in similar European sojourns. Twain’s The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrims’ Progress (1869) and A Tramp Abroad (1880) humorously chronicle his travels, whereas Edith Wharton (1862–1937) shows a more serious admiration for


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1183

W E A LT H

European culture in Italian Backgrounds (1905) and French Ways and Their Meaning (1919). In his fiction, Henry James (1843–1916) subtly explores wealthy Americans’ interest in European aristocracy: The American (1877) details Christopher Newman’s failed courtship of Claire de Cintré, and The Ambassadors (1903) describes Chad Newsome’s relationship with the Countess de Vionnet. The increasing number of wealthy in the Gilded Age posed a problem for dominant members of the social elite: How could they maintain their privileged position? They attempted to do this by setting up a dichotomy between themselves, the old money, and the new money, also called the parvenus, the arrivistes, the social climbers. They enforced this decision in various ways. Samuel Ward McAllister (1827–1895), who as Homberger says, “articulated the ideals upon which the aristocratic idea in America took its stand” (p. 149), founded in 1872 the Patriarchs, which was made up of the twenty-five (later fifty) most exclusive families in New York, a group Homberger calls “the most prestigious social institution of the age” (p. 149). In the 1880s McAllister was the impetus for “the 400”—issued as The 400 (Officially Supervised) in 1890—a list of the officially elite. This and other publications such as the Social Register sought to validate the truly exceptional and exclusive. In The Custom of the Country (1913), Wharton presents an attack on the nouveau riche in the person of Undine Spragg, whose ruthless pursuit of a place in high society forms the core of the novel. One other route the old money took was a sort of conspicuous anti-display, bohemian aestheticism. William Sturgis Bigelow became a Buddhist and collected Japanese art. George Cabot Lodge became a poet/artist/philosopher who affected a Whitmanesque appearance and who, with his friend Joseph Trumbull Stickney, formed the Conservative Christian Anarchist Party. John Hay and Henry Adams settled in Washington, D.C., where their houses became centers for artists, writers, and other aesthetically minded members of the gentry. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John LaFarge, and John Singer Sargent were frequent visitors. Many of the artistically inclined members of the social elite would, by the end of the nineteenth century, gravitate to Greenwich Village, where avantgarde modernism would be formed. Perhaps the best example would be Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879– 1962), who married well and wealthy, traveled extensively in Europe, and settled in Greenwich Village, where she established a salon. Later she relocated to Taos, New Mexico. Two factors, newspapers and photography, significantly affected the increasing prominence of wealth.

1184

A M E R I C A N

The first attempt to create society journalism was W. H. Andrews’s magazine American Queen, which began publication in 1879. “Devoted to the publication of social reports from American cities, and long lists of invited guests,” Homberger writes, “American Queen provided a dry account of current fashions being worn across the nation” (p. 204). In 1880 Charles Anderson Dana’s New York Sun began to include a society column, and other papers soon followed suit, with the New York Tribune and the New York World adding social coverage in 1882. Photography also increased the visibility of the rich, and “society photographers” were present at any major social event. “When the half-tone process was introduced in late 1896,” Homberger writes, “allowing photographs to be printed in the daily press, among the most popular innovations was an illustrated supplement printed on quality paper with the regular Sunday edition of the New York Times” (p. 19), which featured those prominent in society. “The press presented a story about society to the public,” Homberger concludes. “It was a story with a strong, recurrent narrative forms, building toward seasonal high points [balls, opera openings, and so forth]. . . . a story with wealth, color, power, and fancy clothes” (p. 19). Increasingly, to be in the press was a requisite sign of being in the elite. CRITICISM OF WEALTH

This complicity with the press was, however, what Homberger calls “a Faustian bargain for the wealthy” (p. 11). While publicity was valued, scandal became more difficult to hide. The 1880s saw not only the rise of society columns but gossip columns as well. In 1874 Henry Ward Beecher, the most prominent minister of the time, was skewered in the press over his adulterous relations—“criminal conversation”—with Elizabeth Tilton, the wife of Theodore Tilton (Homberger, p. 12). Even more famous, then and now (because of its retelling in E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime), is the scandal involving Harry Thaw, a sadomasochist, his wife, Evelyn Nesbit, and the aging libertine Stanford White. It was, says Smith, “the greatest scandal of the day” (p. 857). Twain and Warner’s The Gilded Age fictionalizes most of the nonsexual dimension of what Trachtenberg calls “the corruption and scandal of a political universe dominated by a great wealth” (p. 144). Land speculation involving the expansion of railroads, legislators bought and sold by industrialists, small businesses and workers being squeezed by monopolies, all are fodder for Twain and Warner’s cannons. Other major novelists of the period also took stances critical of the social elite. William Dean Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

W E A LT H

MENCKEN ON THE MILLIONAIRES These are the first two paragraphs in a short article, “A Chance for Millionaires,” by H. L. Mencken originally published in the New York Evening Mail in 1918.

On the general stupidity and hunkerousness of millionaires a formidable tome might be written— a job I resign herewith to anyone diligent enough to assemble the facts. Not only do they gather in their assets by processes which never show any originality, but are always based upon a few banal principles of swindling; they also display the same lack of resource and ingenuity in getting rid of them. It is years since any American millionaire got his money in any new and stimulating way, and it is years since any American millionaire got rid of his money by any device worthy the admiration of connoisseurs. Setting aside the pathetic dullards who merely hang on to their accumulations, like dogs hoarding bones, the rich men of the Republic may be divided into two grand divisions, according to their varying notions of what is a good time. Those in the first division waste their funds upon idiotic dissipation or personal display. They are the Wine Jacks, social pushers and horsy fellows—the Thaws, Goulds, and so on. Those in the second division devote themselves to buying public esteem by gaudy charities and a heavy patronage of the arts and sciences. They are the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans, et al. H. L. Mencken, “A Chance for Millionaires,” in A Mencken Chrestomathy (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), pp. 380–381.

concerns the moral threat posed by the acquisition of wealth, contrasting Mrs. Lapham’s traditional values with Mr. Lapham’s business practices. In The Age of Innocence (1920) Wharton presents her fullest and most nuanced portrait of New York’s elite, who are at once objects of nostalgic sympathy and distanced criticism. A more wide-ranging and incisive criticism of this era is The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (1899) by Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), a powerful and A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

insightful social critique and an important work of nonfiction literature. In every way, it opposes the ideas of Herbert Spencer and his book First Principles. Veblen begins by locating the contemporary capitalist culture not at the high endpoint of cultural evolution but at “the predatory phase of culture” (p. 19) or “this exemplary barbarian culture” (p. 3) dominated by power, invidious distinction, exploit, aggression, and combat. Veblen begins his analysis with the concept of pecuniary emulation, “the motive that lies at the root of ownership” (p. 25). This phase evolved from a previous one marked by quasi-peaceable savagery and primitive communal organization, when individuals began to raid neighboring tribes and bring back trophies—goods and women—for invidious display. Others then sought to emulate them, and the culture of private property, which would result in modern capitalism, was born. In modern times the exploit of the raid has been replaced by business enterprise and the trophies by a complex and wide-ranging set of practices that are, in essence, contemporary culture, the discussion of which forms the body of Veblen’s book. The first general category of these practices is “conspicuous leisure,” for, Veblen notes, “in order to gain and hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence” (p. 36). And since work in predatory culture is associated with “weakness and subjection to a master” (p. 36), leisure becomes a sign of superior status. This is not simply attending balls or the opera or lounging in the Hamptons or Newport, for much of Veblen’s idea of conspicuous leisure is vicarious leisure. For example, having a wife who demonstrably does not work is prized; having servants who do the “woman’s work” is thus important, and even better is having servants who do little or no work and who therefore demonstrate vicariously the employer’s leisure. Veblen’s analysis extends even to small matters. For instance, a man’s starched white shirt demonstrates that he can have someone else launder it for him, while his wife, dressed in whalebone corset, hoop-skirted dress, and high heels, graphically shows herself incapable of doing work. Veblen’s second general category is “conspicuous consumption,” for “unproductive consumption of goods is honourable, primarily as a mark of prowess and a perquisite of human dignity” (p. 69). Veblen continues: The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He continues freely and of the best, in


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1185

WEAPONRY

food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities. (P. 73)

Consumption, like leisure, can also be vicarious: one’s wife’s or servant’s conspicuous consumption adds to one’s honorific status. Conspicuous consumption, Veblen shows, leads to “conspicuous waste,” which, he says with considerable irony, is an unfortunate term, for it seems to carry “an undertone of deprecation” (p. 97). However, “it is here called ‘waste’ because this expenditure does not serve human life or human well-being on the whole, not because it is waste or misdirection of effort or expenditure as viewed from the standpoint of the individual consumer who chooses it” (pp. 97–98). Mrs. Bradley-Martin’s wasting $360,000 on a ball may be deprecated by many, but it brought her honorific status among her leisure-class society. Veblen says, “customary expenditure must be classed under the head of waste in so far as the custom on which it rests is traceable to the habit of making an invidious pecuniary comparison” (p. 100). Veblen extends his analysis of these concepts into virtually every corner of Gilded Age culture, exposing the American wealthy to his sharp criticism. See also Banking and Finance; Poverty; Social Darwinism; Success; The Theory of the Leisure Class BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Alger, Horatio, Jr. Ragged Dick and Mark, the Match Boy. 1868. New York: Collier, 1962. Carnegie, Andrew. The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays. 1889. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962. Sumner, William Graham. What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other. 1883. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920. Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. 1899. New York: Penguin, 1981. Secondary Works

Chambers, John Whiteclay, II. The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. New York: George Braziller, 1959. Holbrook, Stewart H. Lost Men of American History. New York: Macmillan, 1946. Homberger, Eric. Mrs. Astor’s New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.

1186

A M E R I C A N

Painter, Nell Irvin. Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919. New York: Norton, 1987. Phillips, Kevin. Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich. New York: Broadway Books, 2002. Smith, Page. The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post-Reconstruction Era. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984. Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. John Samson

WEAPONRY Weapon development was fast and furious in the nineteenth century, resulting in technological innovations that would profoundly shape the cultural, social, and political growth of the rapidly expanding nation. In nineteenth-century American literature, weapons were often mirrors of the subject and could be seen as a badge of both an individual’s character and social status. In his ambitious The Winning of the West (1894), Teddy Roosevelt credits firearms with part of the formation of the national character. The Colt revolver and bowie knife became almost synonymous with American ingenuity, rugged individualism, and masculine power, while military innovations such as the Gatling gun set the stage for even greater social and political upheaval in the coming century as weapons began to outstrip their users’ ability to imagine warfare. FIREARMS

Samuel Colt designed the first repeater that used a rotating cylinder with a fixed barrel; it was immediately popular, especially among the Texas Rangers on the western frontier. Although powerful, it was unwieldy, and a smaller version was designed and issued to dragoon regiments. It was this type of revolver that Hank Morgan, himself a Colt employee, carries in Mark Twain’s (1835–1910) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). It is through the combined effects of Yankee ingenuity and gumption that five hundred knights are bested by only one man with two revolvers, and Twain’s commentary on the value of firepower to civilization is obvious, if not also a little ambivalent. In a later chapter titled “The Battle of the Sand-Belt,” his protagonist uses gunpowder and electricity to ward off the entirety of English nobility and assume control of the entire nation, once again illustrating the power of Yankee ingenuity and technology to win battles. The macabre

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WEAPONRY

Colt Single Action Army Revolver, 1873. Samuel Colt’s revolutionary revolving-breech pistol became the weapon of choice in the American frontier. In Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee it is viewed as a symbol of both American technological prowess and the human potential for destruction. TOWER OF LONDON ARMOURIES, LONDON, UK/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

scene in the aftermath of this battle almost prefigures the coming devastation of the First World War. But weapons represent more than the technological advantage of civilization and often symbolize regional or individualistic identifiers within a text. In Roughing It (1872), Twain comments on the ubiquity of weapons on the frontier to offer his readers a sense of moving into a different world, one in which virtually everyone, including women, carries arms. As he prepares for his journey from the frontier of Missouri into the wilds of Nevada Territory, he and all his fellows aboard the stage are dressed for a rough journey into a wild land. The “heavy suit of clothing” necessarily includes armament, and Twain chronicles the firearms of each in turn. He carries “a pitiful little Smith and Wesson’s seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homoeopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult” (p. 543). His brother has a “small-sized Colt’s revolver” to use against the Indians, and “to guard against accidents he carried it uncapped” (pp. 543–544). This is particularly ironic when one considers that such pieces were A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

not quickly capped, and such carry, while safe, would be almost as useless as if it were entirely unloaded. This small detail hints at his brother’s social position as a frontiersman; he is savvy enough to own a sufficiently powerful gun but remains relatively unschooled in its tactical use. Another fellow traveler carries an “old original ‘Allen’ revolver, such as irreverent people called a ‘pepper-box’” (p. 544). In these pages Twain spends much time detailing the armament of the travelers as a mode of dress, signaling one’s firearm as not simply a necessary tool in a wild land but also as a mark of social status. His brother carries the best and most expensive pistol of the bunch, whereas Mr. Bemis carries an old and outdated model. Another important function of guns in literature, especially the literature of the West, is as a symbol of masculine authority and power. As many critics have remarked, the genre western is particularly masculine, and in it a man’s weapons operate as his ethos and are explicitly gendered—in a genre western one would not frequently encounter a woman firing a gun for


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1187

WEAPONRY

sport, as Twain does in Roughing It. Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902) set the benchmark for the genre, conflating violence, particularly gun violence, with masculine authority and privilege and setting it in contrast to feminine domesticity and civilized behavior. Critics such as Peter French, Richard Slotkin, and Jane Tompkins have noted the gender conflict in westerns. In Cowboy Metaphysics (1997), French suggests that women see “the gun as a phallic symbol, a powerful and deadly icon of the masculine” (p. 16). This gendered understanding of weapons and the conflict it creates is perhaps best exemplified in Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), in which the main female protagonist, Jane Withersteen, spends much of the novel trying to persuade Lassiter to surrender his guns and seek a peaceful solution to the conflict in the valley. When he finally does offer them to her, she has recognized the impotence of civilized negotiations and refuses to allow him to disarm. In the frontier world Grey (1872–1939) creates, a man simply is not a man if he cannot fight. The roles of firearms as both protectors and predators are given a different twist in “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (1898) by Stephen Crane (1871– 1900). In this story, a small town is beset with the drunken raging of Scratchy Wilson, who is “a perfect wonder” with his six-guns (p. 388). Scratchy goes on regular binges, and when he is in his cups he is the terror of the town. Those in the local watering hole can only bar the door and wait for Sheriff Jack Potter to intercept Scratchy, but in this instance Potter is gone. The saloon customers have no one to rely upon except the bartender, who carries a Winchester as added insurance against Wilson’s entry. When Sheriff Jack Potter returns from his wedding in San Antonio with a wife in tow, Scratchy is eager for a fight. But Sheriff Potter is unarmed and unprepared to return fire, so the entire scenario is defused when Scratchy simply calls it off. A man of the gun receives justice from unexpected quarters in Frank Norris’s “The Passing of Cock-Eye Blacklock” (1902). Cock-Eye Blacklock is a rogue gambler and shooter who seems to have a habit of getting into shootings that place him just on the right side of the law, such as a dispute with a young tenderfoot who draws a meager .22 on him. The boy’s “parlour ornament” explodes in his hand, leaving Blacklock to fire his pistols and leisurely kill the boy, then claim self defense in the eyes of the law. Blacklock finally gets his comeuppance while “shooting” fish with dynamite in the company of a stray dog named Sloppy Weather, whose habit of fetching sticks thrown into the creeks proves to be the downfall of them both.

1188

A M E R I C A N

A gun is used suicidally in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Richard Cory” (1919). Cory represents “a gentleman from sole to crown” (p. 1106) and is the person everyone else in this fictional community aspires to be until “one calm summer night / [he] went home and put a bullet through his head” (p. 1107). Frederic Remington (1861–1909) traveled widely throughout the West and Southwest. He not only submitted his drawings for publication but also wrote articles about his exploits that appeared in periodicals such as Harper’s Weekly and Collier’s. Guns quite naturally appear frequently among the accoutrements of his subjects and are periodically the subject of considerable interest. In “Sioux Outbreak in South Dakota” (1891), Remington interviews soldiers after the massacre at Wounded Knee and details the injuries, attitudes, and exposition of the events. An unnamed officer reports with evident admiration that “the way those Sioux worked those Winchesters was beautiful” (p. 67). Another concedes the valiance of their foes while tapping his own Winchester appreciatively. An armed encounter with the Sioux also plays a role in Remington’s novel John Ermine of the Yellowstone (1902). In “Squadron A’s Games” (1896), he shares with readers the competitive drills the cavalry uses to hone its combative skills. The most challenging is “tent pegging,” in which a tent peg is placed in the dirt and troopers ride at it full tilt, attempting to dislodge it was their sabers. A shotgun plays a central role in “A Shotgun Episode” (1900). A Captain Jack recalls an incident in which he used a sporting arm to secure the arrest of Chief Winnemucca. But Remington did not spend all his time with the military, and in “Winter Shooting on the Gulf Coast of Florida” (1895), he recommends the sporting use of the twelve bore for quail and jack-snipe. In The Six-Gun Mystique (1984), John Cawelti remarks that “knives and clubs suggest a more aggressive uncontrolled kind of violence which seems instinctively wrong for the character of the cowboy hero” (p. 88). The knife was not nearly as widely favored in literature as the pistol, but it has made regular appearances. THE BOWIE KNIFE

The bowie knife is closely allied to the character of Injun Joe in Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), which maintains the integrity of Cawelti’s thesis. The big knife represents Injun Joe’s threat to Tom and Huck, and in the final scene, in which Injun Joe has died of starvation in the cave, his broken bowie stands in mute testimony to his desperate, violent attempts to free himself of his captivity and finally even

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WEAPONRY

to survive. The bowie for Twain represents the savagism of the mixed-breed character and his unsuitability in a modern, civilized society. The knife was one of the stereotypical weapons of the professional gambler, as seen in Stephen Crane’s “The Blue Hotel” (1898). In this story, the strange Swede begins the tale inexcusably paranoid of those around him and only becomes more and more volatile and caustic to his fellows as the story progresses. It is a tale of violent escalation that ends finally with the Swede accosting and being stabbed to death by the gambler. MILITARY INNOVATIONS

Richard Jordan Gatling designed the first machine gun in 1862 but could not generate wide interest in his “army in six feet square” until well after the Civil War (Ellis, p. 25). In the following century, the machine gun was to become one of the quintessential symbols of the modern era; its inventors and owners advertised the gun’s potential to stop conflicts early and decisively and advised armies and legislatures about the gun’s cost-effectiveness as an economical method of warfare. But both angles focus on the machine gun’s unique ability to replace people with a machine. This common denominator, it was hoped, would allow men to rise above their former limitations, yet it frequently only exacerbated the horrors of war by increasing, and further dehumanizing, the scale on which warfare became possible. With the advent of the mechanized battlefield, the terrible machines of killing appear to have usurped the daring masculinity of the soldiers who wield them. Friedman notes that “military gear . . . often did the opposite of the expected: it unmanned and emasculated” (p. 166). It would not be until World War I that all the implications of this type of warfare would be fully realized, but even before then authors such as Stephen Crane, who was a war correspondent in the Spanish-American War and most famously wrote The Red Badge of Courage (1895), were already formulating a commentary on the effects of mass warfare in the individual soul. Mark Twain joined the commentary in his The Mysterious Stranger (1916). This novella is set in Austria during 1590 and features Satan, who calls himself the nephew of the famed fallen angel. He foretells a future in which “all the competent killers are Christians” (p. 371), and he shows Theodor Fischer and his friend Seppi the “mighty procession” of armies through the centuries, the “raging, struggling, wallowing through seas of blood, smothered in battle-smoke through which the flags glinted and the red jets from the cannon darted; and always [there was] the thunder of the guns and the cries of the dying” (p. 371). In this, one of the last works of A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Twain, which was published posthumously, he seems to fully anticipate the horrors of the world wars that were just around the corner. See also Philippine-American War; Science and Technology; Spanish-American War; Violence; The Western; World War I BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Crane, Stephen. The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane. Edited by Thomas A. Gullason. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963. Norris, Frank. A Deal in Wheat: And Other Stories of the New and Old West. New York: Doubleday, 1903. Remington, Frederic. “John Ermine of the Yellowstone.” In The Collected Writings of Frederic Remington, edited by Harold Samuels and Peggy Samuels. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979. Remington, Frederic. “A Shotgun Episode.” In The Collected Writings of Frederic Remington, edited by Harold Samuels and Peggy Samuels. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979. Remington, Frederic. “Sioux Outbreak in South Dakota.” In The Collected Writings of Frederic Remington, edited by Harold Samuels and Peggy Samuels. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979. Remington, Frederic. “Squadron A’s Games.” In The Collected Writings of Frederic Remington, edited by Harold Samuels and Peggy Samuels. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979. Robinson, Edwin Arlington. “Richard Cory.” In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. D, 6th ed., edited by Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003. Twain, Mark. The Mysterious Stranger. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. Twain, Mark. “Roughing It” and “The Innocents Abroad.” New York: Library of America, 1984. Secondary Works

Cawelti, John G. The Six-Gun Mystique. 2nd ed. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1984. Ellis, John. The Social History of the Machine Gun. London: Croom Helm, 1975. French, Peter A. Cowboy Metaphysics: Ethics and Death in Westerns. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Friedman, Alan Warren. Fictional Death and the Modernist Enterprise. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995.


Virgil Mathes

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1189

THE WESTERN

THE WESTERN The formulaic story of the American West, set in a symbolic landscape or on an imaginary frontier, evolved throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the most basic sense, to be sure, as John Cawelti explains, “A Western that does not take place in the West, near the frontier, at a point in history when social order and anarchy are in tension, and that does not involve some form of pursuit, is simply not a Western” (Six-Gun Mystique, p. 31). EARLY HISTORY OF THE GENRE

The first wave of western American narrative consisted of books of western exploration and travel, such as The History of the Expedition (1814) of Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809) and William Clark (1788–1869) and Washington Irving’s A Tour of the Prairies (1835), and the frontier romances of James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) and Emerson Bennett. From the first, writers of fiction idealized or romanticized the West. Cooper wrote the most “western” of the Leatherstocking Tales, The Prairie (1827), set on the plains of modern-day Nebraska, for example, while living in a Paris hotel. He gleaned details of western topography from the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition and he loosely modeled his prototypical western hero Natty Bumppo on Daniel Boone. In Cooper’s West, Bumppo may enjoy anarchic freedom, but he is also unsuited to live in the settlements. The “American Adam” in the New World Garden is simply unassimilable, at home only in the untracked forest or alone on the prairie. The next wave of western narrative occurred in the late 1860s and 1870s and was spearheaded by such writers as Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and Joaquin Miller—writers who actually lived in the West and were the first to exploit its local color. In “The Rise of the ‘Short Story’” (1899), Harte (1836–1902) reminisced that the discovery of gold in California in 1848 “had drawn to the Pacific slope of the continent” a “heterogeneous and remarkable population. . . . Add to this Utopian simplicity of the people” the “magnificent scenery, a unique climate, and a vegetation that was marvellous in its proportions and spontaneity of growth,” and the western writer enjoyed “a condition of romantic and dramatic possibilities” that was “unrivalled in history” (Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings, pp. 254–255). To be sure, as Harte complained in 1867, California contained “more writers than readers; more contributors than subscribers. Our population contains more than the average proportion of undeniably clever men, but we lack that large middle class

1190

A M E R I C A N

of mediocre but appreciative folk who form the vast body of Eastern readers”(Bret Harte’s California, p. 40). Harte understood from the first that the success of all western writers in the 1860s and 1870s would depend upon their sale in the East. In fact, by mid-1870, the end of its first year of publication, the Overland Monthly, published in San Francisco and edited by Harte, sold as many copies in the eastern United States—transported via the new transcontinental railroad—as in the states of California, Nevada, and Oregon. In brief, in such comic/pathetic western tales as “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868), “Tennessee’s Partner” (1869), and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1869) Harte proved the market for the literary West. Kate Chopin recalled how “The Luck” had “reached across the continent and startled the Academists on the Atlantic coast.” Harte invented many of the characters now associated with the western: the roguish outlaw, the romantic and charming gambler, the surly stagecoach driver, the “fallen” but virtuous dance-hall girl, and the pretty eastern schoolmarm. He also pioneered the use of western dialect in his fiction, though he was never very skilled at rendering it. In the heyday of the popular western early in the twentieth century, both the Broadway play “Salomy Jane” (1907) and twenty-four movies, including the silent film “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1919) directed by John Ford, were based on Harte’s stories. Similarly, Harte’s sometime friend and rival Mark Twain (1835–1910) tapped the growing popularity of the literary West in his satirical travelogue Roughing It (1871), which includes tall tales and imaginary episodes told from the point of view of a (at least initially) tenderfoot narrator. Twain’s treatment of the West is at best ambivalent—his West, replete with desperados and confidence men, is as terrifying as it is entertaining. So far from presuming to offer a realistic or documentary account of the West, moreover, Twain interrupted his narrative at chapter 52—a technical description of silver mining in the Comstock—to invite the reader to “take this fair warning and skip, if he chooses”(p. 281). The decade of the 1870s was also noteworthy for the rise of western melodramas produced for audiences in New York and Boston, such as Augustin Daly’s Horizon (1871), Ned Buntline’s The Scouts of the Plains (1872), Harte’s Two Men of Sandy Bar (1876), Joaquin Miller’s The Danites (1877), and Bartley Campbell’s My Partner (1879). These plays were popular spectacles on stage, featuring live horses and frequent gunplay and such exotic (stereo)types as redshirt miners, primitive Indians, inscrutable Chinese laundrymen, and decayed Spanish aristocrats.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE WESTERN

WESTERN DIME NOVELS

The rise of the literary West during the latter third of the nineteenth century was also fueled by the burgeoning popularity of western dime novels such as Deadwood Dick on Deck (1878) and Buffalo Bill, the Buckskin King (1880) by pulp writers such as Edward S. Ellis, E. Z. C. Judson (“Ned Buntline”), Prentiss Ingraham, and Edward L. Wheeler. The earliest dime novels had been devoted to the Revolutionary War, though the focus gradually shifted to the West after the Civil War. “Of course,” adds Merle Curti, it was a highly colored picture of the West which hack writers painted for Easterners through the almost endless succession of stories about Texas rangers and cowboys, Nevada miners, California vigilantes, and Montana badmen. But through this medium the West entered into the consciousness of a large number of Americans and became for the first time a living reality. (P. 769)

Or as Cawelti notes, “During the heyday of the dime novel the western developed primarily as a form of adolescent escapism, complete with the simple moral conflicts and stereotyped characters and situations usually found in such literature” (Adventure, p. 211). These blood-and-thunder tales featured Indian wars, the Pony Express, buffalo hunts, and posses in search of desperados. They also mythologized the lives of two real-life westerners, Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill, the so-called king of the border men. As Henry Nash Smith adds, “the persona of Leatherstocking was endlessly repeated” in them (p. 105). Not until the 1880s, significantly, were dime novels written about “cowboys,” originally a pejorative term, and even then dime novels about cowboys rarely contained any cows. These novels often also oversimplified the regional conflict of West and East by associating valiant heroes only with the West and villains (e.g., bankers, railroad agents, and corrupt politicians) with the East. Several other writers for juveniles, among them Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger, also traveled to the West and penned sensational juvenile tales designed to compete with dime novels. Alger’s popular Pacific Series—Joe’s Luck (1878), The Young Miner (1879), The Young Explorer (1880), and Ben’s Nugget (1882)— romanticized the California gold fields in purple prose, sold thousands of copies, and remained continuously in print until the 1920s. To be sure, the West also inspired some realistic writers during this period. Stephen Crane ridiculed dime novels in his stories “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (1898) and “The Blue Hotel” (1898). Such books as Mary Hallock Foote’s The Led-Horse Claim: A Romance of a Mining Camp (1883), Hamlin Garland’s Main-Travelled Roads (1891), Theodore Roosevelt’s Ranch Life and A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

the Hunting Trail (1896), Frank Norris’s The Octopus (1901), Mary Austin’s Land of Little Rain (1903), and Andy Adams’s The Log of a Cowboy (1903) also realistically described various aspects of western experience (e.g., mining, farming, hunting, ranching), but none of these books enjoyed wide and sustained popularity. The West was rarely depicted realistically in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries because the “real West” simply did not sell. THE VIRGINIAN AND THE NEW WESTERN FORMULA

No one was more aware of the limited compass of western fiction at the turn of the twentieth century than the novelist Frank Norris (1870–1902). “I have great faith in the possibilities” of the West as “a field for fiction,” he wrote in 1899, but not “the fiction of Bret Harte . . . for the country has long since outgrown the ‘red shirt’ period” (Letters, p. 23). Norris mercilessly parodied Harte’s “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” in “The Hero of Tomato Can” (1897). Only a few months before his death in 1902, Norris complained that instead of a body of respectable writing the West had inspired “the wretched ‘Deadwood Dicks’ and Buffalo Bills of the yellow backs” and writers “who lied and tricked and strutted in Pathfinder and Leather-Stocking series” (Essays, p. 1179). Ironically, later in the same year Owen Wister (1860–1938), the so-called sagebrush Kipling, published his best-selling novel The Virginian in which he virtually invented the modern formula western. Rather than a lone pioneer in the tradition of Cooper’s Bumppo or a projection of adolescent fantasies like Deadwood Dick, the Virginian was a new type of western hero, a cowboy in chaps and spurs who synthesized various cultural ideals—the southern myth of the cavalier and the western myth of the frontiersman, or western primitivism and eastern civilization. The Virginian incarnated or internalized the conflict between the lawlessness of the West and the order of the East; put another way, he was the avatar of a civilized West equally at home in the effete and sophisticated East. As Cawelti concludes, the classical western represents “a kind of foundation ritual. It presents for our renewed contemplation that epic moment when the frontier passed from the old way of life into social and cultural forms directly connected with the present” (Six-Gun Mystique, p. 73). The new formula western also featured a recurring cast of characters. In addition to the hero, the ensemble included, on the one hand, savages and outlaws, and on the other, the agents of civilization endangered by them (townsfolk, ranchers, farmers,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1191

THE WESTERN

Illustration by Charles M. Russell for a 1929 edition of The Virginian, by Owen Wister. SHAPIRO UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

especially women, more especially eastern schoolmarms). In The Virginian, for example, the hero leads a posse charged with hanging a gang of horse thieves, and he woos and wins the hand of the Vermont schoolteacher Molly Stark Wood, all the while rising from cattle hand to foreman to ranch owner in the classical manner of the self-made American man. (As in the dime novels, however, he never seems to work. He is never portrayed as he shoes a horse, drives a cow, ropes a steer, brands a bull, or fixes a fence.) Many popular westerns included one other recurring character type: the horse. The measure of a westerner may be inferred from the way he treats his horse. A pitiful cowhand in The Virginian actually sells his horse Pedro to a rancher who then abuses him. In the shorthand of the western, both men deserve the reader’s scorn. The later purveyors of the western rarely improvised on the formula Wister invented in The Virginian except at one point: their rugged heroes often ride off into the sunset alone. However clichéd it may be, such a conclusion at least shuns the cloying sentimentality of Wister’s ending. In brief, the new western hero epitomized by the Virginian was a type of ageless and “transcendent cowboy,” a natural aristocrat of talent and virtue who both observes a code of personal honor and acts in accord with the will of the community. That is, Wister colored or idealized the character of the Virginian. He

1192

A M E R I C A N

pictured the West through a soft lens and in muted light, much like Bret Harte in his popular early western tales. The Virginian was civilized and a civilizing agent, though he could also operate outside the law when necessary, as when he leads the posse that lynches the cattle rustlers. Whereas Cooper’s The Prairie had depicted the West as an anarchic and uncivilized land, and whereas the dime novels and Beadle yellowbacks in the late 1870s and 1880s had sensationalized the West for purposes of vulgar juvenile entertainment, Wister set his “colonial romance” in a mythological West where the best women and men could rise as in the earliest days of the Republic. Or as Cawelti again observes, “Wister resolved the old ambiguity between nature and civilization by presenting the West not as a set of natural values basically antithetical to civilization, but as a social environment in which the American dream could be born again” (Adventure, p. 225). This theme of moral regeneration, often featuring an eastern dude or tenderfoot, was crucial to popular westerns well into the twentieth century. In this regard, the formula western invented by Wister resembles Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis: Both Wister and Turner averred that the highest social values, particularly democracy, emanate from the frontier. Both considered the West a “safety valve” for alienated labor. Of course, the formula western was also a popular fantasy of legitimated violence, attracting mostly though not exclusively an eastern male readership. In his essay “The Evolution of the Cow-Puncher” (1895), in fact, Wister had argued that the cowboy was the modern heir of the Anglo-Saxon knights of chivalry—a point echoed in the novel when the Virginian is called an “unrewarded knight” after rescuing Molly’s stagecoach at South Fork Crossing— and so the obligatory gunfight was nothing less than a version of the medieval duel. Cawelti fairly contends that the figure of the vigilante gunfighter appealed to readers who were suffering a “sense of decaying masculinity” early in the twentieth century (Six-Gun Mystique, p. 58). For most of Wister’s novel, for example, the Virginian observes a code of restraint, though his conflict with the villain Trampas is ultimately resolved by violence. Cawelti also notes a correlation between the popularity of the western and military adventurism. There has “always been an observable similarity between the pattern of justifying rhetoric used to defend American military policy and the Western drama,” he states (Six-Gun Mystique, p. 84). With his phallic gun, the gunfighter-hero also mediates between the spontaneous sexuality of the outlaws and the repressed sexuality of the agents of civilization. In reality, as David Brion Davis has noted, there

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

THE WESTERN

were “few women in the West in the Chisholm Trail days” and they “were of dubious morality.” The western cowpoke “had to carry his thirst long distances, like a camel, and in the oases the orgies were hardly on a spiritual plane” (p. 117). On still another level, the formula western often restaged the Civil War, with a Southerner (a Virginian or more often a Texan) defeating a Yankee villain (a Southerner triumphing in the reenacted War) or marrying a Yankee ingénue (thus affecting a reconciliation of South and North disguised as a union of West and East) or perhaps even “saving the ranch” (by analogy, a Southern plantation without chattel slavery). In all, The Virginian was the best-selling American novel in 1902–1903; it was adapted by Wister to the stage, where it remained popular for a decade; it was made into five movies, including a silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille (1914) and an early “talkie” (1929) starring Gary Cooper (1901–1961), and was broadly adapted in a 1960s television series; and it has remained continuously in print since its first publication. The novel also served to inspire a school of cowboy artists that included Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE WESTERN

Rarely were westerns only about the West. From the beginning, western narratives have also been vehicles for social and political commentary. From Fenimore Cooper to Gary Cooper and beyond, westerns have functioned as symbolic melodramas or political allegories. As Philip French has remarked, “The Western is a great grab bag, a hungry cuckoo of a genre, a voracious bastard of a form, open equally to visionaries and opportunists, ready to seize anything that’s in the air from juvenile delinquency to ecology” (p. 24). James Fenimore Cooper introduces an environmental ethic in The Prairie: a family of squatters in the novel despoil the land. Joaquin Miller’s The Danites and Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) exploit anti-Mormon prejudices by casting the Latter-Day Saints in the roles of villains. Harte’s “Three Vagabonds of Trinidad” (1900) criticized imperialism and American empire-building after the Spanish-American War. More than any other pioneer of the genre, however, Wister helped turn the western into a form of topical comment. For example, his story “Em’ly” (1893) was a type of antifeminist parable, and his “The Game and the Nation” (1900) allegorizes the 1894 Pullman strike to condemn the strikers and their leader, Eugene V. Debs. Both stories were later folded into The Virginian. Other western writers depicted the West as an agrarian paradise ruined by the introduction of barbed wire. To be sure, the genre usually described migration or the conquest of the West exclusively from A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

a white point of view with a predictable ethnological and nationalistic focus. Wister’s novel, for example, ignores entirely the “buffalo cowboy” and the Mexicano, and Indians appear only offstage. Over the years the western formula has gradually morphed into other forms of popular narrative, particularly science fiction (“Space—the final frontier”). Even Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan books were written according to the basic western formula save for a change of scenery (Africa instead of the West). The basic cast of characters remained the same: white civilizers or colonizers (the Anglo-Saxons), “savage” indigenous peoples (Africans rather than Indians), and bestial types (apes instead of outlaws). But none of those other stories was as popular as the horse opera during the first half of the twentieth century. Such writers as Grey, Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Emerson Hough, Charlie Siringo, Clarence Mulford, and hundreds of scriptwriters imagined the West along the lines Wister conceived. The actors William S. Hart and Tom Mix became the first Hollywood movie stars by playing western heroes on the silver screen. The formula western even infiltrated highbrow culture. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), for example, little Jimmy Gatz inscribes his program for success on the flyleaf of a copy of Hopalong Cassidy, first published in 1907. Ernest Hemingway rewrote Bret Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring Camp” in his tale “Indian Camp” (1924) and he befriended an aging Owen Wister. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, and John Steinbeck—to say nothing of contemporary writers Larry McMurtry, Wallace Stegner, and Cormac McCarthy—are the heirs of Wister’s legacy and the western literary tradition in general. See also Dime Novels; Farmers and Ranchers; Frontier; Regionalism and Local Color Fiction BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Twain, Mark. Roughing It. 1872. New York: Signet, 1962. Wister, Owen. The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains. New York: Macmillan, 1902. Secondary Works

Bold, Christine. Selling the Wild West: Popular Western Fiction, 1860–1960. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Cawelti, John G. The Six-Gun Mystique. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1971.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1193

WILD WEST SHOWS

Chopin, Kate. “The Development of the Literary West.” St. Louis Republic, 9 December 1900, Sunday magazine, p. 1. Curti, Merle. “Dime Novels and the American Tradition.” Yale Review 26 (summer 1937): 761–778. Davis, David Brion. “Ten-Gallon Hero.” American Quarterly 6 (summer 1954): 111–125. Etulain, Richard W. Telling Western Stories: From Buffalo Bill to Larry McMurtry. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. Folsom, James K. The American Western Novel. New Haven, Conn.: College & University Press, 1966. French, Philip. Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre. New York: Viking Press, 1973. Fussell, Edwin. Frontier: American Literature and the American West. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965. Harte, Bret. Bret Harte’s California: Letters to the Springfield Republican and Christian Register 1866–67. Edited by Gary Scharnhorst. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990. Harte, Bret. The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings. Edited by Gary Scharnhorst. New York: Penguin, 2001. Mitchell, Lee Clark. Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Norris, Frank. Novels and Essays. New York: Library of America, 1986. Norris, Frank. Letters. Edited by Franklin Walker. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1956. Robinson, Forrest G. Having It Both Ways: Self-Subversion in Western Popular Classics. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993. Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. New York: Vintage, 1950. Tompkins, Jane. West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Gary Scharnhorst

WILD WEST SHOWS Wild West shows played a significant role in imaging the West by transforming the plethora of confusing and conflicting information about life on the western plains into orderly and predicable acts that spectators found informative and entertaining. These shows brought

1194

A M E R I C A N

before American and European audiences the representative people and animals of the West and reproduced the sights and sounds of the Plains frontier. Entertainers carefully crafted the “Wild West” as a place where everything was extraordinarily exciting and distinct from the civilized parts of the world. Because these shows emphasized things uniquely “American”—the landscape, the native people, and the triumph of civilization over “savagery”—they became a forum for ideas about the meaning of the American experience and the West’s place in national identity. While many such shows existed, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the Miller Brothers of the 101 Ranch in Oklahoma, and Tom Mix dominated the business in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. BUFFALO BILL’S WILD WEST SHOW

Buffalo Bill (1846–1917) began his Wild West show in 1883, and he remained prominent in the business until his death. His career spanned an age when Americans were intensely curious about the West. Dime novels first brought Cody’s name before the public, and from 1883 to 1887, in shows designed specifically for American audiences, he celebrated Manifest Destiny with a potent mixture of history, patriotism, and the blood-and-thunder dime novel tradition. While these elements would remain in the show, its temper changed significantly in 1887, when Cody took the Wild West show first to England and then France, Spain, Italy, Austria, and Germany. His goals were to showcase western hardihood and to make the Old World “esteem us better.” Mark Twain (1835–1910), for one, saw Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show as a uniquely American enterprise, wished it well, and speculated that it would teach Europeans a thing or two about the New World. The European tour changed the show as well as the kind of literature it inspired. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show’s reputation as “America’s national entertainment” made it a spectacle perfectly suited for examining the persistent question, raised by Henry James and others, about what happened when Americans transported themselves and their traditions to the Old World. Buffalo Bill’s show played first in London at a world’s fair called Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. There it stood adjacent to the United States’ official exhibits advertising the nation’s progress in the arts and sciences. Observers noted that these two American exhibitions were complementary: one showcased American cultural and technological progress, and the other celebrated the “Wild West” and its people. Making all of this even more intriguing was that these “American” things stood in an ancient European city. American newspapers carried detailed

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WILD WEST SHOWS

The Scout Buffalo Bill. Lithograph by Paul Frenzeny. Posters for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show often depicted Cody on horseback. His legendary love of horses is a theme in Mark Twain’s “A Horse’s Tale.” THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

accounts of the Wild West show’s success in London and on the rest of the European tour. Mark Twain and Bret Harte apparently followed the journalists’ observations carefully, because their fiction mirrored the opinions often articulated in the press. The proposition of an American dropped into English antiquity intrigued Mark Twain, and he explored it in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). Hank Morgan, the novel’s protagonist, would have smiled approvingly at the array of mechanical inventions in the official American exhibit at the fair. In the book he pits American technology, western skills, and simple virtue against Arthurian England’s entrenched religious cupidity and corrupt codes of honor. The cultural conflict comes to a climax in the chapter “The Yankee’s Fight with the Knights,” where the Wild West usurps a medieval tournament. In it, Morgan dispatches his opponents with Wild West show skills, including lassoing and shooting that had captivated audiences at the jubilee. A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Perhaps it was Buffalo Bill’s return to Europe for a second tour that inspired Twain to return to the idea of Americans in Europe in “A Horse’s Tale” (1906). Soldier Boy, Buffalo Bill’s favorite horse, narrates much of this account, which explores the civilization-versussavagery theme. In this short story, “Little Cathy,” a diminutive and precocious bundle of energy and civilization from Spain, arrives in the West to live with her uncle and immediately attracts the attention of Cody, who teaches her western skills. As a reward for mastering the ways of the West, he gives her Soldier Boy. Then Cathy’s uncle returns the girl to her family in Spain. In this “safer” and more “civilized” country, Soldier Boy is stolen, mistreated, nearly starved, and eventually sold to a scoundrel who puts him in a bullfight. Cathy, who is a spectator there, attempts to rescue her purloined pet, but the girl and her beloved horse die in the arena. In this story Twain makes it very clear that “savage” and “uncivilized” apply more accurately to the Old World than the American West. This story reflects questioning remarks about bullfighting that Buffalo Bill had made when his show played in Barcelona in 1889 and then repeated during the Spanish-American War. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show also inspired Twain’s friend Bret Harte (1836–1902) to explore the American in Europe theme. In Harte’s “The Strange Experience of Alkali Dick” (1898), a rambunctious cowboy finds Europe too confining for his western independence, gets in trouble with the law, and leaves the show while it is at the Exposition Universal in Paris in 1889. At a time when the image of the Wild West show cowboy focused on his natural “nobility,” Harte contrasts that nobility with the Old World variety. The story centers on an accidental and innocent encounter between Alkali Dick and Mademoiselle Fontonelles that raises questions about the virtue of the young lady. Enamored of the woman but chivalrous to the end, the American cowboy defends the honor of the young woman and leaves the country because his presence might fuel more speculations about the aristocratic young woman having a “lover.” The story demonstrates the superiority of western American nobility over a French “nobility” that is mired in hoary antiquity, despotism, and maintaining appearances. The cowboy as the prototypical American became a focal point when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show returned from its first European tour and played at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. At this world’s fair Cody heralded his tour of Europe as a triumph of Americanism and endorsed the cowboy as a “nature’s nobleman” and the representative American westerner. Buffalo Bill interpreted the


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1195

WILD WEST SHOWS

winning of the West as a Darwinian struggle that proved the superiority of Americans and prepared it to meet the challenges of the twentieth century. This and all else that was good about the heroic cowboy figure had settled comfortably on a Wild West show performer named “Buck” Taylor, billed as “King of the Cowboys.” Owen Wister (1860–1938) modeled the protagonist in The Virginian (1902) after Buck Taylor. The Virginian encapsulates the Wild West show cowboy; he is a nature’s nobleman whose rangy and athletic frame is a joy to behold. Like cowboys in Wild West show arenas, he rarely tends cattle, opting instead for exciting “Wild West” tasks such as taming bucking broncos and defending justice. At the end of the novel the Virginian becomes a successful entrepreneur, something that an elderly Cody might have inspired with his well-publicized investments in mining and irrigation. With The Virginian the Wild West show cowboy achieved immortality and transcended the entertainment business. WOMEN AND WILD WEST SHOWS

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show included women; perhaps a dozen had gone as performers on the first trip abroad, but none had attracted as much attention or adoration as Annie Oakley (1860–1926). While show publicity and journalists’ accounts adulated her during her Wild West show career, it was not until the 1920s that the Oakley legend achieved its full stature. During this time the Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch Wild West show successfully promoted the “cowgirl” as a worthy counterpart to the cowboy. Show publicity said that cowgirls and flappers shared a strong sense of independence, but it always argued that the vigorous and salubrious western life made its “girls” more wholesome, athletic, and attractive than their sisters in the cities. The 1946 Broadway musical Annie Get Your Gun, for example, is a title that almost every American recognizes and associates with Annie Oakley. Her image has endured because she embodied so many things: simple western virtue, athleticism, marksmanship (considered a man’s domain in her lifetime), independence, wifely devotion, and celebrity status softened with gentleness and humility. What fault could people in any age find with such a woman? TOM MIX: FROM WILD WEST PERFORMER TO MOVIE STAR

Like that of Annie Oakley, the Tom Mix (1880–1940) legend moved gracefully from Wild West show arenas to motion pictures. He began his career in the Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch show and then transplanted the Wild West show cowboy into movies in the 1920s, a

1196

A M E R I C A N

time when Americans devoured the escapist novels of Zane Grey. Mix’s showmanship, boyish good looks, flamboyant clothing, and simple plots in which good triumphs over evil suited most Americans. Other moviemakers adopted these trademarks and added singing when sound became popular. However, the stock market crash in 1929 ushered in a new age that brought economic hardship and despair to America, causing Mix’s popularity to plummet. In the era of the Great Depression, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939) reflected the national mood more than Wild West shows and Mix’s breezy movies. THE LEGACY OF WILD WEST SHOWS

Despite going out of fashion in the Great Depression, the shows left a lasting legacy. Cowboys in the style of Tom Mix and the Wild West show dominated western movies into the 1950s. Rodeos, comic books, Indian powwows, pulp magazines, advertising, television, radio, and Euro Disney all owe much to Wild West shows. They provided authors with important themes, such as Americans in Europe, the conflict between civilization and “savagery,” “nature’s nobleman,” and the meaning of “American” as seen in the cowboys and cowgirls. Wild West shows expanded the world’s lexicon with the term “Wild West,” enriched literature about the West, and added texture to the broad scope of American literature. SCHOLARLY INTERPRETATIONS OF WILD WEST SHOWS

Because Buffalo Bill was the preeminent figure in Wild West shows, much of the scholarly literature about this entertainment has focused on him. For a number of years The Making of Buffalo Bill (1928) by Richard Walsh was the most referenced work about Cody. It treated Buffalo Bill as an undistinguished scout made famous by dime novelists and the popularity of his Wild West show. Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950) demonstrated that ideas and images of the West changed over time and that dime novels about Buffalo Bill reflected an evolving process of imaging the West. Don B. Russell’s The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill (1960) refocused attention on Buffalo Bill himself and depicted him as a truly heroic man who deserved his legendary status. The New Western Historians, such as Richard Slotkin in Gunfighter Nation (1993), argued that such men as Cody exemplified the violence, environmental destruction, and subjugation of native peoples. While recognizing other shows, Leonard G. Moses in Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians (1996) revised the New Western History perspective by focusing on Buffalo Bill’s Wild

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WINESBURG, OHIO

West show and arguing that it did not exploit Indians but instead provided employment that allowed them to keep alive significant aspects of their culture. Other scholars have approached the shows as reflections of American values. In this regard Richard White’s “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill,” in The Frontier in American Culture (1994), credits the shows with creating cultural icons such as the log cabin, a prop in Wild West show acts that became a symbol of the home ownership segment of the American dream. Paul Reddin’s Wild West Shows (1999) studies several representative shows and treats them as a century-long experiment to attune the western theme to changes in popular culture and evolving American ideals. Glenda Riley’s The Life and Legend of Annie Oakley (1994) contains an excellent chapter on the Oakley legend. While all the works above recognize the connections between Wild West shows and imaginative literature, most focus on the dime novel tradition.

Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. New York: Random House, 1950. Walsh, Richard J., in collaboration with Milton S. Salsbury. The Making of Buffalo Bill: A Study in Heroics. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1928. White, Richard. “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill.” In The Frontier in American Culture, edited by James R. Grossman, pp. 7–65. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Paul Reddin

WINESBURG, OHIO

Twain, Mark. “A Horse’s Tale.” 1907. In The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain, edited by Charles Neider, pp. 523–561. Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover House, 1957.

Sherwood Anderson’s central character in Winesburg, Ohio, George Willard, is cautioned by Kate Swift not to “become a mere peddler of words” (p. 161). Anderson may have been talking to himself, challenging himself to write a narrative that would be remembered. If so, he succeeded. Winesburg, Ohio is one of twenty-seven works Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) wrote and is considered his masterpiece. It was published by B. W. Huebsch in 1919, although Anderson had begun to write the short sections that make up the episodic novel in 1915 and 1916. The story “Godliness” was not originally part of the novel but was added to it in 1917 when Anderson abandoned another novel for which it had been intended. The subtitle of Winesburg, Ohio is A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life and the tales that make up the loosely constructed novel story cycle make it decidedly different from other works of its time.

Wister, Owen. The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains. 1902. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

See also Circuses; Dime Novels; Theater; The Western BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Harte, Bret. “The Strange Experience of Alkali Dick.” In Tales of Trail and Town, 1898. Reprinted in The Writings of Bret Harte 16:338–360. New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1907. Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Charles A. Webster, 1889.

Secondary Works

Moses, L. G. Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883–1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Reddin, Paul. Wild West Shows. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Riley, Glenda. The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. Russell, Don B. The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960. Russell, Don B. The Wild West. Fort Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1970. Slotkin, Richard. Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Much of Winesburg, Ohio is autobiographical, taken from Anderson’s childhood and adolescence in Clyde, Ohio, and his later experiences in Cleveland, Elyria, and Springfield. In fact, Anderson spent nearly half his life in Ohio. He was born in Camden, Ohio, on 13 September 1876 to Irwin M. and Emma Smith Anderson, and eight years later the family moved to Clyde. Suffering from alcoholism, Anderson’s father could barely support his family. In 1895 Anderson’s mother died. The next year, Anderson left Clyde for Chicago, where his brother lived. George Willard, whom critics consider to be based on Anderson, loses his mother at the same age that Anderson lost his. Although Anderson owned his own business and for a time owned and edited two newspapers in Marion, Virginia, he is best known as a fiction writer


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1197

WINESBURG, OHIO

and, more specifically, as the creator of George Willard and the other grotesque characters who people the pages of Winesburg, Ohio. Anderson began to write Winesburg, Ohio while he was in Chicago working for an advertising agency. He said later that he was walking one day through the city after being fired from his job, and, when he arrived home, he wrote “Hands,” one of the short stories later included in the novel, in one sitting. Several of the tales were published in magazines before being included in the longer manuscript. Impressed by Gertrude Stein and her stylistic innovations and deeply affected by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s portraits of unusual characters, Anderson in turn influenced writers such as William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers, and Edgar Lee Masters (especially his Spoon River Anthology [1915], which is made up of character sketches presented as elegies), John Steinbeck, and Thomas Wolfe. Winesburg, Ohio became an American classic largely because of its realistic portrayal of the isolation of modern society after World War I. Anderson belongs to the literary tradition founded by Mark Twain and Theodore Dreiser, who celebrated the ordinary American, and Winesburg, Ohio remains one of the best examples of average people dealing with intense emotional issues at a significant moment of time. Anderson’s other works include Poor White (1920) and Dark Laughter (1925), and among his most successful short story collections are The Triumph of the Egg (1921) and Horses and Men (1923). One of his best-known and most anthologized short stories is “Death in the Woods,” published in 1933. With that stark tale of a woman who confronts her own mortality and with Winesburg, Anderson was guaranteed a place in American literary history. THE BOOK OF THE GROTESQUE

Anderson originally planned to call his collection “The Book of the Grotesque,” but a publisher suggested that he name the book for the town it portrays so vividly. Anderson’s flawed characters draw their literary power from lives spent in service to one individual truth, Anderson’s definition of “grotesque.” In fact, some consider Anderson a naturalistic writer specifically because of his interest in the grotesque. In “The Book of the Grotesque” that begins the story cycle, Anderson writes: It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths

1198

A M E R I C A N

to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. (P. 6)

The obsessions the characters develop separate them from one another and the stories that make up the collection are tales of unending despair that do not progress toward a resolution. The structure of the novel is circular, not linear. The characters remain isolated, trapped in their unspoken longings for one another. Winesburg, Ohio is concerned with the plight of modern men and women in postwar America. Anderson characterizes the people in this American small town as “wanting love more than anything else in the world and not getting it” (p. 75). Anderson considered his fictional characters to be lonely and frail, unable to navigate the world of materialism and industrialization in which they find themselves. Their challenge is to find a way to communicate clearly and to reach out to others, a task that seems nearly impossible as the family structure and sense of community are coming under assault in the modern era. The thematic heart of the work is best expressed in “Sophistication”: “In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled the stores and the sidewalks. Night came on, horses whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about, children became lost and cried lustily, an American town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself” (p. 237). Individual characters illustrate the themes of loneliness and longing for connection. For example, Louise Bentley begins to think obsessively about John Hardy and to long for the life she believes that others have attained: “It seemed to her that between herself and all the other people in the world, a wall had been built up and that she was living just on the edge of some warm inner circle of life that must be quite open and understandable to others” (p. 79). In “The Thinker,” Seth Williams resents Willard, the newspaper reporter who serves as a unifying consciousness in the stories. Longing for love and uncertain about how to pursue it, Williams gives up, saying: “That’s how it’ll be. That’s how everything’ll turn out. When it comes to loving someone, it won’t never be me. It’ll be someone else—some fool—someone who talks a lot—someone like that George Willard” (p. 137). Later in the novel, Elmer Cowley, too, expresses jealousy: “George Willard, he felt, belonged to the town, typified the town, represented in his person the spirit of the town” (p. 195). Like all the other characters, Cowley wants to stand out among his peers, to reach out to another human being who understands and appreciates him. He cries out, “I will not be queer—one to be looked at and listened to. . . . I’ll

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WINESBURG, OHIO

be like other people” (p. 194). Ironically, of course, both Williams and Cowley fail to befriend Willard because of jealousy, making their isolation even more pronounced. Both become “queer,” talked about or ignored by the townspeople, and mysterious even to themselves. IMPORTANCE OF THE COLLECTION

In an introduction to the 1993 Signet Classic edition of Winesburg, Ohio, Irving Howe writes that he fell “under the spell” of the novel when he first read it and each time he reread it “responded to the half-spoken desires, the flickers of longing that spot its pages” (p. viii). Anderson longed for his characters to find freedom and personal expression. “The dream of an unconditional personal freedom, that hazy American version of utopia, would remain central throughout Anderson’s life and work. It was an inspiration; it was a delusion” (p. x). In a particularly insightful portion of his analysis, Howe writes: Narrow, intense, almost claustrophic, the result is a book about extreme states of being, the collapse of men and women who have lost their psychic bearings and now hover, at best tolerated, at the edge of the little community in which they live. . . . Anderson evokes a depressed landscape in which lost souls wander about; they make their flitting appearances mostly in the darkness of night, these stumps and shades of humanity. This vision has its truth, and at its best it is a terrible if narrow truth— but it is itself also grotesque, with the tone of the authorial voice and the mode of composition forming muted signals of the book’s content. (P. xii)

As one of Anderson’s biographers, Howe also understands the characters who populate the fictional Winesburg. Figures like Dr. Parcival, Kate Swift, and Wash Williams are not, nor are they meant to be, “fullyrounded” characters such as we can expect in realistic fiction; they are the shards of life, glimpsed for a moment, the debris of suffering and defeat. . . . These grotesques matter less in their own right than as agents or symptoms of that “indefinable hunger” for meaning which is Anderson’s preoccupation. (P. xiii)

In the face of that suffering and defeat, even George Willard’s personal development comes at a price, as he confronts his own despair in “Sophistication”: “He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. . . . With all his heart he wants to come close to some other human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the hand of another. . . . He wants, most A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

of all, understanding” (p. 239). He and Helen White stand poised to enter adulthood with all its uncertainty and inevitable losses. This short story remains one of the most carefully crafted in the collection and ensures that readers will understand Willard as representative of disappointment and longing. In “Departure,” the final story, Willard boards a train in search of a new life and a place that will fulfill his dreams. In addition to being the narrative center of the stories, Willard takes on allegorical significance as he tries to explain those whom he encounters to one another and as he reaches out—at least somewhat successfully—to begin a career and to find love. The language of Winesburg, Ohio is rich and compelling. In each story, a character is unforgettably portrayed and illuminated, and a moment is chronicled. Winesburg, Ohio becomes a microcosm of life, and when Willard finally boards the train, Anderson gives the reader a ray of hope for the others in the town. In “Death,” Doctor Reefy cautions a townsperson, “You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life” (p. 226). But readers of Winesburg, Ohio may believe that Willard will move to a new place where his expectations will be met and where those whom he encounters will be warm and welcoming. Perhaps he will even find that “divine accident of life.” See also Short Story; Village Dwellers BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Work

Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. 1919. Introduction by Irving Howe. New York: Penguin, 1993. Secondary Works

Anderson, David D. Sherwood Anderson: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967. Burbank, Rex J. Sherwood Anderson. New York: Twayne, 1964. Howe, Irving. Sherwood Anderson. New York: William Sloane Associates, 1951. Howe, Irving. Introduction to Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Penguin, 1993. Rideout, Walter B., ed. Sherwood Anderson: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974. Schevill, James Erwin. Sherwood Anderson: His Life and Work. Denver, Colo.: University of Denver Press, 1951. Sutton, William Alfred. The Road to Winesburg: A Mosaic of the Imaginative Life of Sherwood Anderson. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1972.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1199

WOMAN’S JOURNAL

Weber, Brom. Sherwood Anderson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1964. White, Ray Lewis. The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson: Essays in Criticism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966. White, Ray Lewis, ed. Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997. Jan Whitt

WOMAN’S JOURNAL The Woman’s Journal was described by its longtime editor, Lucy Stone (1818–1893), as “a big baby which never grew up, and always had to be fed” (Kerr, p. 167). Born in 1870, the journal did manage to grow up, though not without pains, lingering on to the age of sixty-one. It took a new name briefly in 1917, when it joined two other journals to form the Woman Citizen, but before its demise in 1931 it had resumed its maiden name. The journal remains a rich archival resource, full of insights into the issues and struggles of the nineteenth-century woman suffrage campaign. As Inez Haynes Irwin mused in her history of the suffrage movement: “It is hard not to become lyrical and rhapsodic when one tries to estimate how much the Woman’s Journal became to the suffrage cause. It was a burning cloud by day and a tower of flame by night” (p. 259). From its very beginnings, the sparks flew. Friction between two factions in the woman suffrage movement led to the founding of the journal as the official organ of one branch. Members of the more conservative New England Woman Suffrage Association (later the American Woman Suffrage Association) established the journal after falling out with the movement’s more radical New York members, who had formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. The New Yorkers, most prominently Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, demonstrated a willingness to align themselves with the likes of Victoria Woodhull and George Francis Train and to forgo a concentrated focus on suffrage for a broader reform agenda that included such contentious planks as divorce and free love. Members of the Boston-based group were disturbed by some of the articles and contributors to Anthony’s Revolution and felt the need for a paper of their own. They found it in the Agitator, a paper edited and founded by Mary Livermore (1820–1905) in 1869. Livermore agreed to move from Chicago to Boston and allow her paper to evolve into the new Woman’s Journal; she also agreed

1200

A M E R I C A N

to serve as its editor, a post she occupied for two years before resigning to pursue a lucrative lecture career (though she continued to serve as one of the journal’s corresponding editors). From that time until the Woman’s Journal morphed into the Woman Citizen in 1917, members of the Stone Blackwell household took over primary editorial duties, joined on the editorial board by such luminaries as Julia Ward Howe, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and briefly, William Lloyd Garrison. The journal was housed in the New England Woman’s Club Building, close to the Boston Atheneum and the Old Burial Grounds. For a time Stone, her husband, Henry Blackwell, and their teenage daughter Alice lived above these offices, but they soon relocated to Dorchester, a fifteen-minute train ride away. Still, in a metaphorical sense the Woman’s Journal remained the place where the Stone Blackwells lived. By 1870 Stone was already well known for her pioneering work as an abolitionist and suffragist (as well as for refusing to take her husband’s name), and for the remainder of her days she would make the journal her last great cause. While, as one biographer suggests, the journal could be read “as a diary on Lucy’s public life” (Hays, p. 224), it also played a significant role in her private life. In the new journal Stone saw her chance to stop lecturing and find more time for “home life,” which was a difficult balance to strike. As Stone complained to a friend: “I do wish there was some way of carrying on the Woman’s Journal without such a hard, constant tug. If only the housekeeping would go on without so much looking after!” (Blackwell, p. 240). Although the journal required just as “much looking after,” Stone made it a priority because of its value to the suffrage movement. “Our cause has a wider hearing today,” Stone wrote in tribute to the journal, “than it ever had” (Kerr, p. 198). CIRCULATION AND FINANCING

Five thousand copies of the first issue of the journal were printed on 8 January 1870; a second issue of seven thousand copies soon followed and sold out almost immediately. Each issue numbered eight pages of five columns each. The annual subscription price settled at $2.50. From the first, subscribers were numerous, and they remained fairly steady at around five thousand. By 1875 the journal could boast of subscriptions in every state as well as in thirty-nine foreign countries, although it could never boast a profit or break even. The Woman’s Journal was financed by a jointstock company offering 200 shares at $50 a share.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WOMAN’S JOURNAL

The largest stockholders were the Stone Blackwells, who held twenty shares; their daughter held five. Other shareholders included William Lloyd Garrison, the Grimké sisters, Stephen Foster, Julia Ward Howe, and Caroline Severance. During her editorial reign Livermore was paid an annual salary of $1,500, and Higginson, who had an invalid wife to support and could not afford to donate his work, received an annual salary of $50. There was also a female typographer who set type and printed the paper. Associate editor Lucy Stone raised much of the initial capital— some $10,000—and did a large portion of the work behind the scenes. From the outset the journal suffered financial difficulties. It was especially hard-hit during the nation’s periodic, severe economic depressions, and with each downturn Stone considered abandoning the work. She was encouraged to persevere by members of her crusading extended family. One stalwart supporter was her sister-in-law, the Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who in 1878 wrote: “I suppose you find the Journal suffers with every thing else in these depressed days. I do hope it can struggle on till better times. To stop that, would be a national calamity” (Lasser and Merrill, p. 200). Relief did come in 1883, when Stone (along with Anthony) received a $20,000 legacy from Eliza F. Eddy; Stone put most of her portion into the Woman’s Journal. This sum helped the journal survive, if barely.

Front page of the Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News, 8 March 1913, featuring coverage of a women’s suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

CONTENTS AND EDITORS

As its masthead stipulated, the Woman’s Journal was “a weekly newspaper, published every Saturday in Boston and Chicago, devoted to the interests of woman, to her educational, industrial, legal and political equality, and especially to her right of suffrage.” Suffrage was the journal’s primary preoccupation; whenever the cause was advanced anywhere in the nation the journal ran a picture of a dove with an olive branch, a toned-down alternative to the political parties’ crowing roosters. But suffrage was not the Woman’s Journal’s exclusive focus. It involved itself in a number of other causes and concerns, taking on, for example, the BeecherTilton scandal, married women’s property rights, women in the professions, political campaigns (though Stone maintained the Woman’s Journal’s nonpartisan status), and coeducation, dress, and temperance reform. Early issues covered news and literature and offered humor and advice. Regular columns included “What Women Are Doing” (later known as “Concerning Women”) and “Gossips and Gleanings.” Letters from readers published in the journal confirm A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

the success of the editors’ attempts to provide a paper that was more reformist than revolutionary. The editorial duties shifted among the Stone Blackwells during the years of their proprietorship. After a decade of coediting with her peripatetic husband, Henry, Stone in 1880 appeared on the masthead as the sole editor, with Blackwell, Higginson, Howe, and Livermore listed as contributing editors. Around the time of this shift, though, she was receiving help from her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, who by 1881 was writing the literary column and contributing other articles. Since the journal was a family affair and was entrenched in the family’s daily routine, Alice had begun helping with the journal as soon as she was able. Her first published work, a poem about a tabby named Toby, appeared in the journal in 1872. As she entered her teens, Alice helped handwrite names and addresses on mailing wrappers in addition to penning


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1201

WOMAN’S JOURNAL

occasional reviews. She got a taste of solo editing in 1882, when her parents went to Nebraska and Wisconsin to campaign for suffrage. Shortly thereafter mother, father, and daughter began to be listed on the masthead as editors. After Stone died of stomach cancer in 1893—whispering on her deathbed to Alice (or so legend would have it), “make the world better”— Alice set out to fulfill her mother’s last wishes, joining with her father to make coediting the journal their shared lives’ work. After Stone’s death the text “Founded by Lucy Stone” appeared on the Woman’s Journal’s front page. CONTRIBUTORS

The journal was never exclusively a one-family show. True, Stone continued to draw on her extended family, as when Stone’s sister-in-law Brown Blackwell wrote a series of seven articles “Sex and Work” for the Woman’s Journal in the mid-1870s. Brown Blackwell later turned these articles into her book The Sexes throughout Nature (1875). Other contributors were less closely related though still deeply invested in both journal and cause. For example, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) signed on during Alice Stone Blackwell’s (1857–1950) reign for a one-year stint as associate editor. A frequent visitor to the Stone Blackwell home in Dorchester, Gilman made it her base while in the Boston area and occasionally contributed to the paper through the years. Her relationship with the journal had begun as early as 1884, when it published her bitter poem “In Duty Bound.” During 1904 she contributed to a regular department titled “Vital Issues,” for which she penned essays, poems, stories, and sketches. Her motive was to enlarge the horizons of the journal to make it representative and to expand its focus from suffrage to other causes vital to women’s interests and rights in hopes of making it a voice within the world-reforming chorus. Gilman worked for the journal gratis, as did other contributors. Still, her contributions were contentious enough that by April 1904 the journal began running a disclaimer suggesting Gilman’s sole responsibility for the contents of her department. On several occasions, Alice Stone Blackwell criticized opinions Gilman expressed in her column, and it may have been with relief on both sides that Gilman resigned her post at the end of the calendar year. Blackwell nonetheless publicly and graciously acknowledged Gilman’s contributions to the journal, claiming that her department had maintained the interest of both those who agreed and those who disagreed with her (intimating that the latter group was sizable). Gilman continued to contribute occasionally to the journal and as late as 1912 was recommending it to readers of her own one-woman

1202

A M E R I C A N

magazine, the Forerunner. In a column therein, she recalled the role of the Woman’s Journal as “the only Voice of the Woman’s Movement in this country, if not the world” and maintained that it remained a “noble paper of which America has every reason to be proud” (p. 111). THE FINAL YEARS

Around the time Gilman wrote this encomium, the Woman’s Journal became the official organ of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (the two divided suffrage groups had been reunited around 1890 thanks largely to the efforts of Alice Stone Blackwell and Henry Blackwell). This affiliation proved only a temporary arrangement, however. In 1917, with the suffrage victory looming, Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947) moved the journal to New York and consolidated it and two other suffrage papers under the name Woman Citizen. In the new journal’s inaugural column, Catt concluded: “There can be no overestimating the value to the suffrage cause of the Woman’s Journal in its long and vivid career. . . . [I]t has been history-maker and history-recorder for the suffrage cause. The suffrage success of to-day is not conceivable without the Woman’s Journal’s part in it” (Blackwell, p. 243). Nor, she acknowledged, would it have been conceivable but for Lucy Stone and Alice Stone Blackwell’s heroic efforts. Still, the mother-daughter team would have been the first to admit that the Woman’s Journal always was more than simply one woman’s journal. See also Editors; Feminism; Periodicals BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

B. “A New Department.” Woman’s Journal, 26 December 1903. Disclaimer. Woman’s Journal, 2 April 1904, p. 106. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Comment and Review.” Forerunner 3 (April 1912): 111. Secondary Works

Blackwell, Alice Stone. Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman’s Rights. Norwood, Mass.: Alice Stone Blackwell Committee, Plimpton Press, 1930. Blodgett, Geoffrey. “Alice Stone Blackwell.” In Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols., edited by Edward T. James. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. Gillmore, Inez Haynes. Angels and Amazons: A Hundred Years of American Women. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1934. Hays, Elinor Rice. Morning Star: A Biography of Lucy Stone, 1818–1893. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1899.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WOMEN AND ECONOMICS

Kerr, Andrea Moore. Lucy Stone: Speaking Out for Equality. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992. Lasser, Carol, and Marlene Deahl Merrill, eds. Friends and Sisters: Letters between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846–93. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Merrill, Marlene Deahl, ed. Growing Up in Boston’s Gilded Age: The Journal of Alice Stone Blackwell, 1872–1874. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990. Cynthia J. Davis

WOMEN AND ECONOMICS Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, published in 1898 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), is considered a classic among American women’s nonfiction writing. The book combined feminist, economic, and evolutionary theories in a bold program calling for the improvement of society. At the heart of Gilman’s treatise is a critique of what she calls women’s “sexuo-economic” relation to men. Because women are expected to depend upon men for their support rather earning their own living, she argues, they are obliged to develop their feminine and sexual attributes at the expense of human characteristics in order to attract husbands and thus to ensure their survival. In Gilman’s view, this practice renders marriage little more than legalized prostitution. To solve this problem, Gilman asserts that women should be free to perform productive work outside the home. This arrangement would not only grant women economic independence, which would make it unnecessary for them to exaggerate their femininity (what Gilman calls being “over-sexed”) and thus allow them to develop all of their human faculties; it would also improve society because women would be able to contribute to the world around them. “Woman,” Gilman proposed, “should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body” (p. 237). For this new vision to become a reality, of course, societal infrastructure and domestic organization would have to undergo fundamental changes. Gilman therefore proposed that traditional women’s work be professionalized. If child care were performed by “well-trained professional nurses and teachers,” women would be free to pursue meaningful work in the world, making them “wiser, stronger, and nobler” mothers (pp. 242, 290) and making the children less individualistic and more civic-minded. If cleaning and laundering were “done by efficient workers” more suited to the tasks, A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

women again would be able to engage in their profession of choice, and household labor would come to be recognized as labor by being remunerated (p. 242). If cooking were made a “reputable, well-paid profession,” wives and mothers with no specialized training in nutrition or food preparation would be free to do their professional work and their families would be the healthier for it (p. 240). This cooking, moreover, would be done outside the home; believing that the environment shaped the lives of its occupants, Gilman envisioned dwellings without individual kitchens. Such changes in domestic labor and architecture would create citizens who were not only equals to one another but also focused outward to social service—to improving the human race as a whole. These theories were held together by an evolutionary worldview: Gilman claimed that “the duty of human life is progress,” in which people “build up the ever-nobler forms of life” in a process of “social evolution” (p. 207). Human development operates on an upward trajectory that is driven by natural forces that can be assisted (or thwarted) by human intervention. In Gilman’s view, the “sexuo-economic” relation warped human evolution because it caused women to overevolve those characteristics that would please men, depriving women of the strength, skill, and interest necessary for advancing humanity. Originally, Gilman suggests, women were the leaders of race development, having the initiative in sexual selection (the choosing of mates), while men were individualistic and opportunistic beings useful mainly for fathering offspring. Evolution then took a temporary detour: women became subordinate to and dependent upon men so that men could develop social, rather than individualistic, traits, which they would acquire through providing food and shelter for those nowdependent women. This detour was a temporary necessity that would bring men into line with the evolutionary plan, but by Gilman’s time, it had gone too far for too long, causing excessive sexual differentiation. “The time has come,” she pronounced, “when it is better for the world that women be economically independent, and therefore they are becoming so” (p. 316). Gilman’s treatise was intended to convince people to cease resisting this natural, evolutionary change toward women’s equality and instead to help it along. COMPOSITIONAL HISTORY AND RECEPTION

Gilman began developing the theories that would become famous in Women and Economics as a poet and lecturer during the 1880s, and she would return to the same ideas in both fiction and nonfiction for the


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1203

WOMEN AND ECONOMICS

drafted the volume in an outpouring that took less than three weeks. “ALL RUNNING TO MILK” Central to Women and Economics is the idea that women’s economic dependence upon men has made them excessively feminine and insufficiently human. Women were, in Gilman’s terms, “over-sexed”— overly feminine and thus abnormally weak, passive, and concerned with physical appearance—at the expense of developing their strength, talents, and intellect. In this excerpt, Gilman uses the analogy of the wild cow and the milk cow to illustrate the process whereby the distinction between the sexes has been overdeveloped. Though Women and Economics is a work about human evolution, Gilman frequently uses examples from the animal kingdom in order to ground her arguments in the firm language of nature and science. This excerpt illustrates why the book appealed to both academic and popular audiences, showcasing Gilman’s straightforward language and trademark wit.

To make clear by an instance the difference between normal and abnormal sex-distinction, look at the relative condition of a wild cow and a “milch cow,” such as we have made. The wild cow is female. She has healthy calves, and milk enough for them; and that is all the femininity she needs. Otherwise than that she is bovine rather than feminine. She is a light, strong, swift, sinewy creature, able to run, jump, and fight, if necessary. We, for economic uses, have artificially developed the cow’s capacity for producing milk. She has become a walking milk-machine, bred and tended to that express end, her value measured in quarts. The secretion of milk is a maternal function,—a sex-function. The cow is over-sexed. Turn her loose in natural conditions, and, if she survive the change, she would revert in a very few generations to the plain cow, with her energies used in the general activities of her race, and not all running to milk. Gilman, Women and Economics, pp. 43–44.

remainder of her career. Fittingly, this sociological treatise reenvisioning the home was written during a period of Gilman’s life in which she had no fixed address. Moving among the households of friends as she traveled on the lecture circuit in 1897, she reportedly

1204

A M E R I C A N

Women and Economics met with immediate and wide acclaim both at home and abroad. It went through several editions during Gilman’s lifetime, including translations in German, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Russian, Hungarian, and Japanese. Reviews were wide-ranging and often enthusiastic. The Nation called the book “the most significant utterance on the subject since Mill’s Subjection of Woman” (Degler, p. xiii), and a review in the Arena called it “the book of the age” (Bederman, p. 122). Reviews also appeared in other prestigious periodicals, such as the American Fabian, The Dial, the Independent, the Humanitarian, the London Daily Chronicle, the New York Times, and Woman’s Journal. As such reviews suggest, the book was welcomed among social reformers and activists, rendering Gilman an international celebrity and the American women’s movement’s “leading intellectual” for the next two decades (Degler, p. xiii). Carrie Chapman Catt, leader of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, pronounced Gilman “the most original and challenging mind which the movement produced” (Hill, p. 4). The reformer Jane Addams, founder of Chicago’s Hull-House, called it “a Masterpiece,” and Florence Kelley, a lawyer and factory inspector whom Gilman met at Hull-House, wrote that it was “the first real, substantial contribution made by a woman to the science of economics” (Kessler, p. 31). The volume was even assigned as a textbook at Vassar College. Women and Economics cemented Gilman’s place in the intellectual vanguard of feminists, socialists, and economic theorists at the dawn of the new century. INFLUENCES AND PRECEDENTS

Gilman’s sociological treatise was formulated in the 1890s, when the worst excesses of Gilded Age capitalism were sparking impulses for reform that would come to characterize the Progressive Era, in which Gilman reached the height of her fame. Like many of her associates, Gilman deplored the self-serving doctrine of Social Darwinism propounded by Herbert Spencer and the economic elite, which used the Darwinian theory of “survival of the fittest” to justify social inequalities and industrial exploitation of the working class. Others, such as the educator G. Stanley Hall, were alarmed at the growing trend among women of the higher classes to seek “male” prerogatives (such as higher education, sexual and reproductive self-determination, and economic independence); they used the theory of evolution to criticize these

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WOMEN AND ECONOMICS

and Economics (Living, p. 259). The volume drew, however, upon many other works, theories, and traditions from Gilman’s time and before. Edward Bellamy’s Utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888), which Gilman greatly admired, was one such source, as was the Nationalist movement it inspired—a movement Gilman joined in the late 1880s under the mentorship of her uncle, Edward Everett Hale. Gilman’s work also intersected with that of Thorstein Veblen, whose The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899) critiqued what he called “conspicuous consumption,” in which women functioned as idle consumers in order to display men’s wealth. Similarly, Gilman’s work followed Fabian socialism: while she agreed with the socialist Karl Marx that economic relationships were the root of all other inequalities, she preferred the Fabians’ nonconfrontational philosophy of gradual change within capitalism, with the ultimate goal of a nationalized industry led by enlightened politicians, benevolent capitalists, and progressive intellectuals. Gilman’s economic theory also aimed to account for women’s experience, which Marx’s did not.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Undated portrait.

THE GRANGER

COLLECTION, NEW YORK

developments, arguing that increased sexual differentiation was a mark of evolutionary progress. Gilman put her own spin on the same Darwinian theory of evolution in order to counter these impulses, drawing upon the work of many thinkers in formulating her ideas. She was a follower of Reform Darwinism, which incorporated the commonly held Lamarckian theory that acquired characteristics could be inherited by the next generation and therefore maintained that human beings could intervene in the process of evolution to change the course of their development. In this, she was greatly influenced by the sociologist Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913), who theorized that human evolution would progress only through cooperative, self-directed action. Central to Ward’s work was his “gynaecocentric theory,” proposing that women were the original sex and had the prerogative to choose their mates, with men evolving later and secondarily. Ward’s 1888 essay “Our Better Halves” along with Sir Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson’s biological tract The Evolution of Sex (1889), which explored theories of sexual differentiation in the human and animal kingdoms, were the only works Gilman acknowledged publicly as bases for Women A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Gilman was not the first to link the struggle for women’s economic and social equality with reorganizing the home, including socializing child care and housework and doing away with the private kitchen. These progressive impulses had their roots in the Utopian socialist movement inspired by Robert Owen and Charles Fourier more than half a century before. Such earlier experiments with social, family, and architectural organization, including Utopian communities and the free-love movement, provided ample precedent for Gilman’s later reforms. More generally, Women and Economics was part of a long tradition of women’s writing on women’s rights, such as Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845). Closer to her own time, Gilman owed much to feminist reformers such as Melusina Fay Peirce and Marie Stevens Howland, who had begun designing socialized, kitchenless dwellings soon after mid-century; the suffragist Mary Livermore, a proponent of cooperative housekeeping; and Gilman’s associate and friend Helen Campbell, author of the 1897 tract Household Economics (dedicated to Gilman), with whom she worked on many housekeeping reforms. Gilman also visited several established models of socialized housekeeping, such as Jane Addams’s HullHouse, a settlement house she used as her base while lecturing in the 1890s. Gilman’s work was thus informed by her own life experience, which bore out the truth of some of


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1205

WOMEN AND ECONOMICS

her theories. Separated from her first husband, Charles Walter Stetson (whom she divorced in 1894), and moving with their daughter to California in 1888, Gilman learned firsthand the social and economic impediments to being both a mother and a professional when “there were neither affordable systems of quality child care nor reasonable housework support services available to her” (Allen, p. 41). Unable to earn a living doing her meaningful work and to look after her home and her daughter Katharine properly, Gilman sent Katharine to live with her former husband and his new wife in 1894. Her manifesto was written, in part, to free future women from having to make this choice.

EFFECTS AND IMPLICATIONS

Women and Economics contributed to the theories and practices of the women’s and socialist movements in the early twentieth century. It provided renewed inspiration for feminist architects, who continued to propose kitchenless dwellings, and for activists, who responded to the volume by setting up community dining groups and food delivery services. It even merited notice by the likes of Upton Sinclair, who mentioned Gilman by name in The Jungle (1906). Because Women and Economics built upon the ideas of so many reformers and activist organizations, the book had the potential to appeal to a wide range of interests. “Gilman’s great achievement was to broaden the constituencies for domestic reform established by her predecessors. She reached beyond the small numbers of women in the cooperative movement, the free-love movement, the suffrage movement, and the home economics movement” (Hayden, p. 202). Though Gilman articulated her theories and proposals in universal terms, however, she spoke most directly to the interests of white, middle-class professional women in Western societies; the reach of her reforms is therefore more limited than it might seem. Certainly, Gilman makes gestures toward elevating the status of domestic work in her move to professionalize it. Yet she implicitly maintains its secondary status in relation to the middle-class professions pursued by the women central to her narrative, those who will be freed to pursue such work through the aid of housework and child care “specialists.” Her analysis also presumes that certain people are more suited for such “servile labor” than others (p. 266); these laborers, most of whom were working-class and women of color, seem destined merely to make others’ freedom possible. Similarly, Gilman’s satisfaction with benevolent capitalism did not address the problems of wage labor and alienation that concerned more radical socialists of her time.

1206

A M E R I C A N

On a more global level, the “others” against whom Gilman defines her version of the “genus homo” and its progress in the volume are “savages,” “Orientals,” Africans, or Jews. She alludes in Women and Economics to the belief she propounded elsewhere that AngloSaxon and Germanic races were more highly evolved than, and separate from, other races, and such ideas overlapped with those of the eugenics groups, nativist organizations, and genealogical societies of her time, who were anxious to maintain white, Protestant supremacy in the United States. While there is some debate among scholars as to the extent of Gilman’s nativism, racism, and classism in this particular work, then, critics generally agree that the volume expresses such views. These sentiments were not inconsistent with Gilman’s progressive, feminist impulse; indeed, they were inextricable from it. Like many turn-of-thecentury reformers, Gilman used what she had at hand— the knowledge and theories of her own world—in order to bring what she saw as a radically new world into being. CONTINUED RESURGENCE

The publication history of Women and Economics over the twentieth century reveals the book’s dynamic relationship to its context. Its journeys in and out of print seem to correspond to currents in American culture, particularly those around the status of women. Though Women and Economics was widely cited among reformers for several years after its initial publication, its popularity waned as mainstream American culture became less tolerant of socialism and radical politics after the First World War; similarly, as the women’s movement lost much of its urgency after women gained the national vote in 1920, so did Gilman’s proposed reforms seem less necessary. The book did not come back into print again until 1966, at a time in which “second wave” feminists called once again for women to be freed from domestic ideology and to achieve economic independence. Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan helped to spark this resurgence of the women’s movement by observing that women, still the “second sex,” wielded influence only through manipulating “the feminine mystique.” Over half a century earlier Gilman had explored precisely these problems in Women and Economics; her book was once again relevant and addressed problems that still had not been solved. By the 1980s, however, middle-class women had finally achieved some degree of the economic independence Gilman had called for. They were no longer limited to the domestic sphere, and even if not in proportionate numbers, women had entered politics and

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

the professions. Perhaps in response, the book fell out of print again. Yet crucial problems remain unresolved, for, as Gilman prophesied, women’s gains cannot provide full personal or societal improvement unless they are accompanied by fundamental changes in the socioeconomic infrastructure and in men’s roles. Domestic duties, including housework and child care, remain unsocialized, and most professional women are still struggling to balance fulfilling careers with fulfilling home lives (in which they are still expected to perform a “second shift” of many of the same domestic duties about which Gilman wrote), a conflict that remains nearly unheard of for men (Kimmel and Aronson, pp. lx–lxiv). Predictably, then, Women and Economics reemerged in 1998 and, until its work is completed, will continue to speak Gilman’s message to new generations of readers.

Evolution, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Scharnhorst, Gary. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Boston: Twayne, 1985. Scharnhorst, Gary. “Historicizing Gilman: A Bibliographer’s View.” In The Mixed Legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, edited by Catherine J. Golden and Joanna S. Zangrando, pp. 65–73. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000. Zauderer, Naomi B. “Consumption, Production, and Reproduction in the Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” In Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Optimist Reformer, edited by Jill Rudd and Val Gough, pp. 151–172. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999. Jennifer S. Tuttle

See also Darwinism; Feminism; Labor

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. 1935. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Women and Men as a Factor in Social Evolution. 1898. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Secondary Works

Allen, Polly Wynn. Building Domestic Liberty: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Architectural Feminism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988. Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Degler, Carl. Introduction to Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1966. Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981. Hill, Mary Armfield. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Making of a Radical Feminist, 1860–1896. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980. Kessler, Carol Farley. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress toward Utopia with Selected Writings. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995. Kimmel, Michael, and Amy Aronson. Introduction to Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

By the time the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified in the summer of 1920, the struggle for women’s suffrage in United States had occupied the better part of a century. Suffragists had participated in and had been influenced by most of the major issues that had engaged the American political imagination during that period. On two occasions the toil of suffragists seemed on the verge of reward until war preoccupied political consciousness; in the subsequent desire on the part of the electorate for society to return to normal, empowering women with the franchise appeared too likely to destabilize established patriarchal structures. Through unremitting effort, however, incremental gains in individual states accumulated until more than half of the female population had at least achieved the right to vote for presidential electors. At that point, the major parties found it prudential to reconsider the possibility of enfranchising women. The Suffrage Amendment, which had stalled in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1887, finally passed both houses of Congress in 1919. Bloc opposition from one-party states made the ratification effort equally laborious, if not as lengthy, as the process of winning over Congress. Thirty-six ratification campaigns later, American women were at last able to vote for their national representatives in 1920. BEGINNINGS

In the early years of the republic, conditions were not propitious for the exercise of citizenship by women. They were not permitted to own property in their own names, schools were unavailable to them, and they


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1207

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

were not allowed to address a public assembly. They were, legally, femmes couvertes: that is, their rights were subsumed under their father’s or their husband’s. The Declaration of Independence stated that “all men are created equal,” a gendered formulation that women would not challenge for more than half a century. Seeds of change began to germinate in the 1820s, but they could not flower into a formal suffrage movement until conditions developed that could encourage women’s full exercise of citizenship. In 1821 Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870) founded the first endowed school for girls, and others soon followed. Public schools gradually began to include girls. Oberlin College became the first coeducational institution of higher education in 1833 and awarded its first degrees to women eight years later. Mount Holyoke, the first four-year college exclusively for women in the United States, was founded in 1837. The rapid industrialization of America in the early decades of the nineteenth century provided new economic opportunities and challenges for women. Young women from agricultural areas moved into mill towns to increase family income before becoming farm wives themselves, while spinsters, widows, and orphans found independent means through factory labor. By the 1830s, however, more work for less pay became a common managerial response to manufacturing competition and the labor surplus brought about by rising immigration. Women found the incentive to form worker associations to fight for better working conditions and higher wages. They also testified before legislative commissions in the hope of obtaining stronger legal protections. Genuine economic gains combined with increased self-confidence and organizing skill to empower working women. The “Cult of Domesticity” flourished in America’s social climate during these same decades. A conservative response to increasing industrialization, it emphasized maintaining separate spheres for male and female activity; men would strive and struggle in the ruthless economic sphere and at the end of the workday return to the sanctuary of home and family presided over by a spiritually superior wife. Paradoxically this overtly repressive domestic ideology eventually produced women’s first organized political activity outside of the labor movement. The Great Awakening that took place in mainstream Protestant churches at this time forged a connection between spiritual and social welfare. As the designated guardians of spiritual values, women under the influence of the Great Awakening felt called to participate in its various initiatives for social reform, most especially in the abolitionist movement. The first National Female Anti-Slavery Society

1208

A M E R I C A N

convention brought together delegates from twelve states in 1837. These activities developed political and organizational skills that would be essential to the suffrage movement. Meanwhile, women challenged the political process to preserve the sanctity of domestic life on other fronts. The ability for a married woman to retain control of the assets she brought into marriage would protect her family in the event that her husband became incapacitated for work by injury or disease and would prevent a dissolute spouse from wasting the family’s substance. Mississippi became the first state to pass a Married Women’s Property Act in 1839. The first convention devoted exclusively to the issue of women’s rights took place in Seneca Falls, New York, during the summer of 1848. The convention developed a Declaration of Sentiments in phrases that paralleled the language of the Declaration of Independence. The participants in the Seneca Falls conference resolved to circulate tracts, petition state and national lawmakers, enlist the support of the clergy, and make use of the mass circulation press to advocate for their cause. The first women’s rights convention to call itself “national” took place in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850; national meetings occurred regularly after that. At the Seneca Falls convention, leadership positions were given over to men because the women who initially put forth the call felt insufficiently prepared to take on such public roles. Soon enough, however, the same frustration with being patronized that women abolitionists felt galvanized a female leadership cadre in the women’s rights movement. Under the guidance of such women as Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), Lucretia Mott (1793–1880), Paulina Wright Davis (1813–1876), and Lucy Stone (1818–1893), the campaign for a broad spectrum of women’s rights achieved numerous successes in the 1850s and 1860s. Initially suffrage did not claim a prominent place among the rights that women sought. Legal reforms, educational opportunities, legal protections, and economic issues seemed more important. Indeed, when the state of Indiana passed its Married Women’s Property Act, the women campaigning for it specifically denied that their political activity would lead to their seeking the vote. But when it became clear that rights granted by any one legislature as the result of strenuous campaigning could be rescinded at a later legislative session, suffrage became recognized as “the right protective of all other rights.” If women could vote, they could remove legal impediments to assuming equal opportunity and responsibility with male citizens.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION

The onset of the Civil War slowed the impetus of the women’s rights movement, but “war work” provided women with opportunities to hone skills they would need later on. The Women’s Sanitary Commission organized field hospitals and convalescent homes for which the military had failed to plan. Prior to the war, direction of the women’s rights movement had come primarily from the intellectual elite of the Northeast; the war had the effect of diversifying its leadership as genteel southerners and pragmatic midwesterners became empowered by the success of their “war work.” When Emancipation was proclaimed in 1863, the energies of female abolitionists could be fully redirected to the cause of women’s rights. African American abolitionist leaders like Harriet Tubman (c. 1820–1913) and Sojourner Truth (c. 1797–1883) became important figures in the suffrage movement at this time, as newly emancipated African Americans formed civic organizations to “uplift the race.” Recognizing a common goal among white women, black women, and black men, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony joined with W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) in founding the American Equal Rights Association in 1866 to pursue universal suffrage. The passage of the Fourteenth (1867) and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments to the Constitution greatly complicated the achievement of suffrage for women. While the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed protection against unjust state laws to all American citizens, it specifically defined “citizens” and “voters” as “male”; subsequently the Fifteenth Amendment extended the franchise to black men only. These developments caused a split in the women’s suffrage movement. Stanton and Anthony led a radicalized breakaway from the American Equal Rights Association called the National Woman Suffrage Association, which argued that those Reconstruction-era amendments should be rescinded in favor of a single amendment guaranteeing universal suffrage. The remnant of the original group reorganized as the American Woman’s Suffrage Association, under the leadership of Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910). The latter group recognized the need for specific federal protections for blacks in the post–Civil War South and advocated the amending of individual state constitutions to gain the franchise for women. During the 1870s women’s suffrage advocates undertook a strategy called the “new departure,” an effort to extend the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause to women, which precipitated a series of court actions. The judiciary consistently blocked these efforts. The Supreme Court of the District of Columbia A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

held that while women might be citizens under the Constitution, not every citizen is a voter. Even the negative argument that nothing in the Constitution specifically denies women the right to vote gained no traction in the courts. Susan B. Anthony was convicted of a federal felony for attempting to vote for Ulysses S. Grant. Sojourner Truth was turned away from the polling booth during the same election but was not arrested. Finally, a “new departure” case reached the Supreme Court of the United States in 1874. Minor v. Happersett affirmed the right of the individual states to grant or deny the franchise, except in the narrow instances set forth in the Fifteenth Amendment, because “the United States has no voters of its own creation.” Women’s failure to achieve suffrage through the courts left three options open to them, all dependent on the electoral process: amendment of the federal Constitution, amendments to the constitutions of the individual states, or achievement of municipal suffrage, the type of voting deemed most appropriate to their domestic sphere. Progress on these fronts was painfully slow. In the fifty-two years between the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the ratification of the Nineteenth, women undertook 56 popular referendum campaigns on the issue, 480 campaigns to get state legislatures to submit state constitutional amendments to their voters, 267 campaigns to get state political party conventions to include suffrage planks in their platforms, and 19 campaigns in the national congress. The first Woman’s Suffrage Amendment was introduced in the U.S. Congress in 1871; its text remained unchanged when both House and Senate finally passed it in 1919.

THE GILDED AGE: THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT AND THE WESTERN TERRITORIES

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874, legitimized female political activism on the grounds that temperance laws would protect the sanctity of the family. The drive for temperance and the drive for suffrage naturally moved in tandem, as women who had previously not realized the value of the ballot for themselves became interested in electing temperance candidates or passing a temperance amendment. As a consequence, distillers, brewers, and distributors of alcohol became a potent opposition to women’s suffrage, supporting anti-suffrage candidates, buying negative publicity, and even buying votes. The corruption of the political process by other elements of big business during the Gilded Age stymied progress toward a number of social reforms coveted by women,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1209

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

as purchasable legislators blocked reform bills at both the state and national levels. In contrast to the impasse confronting women’s suffrage in the established states, the developing territories of the western frontier readily granted the franchise to women. This willingness stemmed generally from the desire to increase representation in sparsely populated areas and to attract a higher number of female citizens where males outnumbered them by ratios as high as six to one. In some territories the motives for giving the women the ballot were more narrowly partisan. Nativists in several territories sought female votes to offset the ballot power of black or Hispanic constituents, while in Utah the Mormons anticipated that granting the franchise to their wives would increase their political influence. Although these conditions for obtaining the vote could not be replicated elsewhere, the legal fact of women’s suffrage in the western territories provoked keen interest among women and considerable controversy within state legislatures. The existence of women’s suffrage in the western territories created a constitutional dilemma for those who opposed it. If territories that had given women the right to vote were admitted to statehood with such laws intact, they would set a dangerous precedent for all the other states that had resisted such an extension of the franchise. On the other hand, if the Congress of the United States used its power to rescind territorial constitutions in order to require abrogation of women’s suffrage as a condition of admission to the Union, this violation of states’ rights would also set a dangerous precedent. Conservative unease was sharpened when two former territories, Colorado and Idaho, approved granting the vote to their female citizens after being admitted to the Union. In both those states, support for women’s suffrage by the Populist Party played a significant role. The fear that a wave of political populism would sweep women’s suffrage statutes into many additional states subsided when financial upheavals, precipitated in part by the Populist demand for “silver coinage,” tarnished the political luster of the party. Nevertheless, the association of women’s suffrage with populism underscored the perception that suffrage advocates were political radicals. When Stanton published The Woman’s Bible in 1895, this impression was further reinforced. The book, which paired scriptural passages with commentary demonstrating how the Scriptures were oppressive to women, ignited such a firestorm of criticism that the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA, which had been formed by a merger of the NWSA and the AWSA) felt compelled to distance itself from its longtime leader.

1210

A M E R I C A N

Meanwhile, despite the assertion in Minor v. Happersett that “the United States has no voters of its own creation,” various extensions and withdrawals of the franchise by the federal government had already eroded the powers reserved to the individual states to determine which of their citizens could vote. The Constitution recognized the right of naturalized citizens to vote, and these former immigrants swore allegiance to the United States rather than to a particular state of residence. In 1887 the Dawes Act granted full rights of citizenship, including the franchise, to Native Americans who had accepted government allotments and paid taxes in various states and territories. In that same year the Edmunds-Tucker Act disenfranchised the women of Utah on the grounds that polygamy so degraded Mormon women that they were incapable of voting independently. These federal actions had complex effects on the fortunes of woman’s suffrage at the national level. On the one hand, they reintroduced the hope that an amendment to the federal constitution could be used to secure the vote for women. On the other, they led to a reification of racist politics that alienated African American suffragists from their white counterparts. Many native-born American women were indignant that the vote was granted to “foreigners” and “savages” (a term also applied to Mormons on the grounds of their polygamy) before female descendants of the original colonists had obtained it. For a time the National Woman Suffrage Association found a dubious common cause with southern white supremacists, arguing that woman’s suffrage would offset the baleful influence of black, Native American, and immigrant voters. They argued that a generation of America’s finest men having perished on the battlefields of the Civil War, it was more appropriate to replace their votes with those of their cultured mothers, wives, and daughters than with votes from men who had no education or popular tradition of democracy to guide them. Legislators who feared giving the vote to black women were assured that the total of white votes to be gained by granting universal suffrage in their states would exceed by several hundred thousand the number of black male and female votes combined. This descent of suffrage activists into the tawdry realm of racist realpolitik marked a low point in the history of the campaign. PROGRESSIVE ERA REFORM POLITICS

The period that suffragists would later call “the doldrums” ended when a new generation of reform-oriented politics commenced after 1910. The Democratic Party broke a long-standing Republican hegemony in a series of congressional election victories that

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

culminated in taking the White House for Woodrow Wilson in 1912. During the same period, the rise of the Progressive Party and the Socialist Party applied pressure on traditional politics from the left. As party competition sharpened, the potential votes of women began to seem like a more valuable commodity. In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive (Bull Moose Republican) Party became the first national political party to include a woman’s suffrage plank in its platform. From 1910 to 1914 seven additional states adopted at least a limited form of women’s suffrage. Illinois added new value to women’s ballots in 1913 when that state’s legislature granted women the right to vote for presidential electors. Combining Illinois’s twenty-nine electors with the sixty-nine from the states with full equal suffrage, women suddenly had a significant voice in presidential politics. Moreover, Illinois’s decision to allow women to vote for municipal officers enabled them to vote in Chicago, the secondlargest city in the United States. As momentum built toward a federal women’s suffrage amendment more strongly than at any time since the onset of the Civil War, suffrage proponents again took their case to Congress and successfully lobbied President Wilson to announce his support for it. Prior to 1912 anti-suffragists had concentrated on defeating state referenda and amendment proposals, but now the first nationally organized female opposition to the women’s vote emerged. The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage drew behindthe-scenes support from the liquor industry, urban political machines, southern congressmen, corporate capitalists such as railroad directors and meatpackers, and even some Catholic clergy. At the same time a more militant advocacy of women’s suffrage emerged in emulation of the Women’s Social and Political Union in England. From 1913 onward the Congressional Union—later known as the Women’s Party—engaged in hunger strikes, pickets of government offices, and other acts of civil disobedience. These high-profile actions helped publicize the suffrage campaign, but they also engendered resistance on the part of legislators who felt bullied by such aggressive female behavior. The Women’s Party achieved its greatest impact from sympathy generated by journalistic accounts of brutal police repression of their demonstrations, including force-feeding the hunger strikers. The 1914 endorsement of a national suffrage amendment by the National Federation of Women’s Clubs demonstrated that mainstream American women did want the vote. The women’s club phenomenon had begun in the 1880s, uniting small groups of A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

women in educational, cultural, and civic activities. By the time its National Federation endorsed suffrage, it represented more than two million women, both white and black. Women’s clubs and mass-circulation women’s magazines were major forces for creating a sense of community and common purpose among the widely dispersed constituency for women’s suffrage. In 1916 the NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947) formulated a three-pronged “winning plan” for obtaining the franchise. It required mobilization of enormous forces that would simultaneously campaign for state suffrage amendments in places like New York where conditions seemed ripe for them, lobby legislatures in the equal-suffrage states to send resolutions to Congress in favor of a national suffrage amendment, and pressure the legislatures in the remaining states to directly grant women the right to vote for presidential electors. Chiefly middle- and upper-class women had the free time and means to respond to this call, which had the effect of muffling working-class and minority voices. The NAWSA fielded leadership teams in every state. If an important legislative committee vote on some aspect of women’s suffrage was announced anywhere in the country, suffragists could direct a stream of communication and personal attention to the site within hours. Such an effort required enormous financial resources. Raising money for political action was a chronic problem for suffragists, since women were either underpaid or dependent on spousal income. In 1914 an extraordinary legacy provided a significant war chest to the NAWSA. It came from Miriam Leslie (1836–1914), widow of the magnate who published the immensely popular Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. She had legally changed her name to “Frank Leslie” in order to continue publishing the paper after his death, and by the time of her own death she had amassed a considerable fortune. “Mrs. Frank” willed $2 million to Carrie Chapman Catt for support of the women’s suffrage campaign. Although the bequest was bitterly contested by distant relations (Leslie had no direct descendants), the NAWSA eventually received more than $500,000 to use for education and propaganda. The successful effort to secure a state constitutional amendment enabling women’s suffrage in New York gave a huge boost to the national campaign. Once women obtained the vote in America’s two largest cities, a seismic shift in national sentiment seemed underway. Suffragists felt even more heartened when the state of Montana elected Jeanette Rankin (1880–1973) as the first woman to serve in the House of Representatives.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1211

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

Cover of the program for the National American Woman Suffrage Association procession, 3 March 1913. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The onset of war once again undercut the momentum toward a federal statute that would enfranchise women. But after the Armistice, American women again took their case directly to the White House (members of the NAWSA lobbied the staff while the members of the Women’s Party chained themselves to the fence) and convinced President Wilson to call a special session of the Sixty-sixth Congress to pass the Suffrage Amendment in May 1919. NINETEENTH AMENDMENT: PASSAGE AND RATIFICATION

The endgame of the women’s suffrage campaign involved complex stratagems in the U.S. Congress. In the House, a custody fight over the resolution developed when the Republican-dominated Judiciary Committee wanted to report it out to the floor before the newly constituted Women Suffrage Committee had a chance to mobilize support for it. Next, suffrage opponents in the House scheduled the vote on the

1212

A M E R I C A N

resolution for the day before the vote on the Prohibition Amendment. Since congressional opponents of prohibition feared that women would vote to ratify it if given the franchise, they would probably have made a preemptive strike against women’s suffrage; fortunately, representatives who supported enfranchising women succeeded in getting the vote postponed. Ultimately the resolution seeking a constitutional amendment to grant women suffrage cleared the House by just one vote. The first effort to pass a similar resolution in the Senate initially had to be withdrawn by its sponsors when they foresaw that it would not receive a majority vote. Meanwhile, both House and Senate easily passed a bill permitting the legislature of Hawaii to extend the franchise to the women of that territory. The embarrassing contrast between the senators’ willingness to enfranchise the women of Hawaii with their reluctance to do so for American women spurred a second, successful

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

Senate vote on the suffrage resolution. Finally the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was presented to the states for ratification. In passing the Prohibition Amendment, Congress had provided that it would expire if not ratified by two-thirds of the states within seven years. No such deadline had been imposed on the Woman’s Suffrage Amendment, but a groundswell of popular sentiment arose for assuring women the franchise in time to vote for president in the 1920 elections. Only eleven state legislatures were scheduled to meet in regular session in time to achieve this outcome. These states promptly ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. Although only a third of the number required to put the amendment in force, these states nevertheless contained more than half the U.S. population at the time. This popular mandate for suffrage became the basis of a drive to persuade other states to move quickly. Another massive campaign began to convince at least twenty-five additional states identified as pro-ratification to schedule special sessions for the purpose. Local politics and economics proved the chief obstacles to the success of this crusade. Many states, in particular those that had already enfranchised their female citizens, did not wish to bear the expense of calling a special legislative session that provided no direct benefit to them. Suffragists responded by rallying their forces to convince state legislators to forego their per diem, and those living in state capitals offered their homes in lieu of hotels to reduce the cost of travel. Regionalism played a part in the foot-dragging. States in the Far West had to be pressured into mobilizing to ratify an amendment that would grant to women in eastern states a right that women of the West already had. The appeal to federalism seemed less likely to succeed in the states’-rights South than in the West, so that nine of the formerly Confederate states were not extensively lobbied to ratify. Only the border state of Tennessee ultimately voted for the amendment. Antifederal behavior was not limited to the South, however. In Delaware, the one-party legislature was so committed against ratification that women campaigned to unseat suffrage opponents. The governors of Connecticut and Vermont refused to call special legislative sessions, despite a majority of legislators in both states petitioning that they do so, because those legislative majorities came from the opposite party. In the internecine disputes between branches of government or among party factions, women’s suffrage was an issue easy to bargain away. Mirroring the outcome in Congress, the state senate of Tennessee ratified the Woman’s Suffrage Amendment by a single vote. Meanwhile Connecticut’s A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

governor had convened a special session on condition that it adhered to his exclusive agenda, but the legislature defied his directive and voted to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. Once the validity of the Tennessee vote was confirmed, however, it eclipsed the revolt of the Connecticut legislature. Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify, producing the necessary twothirds majority to bring the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution into force. Through heroic efforts, the suffragists’ self-imposed deadline had been met; all American women over twenty-one years of age became eligible to vote in the presidential election of 1920. The NAWSA dissolved, its work done at last. It reconstituted itself as the League of Woman Voters for the purpose of creating an informed female electorate. Although the achievement of the franchise was a monumental triumph for American women, it did not immediately produce a flood of women-centered legislation. The postwar “return to normalcy,” like its Civil War predecessor, slowed the impetus for further reforms. Young women turned their energies to dismantling social strictures rather than penetrating political structures during the Roaring Twenties. The Great Depression drove many women out of the labor force and higher education, undoing decades of incremental improvement in those areas. World War II brought about a surge in women’s paid labor as well as volunteer work, but the return of the troops and the postwar recession sent them back home again. It was not until the 1960s that some of the same social forces that had given birth to the suffragist movement generated another major drive to achieve a full range of rights for women. See also Feminism; Reform; Temperance BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Work

National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection. Library of Congress. Available at www.libraryofcongress. gov. Secondary Works

Baker, Jean H., ed. Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Edwards, Rebecca. “Pioneers at the Polls: Woman Suffrage in the West.” In Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, edited by Jean H. Baker, pp. 90–101. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Fischer, Gayle Veronica. “The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of Woman Suffrage in the United States.” Journal of Women’s History 7, no. 3 (1995): 172–200.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1213

WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION

Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Right’s Movement in the United States. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959. Kraditor, Aileen S. The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement 1890–1920. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965. O’Neill, William. Everyone Was Brave: The Rise and Fall of Feminism in America. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970. Sneider, Allison. “Woman Suffrage in Congress: American Expansion and the Politics of Federalism, 1870–1890.” In Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, edited by Jean H. Baker, pp. 77–89. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Zink-Sawyer, Beverly A. “From Preachers to Suffragists: Enlisting the Pulpit in the Early Movement for Woman’s Rights.” Special issue. ATQ 4, no. 3 (1990): 193–210. Joanne B. Karpinski

WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION In 1893 Chicago was at the center of national and international attention not only due to the amazing way it had bounced back from the fire that had almost destroyed it in 1871 but also because of the Columbian Exposition, with its famed “White City” constructed on the banks of Lake Michigan in and around Jackson Park. The old settlers of the city saw their home being treated as a gateway for Chicago and America to bridge the gap between the Old World and the New and to position itself at the center of the modern order of things. As Alfred Kazin put it, “Chicago was halfway between the wilderness and the stock exchange” (p. 237). At the closing ceremony of the fair on 28 October 1893 (two days before the gates were closed for the last time) Carter Henry Harrison, chief magistrate of the City of Chicago, made a speech that summed up much of what the people of Chicago felt about their fair and their city: “The World’s Fair is a mighty object lesson, but, my friends, come out of this White City, come out of these walls into our black city. When we get there we will find that there is an object lesson even greater than is the World’s Fair itself. . . . I believe I shall see the day when Chicago will be the biggest city in America and the third city on the face of the globe” (Truman, p. 606). Commentators have also seen the 1893 exposition, along with the St. Louis World’s Fair nine years later, as marking the celebration of a new consumer society that ushered in the twentieth century. The Chicago exposition introduced a host of new brand names that would become staples of American daily life, such as Cream

1214

A M E R I C A N

of Wheat, Shredded Wheat, Pabst Beer, Aunt Jemina’s syrup, and Juicy Fruit gum. The Chicago writer Henry Blake Fuller (1857– 1929) loved the cosmopolitan experience of the fair but was not so sure that all this growth through commerce was a positive thing for his city or his nation, and he recognized that this transition from the accepted and understood precepts of Chicago to the status of a modern world-renowned metropolis was unlikely to be an easy one. Alan Trachtenberg has written that “the Fair invites ironic scrutiny as few other events and objects of the age” in that, being positioned between the financial panic of 1893 and the Pullman strike of 1894, it is representative of the age and of Chicago as a site in flux. An association between culture and corporate influence closes the era, Trachtenberg claims, but also “lays bare a plan for the future. Like the Gilded Age, the White City straddles a divide: a consummation and a new beginning” (p. 209). Fuller, like others of his ilk, including a young Theodore Dreiser (1871– 1945), was concerned about what would follow the fair and how the old Chicago—the society Fuller knew intimately—would function in this new world: there simply didn’t seem to be much of a link between the White City of the fair and the “black city” of industrial Chicago. Fuller expressed these concerns before the fair even opened its doors, but his voice was drowned out by the overwhelming enthusiasm for the glamour of the exposition. As one commentator described the White City, it was “crowned with flags, running the gamut of color, but above the splendor of imperial banners the starry folds of ‘Old Glory’ rose and fell, dearer to every patriotic eye than all the rest” (Truman, p. 157). Stanley Appelbaum has noted that the White City “seemed to suit the temper of the country, which was actively turning from the conquest of its own territory to imperial conquests overseas”; it also suited the “psychological needs of the newest group of millionaires, who tended to be suave financiers rather than lusty self-made men. Its Romanism was that of the Empire, not that of the Republic, as Jefferson’s had been” (pp. 13–14). LITERATURE AND THE FAIR

Literary works were commissioned for and inspired by the fair. Harriet Monroe (1860–1936), the founder of Poetry magazine, was asked to compose a commemorative ode, verses of which were read at the opening ceremony. Some sections were also set to music and sung by a choir reputed to have been five thousand strong. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s story Two Little Pilgrims’ Progress (1895), Clara Louise Burnham’s romance Sweet Clover (1894), and Emma Murdoch Van Deventer’s detective story Against

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Odds (1894) all use the fair as a backdrop or a major setting. Henry Adams wrote about his visit in The Education of Henry Adams (1907). Addresses given by Hamlin Garland at the fair were expanded and published as Crumbling Idols (1894), a manifesto of his artistic vision. Robert Herrick’s The Web of Life (1900) has key scenes set in the ruins of the fairgrounds, while Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (2003) has been a modern success. In a series of letters published in Cosmopolitan between November 1893 and September 1894, William Dean Howells (1837–1920) reflected on the promise for a utopian future in America as seen by a traveler from the fictional Altruria, who visits the fair and reflects on the ingenuity and clarity of purpose it shows. Through the eyes of his narrator, Aristides Homos, Howells saw in the fair a promise of a Christian socialism that would consolidate the industrial and cultural future of America. When Howells came to gather the letters as a sequel to his 1894 A Traveler from Altruria, however, he was disillusioned with his nation in the light of the Spanish-American War. In Through the Eye of the Needle (1907), Howells summarizes (without comment) Aristides’s visit to the fair by simply saying that he was there, but the enthusiasm and idealism of the earlier letters has vanished. Theodore Dreiser, a fledgling reporter for the Republic of St. Louis, accompanied a group of schoolteachers to the exposition. In his memoir Newspaper Days (1931), he wrote that the fair had “a lightness and an airiness wholly at war with anything that the western world had yet presented, which caused me to be swept into a dream from which I did not recover for months.” The critic Guy Szerbula notes that the two cities of Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie (1900)—the walled city and the magically lit city—are “close at hand as Dreiser thinks back to Chicago and the White City” (p. 370). In Sister Carrie, Dreiser conflates the city and the fair to create the image of a semimythical garden surrounded by the city: “not an illustration of the machine in the garden, but the garden within the machine: within the city” (p. 378). Szerbula sees the idea of Dreiser’s “urban sublime” coming from the exposition and the architectural designs of Daniel H. Burnham. THE WHITE CITY ON THE LAKE

The exposition occupied 630 acres in Jackson Park and the Midway. The main site was bounded by Stony Island Avenue on the west, Sixty-seventh Street to the south, Lake Michigan on the east, and Fifty-sixth A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Street at the north side. A specially selected group of architects designed the exposition’s buildings under Daniel Burnham’s supervision. Sophie Hayden, the first woman awarded a degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, designed the Woman’s Building, and the exposition also helped launch the careers of architects such as Louis Sullivan and William Le Baron Jenney. A classical architectural theme was selected for the fair over the objections of the more innovative Chicago architects. The design centered on the Court of Honor, onto which all of the buildings housing exhibitions and attractions faced. These included the Mines and Mining Building, the Agriculture Building, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the Palace of Mechanic Arts. The buildings housed sixtyfive exhibits in tune with the theme each represented. Some of the more popular exhibits were curiosities rather than serious displays of technology and progress. They included an eleven-ton cheese and a fifteen-hundred-pound chocolate Venus de Milo in the Agriculture Building and a seventy-foot-high tower of lightbulbs in the Electricity Building. The fair consumed three times more electricity than the whole city of Chicago. While the interiors of the buildings on the main court were more like warehouses than palaces, these structures came to identify the beaux arts classicism that would spread across the country and introduce to the world of modern architecture some of its best-known figures, including Sullivan, Dankmar Adler, and later, Frank Lloyd Wright. All of the facades were constructed of a temporary material of plaster, cement, and jute, and the uniform order of cornice height and classical designs was enhanced by the white color of all of the structures. Unfortunately the temporary nature of the buildings was also an invitation to disaster. There were several fires before and during the exposition, and on 5 July 1894 most of the site was cleared by a fire that destroyed multiple buildings, including the Electricity Building, the Manufacturer’s Hall, and the Court of Honor itself. The only surviving building built specifically for the fair is the Palace of Fine Arts, now the Museum of Science and Industry, on the shore of Lake Michigan. Immediately after the fair it was occupied by the Field Museum, but it was abandoned in 1921 when the Field collection was moved to its current home in Grant Park. In 1926 Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck created an industrial museum and renovated the deteriorating building to the tune of $5 million. The faded glory of the structure was rebuilt with limestone and marble, and it stands in the early twenty-first century as a reminder of how glorious the White City must have been.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1215


MIDWAY PLAISANCE

The Columbian Exposition was the first of the world’s fairs to provide an amusement area that was away from the main site of the exhibits. While the White City was on the shore of the lake, the Midway Plaisance, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, led away from it inland. The Plaisance, a narrow strip of land between Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth Streets, extended west from Stony Island to Cottage Grove Avenue and was laid out with fairgrounds. The area was constructed with replicas of European villages and carnival rides. The “Street in Cairo,” which introduced exotic dancing to America, was the most successful Midway attraction; its stockholders realized more than 100 percent profit on their investment. At the center of the attraction on the Plaisance and towering above them all was the world’s first Ferris wheel. The Plaisance can still be seen, running along the south side of the University of Chicago’s campus, and it has become an open recreation ground. At the western end stands Lorado Taft’s concrete sculpture The Fountain of Time, completed in 1922. LITTLE EGYPT

One of the major draws at the fair was a dancer known as Little Egypt. Although there are many different theories about who Little Egypt was and where she came from, the legend is that she was a practitioner of the danse du ventre, or belly dance. Some commentators describe the dance she performed as the hootchykootchy, a sensual routine in which she wriggled out of much of her costume with the aid of the newly invented zippers along the side of it. Though audiences were reported as being shocked and scandalized, Little Egypt was one of the major attractions of the fair, credited with helping to pull the exposition back from financial ruin. However, Donna Carlton, a dance historian, believes that there were at least three exhibits of Oriental dance on the Midway Plaisance and that Little Egypt is in fact a composite and apocryphal figure created by word of mouth after the fair had ended. Carlton has found no concrete evidence that a single Little Egypt ever appeared at the fair and notes that the name itself was known to be a euphemism for “loose woman.” FERRIS WHEEL

In 1890 Daniel Burnham called on the architects of Chicago to visualize a structure for the Columbian Exposition that would challenge or emulate the role of the Eiffel Tower, constructed for the 1889 Exposition Universal in Paris. The idea of building another, higher tower was rejected, and the focus rested on the plan of the thirty-two-year-old engineer George Washington Gale Ferris, who specialized in building steel bridges.

1216

A M E R I C A N

When his plan was accepted he set up the Ferris Wheel Company, and the exposition committee set aside a site on the Midway Plaisance, the agreement being that his company would retain $300,000 of receipts and that any take above that would be shared equally with the fair. Construction of the wheel began in one of the worst Chicago winters for years. Eight reinforced concrete masonry piers were built to support the towers, which in turn would support the axle of the wheel. The axle, forged in Pittsburgh by the Bethlehem Iron Company, weighed 89,320 pounds and was 45.5 feet long and 33 inches in diameter. At each end it had two 16-foot diameter cast-iron spiders weighing 53,031 pounds that gripped and turned the wheel itself. The axle was fixed at 140 feet above the ground. The wheel itself weighed in at 2,079,884 pounds and was driven by steam. It took nine minutes to complete one nonstop revolution, and it ran without problems for the four months it was at the fair. There were eventually thirty-six cars hung around the wheel. Each car carried 60 passengers, weighed 26,000 pounds, and was 24 feet in length, 13 feet wide, and 10 feet high. A trip on the wheel became a major cultural experience, including weddings performed at the highest point of a revolution. By the beginning of November 1893 more than 1.45 million paid admissions had been logged, and the Ferris Wheel Company showed a profit of $395,000. After the fair the wheel was relocated at huge expense near Lincoln Park, but it never recouped the cost of moving it. The wheel was taken to St. Louis for the World’s Fair of 1904, once more failing to cover the costs of moving it. At the end of the St. Louis fair the wheel stood idle for almost two years until 11 May 1906, when it was destroyed by a combined three hundred pounds of dynamite. George Ferris did not live to see the destruction of his creation, as he died of tuberculosis in 1896 at the age of thirty-seven. FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND AFRICAN AMERICANS AT THE FAIR

African Americans, while free to come and go at the fair like anyone else, were made to feel unwelcome. Unlike the exhibits celebrating the achievements of other cultures, fake “African villages,” according to Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), had a very different purpose: he saw them as an attempt “to exhibit the Negro as a repulsive savage.” At the Chicago fair even Douglass’s presence and his eloquent speech-making could not prevent thoughtless bigotry, as organizers offered free watermelons to African American fairgoers and turned “Colored People’s Day” into an example of how far the fight for equality still had to go. The fair was a true expression of the less-worthy aspects of its age as well as the best. A year after the exposition, in a

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


The Ferris wheel. On the Midway Plaisance of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893. © CORBIS

The Women’s Congress convened on 15 May 1893 with the aim of representing the progress of woman since the discovery of the American continent in 1492. It was divided into different areas of interest and progress, including education, industry, art and literature, philanthropy and charity, moral and social reforms, religion, and civil law and government. The purpose was to discuss the relation of women to each of the subject areas and to produce documents and observations that would be of use to students of sociology. Sixty-three organizations were represented at the congress, and attendees from the United States included Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Helena Modjeska. International attendees came from Belgium, Denmark, Italy, and Spain. Papers were presented in the course of the congress on such subjects as “The Civil and Social Evolution of Woman,” “The Ethics of Dress,” “Woman as a Financier,” “Woman in Municipal Government,” “The Political Future of Woman,” and “Woman’s War for Peace.” As Bertha Palmer said in her address at the dedication ceremonies, “Columbus discovered a new world, but the Columbian Exposition has discovered woman.” She also used her speech to advocate for women’s rights, to call for more opportunities for women to work, and to express the desire of women to be more self-sufficient. See also Chicago; St. Louis World’s Fair

speech made in Washington, D.C., Douglass declared that, “great and glorious as it was,” it still showed “unfairness and discrimination against the Negro.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WOMEN’S CONGRESS

Appelbaum, Stanley. The Chicago’s World Fair of 1893: A Photographic Record. New York: Dover, 1980. Photos from the collections of the Avery Library of Columbia University and the Chicago Historical Society.

As the home to the influential Chicago Woman’s Club and social reformers like Jane Addams, Chicago was ideally placed to offer a forum for women at the fair. The Chicago socialite Bertha Palmer (wife of Potter Palmer, a member of the administrative board for the fair) headed the Board of Lady Managers who organized the Woman’s Building, including decisions related to design, layout, and content. Palmer referred to the building as the “Ladies’ lovely child.” The Board of Lady Managers decided to include a Gallery of Honor that would feature the “most creditable achievements of women.” It was also decided that, while there would be work by women featured in other buildings, “where there is anything of such extreme excellence that we, as a sex, feel proud of it, . . . a duplicate should be featured in the Woman’s Building to call attention to the fact that it is the work of a woman” (Weimann, p. 280). Unfortunately the gallery was roundly criticized as displaying a “glorious wealth of mediocrity.” A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Primary Works

Truman, Ben C., et al. History of the World’s Fair: Being a Complete and Authentic Description of the Columbian Exposition from Its Inception. Philadelphia: Standard Publishing, 1893. Secondary Works

Burg, David F. Chicago’s White City of 1893. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976. Carlton, Donna. Looking for Little Egypt. Bloomington, Ind.: IDD Books, 1995. Fuller, Henry Blake. “Mural Painting at the Fair II.” Chicago Morning Record, 26 May 1893, p. 4. Fuller, Henry Blake. “Photographers at the Fair I.” Chicago Record, 10 August 1893, p. 4. Fuller, Henry Blake. “Photography at the Fair II.” Chicago Record, 11 August 1893, p. 4. Fuller, Henry Blake. “World’s Fair Architecture I.” Chicago Morning Record, 14 September 1892, p. 4.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1217

WORLD WAR I

Herrick, Robert. The Web of Life. New York: Macmillan, 1900. Kazin, Alfred. An American Procession. New York: Knopf, 1984. Szerbula, Guy. “Dreiser at the World’s Fair: The City without Limits.” Modern Fiction Studies 23 (1977): 369–379. Trachtenberg, Alan. The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. Weimann, Jeanne Madeline. The Fair Women. Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1981. Keith Gumery

WORLD WAR I The United States entered World War I in April 1917. By 11 November 1918, Armistice Day, it had sent an army of two million across the Atlantic and had contributed decisively to the defeat of Germany and the Central Powers. The brief involvement brought about the end of American isolation from the politics and tensions of Europe. It also increased the country’s knowledge about industrial production, mass organization, and the destructive capacities of modern science. Over the succeeding two decades and beyond, these experiences flowed into American social life, politics, and literature. Writers who had lived through the war often invoked the conflict, overtly or by implication, as the threshold that they had crossed on a journey to personal and artistic maturity, political commitment, or a rejection of the compromised values of an earlier era. This idea is expressed in the lines of the poet Amy Lowell: For I have time for nothing But the endeavor to balance myself Upon a broken world. (P. 45) THE DECISION

When President Woodrow Wilson went before the United States Congress on 2 April 1917 to request the power to declare war on the Empire of Germany, the greater part of Europe and the Near East had been at war for almost three years. The spark that ignited the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, BosniaHerzegovina on 28 June 1914. Within a few weeks, a sequence of diplomatic threats, military mobilizations, and activation of treaty alliances culminated in full-scale hostilities throughout Europe. The so-called

1218

A M E R I C A N

Triple Entente, an alliance between Britain, France, and Russia (a group later known, after the inclusion of Italy, as the Allies) found itself at war with the Central Powers, consisting of Germany, AustriaHungary, and Turkey. Initially, the German invasion forces gained ground in Belgium and France but then found their progress blocked. From that point on, the war was marked by a combination of strategic stalemate, makeshift fortifications, and the profitless, mutual massacres that became known as trench warfare. By 1917 the so-called Western Front of the war extended for four hundred miles, from the English Channel to the Swiss border. The casualties suffered by all sides had been, and continued to be, immense. The war abounded in new and frightening technologies such as the flame-thrower, poison gas, and the submarine. The latter (originally an American invention from the time of the Civil War) came into its own in the shape of the German U-boats that scoured the Atlantic for British and French shipping. Merchant ships and vessels from neutral countries were also targeted by the U-boats. In the United States, public opinion was divided, although the desire to keep the war on the other side of the ocean initially tended to override all other loyalties. The print media were flooded by various kinds of partisan propaganda as well as appeals for strict American neutrality. The chosen forms were not restricted to reporting and opinion pieces: in an era where poetry still found a place in the pages of newspapers, pro-British verse, for example, could appear in prompt, angry response to an anti-British poem that had appeared a day or two earlier. Beyond the shadowboxing, the first incident to touch Americans in any substantial way was the sinking of the Cunard liner Lusitania by a German U-Boat off the southwestern coast of Ireland on 7 May 1915, an attack that cost over a thousand lives including those of about 125 American citizens. Despite the ambiguous status of the ship with its cargo of munitions and its defensive armaments, much of the public saw only the coldblooded murder of civilians and rejected German attempts at justification. For his part, President Wilson took a sharp and uncompromising line with the German government. The Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, was a convinced pacifist and neutralist and resigned after the Lusitania incident, believing that Wilson was mentally preparing for war with Germany. Wilson, however, ran for a second term as president in 1916 with neutrality as his central plank. His election to a second term suggested that Americans were still unwilling to risk lives and assets in a foreign conflict, despite a broadly supportive attitude toward Britain and France.

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WORLD WAR I

“I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH” For many young men in the early part of the war, its potential for trials of courage, suffering, and death seemed to fill them with reverence and a desire for self-sacrifice. This was true on all sides in the conflict, and Alan Seeger was one of the many who wrote in prose and verse about their vision.

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death on some scarred slope of battered hill,

When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows ‘twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear . . . But I’ve a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Alan Seeger, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” North American Review 204, no. 4 (October 1916): 594.

The revelation in early 1917 of the so-called Zimmermann Note, however, sparked a furious reaction in America. Actually an intercepted telegram, the message revealed that the German government was seeking a covert arrangement with the government of Mexico; in return for war assistance, the Germans promised to help Mexico recover territories lost to the United States in 1848. (The Mexican government denied any responsibility for the plan and declined the German offer.) This development helped convince President Wilson that nonintervention was no longer an option—much to the relief of the Allies, who knew that American troops in large numbers represented the only real possibility of victory on the Western Front. With the admission that the note was genuine and the announcement by Germany that it would begin unrestricted submarine warfare against any ships supplying the Allies, the antiwar movement found itself suddenly confused and divided. On 6 April 1917 the United States officially declared war on Germany. The recruitment and training of a large military force began immediately. As American society organized itself behind the war effort, an overconfident take-charge mood prevailed, reflected in George M. Cohan’s famous song “Over There” (“The Yanks are A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

coming. . . . / And we won’t come back till it’s over over there”). Under the command of General John J. Pershing, the first units of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) shipped out for Europe during the summer of 1917. Known as the doughboys, the U.S. forces represented an enthusiastic but untried military that would be, for the first time, an American army at war on the European mainland. They were not, however, the first Americans to take up arms. “CONSCRIPTS OF DESTINY”

For some Americans, Paris had become the alternative to native cultural provinciality. For such people, the German invasion of France and Belgium in August 1914 was not merely a European crisis but a threat to the existence of civilization itself. Before the United States entered the war, American citizens had joined other armies to fight, as they saw it, for a cosmopolitan patriotism. The American squadron in the French Air Corps, known as the Lafayette Escadrille, was perhaps the most glamorous example. The poet Alan Seeger (1888–1916) no doubt spoke for many in his article in the New Republic in 1915: Paris was in peril. . . . Without renouncing their nationality they had yet chosen to make their homes here beyond any other city in the world.


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1219

WORLD WAR I

Did not the benefits and the blessings they had received point them a duty that heart and conscience could not deny? (P. 66)

Seeger was a Harvard graduate who had traveled in Mexico and Europe before settling on Paris as his home. He joined the French Foreign Legion in 1915. His letters to his parents and occasional articles in journals reveal an intense love of France and the French, as well as the kind of romantic insouciance that marked the English poetic style at that early stage of the war, when the full force of the ongoing slaughter had not quite penetrated the public mind. His manuscripts were collected by friends and published posthumously in 1916, but the traditional diction of the poems and their uncritical approval of the war led to the marginalization of his work in the postwar literary landscape. Today he is remembered for only one poem, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” originally published in The North American Review, whose solemn cadences and naked lyricism combine to express acceptance of— almost a wish for—martyrdom in battle. Alan Seeger was killed during the night of 4–5 July 1916. A fictional treatment of the fusion of aesthetic sensibility and belief in the universal value of French civilization appears in the work of Edith Wharton (1862–1937), who already had an established literary career of two decades’ standing. Her attitudes emerge most strongly in the novella The Marne (1918). The young protagonist, Troy Belknap, is deeply influenced by his vacations in France as a boy and by his beloved tutor, Paul Gantier. When war breaks out in 1914, Troy is fifteen years old and frustrated by his youth and inability to join the struggle to defend France. Back home in the United States, he finds a smug isolationism to be the dominant attitude. He feels a sense of responsibility toward Gantier, who is killed in fighting along the Marne River. In 1917, on his eighteenth birthday, Troy leaves for Europe to drive an ambulance in France. Later, after the arrival of American troops offers him an unexpected chance to join the fighting at Château-Thierry, his feelings toward his homeland change radically. Edward Estlin Cummings, later to become e.e. cummings (1894–1962), poet of lower-case name and experimental punctuation, went to Europe in 1915 as a driver with the Norton-Harjes Volunteer Ambulance Corps. A series of misunderstandings on the part of the French censorship authorities led to the arrest of Cummings and a friend in October 1917, which in turn led to imprisonment for three months in the La Ferté military detention center. This experience, combining personal hardship with the sense of being helpless before a Kafkaesque military bureaucracy, was the basis for Cummings’s first book The Enormous Room

1220

A M E R I C A N

(1922). The title refers to the holding cell in the prison, which was home to a diverse company of unfortunate men from all over Europe. His account is permeated by images of degradation and brutality, thrown into sharp relief by the poised, self-deprecating narrative voice that seems to be the protagonist’s only protection against his environment. BATTLE FRONT, HOME FRONT

As the country prepared for war in 1917, the Wilson administration encouraged labor to put class interests aside in favor of a unified national effort. Those who failed to compromise were ostracized and sometimes, as in the case of the socialist leader Eugene Victor Debs, put in prison. The relationship between federal authority and corporate America was also difficult at times. For both business and government, the war brought about confrontations over the ominous fact that inefficiency (in railroad management and operations, for example) could be profitable and difficult to eradicate. In contrast to World War II a generation later, the World War I performance of American industry in respect to logistics and supply for the troops overseas was unimpressive. The struggle to exact “100% Americanism” from immigrant communities began to distort culture and education. Even before the United States entered the war, there were tensions between ethnic communities such as the Irish Americans, whose agenda involved support for nationalist resistance to British authority in Ireland, and the eastern establishment, who distrusted Catholics and inclined toward a pro-British view of the world. Americans of German and Austrian extraction were naturally somewhat divided in their feelings. After war was declared, suggestions of unpatriotic attitudes metastasized into a broad attack on German literature and thought, much to the disgust of people who saw a kind of cultural mob rule at work. “What on earth is the use of suddenly running down Goethe. . . . Why write books to prove he started the war . . . ?” (p. 150) wonders Amory Blaine, the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (1920). Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler told faculty at the commencement ceremony in 1917 that the articulation of antiwar views would no longer be tolerated on campus. The broad front of the pragmatist philosophical movement, taking in writers such as John Dewey and Randolph Bourne and activists such as Jane Addams, split over support for the war. This division suggested that the implications for the future were enough to divide people who had been through much controversy and acrimony over the previous twenty years and who largely shared each other’s attitudes and views. The war, and particularly the United States’

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WORLD WAR I

Paris and the French among black Americans. As Du Bois wrote in The Crisis in March 1919: THE “DOUGHBOYS” The term for the American soldier in World War I has a mysterious etymology. The word goes back to the middle of the nineteenth century and may have its roots in the Mexican-American war of 1846–1848. One theory is that the pipe clay used to whiten the uniform belts worn by American troops had the appearance of the white clay used for adobe-based bricks, and the word “adobe” morphed into an English acoustic equivalent, “doughboy,” which began in turn to attach to the soldier himself. Irrespective of its origins, that name failed to survive beyond World War I: “G.I.” emerged in World War II, and to a large extent has remained to this day as a generic term for enlisted men and women in the U.S. Army.

The American army is going to return to America determined to disparage the black officer and eliminate him from the army despite his record. And the black officer and private? They return at once bitter and exalted! They will not submit to American caste and they will ever love France! (P. 223)

Du Bois knew that black American units had been prevented from marching in the Bastille Day victory parade in Paris with their white fellow soldiers, something that had been an unchallenged right of French colonial troops from Africa. After that casually malicious gesture on the part of U.S. military authorities, it was perhaps no surprise that the stateside reality to which African American soldiers returned was also a bleak one, marked by race riots in northern cities in 1919. Nevertheless, the war had brought about subtle but irreversible changes in racial attitudes, and service overseas had shown many African Americans another world. THE DEATH OF NAÏVET É

intervention, cast a shadow over the progressive causes of the early twentieth century. These intellectuals had not suddenly become conservatives, but the war made them realize that they no longer agreed on what was and was not progressive. Indeed, new, radical political models such as Soviet communism were transforming the parameters of political loyalty and belief. The journalist and war reporter John Reed (1887–1920)—a graduate of the same Harvard class as Alan Seeger— came to see economic and political imperialism and class warfare as ultimately more important than conflicts between nations. Embracing the communist cause, Reed went on to write Ten Days That Shook the World (1919), a dramatic account of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. After his early death in 1920, he was buried in the Kremlin. The scholar and writer W. E. B. Du Bois (1868– 1963), editor of The Crisis (a journal dedicated to advocacy for African Americans), devoted much time to encouraging blacks to join the armed forces and whites to accept the reality of black comrades-in-arms. The resistance to that pressure, however, particularly with respect to black officer commissions, training, and combat assignments, was stubborn inside and outside the armed forces. Nonetheless, for many African American servicemen France was an unforgettable experience. Socializing with white Frenchmen and women in unsegregated social contexts—much to the irritation of white American military personnel—the soldiers discovered a sense of freedom and social worth, and the experience resonated for many decades in the idealization of A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

The 1920s and 1930s saw the appearance of a number of books set during the war, often with an antiheroic posture that echoed the dogged attitude of the ordinary recruit rather than the self-sacrificial enthusiasm of volunteers like Alan Seeger. John Dos Passos (1896–1970) published his long and angry novel Three Soldiers in 1921, a story of how the personality can be dehumanized and destroyed by military organization. The three men of the title, Fuselli, Chrisfield, and Andrews—from an urban working-class, a farming, and an educated middle-class background, respectively—come to know each other in the army. Each meets with frustration and brutality at the hands of the authorities. The chapter titles “Making the Mould,” “The Metal Cools,” “Machines,” and “Rust” suggest anonymous industrial processes and the mass production of soldiers and weaponry alike. As Andrews says finally: “I’m sick of being ordered round. One more order shouted at my head is not worth living to be eighty” (p. 426). Dos Passos would go on to transform the motif of Americans at war into a more complex and powerful form in his 1932 novel 1919, the second volume in the U.S.A. trilogy. The figure of the doughboy in Europe was also put on the stage in What Price Glory?, a dour, realistic play by Maxwell Anderson (1888–1959) and Laurence Stallings (1894–1968) about an AEF platoon stationed in a French village. It opened on Broadway in 1924 and was successful enough to permit Anderson to give up journalism and devote himself to a career as a playwright. Anderson’s collaborator Stallings had put


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1221

WORLD WAR I

memories of his own war service in the AEF into the writing, and he would go on, over thirty years later, to write The Doughboys (1963), a subjective but conscientious history of the American soldier in France. In 1926 William Faulkner (1897–1962), who had gone to Canada to enlist with the Royal Air Force as a pilot but was frustrated by the war’s sudden end in November 1918, used the war as the backdrop to his first novel, Soldiers’ Pay (1926). The return of a disfigured veteran, Lieutenant Mahon, to his southern home town and his failure to reach any mutual understanding with the people who surround him is not only a narrative of trauma and death but also a vehicle for Faulkner to illuminate the social and emotional makeup of the contemporary South. More successful than Faulkner at getting near the fighting, Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) left his Kansas City reporter’s job and joined a field medical unit with the Italian infantry. Out of this experience came, among other works, his third novel A Farewell to Arms (1929). The story of Frederic Henry and his doomed love affair with the English nurse Catherine Barkley is a modern romance carried on under the pressure of war. The chaos and possibility of injury and death are refracted through a laconic, pared-down style of writing for which Hemingway was to be praised, excoriated, and parodied. Nonetheless, the sparse dialogue and the grim ending represented, for many readers, the most authentic effort yet made by a writer to structure the meaning of his war experience, not only in the plot and the characters but also in the most intimate workings of his prose style. The novel Company K by William March (a penname for William Edward March Campbell, 1893– 1954) appeared in 1933. March, himself a much-decorated veteran, composed a series of 113 vignettes, each giving a particular soldier’s perception of the company’s journey from training camp through the fighting and into the postwar era. The narrative moves along laterally from one perspective to another, but a defining moment comes when the massacre of a group of German prisoners is ordered by the company commander, Captain Matlock—an act that psychologically destroys many of the men who take part in the shooting. After the war, one ex-soldier comes to believe that the misfortunes his family and their farm are suffering are retribution for his participation in the massacre, and he shoots himself. The organization of Company K reflects the combination of anonymity and shared intensity experienced by members of a combat unit. It suggests an atomized universe in which private thoughts and subjective psychic processes have very little to do with structures imposed from above, whether it be orders from officers or the hollow invocation of theological legitimacy for the war by military chaplains.

1222

A M E R I C A N

A World War I recruitment poster for the Air Service, 1917. The newly formed and underequipped Air Service was one of the most dangerous postings for a recruit, yet the appeal was strong and the corps grew rapidly. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The delayed disillusion of a war veteran was reflected in another way—and in another media—in the early 1930s. As the Great Depression hit its peak, a young singer named Bing Crosby had a hit with his version of a song cowritten by the lyricist E. Y. Harburg, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Its narrator is a World War I veteran fallen on hard times who is ignored by former acquaintances as he panhandles on the street. CONSEQUENCES

Despite the joyous celebrations on Armistice Day, 11 November 1918, as crowds cheered and danced in the streets of cities across America, the problems of peace were to prove to be as complex as the demands of war. The Great War (as it became known in Europe) had become the most sustained mass slaughter in human

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WORLD WAR I

history. Against the backdrop of several million French, British, Russian, German and other warrelated deaths, American losses of approximately 49,000 in combat and 73,000 from other causes out of a total AEF combat strength of 1.1 million troops on active duty seemed almost insignificant. The relatively low casualty figures and short duration of direct American involvement in the war, however, are misleading. The reverberations of the war—including the creation of the Soviet Union—in culture, economic life, and political loyalties would be heard in America through the prosperity of the 1920s, the economic crisis of the 1930s, and into the gathering storm of the next major conflict. The seeds of future hostilities were sown at the postwar Paris Conference (January to June 1919), which sought to regulate the new international situation and provide for appropriate arrangements with a defeated Germany: these arrangements were known as the Treaty of Versailles. Although the Armistice had been accepted originally on the basis of President Wilson’s far-sighted “Fourteen Points” (promising, among other things, open diplomacy, selfdetermination, and fair treatment for the defeated nations) the final treaty was regarded by Germans as a humiliating punishment—the result of the uncompromising position of the French. The questions of German responsibilities, territorial losses, and reparations formed only one dimension of the Paris negotiations, however. The collapse of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires had brought new nations into being and created new territorial problems from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. Sometimes decisions made in Paris caused disaster elsewhere. Hemingway’s brief short story “On the Quai at Smyrna” is a literary snapshot of the human suffering that followed an ill-advised plan to redraw territorial boundaries in western Turkey. Attempts on the part of Britain and France to block many of Wilson’s proposed reforms of the international order soured the postwar era. Also, the United States’ propensity to raise wildly optimistic expectations with its rhetoric of high moral purpose—expectations it could not satisfy—meant that much of the Versailles legacy was hatred and unresolved national and ethnic problems in Europe and the Middle East. The League of Nations, the world assembly that many fervently hoped would be the tool to avoid future armed conflicts, was hobbled before it could start by the disinterest of the European powers, impossible procedural rules, and the absence of the United States. (Congress failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and refused to approve the country’s membership in the League.) President Wilson suffered a massive stroke in October 1919 and was incapacitated for the remainder A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

of his term. The League of Nations, despite its birth among a chorus of good intentions, failed to exert influence on any significant military conflict during the two decades of its existence and was rendered irrelevant by the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Some major constitutional reforms were probably accelerated by the war: the Eighteenth (Prohibition) and Nineteenth (women’s suffrage) Amendments to the United States Constitution were the most important; the short life of the Eighteenth Amendment became an object lesson in the problems of trying to legislate social behavior. Some individuals and their actions would retain a niche in popular memory. The infantryman Sergeant Alvin Cullum York (1887–1964) and the aviator Captain Edward Vernon (“Eddie”) Rickenbacker (1890–1973) were two such figures. Both were decorated war heroes who came from unassuming backgrounds—York from a remote corner of Appalachia and Rickenbacker from a Swiss American family in Columbus, Ohio—and their exploits became triumphal symbols of the American character. The transformation of that symbolism into organizational power was reflected in the founding of the American Legion in 1919. The legion would become the nation’s largest veterans’ organization and, at times, a powerful conservative lobby. It gave ex-servicemen not only effective representation on the national level but also a vehicle by which the atmosphere, loyalties, and hierarchies of military service could be retained in somewhat diluted form in civilian life. THE EDGE OF MEMORY

A memorable later effort by an author to use World War I as a setting was William Faulkner’s allegorical novel A Fable (1954). In this ambitious work (which won a Pulitzer Prize), the execution of a young French soldier on charges of pacifism and mutiny becomes a modern parable of a Christ-like sacrifice which embodies an appeal to reject war forever. In the decades since A Fable was published, World War I has largely vanished as a theme or backdrop in American literature, drama, and cinema, even for writers looking for new angles on issues of race, conflict, and sexuality. (Indeed, parts of the war’s history—the volunteer ambulance drivers, for example, or the African American soldiers’ experiences in France—beg for some author or filmmaker to take up the story in an original way.) This lack of attention is a contrast to other American wars such as World War II and Vietnam. The Civil War also receives significantly more attention than World War I, even though it is more historically distant. The memory and meaning


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1223

WOUNDED KNEE

of those conflicts are still, for good or ill, inspirations for literary and cultural work in the United States. Perhaps involvement in World War I was too shortlived, and the subsequent marginalization of American ideas and interests, reflected in President Wilson’s physical and political decline, proved too discouraging for extended consideration. Unlike the still-resonant names of Shiloh, Normandy, or Khe Sanh, the battlegrounds of World War I such as Château-Thierry and Meuse-Argonne have become obscure, on the far edge of American historical memory. See also Americans Abroad; Moon-Calf; War Writing; Weaponry BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Dos Passos, John. Three Soldiers. New York: Modern Library, 1932. Du Bois, W. E. B. “The Black Man in the Revolution of 1914–1918.” The Crisis 17, no. 5 (March 1919): 218–223. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. This Side of Paradise. 1920. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960. Lowell, Amy. “September 1918.” In Anthology of Modern American Poetry, edited by Cary Nelson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Seeger, Alan. “As a Soldier Thinks of War.” The New Republic 3, no. 29 (1915): 66–68. Stallings, Laurence. The Doughboys: The Story of the AEF, 1917–1918. New York: Harper and Row, 1963. Secondary Works

Farwell, Byron. Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917–1918. New York: Norton, 1999. Fussell, Paul. The Great War and Modern Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. New York: Random House, 2002. Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Painter, Nell Irvin. Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919. New York: Norton, 1987. The United States Army in World War I. CD-ROM (3 discs). Washington, D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History, 1998. Van Wienen, Mark W. Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Martin Griffin

1224

A M E R I C A N

WOUNDED KNEE Considered the last battle between the U.S. Army and American Indians, the Wounded Knee Massacre took place on the morning of 29 December 1890 beside Wounded Knee Creek on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. This was the culmination of the Ghost Dance religion that had started with a Paiute prophet from Nevada named Wovoka (1856–1932), who was also known as Jack Wilson. During the previous year, U.S. government officials had reduced Sioux lands and cut back rations so severely that the Sioux people were starving. These conditions encouraged the desperate embrace of the Ghost Dance. This pan-tribal ritual had historical antecedents that go much further back than its actual founder, as both millenarian and messianic traditions had intersections between Christianity and many Native American religions from the time of contact with Europeans. MOONEY’S ACCOUNT OF THE MASSACRE

The anthropologist James Mooney (1861–1921) did an extremely thorough treatment of the tragic events at Wounded Knee in his 1,136-page work originally published by the Government Printing Office in 1896. Originally called “The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890” and published in The Fourteenth Annual Report (Part 2) of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Smithsonian Institution, 1892–93, Mooney’s study was reprinted in 1973 with the title The Ghost Dance Religion and Wounded Knee. This detailed history begins with the life of Wovoka. Mooney points out that the Paiute prophet was born around 1857 near Walker Lake, Nevada. At age twelve his father, the Paiute shaman Tavibo, shared a vision with his mentor, Wodziwob, promising a cleansed world involving the restoration of those who had died if believers performed the Dance of Souls Departed, later called the more familiar Ghost Dance. These earlier prophets’ visions caught on quickly in the early 1870s, possibly contributing to the brutal Modoc War of 1872–1873, but upon Tavibo’s death of disease, early practice of the Ghost Dance ceased. Fourteen years old when his father died, Wovoka was adopted by a ranching family and took on their family name, becoming Jack Wilson and receiving training in Christianity and engaging in daily Bible readings. In time he also learned from Mormon missionaries in search of Paiute converts, leading some to speculate that the famous ghost shirts may derive from the Mormon “garments” worn as underwear. He also learned from Quakers or Shakers while working on farms in the Pacific Northwest. Upon his return to Nevada and his marriage to a Paiute woman, he

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

WOUNDED KNEE

accepted the life of a ranch hand. In 1886, while chopping wood in the mountains, Wilson had a vision of his death and acceptance into heaven, where the voice of God promised renewal in terms similar to those found in the prophecies of his father. Wovoka preached among the Paiute for a couple of years before performing three “miracles” which caused the Ghost Dance religion to spread. Mooney reports that the level of despair that the Sioux nation had reached by 1890 made them ready converts to the promises of the Ghost Dance, and many had embraced the sect’s practices. Sioux practitioners experienced visions of the return of their ancestors and the buffalo; many wore the ghost shirts, believing this would deflect the bullets of the whites. When an encampment of nearly three thousand Ghost Dance believers gathered in the Badlands of South Dakota, settlers were alarmed, and many left their farms. More than half of the U.S. Army was sent to the reservations, which in turn concerned Sioux leaders hoping for peace. A band led by Big Foot, the Miniconjou Lakota chief, sought supplies at the Indian agency headquarters, but they grew alarmed by approaching U.S. troops. While deliberating how to

proceed, they were joined by starving members of Sitting Bull’s band, who informed them of the revered leader’s murder on the day before, 15 December 1890. Together, the two bands fled to Pine Ridge Agency, surrendering to the Seventh Cavalry on 28 December and camping beside Wounded Knee Creek. There, surrounded by 470 soldiers and with four Hotchkiss cannons trained on them, the 106 warriors were separated from the 250 women and children. The soldiers, who were provided with a barrel of whiskey by a local trader, prevented the Sioux from sleeping. The next morning, Colonel James Forsyth ordered the Native Americans to surrender their weapons and confiscated any and all equipment that could conceivably be treated as a weapon, including sewing awls; in the process, some of the women were treated disrespectfully. Forty rifles were taken from the men, but one warrior who was hearing impaired struggled with soldiers, and a shot was fired. That caused immediate firing from all sides that left half of the warriors dead at once. As the women and children fled they were slaughtered by the soldiers, and bodies were found scattered as much as three miles from the camp. Most of the thirty-one U.S. casualties resulted from friendly fire.

Members of Big Foot’s band gathered for a Ghost Dance ceremony, 1890. Photograph by John C. H. Grabill. © BETTMANN/CORBIS

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1225

WOUNDED KNEE

CALLAHAN’S WYNEMA

The first Native American literary reaction to the events at Wounded Knee was published soon after the event. Wynema: A Child of the Forest (1891), a novel written by the Muskogee Creek author S. Alice Callahan (1868–1894), appeared less than six months after the massacre. The first known novel by an American Indian woman, this work concerns Wovoka’s messianic movement and its consequences in the massacre of December 1890. Although it is not a particularly well-written book and its references to the Wounded Knee Massacre are factually inaccurate, it is significant as the first treatment of the subject by a Native American writer. The novel was already nearly finished before the events of December 1890, and the material concerned with Wounded Knee seems hastily tacked onto what is primarily a romance. While historically the massacre is considered a mythic end of Native American cultures, Callahan’s book demonstrates continuance, if in a stilted and forced fashion. While one elderly female character claims to be the only remnant of her tribe to survive the massacre, there are children who survive, one of whom is adopted by the character Wynema. The book also depicts nearly twenty years of the Native American protagonist’s life, portraying her assimilation under the influence of the real central character, the white Methodist teacher Genevieve Weir. The Ghost Dance enters the novel through media reports concerning the new belief system. Despite the inaccuracies in the book’s account of Wounded Knee, it is significant insofar as the women become central to the outcome; where most written accounts focus on the actions of men, here almost forty women join their husbands with hostile intentions toward the soldiers. Additionally, the Creek author misunderstands traditional Lakota culture and engages in stereotyping as well, with depictions of “savage” warriors and women with papooses. The author’s outrage concerning the massacre is clear, however, and again, is significant inasmuch as it is the first Native American treatment of the issue. EASTMAN’S FROM THE DEEP WOODS TO CIVILIZATION

The Lakota writer Charles A. Eastman (also known by his family’s Sioux name, Ohiyesa; 1858–1939) was the attending physician to the survivors of the event at Wounded Knee. The second volume of his autobiography, titled From the Deep Woods to Civilization: Chapters in the Autobiography of an Indian, records his observations of the tragic event. First published in 1916, Eastman’s work shows that the events at Wounded Knee deeply shook the author’s hope in rec-

1226

A M E R I C A N

onciling his Native American sensibilities with his accommodation of Euro-American culture. In a chapter called “The Ghost Dance War,” Eastman refers to the Ghost Dance belief as a “religious craze” (p. 92) that is inconsistent with Native American culture. This chapter details the grievances of the people at Pine Ridge, and he calls the government treaties and other documents “worthless scraps of paper” (p. 99). In the midst of his description of the days leading up to the fateful event, Eastman refers to preparations for Christmas. Four days after the holiday, Eastman notes hearing the sound of the Hotchkiss guns and seeing the arrival of the soldier delivering a report to local cavalry officers. Eastman joined those who traveled to Wounded Knee after the event and acted as surgeon to the wounded, using the chapel as a hospital, and he was among those searching for victims and survivors for miles around the site. Despite the blizzard that followed the massacre, Eastman and his companions found survivors two days afterward. The writer concludes that “this was a severe ordeal for one who had so lately put all his faith in the Christian love and lofty ideals of the white man” (p. 114). STANDING BEAR’S MY PEOPLE, THE SIOUX

In 1928 Luther Standing Bear (also known as Ota Kte or Plenty Kill, c. 1868–c. 1939) published My People, the Sioux. The author begins his treatment of the Wounded Knee tragedy by discussing treaties made with the white people in a chapter called “The Ghost Dance Troubles.” Like Eastman, Standing Bear refers to the new religion as a “craze” that brought great excitement to his people, and again like his predecessor, he sees the Ghost Dance beliefs as superstition. Standing Bear objects to the official designation of the event as a “battle,” claiming it was rather a “slaughter, a massacre” (p. 224). He learns of the event on the day it occurred, and he finds he is prepared to fight the whites as a result, asking how he could convince his people to “follow in the white man’s road—even trying to get them to believe in their religion” (p. 224). The writer concludes that the perpetrators lacked “civilized training” (p. 224). He reports that after this event rumors circulated among the Native Americans that the white people intended to kill them all, even those with the white people’s education. Upon viewing the site of the tragedy, he notes that some of the pools of water were red with blood, and he observes that he cannot blame the many survivors who fled into the Badlands. NEIHARDT’S BLACK ELK SPEAKS

The 1932 text Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt (1881–1973) reflects the impressions of the Lakota

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

“ T H E Y E L L O W WA L L - PA P E R ”

holy man Hehaka Sapa, known to most readers as Black Elk, who rode his horse to see the aftermath of the massacre and participated in subsequent skirmishes. Twenty-seven years of age at the time, Black Elk claims to have wanted revenge for what he witnessed. Readers should keep in mind that while the Lakota named Black Elk did indeed share his story with the poet John Neihardt, the written text that results is that of Neihardt, as Black Elk did not speak, read, or write English. Significantly, then, the two chapters concerned with the Ghost Dance and the massacre appear near the end of the book. Neihardt’s usage of this material is the standard portrayal of the mythic end of Native American culture. Even so, it is clear that Black Elk wanted his story to be told. In a chapter called “Bad Trouble Coming” he relates the buildup to the tragic event at Wounded Knee. Black Elk describes visiting the various dances taking place all around the region. In the following chapter, called “The Butchering at Wounded Knee,” Black Elk says that the night before the massacre he could hardly sleep, and when he went for his horses in the morning he heard the sound of the cannons firing on the lodges of Big Foot’s people. He put on a sacred shirt he had made from images in his vision, saddled his buckskin, and headed for Wounded Knee, still hearing the guns. Black Elk and two companions rescued some women and children who were targeted by the soldiers, then he wrapped up a baby he found and hid her so as to rescue her later. He relates the sight of dead and wounded women, children, and babies, many torn to pieces by the shells of the Hotchkiss guns. He ends this chapter with the eyewitness account of one of his friends. The next chapter in Black Elk Speaks is the final one in the book, which ends, significantly, with a despairing paragraph that expresses the views of Neihardt rather than those of Black Elk. See also Annexation and Expansion; Indians; Indian Wars; Violence BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Callahan, S. Alice. Wynema: A Child of the Forest. 1891. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Eastman, Charles A. (Ohiyesa). From the Deep Woods to Civilization: Chapters in the Autobiography of an Indian. 1916. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977. Mooney, James. The Ghost Dance Religion and Wounded Knee. New York: Dover Publications, 1973.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. 1932. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979. Standing Bear, Luther. My People, the Sioux. 1928. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975. Rick Waters

YELLOW JOURNALISM See Muckrakers and Yellow Journalism

“THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER” If Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) had never written another word after the publication of “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” her place in American literary history would still be secure. Originally published in New England Magazine in January 1892 and reprinted by the Boston publisher Small, Maynard & Company as a chapbook in 1899, the story depicts the harrowing breakdown of a young wife and mother. A compelling example of psychological realism, the story is loosely based on Gilman’s own experience in undergoing the rest cure for neurasthenia in 1887 at the age of twenty-six. BIOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCES

The origins of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” were, indeed, rooted in Gilman’s biography, though she admitted in an article for her magazine, Forerunner, that she wrote the story with “embellishments and additions” to graphically illustrate the devastating effects of intellectual deprivation—a critical component of the rest cure regimen—on intelligent women. While the ties to Gilman’s own experience with crippling depression are undeniable, the story also launches a powerful attack on nonegalitarian marriages that forced women into an obsequious role. A great-niece of the nineteenth-century author Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gilman developed a fiercely independent streak at an early age. During her teens, she made a pact with a girlhood friend never to marry, so convinced was she that marriage would compromise her ability to devote her life to public service. In 1882, however, at the age of twenty-one, Gilman met the Rhode Island artist Charles Walter Stetson (1858– 1911), who proposed marriage just two and a half weeks later. Gilman at first declined, fearing that marriage would end her carefully cultivated independence. Stetson persisted in his proposals for two years,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1227


was suicidal. Finally, in 1888, Gilman cast aside Mitchell’s advice, left her husband, and moved to California with her daughter. It was there, over a twoday period in August 1890, when the temperature soared to 103 degrees, that Gilman drafted “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” a chilling story that effectively chronicles the narrator’s psychological breakdown. THEMATIC ISSUES IN “THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER”

Illustration from the original publication of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in New England Magazine, January 1892. GRADUATE LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

however, and despite grave reservations, Gilman finally agreed to marry him. The two were wed in 1884, but predictably, the marriage failed. The depression to which Gilman had been susceptible for much of her life intensified during her courtship with Stetson. Almost immediately following their wedding, Gilman became pregnant with her only child, a daughter, Katharine, and following the birth, Gilman’s depression deepened. When she temporarily left her husband and daughter in late 1885 for a sojourn west to spend the winter with friends, her depression lifted. Upon returning east, however, Gilman’s spirits once again plummeted. Eventually, Gilman sought the care of the nation’s preeminent nerve specialist, S. Weir Mitchell, in Philadelphia, where she spent a month undergoing the rest cure, a controversial treatment for nervous prostration that denied the patient all physical activity or intellectual stimulation. In her autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935), Gilman reported that the doctor’s prescription—to lead a domestic life, to have the baby with her twenty-four hours a day, and to have no more than two hours of intellectual activity a day—nearly cost her her sanity. Within weeks, she

1228

A M E R I C A N

The opening paragraph of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” quickly establishes the narrator’s circumstances: she is spending the summer in a remote mansion after being diagnosed with a “temporary nervous depression” (p. 10). The narrator’s husband, John, a physician, prescribes isolation and inactivity as the treatment of choice. As part of her therapy, John forbids his wife to engage in work of any kind, including writing. (It is notable that the narrator’s regimen of rest is far less restrictive than that prescribed by Mitchell, who typically confined the patient to bed rest for twenty-four hours a day.) Despite John’s admonitions, however, the narrator records her thoughts in a secret diary. Comprising the text of the story, the diary entries provide a riveting account of the narrator’s breakdown as she struggles to conform to the role of passive patient and deferential wife. As the story unfolds, the reader learns that the narrator is suffering from what in the early twenty-first century would likely be diagnosed as a form of postpartum psychosis, a rare condition characterized by hallucinations, disturbed sleep patterns, severe depression, insomnia, agitation, change in appetite, and paranoia. Postpartum psychosis was a condition acknowledged neither by John nor by the late-nineteenth-century medical community. “John does not know how much I really suffer,” the narrator laments. “He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him” (p. 14). John also warns the narrator that if she fails to show improvement, he will send her “to Weir Mitchell in the fall” (p. 18), an outcome she clearly fears. So severe are the narrator’s symptoms that her infant son has been placed in the care of a nursemaid. Deprived of the freedom to write openly, which she believes would be therapeutic, the narrator gradually shifts her attention to the yellow wallpaper in the attic nursery where she spends most of her time. The paper both intrigues and repels her; it becomes the medium on which she symbolically inscribes her “text.” Before long, the narrator detects a subpattern in the wallpaper, which crystallizes into the image of a woman desperate to escape her entrapment behind the wall. In the penultimate scene, the narrator’s identity merges with the entrapped woman, and having been deprived of the ability to “work” for

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


In the following passage from “The Yellow WallPaper” the narrator provides a detailed description of the wallpaper’s color and pattern and its impact on her mind.

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind. The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream. The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions—why, that is something like it. Gilman, “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” p. 25.

weeks, the narrator feverishly tears the paper from the walls in an attempt to effect freedom. In the story’s final scene, an ironic reversal takes place as John breaks into the room and faints, after he is forced to acknowledge the true extent of his wife’s insanity. Gilman ends the story with the narrator crawling around the perimeter of the attic room in an evocative display of infantile regression. Significantly, however, as he lies unconscious on the floor, John is still blocking his wife, both literally and symbolically obstructing her path, so that she has to “creep over him” (p. 36) as she makes her way around the room. In addition to Gilman’s emphasis on postpartum depression, which in this story develops into a devastating form of psychosis, one of her major thematic concerns was the consequences of denying women the right to work—a topic that she would treat extensively in such later works as Women and Economics (1898) and Human Work (1904). Despite John’s insistence that the narrator not work, which would not only compromise the efficacy of the rest cure in his opinion but also be construed as “unwomanly” conduct in an upper-middle-class marriage, the narrator instinctively A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

believes “that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do [her] good” (p. 10). The deprivation of intellectual stimulation exacerbates the depression from which the narrator is suffering, a point underscored by the inclusion of the character, Jennie, the narrator’s sister-in-law, who exemplifies the “true woman” of the late nineteenth century—the kind of woman whom the narrator characterizes as “a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, [who] hopes for no better profession” (pp. 17–18). The narrator, however, is philosophically aligned with the “new woman” (the antithesis of the “true woman”), who was typically vigorous, assertive, and confident in her ability to earn her own living. It is through her attempts to adhere to a conventional role, and her subjection to patriarchal authority, that the narrator goes insane. In her own marriage, Gilman struggled with some of the same issues plaguing her fictional narrator. Walter Stetson, although kind and devoted, held conventional views about gender roles and dismissed Gilman’s desire to work, particularly after the birth of their daughter. His diary records his opposition: “It is sin—surely sin: anything that takes woman away from the beautifying and sanctifying of home and bearing children must be sin,” he wrote (Stetson, p. 148). As Gilman noted many years later in her article “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper,” she regained her sanity and recovered “some measure of power” by resuming work. It was her belief that work played a vital role in “the normal life of every human being,” that it provided “joy and growth and service,” and that without work “one is a pauper and a parasite” (p. 271). Gilman’s fundamental belief in work as a duty was a sentiment that she repeated often, and it formed a guiding principle in her personal philosophy. CRITICAL RECEPTION

Shortly after she completed “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” Gilman sent the story to William Dean Howells (1837– 1920), who had praised her poem “Similar Cases” after it appeared in the Nationalist in early 1890. Howells, in turn, forwarded the story to the Atlantic Monthly editor Horace Scudder, who returned the manuscript to Gilman with a terse note: “Mr. Howells has handed me this story. I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have made myself !” (Gilman, Living, p. 119). Undeterred by Scudder’s brusque rejection, Gilman placed the story with a literary agent, and in January 1892 “The Yellow Wall-Paper” was published in New England Magazine. Reviews of the story were generally favorable, particularly after its republication in 1899 by Small,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1229


Maynard & Company. One letter to the editor of the Boston Evening Transcript in 1892, however, opined that “The Yellow Wall-Paper” was “a sad story” that held “the reader in morbid fascination,” but the writer questioned whether “such literature should be permitted in print,” since it did not seem possible that it could “give pleasure to any reader”; on the contrary, the writer feared that the story could cause “keenest pain” to those “whose lives have been touched” by mental illness (Dock, p. 103). Not surprisingly, the majority of writers ignored the politics of gender embedded in the text and saw the story as one that illustrated the detrimental effects of hideous wallpaper on sensitive imaginations. One review in the Boston Daily Advertiser, however, hailed it as “one of the most powerful and original short stories published” in recent years, while another writer characterized it as “a strange, weird story, uncommonly fascinating” that would make a “beautiful gift book” (Dock, p. 105). A review in the Los Angeles Sunday Times praised it as a “grewsome [sic], but wonderfully strong and vivid little story,” while the Chicago Daily News remarked that “as a short story it stands among the most powerful produced in America” (Dock, p. 109). An anonymous reviewer for the Boston Times characterized “The Yellow Wall-Paper” as a tale “of uncommon excellence,” while the Literary World applauded Gilman for presenting “an exceedingly vivid and compelling picture of mental sickness and hallucination” (Dock, pp. 110, 111). One reviewer stated that Gilman’s “strong and original story” is “in many respects . . . worthy of a place beside some of the weird and uncanny masterpieces of Hawthorne and Poe” (Dock, pp. 110–111). Years later, when Howells sought Gilman’s permission to reprint “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in his 1920 anthology The Great Modern American Stories, she readily gave her consent “but assured him that it was no more ‘literature’ than [her] other [work], being definitely written ‘with a purpose’” (Living, p. 121). Critics, however, generally agree that “The Yellow Wall-Paper” stands alone among Gilman’s stories and that she never again was able to produce a work that rivaled its power and poignancy. Throughout her life Gilman insisted that the “real purpose” behind “The Yellow Wall-Paper” was to convince Mitchell that his rest cure treatment for neurasthenia was misguided at best and needed to be altered (Living, p. 121). Despite Gilman’s claim in “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper,” there is no evidence to suggest that Mitchell ever read the story.

1230

A M E R I C A N

CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM

Dozens of critiques of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” have been published since the Feminist Press edition appeared in 1973, ranging from linguistic approaches to psychoanalytic interpretations to formalist readings. While some critics have viewed the narrator as a feminist heroine, others have seen her as a highly neurotic woman who suffers from a morbid fear of female sexuality. Some have interpreted the story, with its yellow paper, as an exemplar of the silencing of women writers in nineteenth-century America; others have focused on its gothic elements. Regardless of the lack of critical consensus about its meaning, “The Yellow Wall-Paper” has become firmly assimilated into the American literary canon and is now a staple in college literature anthologies, where it continues to intrigue, mystify, and delight readers. See also Feminism; Health and Medicine; Psychology; Women and Economics BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Works

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography. 1935. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. Includes a foreword by Zona Gale. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper.” Forerunner 4 (October 1913): 271. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” New England Magazine, January 1892, pp. 647–656. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wall-Paper. 1899. 2nd ed. Old Westbury, Conn.: Feminist Press, 1996. Includes an afterword by Elaine Hedges. All quotations in the text are from the Feminist Press edition. Stetson, Charles Walter. Endure: The Diaries of Charles Walter Stetson. Edited by Mary Armfield Hill. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980. Secondary Works

Dock, Julie Bates. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and the History of Its Publication and Reception. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Golden, Catherine. The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on “The Yellow Wallpaper.” New York: Feminist Press, 1992. Knight, Denise D. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1997. Scharnhorst, Gary. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Boston: Twayne, 1985.

H I S T O R Y

Denise D. Knight

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

Contributor Biographies Liza Ann Acosta is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the English Department at North Park University. Her research focus is on literary works that explore complicated cultural identities, and she teaches developmental writing and courses in cultural literatures and creative nonfiction. Museums Richard Adams is Assistant Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Arkansas. He has published work on Henry James, Henry Adams, and Sarah Orne Jewett, among others. He is at work on a book about Mark Twain and the economic history of American symbology as well as a study of sympathy and interest as reciprocal economic and aesthetic paradigms. Business and Industry Novels Susan Albertine is Professor of English and Dean of the

School of Culture and Society at the College of New Jersey. A scholar of American literary history, she edited A Living of Words: American Women in Print Culture (1995). Her work on American women’s careers in literary context includes “Breaking the Silent Partnership: Businesswomen in Popular Fiction,” American Literature (1990). Her work on life writings includes “Heart’s Expression: The MiddleClass Language of Love in Late Nineteenth-Century Correspondence,” American Literary History (1992). Christian Science Jesse Alemán is Assistant Professor of English at the University of New Mexico; editor of The Woman in Battle: The Narrative of Loreta Velazquez; Cuban Woman and Confederate Soldier (2003); and author of “Novelizing National Discourses: History, Romance, and Law in María Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don,” in Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage, vol. 3, edited by María Herrera-Sobek and Virginia Sánchez Korrel (2000); and author of “Historical Amnesia and the Vanishing Mestiza: The Problem of Race in The Squatter and the Don and Ramona,” Aztlán (2002). The Squatter and the Don

Mary P. Anderson is working toward a doctorate in U.S. lit-

erature at Washington State University. With a special interest in black women writers of the United States, she is working on her dissertation, which investigates the abject as a critical element in the corpus of U.S. women writers. Her brief biography of the seventeenth-century book printer John How can be found in the New Dictionary of National Biography. Cross-Dressing; Penitentiaries and Prisons Steve Anderson is Professor of English at the University

of Arkansas at Little Rock. His research interests are in the film and literature of the Vietnam War. He has published fiction. In 2004 he received the university-wide award for teaching excellence. Science Fiction William L. Andrews , E. Maynard Adams Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the author of The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt (1980) and To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of AfroAmerican Autobiography, 1760–1865 (1986). He is the editor or coeditor of more than thirty books on African American literature, including The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (1997); The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (2003); and North Carolina Slave Narratives (2003). The Marrow of Tradition Michael Anesko teaches English and American Literature at the Pennsylvania State University. His books include “Friction with the Market”: Henry James and the Profession of Authorship (1986) and Letters, Fictions, Lives: Henry James and William Dean Howells (1997), both published by Oxford University Press. Daisy Miller Elizabeth Archuleta (Yaqui/Chicana) is an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches contemporary Native American, American, and minority women’s literature. She has current and forthcoming publications in Wicazo Sa Review, UCLA Indigenous Peoples’ Journal of Law, Culture, and Resistance, and

1231

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

American Indian Quarterly and reference entries in the Dictionary of Literary Biography and the Encyclopedia of Native American Literature. She is the past recipient of a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, and she serves on the advisory board for the Sequoyah Research Center at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Chinese; Ethnology; Jim Crow Ronald L. Baker is chairperson and Professor of English at Indiana State University. His publications include Hoosier Folk Legends (1982); Jokelore: Humorous Folktales from Indiana (1986); and Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless: The WPA Interviews with Former Slaves Living in Indiana (2000). Folklore and Oral Traditions Laura L. Behling teaches American literature and culture,

including detective fiction, at Gustavus Adolphus College (Minnesota). Her publications include The Masculine Woman in America, 1890–1935 (2001) and Hospital Transports: A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in 1862 (2005) as well as journal articles on modern American literature and medicine. She has taught in the Czech Republic as a Fulbright scholar and participated in a 2002 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute. Mystery and Detective Fiction

University of Michigan–Dearborn, where he was Chair of the Humanities Department and Director of the American Studies Program. He is a specialist in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature and has published extensively in his field. Most of his work is on the literature of the American West, especially that of Mark Twain, Jack London, and the authors of Nevada’s Sagebrush School, as well as of Ambrose Bierce, whom he selected for his dissertation and has happily written about ever since. He is the author or editor of ten books and monographs, including The Fighting Horse of the Stanislaus: Stories & Essays by Dan De Quille (1990), Ethical Records of Twain and His Circle of Sagebrush Journalists (1994), A Prescription for Adversity: The Moral Art of Ambrose Bierce (2002), and The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain (2004), and in 2006 will have published a three-volume edition of Bierce’s stories. Tales of Soldiers and Civilians R. Bruce Bickley Jr. is Griffith T. Pugh Professor of English at Florida State University. His writings include The Method of Melville’s Short Fiction (1975); Joel Chandler Harris: A Biography and Critical Study (2000); and, with Hugh T. Keenan, Joel Chandler Harris: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1977–1996 (1997). Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings

Kelvin Beliele is a doctoral candidate at the University of

New Mexico. His publications include “The Prophetic Burden: James Baldwin, A Latter Day Jeremiah” in The Gift of Story: Narrating Hope in a Postmodern World (forthcoming); “Chrystos” in The Encyclopedia of Native American Literature (forthcoming); and “The Hippie Cowboy: Politics and Religion in the Lyrics of Kris Kristofferson” in Country Lyricists and Their Contribution to the American Literary Canon (forthcoming). Migration Klaus Benesch is Professor of English and Director of the

American Studies Program at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He is the editor of African Diasporas in the Old and the New World (2004) and Space in America: Theory, History, Culture (2005) and the author of Romantic Cyborgs: Authorship and Technology in the American Renaissance (2002). With David Nye, Miles Orvell, and Joseph Tabbi, he is also the general editor of Architecture—Technology— Culture (ATC), a Rodopi International Book Series. Science and Technology Megan Benton is Humanities Faculty Fellow at Pacific

Lutheran University. She is the author of Beauty and the Book: Fine Editions and Cultural Distinction in America (2000) and coeditor of Illuminating Letters: Typography and Literary Interpretation (2001). Book Publishing Christian Berkemeier is a fellow with Dalkey Archive Press

at the Center for Book Culture of Illinois State University. Since his dissertation on strategies of parody in Donald Barthelme (2003), his research has been concerned with the aesthetics of travelogues of the nineteenth century (2004). He is also the editor of a collection of essays on Paul Auster (2002) and an essay collection on intermedia in contemporary American fiction (2005). Aestheticism

1232

Lawrence I. Berkove is Professor Emeritus in English at the

A M E R I C A N

John Bird is an Associate Professor of English at Winthrop University and is the editor of the Mark Twain Annual. Iola Leroy; Lyrics of Lowly Life Brian Black teaches history and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona and is the author of PETROLIA: The Landscape of America’s First Oil Boom (2000). Muckrakers and Yellow Journalism James Arthur Bond is an Assistant Professor of English at

California Lutheran University, where he teaches courses in composition and literacy studies, children’s literature, and American literature and culture. A cultural historian of latenineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American periodicals, he has published an essay on the Century Magazine in American Periodicals. He is pursuing a larger project on periodical authorship and cultural imperialism in the “family house” magazines. Century Magazine; Scribner’s Magazine Seth Bovey is Professor of English at Louisiana State University in Alexandria. He has published numerous articles on the literature and culture of the American West. Parks and Wilderness Areas David A. Boxwell is an Associate Professor of English and

film studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado. His article on Stephen Crane’s Orientalism appeared in the fall 1998 issue of ALR: American Literary Realism. Orientalism Anne E. Boyd is Assistant Professor of English and women’s

studies at the University of New Orleans. She is the author of Writing for Immortality: Women and the Emergence of High Literary Culture in America (2004) as well as essays on Constance Fenimore Woolson and women writers of the Atlantic Monthly. Domestic and Sentimental Fiction

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Michael P. Branch is Professor of Literature and Environment and is the Fitzgerald Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of Nevada in Reno. He is a cofounder and past president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and is the book review editor of the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Books he has edited or coedited include John Muir’s Last Journey: South to the Amazon and East to Africa (2001), The ISLE Reader: Ecocriticism, 1993–2003 (2003), and Reading the Roots: American Nature Writing before Walden (2004). My First Summer in the Sierra; Nature Writing Stephen Brandon is Assistant Professor of Native and

American Literatures and Rhetorics, Department of English, University of New Mexico. He specializes in American Indian literature, rhetoric, literacy, and print studies. Ramona June Johnson Bube is a Senior Lecturer at Seattle

University. Her publications on nineteenth-century women’s fiction about the West include “From Sensational Dime Novel to Feminist Western: Adapting Genre, Transforming Gender,” in Change in the American West: Exploring the Human Dimension, edited by Stephen Tchudi (1996); “Prefiguring the New Woman: Frances Fuller Victor’s Refashioning of Women and Marriage in ‘The New Penelope,’” in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (1997); and “Frances Fuller Victor’s Promotion of Strong, Independent Womanhood: Women and Marriage Reconstructed in ‘The New Penelope,’” in Portraits of Women in the American West, edited by Dee Garceau (2005). Writing as June Johnson, she is also the coauthor of two major college rhetoric and composition textbooks, Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings, 6th ed. (2004) and The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing, 4th ed. (2005). Mass Marketing Louis J. Budd is the James B. Duke Professor of English

(Emeritus) at Duke University. He is the author of Mark Twain: Social Philosopher (1962; updated edition, 2001) and Our Mark Twain (1983) and is the editor of Mark Twain: The Contemporary Reviews (1999). Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Humor; The Nation Michael J. Budds, musicologist and member of the faculty of the University of Missouri–Columbia, serves the College Music Society as editor of its series Monographs and Bibliographies of American Music and CMS Sourcebooks in American Music. His published research concerns American music, primarily the history of jazz. Music Martin T. Buinicki is an Assistant Professor of English at

Valparaiso University specializing in nineteenth-century American literature and the history of the book and authorship. He has published articles in American Literary History and American Literary Realism. His book on copyright is forthcoming from Routledge. Copyright Keith E. Byerman, Professor of English and Women’s

Studies at Indiana State University, is also associate editor of African American Review and author of Fingering the Jagged Grain: Tradition and Form in Recent Black Fiction (1985), Seizing the Word: History, Art, and Self in the Works

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

of W. E. B. Du Bois (1994), The Short Fiction of John Edgar Wideman (1998), and Remembering the Past in Contemporary African American Fiction (2005). The Souls of Black Folk; Up from Slavery Licia Morrow Calloway is Assistant Professor of English at the Citadel, specializing in African American literature and cultural studies. She is author of Black Family (Dys)Function in Novels by Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Fannie Hurst (2003). Blacks; Civil Rights Donna M. Campbell is Associate Professor of English at

Washington State University. She is the author of Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885–1915 (1997) and articles on Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and other regionalist authors. Regionalism and Local Color Fiction Emmett H. Carroll teaches American literature at Seattle University, specializing mostly in twentieth-century authors. He has presented papers on such writers as Herman Melville, Katherine Anne Porter, Edith Wharton, Flannery O’Connor, James Welsh, and Don DeLillo. His interest in literature and faith has led to publication in Christianity and Literature and elsewhere. Lynching Sharon Carson is Professor of English, Philosophy, and

Religion at the University of North Dakota. Her publications include “Africana Constellations: African American Studies and Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in Approaches to Teaching Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, edited by Elizabeth Ammons and Susan Belasco (2000); and Discussion and Resource Guide to accompany Race with History: Between Civil War and Civil Rights (2004), a six-episode audio/radio documentary series (racewithistory.org). Reconstruction Leonard Cassuto is Professor of English at Fordham University. He is the author of The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture (1997) and many articles on naturalist writers. He is the coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser. Sister Carrie Suzanne Clark is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Oregon, where she teaches modernist literature, rhetoric, and theory. She is working on a biography of Robert D. Clark, university president during the 1960s, and on a book project called “The Natural History of Modernism.” Anarchism John Clendenning has written “Stephen Crane and His

Biographers: Beer, Berryman, Schoberlin, and Stallman,” American Literary Realism (1995); “Crane and Hemingway: A Possible Biographical Connection,” Stephen Crane Studies (1996); “Visions of War and Versions of Manhood,” War, Literature, and the Arts, special edition, Stephen Crane in War and Peace (1999); and “Prat Falls: A Revisionist Reading of ‘The Clan of No-Name,’” Stephen Crane Studies (2000). The Red Badge of Courage David Cochran is the author of America Noir: Underground

Writers and Filmmakers of the Postwar Era (2000). He teaches history at John A. Logan College in Carterville, Illinois. Populism


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1233


Jennifer Cognard-Black is Assistant Professor of English at

St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she teaches nineteenthcentury transatlantic literature and fiction writing. Her most recent publications include Narrative in the Professional Age: Transatlantic Readings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (2004); “The Wild and Distracted Call for Proof: Harriet Beecher’s Stowe’s Lady Byron Vindicated and the Rise of Professional Realism,” American Literary Realism (2004); and an anthology coedited with Elizabet MacLeod Walls, Kindred Hands: Letters on Writing by Anglo-American Women Authors, 1865–1935 (2005). Food and Drink; Professionalism Ann Mauger Colbert, Journalism Coordinator at Indiana

University Purdue University at Fort Wayne, has written widely about the history of periodicals, particularly the history of women’s editions of newspapers. She has been a journalist and an editor. Editors; Harper’s New Monthly Magazine Michael L. Collins serves as Regents Professor of History at

Midwestern State University. He is coeditor of and contributor to Profiles in Power: Twentieth-Century Texans in Washington (2004) and is editor of and contributor to Tales of Texhoma: Episodes in the History of the Red River Border (2005). The Strenuous Life Joseph L. Coulombe is an Assistant Professor at Rowan

University in Glassboro, New Jersey. He has published articles on Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, and Sherman Alexie. His book Mark Twain and the American West was published in 2003, and he is working on a book about contemporary Native American authors. Annexation and Expansion J. Randolph Cox edits the journal Dime Novel Round-Up

and is a Professor Emeritus at St. Olaf College, where he served as reference and government documents librarian. Among his book publications are Man of Magic and Mystery: A Guide to the Work of Walter B. Gibson (1988) and H. G. Wells: A Reference Guide (1988). Dime Novels Rosemary D. Cox is Professor of English at Georgia

Perimeter College, where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. She also serves as a contributing editor for the Chattahoochee Review. Her most recent publications include “The Old Southwest: Humor, Tall Tales, and the Grotesque,” in A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America (2003), and “The Shape of Truth: Men and Women in Fred Chappell’s More Shapes Than One,” in More Lights Than One: On the Fiction of Fred Chappell (2004). “The Marshes of Glynn” Paul Crumbley is an Associate Professor of English and

American Studies at Utah State University. He is the author of Inflections of the Pen: Dash and Voice in Emily Dickinson (1997) and coeditor with Melody Graulich of Environmental Writing and Education: The Search for a Common Language (2005). He has published essays on Emily Dickinson in Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal (November– December 2002) and on Elizabeth Stoddard in American Culture, Canons, and the Case of Elizabeth Stoddard (2003). Crumbley is completing a book on Dickinson and politics

1234

A M E R I C A N

and is coediting, with Patricia M. Gantt, a collection of essays on the life and work of May Swenson. Lyric Poetry Joseph Csicsila is Associate Professor of English at Eastern

Michigan University. He is the author of numerous essays on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and American literary pedagogy. His book-length study of the teaching of American literature in the academy, Canons by Consensus: Critical Trends and American Literature Anthologies, was published in 2004. American Literature Kirk Curnutt is a Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Troy University, Montgomery, in Montgomery, Alabama. In addition to serving as the managing editor of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Review, he is the author of a forthcoming study of Fitzgerald’s career, A Historical Guide to F. Scott Fitzgerald (2004), and Wise Economies: Brevity and Storytelling in American Short Stories (1997). Short Story; This Side of Paradise Susan Curtis is Professor of History and American Studies

at Purdue University and is Director of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Liberal Arts. In addition to A Consuming Faith (2001), she is the author of Dancing to a Black Man’s Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin (1994) and The First Black Actors on the Great White Way (1998). Christianity and the Social Crisis Martha J. Cutter is an Associate Professor of English at

Kent State University, where she teaches classes in ethnic literature of the United States, women’s literature, and African American literature. In 1999 her book, Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women’s Writing, 1850– 1930, was published, and her second book, Lost and Found in Translation: Contemporary Ethnic American Writing and the Politics of Language Diversity, was published in 2005. She has also published articles on many ethnic American writers in journals such as American Literature, Criticism, African American Review, and MELUS. Mrs. Spring Fragrance Wendy Dasler Johnson is Associate Professor of English at Washington State University. Her essays on nineteenthcentury U.S. women’s poetry, writing, and corsets appear in the Rhetoric Review, South Atlantic Review, and elsewhere. Her book Serious Sentimentalism: A Rhetoric of Antebellum American Women’s Poetry is forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press. Oratory Cynthia J. Davis is an Associate Professor of English at the

University of South Carolina in Columbia. She is the coauthor of Women Writers in the United States: A Timeline of Literary, Cultural, and Social History (1996), the author of Bodily and Narrative Forms: The Influence of Medicine on American Literature, 1845–1915 (2000), and the coeditor of Approaches to Teaching Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Herland” (2003). Her newest book is Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Her Contemporaries: Literary and Intellectual Contexts, coedited with Denise D. Knight (2004). Her current project is a biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Woman’s Journal

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


James Dawes is Associate Professor of English Literature at Macalester College. He is the author of The Language of War (2002) as well as numerous articles on topics including literary and language theory, international law and human rights, literature and medical studies, trauma and recovery, and belief. War Writing Cole P. Dawson has taught American social and cultural his-

tory for over twenty-five years at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon. He is working on a project that relates concepts of hell to political and social behavior. Christianity George Dekker, Professor of English, Emeritus, Stanford

University, has special interests in British and American literature, 1750–1950. He is the author of Sailing after Knowledge: The Cantos of Ezra Pound (1963); James Fenimore Cooper the Novelist (1967); and The Fictions of Romantic Tourism: Radcliffe, Scott, and Mary Shelley (2005). Historical Romance Stacey L. Donohue has been in Bend, Oregon, since 1995

and is the Chair of the Fine Arts Department and a Professor of English at Central Oregon Community College, where she teaches American, Native American, African American, and immigrant literatures as well as composition. Irish Patrick K. Dooley is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy,

St. Bonaventure University. He is the author of Pragmatism as Humanism: The Philosophy of William James (1974); Stephen Crane: An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Scholarship (1992); and The Pluralistic Philosophy of Stephen Crane (1993). He has also written more than seventy articles and book chapters in the general area of philosophy and American culture. Pragmatism Kerry Driscoll is Professor of English at Saint Joseph

College, West Hartford, Connecticut, and author of William Carlos Williams and the Maternal Muse (1987) and a forthcoming study of Mark Twain’s representation of Native Americans. Feminism John Dudley is Assistant Professor of English at the

University of South Dakota. His research includes work on American literary naturalism and issues of race, gender, and aesthetics. He is the author of A Man’s Game: Masculinity and the Anti-Aesthetics of American Literary Naturalism (2004). Boxing Connie Eble teaches English linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Slang and Sociability: In-Group Language among College Students (1996). She was editor of American Speech, the quarterly journal of the American Dialect Society, 1996–2005. American Language Clare Eby, Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, is author of Dreiser and Veblen, Saboteurs of the Status Quo (1998) and numerous articles on Veblen and his contemporaries. She is editor of the Norton critical edition of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (2002) and coeditor of The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser (2004). The Theory of the Leisure Class Grace Toney Edwards is Director of the Appalachian Regional Studies Center and Professor of English and

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Appalachian studies at Radford University in Radford, Virginia. Her publications include “Marilou Awiakta: Poet for the People” in Her Words: Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women’s Poetry (2002) and the foreword to the University of Georgia Press edition of Corra Harris’s A Circuit Rider’s Wife (1998). She is the senior editor of A Handbook to Appalachia: An Introduction to the Region, forthcoming from the University of Tennessee Press. In the Tennessee Mountains Michael Eldridge is Lecturer and Undergraduate Coordinator in the Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is author of Transforming Experience: John Dewey’s Cultural Instrumentalism (1998) and the 35,000-word introduction to the second volume of the Dewey Correspondence, 1919–39 (2001). Philosophy Mary Esteve is Assistant Professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal. Among her publications are “William James’s Onto-Physiology of Limits,” in Genre (1996); “Anerotic Excursions: Memory, Celibacy, and Desire in The American Scene,” in Questioning the Master: Gender and Sexuality in Henry James’s Writings (2000); and The Aesthetics and Politics of the Crowd in American Literature (2003). The American Scene Richard W. Etulain is a Professor Emeritus of History and the former Director of the Center for the American West at the University of New Mexico. He served as president of the Western Literature Association (1978–1979) and the Western History Association (1998–1999). He is the author or editor of more than forty books, including Writing Western History: Essays on Major Western Historians (1991) and Western Lives: A Biographical History of the American West (2004); he coauthored, with Michael P. Malone, The American West: A Twentieth-Century History (1989). Frontier David Fine is Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, Long Beach. His publications include Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction (2000; 2004) and the edited collections of essays Los Angeles in Fiction (1985; 1995) and San Francisco in Fiction: Essays in a Regional Literature (with Paul Skenazy, 1995). San Francisco Roger Forseth is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Wisconsin–Superior and founding editor of Dionysos: The Literature and Addiction Triquarterly. He is also the author of “‘Alcoholite at the Altar’: Sinclair Lewis, Drink, and the Literary Imagination,” Modern Fiction Studies (1985); “Alcohol and the Writer: Some Biographical and Critical Issues (Hemingway),” Contemporary Drug Problems (1986); and “Spirits and Spirituality: Notes on the Art of John Berryman’s Recovery,” in Recovering Berryman: Essays on a Poet, edited by Richard J. Kelly and Alan K. Lathrop (1993). Addiction Jonathan Freedman is a Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Professions of Taste: Henry James, British Aestheticism, and Commodity Culture (1991) and The Temple of Culture: Assimilation, Aggression and the Making of Anglo-American Literary Culture (2001). The Portrait of a Lady


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1235


Kimberly A. Freeman teaches late-nineteenth-century and twentieth-century American literature as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Schenectady County Community College. Her publications include “‘The Moral of My Story’: Alice Kaplan’s French Lessons and the Moralization of Autobiography,” A/B: Auto/Biography Studies (winter 1999); “The ‘Enormous Fact’ of American Life: Divorce in William Dean Howells’s A Modern Instance,” American Literary Realism (2003); and Love American Style: Divorce and the American Novel 1881–1976 (2003). Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce

Len Gougeon is a Professor of American Literature and

Distinguished University Fellow at the University of Scranton. His publications include “Adams in the Garden: Sex, Symbol, and Myth in The Education of Henry Adams,” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology (August 1986); Virtue’s Hero: Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform (1990); “Holmes’ Emerson and the Conservative Critique of Realism,” South Atlantic Review (1994); Emerson’s Antislavery Writings (coedited with Joel Myerson, 1995). Boston and Concord; The Education of Henry Adams

Court

Martin Green is Professor of English and former Chair of the English Department at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New Jersey. He has published essays on medieval and modern literature and media history, including “The American Spectator: A Literary Newspaper and the Cultural Politics of the Early 1930s,” Biblion: The Bulletin of the New York Public Library (1998); and “Icons of the 1920s” in A Century of American Icons: 100 Products and Slogans from the 20th-Century Consumer Culture, edited by Mary Cross (2002). Periodicals

Richard Fusco is Associate Professor of English at Saint

Martin Griffin is the author of “The Road from Memorial

Joseph’s University. He is the author of Fin de millénaire: Poe’s Legacy for the Detective Story (1993); Maupassant and the American Short Story: The Influence of Form at the Turn of the Century (1994); and the introductory essay “Stephen Crane Said to the Universe” for Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (2003). Satire, Burlesque, and Parody

Hall: Future Imperfect in The Bostonians,” published in Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies (2004), and is working on a study of the relationship between public commemoration and private memory in post–Civil War literature. He is currently teaching American literature at Pomona College. New South; World War I

James R. Giles is Professor of English at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of The Naturalistic Inner-City Novel in America (1995) and is the author or editor of numerous other books. He specializes in American literary naturalism, the American urban novel, African American literature, and contemporary American fiction. City

Keith Gumery is an Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the First-Year Writing Program at Temple University in Philadelphia. His published articles include “Old School/New School: Henry Blake Fuller’s Response to Main Street,” American Literary Realism (2002) and “Repression, Inversion, and Modernity: A Freudian Reading of Henry Blake Fuller’s Bertram Cope’s Year,” Journal of Modern Literature (2002). Chicago; Moon-Calf; St. Louis

Joe B. Fulton is Associate Professor of English at Baylor

University and is the author of many journal articles on American literature. He is particularly interested in the interplay of ethics and aesthetics in Mark Twain’s work, an idea he has explored in two books, Mark Twain’s Ethical Realism (1997) and Mark Twain in the Margins: “The Quarry Farm Marginalia” and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” (2000). A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s

Dwellers Leah Blatt Glasser teaches American literature and creative

writing at Mount Holyoke College, where she is also the Dean of first-year studies. She has published essays in Legacy, American Literary Realism, and the Massachusetts Review. Her literary biography In a Closet Hidden: The Life and Work of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1996) explores the importance of place in a nineteenth-century woman writer’s struggle for autonomy. She is currently working on “A Landscape of One’s Own: Nature Writing and Women’s Autobiography (1880s–1920s).” A New England Nun and

World’s Fair; World’s Columbian Exposition Paul Hadella is an independent scholar living in Oregon. Free Love; Sex Education Roger A. Hall is a Professor of Theater at James Madison

University, Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is the author of Writing Your First Play (1998) and Performing the American Frontier, 1870–1906 (2001). He also served as editor of Nate Salsbury’s “Reminiscences” in a special edition of the Journal of American Drama and Theatre (1993).

Other Stories

Theater

Steven Goldleaf is the author of John O’Hara: A Study of

John J. Han is Professor of English and acting Chair of the

the Short Fiction (1999) and coauthor, with David Castronovo, of Richard Yates (1996), both published by Twayne. He is Professor of English at Pace University in New York City. Foreign Visitors; Presidential Elections the University of Missouri–Columbia. His research specializes in sociolinguistics and American dialectology. He is the author of Small-Town Values, Big-City Vowels (2001) and coauthor, with Lesley Milroy, of Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation (2003). Slang, Dialect, and Other Types of

Humanities Division at Missouri Baptist University, where he teaches American, minority, and world literature. He has published journal articles on Flannery O’Connor, Andrew Marvell, John Steinbeck, and Christian issues within higher education and serves as founding editor of Intégrité: A Faith and Learning Journal. He also has published dozens of essays in such reference volumes as Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature, Writers of the American Renaissance, Asian American Autobiographers, Asian American Novelists, and An Encyclopedia of African American Literature. Best-

Marked Language

Sellers; Catholics

Matthew J. Gordon is an Associate Professor of English at

1236

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


William R. Handley is Associate Professor of English at the

University of Southern California. He is the author of Marriage, Violence, and the Nation in the American Literary West (2002) and coeditor, with Nathaniel Lewis, of True West: Authenticity and the American West (2004). Mormons Susan K. Harris is Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Kansas, where she specializes in nineteenthcentury literature, including Mark Twain and the works of American women writers. Her publications include Mark Twain’s Escape from Time: A Study of Patterns and Images (1982); 19th-Century American Women’s Novels: Interpretive Strategies (1990); The Courtship of Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain (1996); and The Work of the Late 19th-Century Hostess: Annie Adams Fields and Mary Gladstone Drew (2002). Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism; New York Kevin J. Hayes, Professor of English at the University of

Central Oklahoma, is the author of numerous works, including A Colonial Woman’s Bookshelf (1996), Melville’s Folk Roots (1999), and An American Cycling Odyssey, 1887 (2002). Bohemians and Vagabondia; Little Magazines and Small Presses; Prostitution; Transportation Richard A. Hocks is Professor Emeritus of English and

Catherine Paine Middlebush Professor of Humanities at the University of Missouri–Columbia. He is the author of three critical books on Henry James, including the National Book Award nominee Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought (1974). He has also written on such major authors as Henry David Thoreau, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Herman Melville, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He presently teaches the interdisciplinary Humanities Sequence in Missouri’s Honors College. The Ambassadors; Billy Budd Phillip Howerton is a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri–Columbia. Tarzan of the Apes James M. Hutchisson is a Professor of American Literature at The Citadel. His most recent book is Poe (2005). Main Street Christoph Irmscher has taught at the University of

Tennessee, the University of Bonn, and Harvard University. He is currently Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He is the author of The Poetics of Natural History (1999) and of Longfellow Redux (2005) and has edited John James Audubon’s Writings and Drawings for the Library of America. Popular Poetry Lori Jirousek is an Assistant Professor of English at the New York Institute of Technology, Manhattan. She has published articles in American Literary Realism, MELUS, and African American Review and is working on a book about immigrant writers and ethnography. Assimilation; Immigration Steven H. Jobe is a Professor of English at Hanover College

in Hanover, Indiana. His scholarly work has focused primarily on Henry James and includes the online Calendar of the Letters of Henry James (http://jamescalendar.unl.edu) and, with coeditor Susan Gunter, “Dearly Beloved Friends”: Henry James’s Letters to Younger Men (2001). Literary Marketplace

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Johanningsmeier teaches in the English Department at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He is the author of Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates in America, 1860–1900 (1997); “Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman): Two Shrewd Businesswomen in Search of New Markets,” New England Quarterly (1997); “The Industrialization and Nationalization of American Periodical Publishing” in Perspectives on American Book History: Artifacts and Commentary (2002); “Subverting Readers’ Assumptions and Expectations: Jewett’s ‘Tame Indians,’” American Literary Realism (2002); and “Unmasking Willa Cather’s ‘Mortal Enemy,’” Cather Studies (2003). McClure’s Magazine;

Charles

Newspaper Syndicates S. T. Joshi is a freelance writer and editor. Among his critical and biographical studies are The Weird Tale (1990), H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996), The Modern Weird Tale (2001), and God’s Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003). He is editor of Atheism: A Reader (2000) and has prepared annotated editions of the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and other writers. Agnosticism and Atheism; Ghost Stories Joanne B. Karpinski is Associate Professor of English at

Regis University in Denver, Colorado. She is the author of numerous articles for academic journals and is the editor of Critical Essays on Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1992). Women’s Suffrage Holger Kersten is Professor of American Literature and

Culture at the University of Magdeburg in Germany. He has presented papers and published articles on Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Jack London, the Lewis and Clark expedition, and humor in American literature. His research interests include the use of nonstandard language in literature, national images, and nature writing. His publications include Von Hannibal nach Heidelberg: Mark Twain und die Deutschen (From Hannibal to Heidelberg: Mark Twain and the Germans, 1993); “The Creative Potential of Dialect Writing in Later 19th Century America,” in Nineteenth Century Literature (2000); and “The Early German Reception of American Humor” in Amerikanische Populärkultur in Deutschland: Case Studies in Cultural Transfer Past and Present, edited by Heike Paul and Katja Kanzler (2002). Tramps and Hobos Helen Killoran is an Associate Professor of English at Ohio

University Lancaster and the author of Edith Wharton: Art and Allusion, The Critical Reception of Edith Wharton (1996) and articles on Edith Wharton and Henry James. The Four Million; North of Boston Denise D. Knight is Professor of English at the State

University of New York at Cortland, where she specializes in nineteenth-century American literature. She is the author of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Study of the Short Fiction (1997) and editor of the two-volume edition of The Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1994) as well as volumes of Gilman’s poems and fiction. “The Yellow Wall-Paper” Carol A. Kolmerten is Professor of English at Hood

College. She is the author of Women in Utopia: The Ideology


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1237


of Gender in the American Owenite Communities (1990, 1998) and The American Life of Ernestine Rose (1999) and coeditor of a collection of essays on Faulkner and Morrison and of the collection of essays Utopian and Science Fiction by Women (1994). She also has written the introduction to the republished Unveiling a Parallel (1991). Utopias and Dystopias Konkle, Associate Professor of English, University of Missouri–Columbia, is the author of Writing Indian Nations: Native Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827–1863 (2004). Indians; Indian Wars

Maureen

Horst Kruse is Professor Emeritus of English and American

Literature, former head of American Studies, University of Münster, Germany. Author of Mark Twain and “Life on the Mississippi” (1981), editor of Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, and author of numerous scholarly books and articles on Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other American writers. Americans Abroad Kris Lackey is Professor of English at the University of New

Orleans. His nonfiction book RoadFrames: The American Highway Narrative (1997) was published by the University of Nebraska Press. He has published fiction and scholarly articles in a number of journals. New Orleans Maurice S. Lee, an Assistant Professor in the English

department at the University of Missouri–Columbia, specializes in nineteenth-century American literature, particularly writings about slavery and race. Recent publications include “Writing through the War: The Civil War Poetry of Melville and Dickinson after the Renaissance” (PMLA) and “Absolute Poe: His System of Transcendental Racism” (American Literature). His first book is Slavery, Philosophy, and American Literature, 1830–1860 (2005). Civil War Memoirs; Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant James S. Leonard is a Professor and head of the English

Department at The Citadel. He is coauthor of The Fluent Mundo: Wallace Stevens and the Structure of Reality (1988), editor of Making Mark Twain Work in the Classroom (1999), and coeditor of Satire or Evasion? Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn (1992). Ku Klux Klan; Realism David W. Levy is Irene and Julian J. Rothbaum Professor of

Modern American History at the University of Oklahoma. He is author of Herbert Croly of the New Republic: The Life and Thought of an American Progressive (1985) and The Debate over Vietnam (1991, 1995) and coeditor of The Letters of Louis D. Brandeis, 5 vols. (1972–1978). The Promise of American Life Bruce Levy is Lecturer in Humanities and the Director of the Center for Inter-Community Experience at Southern Methodist University. He has published articles on latenineteenth-century American fiction in American Literary Realism and the Journal of American Studies. He is finishing a manuscript on midwestern regionalism and the origins of American modernism. Reform

University of New Orleans. She holds a degree in British and American Modernism and Performance Studies. In addition, she is a professionally trained classical ballet dancer who also specializes in ballroom dance. Her work is interdisciplinary in nature with a focus on dance in literature. Her essay, “Hester Santlow’s Harlequine: Dance, Dress, Status, and Gender on the London Stage, 1706–1734,” published in The Clothes That Wear Us: Essays on Dressing and Transgressing in Eighteenth-Century Culture (1999), discusses the commedia dell’arte tradition in London in the eighteenth century. Dance Christopher Looby is Professor of English at the University

of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States (1996), and he edited The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2000). Same-Sex Love Jean Marie Lutes, Assistant Professor of English at

Villanova University, is completing a book titled Stunt Reporters and Sob Sisters: Journalism, Gender, and Fiction in America. She recently published articles on late-nineteenthand early-twentieth-century women’s journalism in American Literary History and American Quarterly. Journalism Robert Lee Lynch Jr. is Assistant Professor of English at

Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. He earned his doctorate from Indiana University–Bloomington in American literature and composition. He is currently at work on a study of impressionism in Willa Cather’s fiction. Impressionism Sonja Froiland Lynch is Assistant Professor of English and

Coordinator of Writing across the Curriculum at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. She earned her doctorate from Indiana University–Bloomington in American literature. Her doctoral dissertation examines American literary impressionism in the works of several major American authors. She is currently at work on a study of impressionism in Willa Cather’s fiction. Impressionism Joseph B. McCullough is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is author of Hamlin Garland (1978) and coeditor of The Bible according to Mark Twain (1996), Selected Letters of Hamlin Garland (1998), and Mark Twain at the Buffalo Express (1999). Main-Travelled Roads Joseph R. McElrath Jr. is the William Hudson Rogers

Professor of English at Florida State University, author of Frank Norris: A Descriptive Bibliography (1992), and coeditor of The Apprenticeship Writings of Frank Norris, 1896–1898 (1996). McTeague Sanford E. Marovitz is Professor Emeritus of English at

Elizabeth Miller Lewis earned her Ph.D. from Tulane

Kent State University, author of Abraham Cahan (1996), coauthor, with Clarence Gohdes, of Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Literature of the U.S.A., 5th ed. (1984), and coeditor, with A. K. Christodoulou, of Melville “Among the Nations”: Proceedings of an International Conference, Volos, Greece, July 2–6, 1997 (2001). Jews; The Rise of David

University and is a retained instructor in English at the

Levinsky

1238

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Antonio C. Márquez is a Professor of English at the

University of New Mexico; his fields of specialization are American literature and literature history. He is a contributor to American Literary Scholarship (Duke University Press). A Fulbright scholar/lecturer three times, Marquez has published dozens of articles on American and U.S. Latino literature in American, European, and Latin American journals and anthologies, including his latest, “The Poetics of Chaos: American Abstract Expressionism and American Poetry.” Mexican Revolution

Roark Mulligan is an Associate Professor at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, where he teaches literature and writing. Besides publishing articles on composition and pedagogical topics, he has written articles on Theodore Dreiser that have appeared in American Literary Realism, English Language Notes, and Dreiser Studies. Banking and Finance Brenda Murphy is Board of Trustees Distinguished

Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. Among her books are Congressional Theatre: Dramatizing McCarthyism on Stage, Film, and Television (1999), O’Neill: Long Day’s Journey into Night (2001), and The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity (2006). The Emperor

Timothy Materer is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Missouri. He is the author of Vortex: Pound, Eliot, and Lewis (1979), Modernist Alchemy (1995), and James Merrill’s Apocalypse (2000). Imagism;

Jones

Poetry: A Magazine of Verse

John J. Murphy, Professor of American Literature at

Virgil Mathes is completing his dissertation at the University of New Mexico. Aging and Death; Weaponry

Brigham Young University, is the author of My Ántonia: The Road Home (1989) and over sixty articles on Willa Cather and other American writers. He has edited four essay collections on Cather and one on O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor and the Christian Mystery (1997). From 1981 to 1987 he contributed the bibliographical article “Fiction from 1900 to the 1930s” to American Literary Scholarship. He is the volume editor of the Nebraska University Press Cather Scholarly Editions of Death Comes for the Archbishop (1999) and Shadows on the Rock (2005). From 1994 to 2004 he edited the scholarly journal Literature and Belief. The Bible

Carolyn L. Mathews is an Associate Professor in the

Department of English at Radford University in Radford, Virginia. Her publications include “The Fishwife in James’s Historical Stream: Henrietta Stackpole Gets the Last Word,” American Literary Realism (2001), and “Fabricating the Hybrid Female Self in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening,” Mosaic (2002). Resorts; Self-Help Manuals Pamela R. Matthews is an Associate Professor of English at

Texas A&M University. She is the author of Ellen Glasgow and a Woman’s Traditions (1994) and the editor of Perfect Companionship: Ellen Glasgow’s Selected Correspondence with Women (2005). The Voice of the People Jeffrey Melton is Associate Professor of English at Auburn

University, Montgomery, and author of “Keeping the Faith in Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad,” South Atlantic Review (1999); “Touring Decay: Nineteenth-Century American Travel Writers in Europe,” Papers on Language and Literature (1999); and Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism: The Tide of a Great Popular Movement (2002). Tourism and Travel Writing Peter Messent is a Professor of modern American literature

at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of New Readings of the American Novel: Narrative Theory and Its Application (1990), Ernest Hemingway (1992), Mark Twain (1997), and The Short Works of Mark Twain: A Critical Study (2001). He also edited Criminal Proceedings: The Contemporary American Crime Novel (1997). He has published in many other areas of American literature and is working on a study of Mark Twain and male friendship. Literary Friendships Nancy Morrow is a Lecturer at the University of California,

Carol Nackenoff is Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, where she teaches American politics, constitutional law, environmental politics, and political theory. She is the author of The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse (1994) and has written about political and attitudinal consequences of changes in the U.S. job structure. She is coediting a book on new directions in Jane Addams scholarship and writing a manuscript on the contested meaning of citizenship in the Progressive Era. Success William Nelles is Professor of English and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. His publications include “Myth and Symbol in Madame Bovary,” in Approaches to Teaching Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary,” edited by Laurence M. Porter and Eugene F. Gray (1995); Frameworks: Narrative Levels and Embedded Narrative (1997); and “Edna Pontellier’s Revolt against Nature,” American Literary Realism (1999). The Awakening K. Patrick Ober is Professor of Internal Medicine

(Endocrinology and Metabolism) and Associate Dean for Education at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His publications include “Uncle Remus and the Cascade Effect in Clinical Medicine: Brer Rabbit Kicks the Tar-Baby,” American Journal of Medicine (1987); “The Pre-Flexnerian Reports: Mark Twain’s Criticism of Medicine in the United States,” Annals of Internal Medicine (1997); and Mark Twain and Medicine: “Any Mummery Will Cure” (2003). Diseases and Epidemics

Davis. She is the author of Dreadful Games: The Play of Desire in the Nineteenth Century Novel, a study of Henry James in the context of European realism (1988). She has published articles on Edith Wharton, Mary Austin, Willa Cather, and other American women authors. Her interests also include rhetoric and composition and cultural studies, specifically the way art is portrayed in literature. Appeal to

Fritz Oehlschlaeger is Professor of English at Virginia

Reason; Arts and Crafts; Capital Punishment; Disasters

Tech. His most recent publication is Love and Good Reasons:

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1239


Postliberal Approaches to Christian Ethics and Literature (2003). The Damnation of Theron Ware Oggel is Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. He has written books and essays in bibliography and textual studies as well as in nineteenth-century American literature and theater, including “Speaking Out about Race: ‘The United States of Lyncherdom’ Clemens Really Wrote,” Prospects (2000) and “In His Own Time: The Early Academic Reception of Mark Twain,” Mark Twain Annual (2003).

Terry

literature and nineteenth-century commercial culture have appeared in such journals as American Literary Realism, American Periodicals, Utopian Studies, and Resources for American Literary Studies. Harper & Brothers; A Hazard of New Fortunes Diane Dufva Quantic is an Associate Professor of English at Wichita State University and the author of The Nature of the Place: A Study of Great Plains Fiction (1995) and the editor of A Great Plains Reader (2003). She is past president of the Western Literature Association. Farmers and Ranchers

Philippine-American War; Spanish-American War; Violence

Tom Quirk is a Professor of English at the University of

Michael Oriard is Distinguished Professor of American

Missouri–Columbia. He is the author of five scholarly books on American literature and editor or coeditor of a dozen other volumes. His most recent publications include Nothing Abstract: Investigations in the American Literary Imagination (2001) and The Portable Mark Twain (2004).

Literature and Culture and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State University. He has written five books on American sports and sport literature. Sports William Pannapacker is Assistant Professor of English and

Towsley Research Scholar at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He is the author of Revised Lives: Walt Whitman and Nineteenth-Century Authorship (2004) and numerous articles on American literature and culture. Autobiography; Biography Timothy Parrish is an Associate Professor of English at Texas Christian University. He is the author of Walking Blues: Making Americans from Emerson to Elvis (2001) and numerous articles on American literature and culture. Martha D. Patton is Assistant Adjunct Professor of English

at the University of Missouri. Although her administrative work and research focus is on writing in the disciplines, particularly in the sciences, she offers writing-intensive literature courses and frequently teaches in the Honors College Humanities sequence. Pseudoscience; Spiritualism Tara Penry is an Associate Professor of English at Boise State

University, where she teaches nineteenth-century American literature and literature of the American West. Her essays on Bret Harte, western American literature, and American sentimentalism have appeared in American Literary Realism, Western American Literature, and elsewhere. She edits the Boise State University Western Writers series. Overland Monthly Priscilla Perkins is Associate Professor of English, School of Liberal Studies, Roosevelt University. Psychology Sanford Pinsker is an Emeritus Professor at Franklin and Marshall College. He resides in South Florida, where he continues to write about American literature on cloudy days. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Donald Pizer is Pierce Butler Professor of English Emeritus at Tulane University, New Orleans. He is the author of numerous studies of late nineteenth-century American literature, including The Novels of Theodore Dreiser: A Critical Study (1976) and The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism: Selected Essays and Reviews (1993). Naturalism Gib Prettyman is an Associate Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University at Fayetteville. His articles on

A M E R I C A N

Richard S. Randolph completed his dissertation, “Marginalized Thoreau: A Sociological Study of Henry David Thoreau’s Sympathy with the Economic and Ethnic Underclass,” in 1996 at the University of New Mexico. His article “‘I Am of French Extract’: Thoreau’s Sympathy with the French” was published in the Concord Saunterer (1998). He teaches English at Kauai Community College. Literary Colonies Deirdre Ray teaches in the Department of Communications

Haymarket Square; The Promised Land

1240

The Man against the Sky; Scientific Materialism

and Modern Languages at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. Her published works include Sex Theories and the Shaping of Two Moderns: Hemingway and H.D. (2002). Darwinism; Social Darwinism Paul Reddin is a Professor of History at Mesa State College,

Grand Junction, Colorado, and author of Wild West Shows (1999). Wild West Shows Jeanne Campbell Reesman is Ashbel Smith Professor of

English at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has published numerous books on Jack London and other American writers, including American Designs: The Late Novels of James and Faulkner (1991); Jack London, rev. ed. (with Earle Labor, 1994); Rereading Jack London (with Leonard Cassuto, 1996); Speaking the Other Self: American Women Writers (1997); Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction (1999); No Mentor but Myself: Jack London on Writers and Writing (with Dale Walker, 1999); Trickster Lives: Myth in American Culture and Literature (2000); and Jack London: One Hundred Years a Writer (with Sara S. Hodson, 2002). Reesman serves as executive coordinator of the international Jack London Society. The Sea-Wolf Andrew Rennick is a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. His publications include articles in Nineteenth Century Prose and American Literary Realism. Labor Chad Rohman, Associate Professor of English at Dominican

University, is a specialist in nineteenth-century American studies. He has presented and published articles on various authors, including Mark Twain, and American regional women authors, such as Mary Austin. A regular facilitator

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


for the Illinois Humanities Council, he is working on a book-length manuscript about Twain’s later-life works. Poverty Debra J. Rosenthal, Associate Professor of English at John

Carroll University, is the author of Race Mixture in Nineteenth-Century U.S. and Spanish American Fictions: Gender, Culture, and Nation Building (2004). She is also the editor of A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (2004). With Monika Kaup she edited Mixing Race, Mixing Culture: InterAmerican Literary Dialogues (2002) and she was coeditor, with David S. Reynolds, of The Serpent in the Cup: Temperance in American Literature (1997). Temperance Cristina L. Ruotolo is an Associate Professor of Humanities

at San Francisco State University. She has published articles on music and American fiction in American Literary Realism and American Literature. The Autobiography of

She is the author of Sarah Orne Jewett, an American Persephone (1989) and the editor of the centennial edition of The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories (1997), for which she also wrote the introduction. She is chief series editor for Becoming Modern: New Nineteenth-Century Studies, a publishing series sponsored by the University of New Hampshire Press. The Country of the Pointed Firs Carol J. Singley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers

University-Camden, where she codirects American Studies and is a fellow in the Center for Childhood Studies. She is the author of Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit (1995) and editor of three books on Wharton, including “The House of Mirth”: A Casebook (2003). She has coedited three other volumes on Calvinism, feminist theory, and the American child. She is completing a book about adoption narratives in American literature and culture. The House of Mirth

an Ex-Colored Man

Joseph W. Slade is Professor of Telecommunications and

Robert W. Rydell teaches at Montana State University,

Codirector of the Central Region Humanities Center at Ohio University in Athens. He is the coeditor of Beyond the Two Cultures: Essays on Science, Technology and Literature (1990) and The Midwest, a volume in the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures series (2004), and author of Thomas Pynchon (1974; 1990), Pornography in America (2000), and Pornography and Sexual Representation, 3 vols. (2001), as well as several dozen articles on literature, technology, film, and culture. Pornography

Bozeman, and is the author of many books and essays on the history of world’s fairs, including All the World’s a Fair (1984) and World of Fairs (1993), both published by the University of Chicago Press. Centennial John Samson is Associate Professor of English at Texas

Tech University and the author of White Lies: Melville’s Narratives of Facts (1989). A former editor of The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, he wrote the “Melville” chapter of American Literary Scholarship. Socialism; Wealth Gary Scharnhorst is Professor of English at the University

of New Mexico, author or editor of over thirty books, editor of American Literary Realism, and editor in alternating years of the research annual American Literary Scholarship. Education; Lectures; “Plain Language from Truthful James”; The Western William J. Scheick is the J. R. Millikan Centennial Professor

at the University of Texas at Austin. His books include The Half-Blood: A Cultural Symbol in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (1979), Fictional Structure and Ethics: The Turn-of-the-Century English Novel (1990), and The Ethos of Romance at the Turn of the Century (1994). The Land of Little Rain Ellery Sedgwick is Professor Emeritus of English at

Longwood University and author of A History of the “Atlantic Monthly,” 1857–1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb (1994). The Atlantic Monthly; Houghton Mifflin Timothy S. Sedore is Associate Professor of English at the City University of New York, Bronx Community College. He did his doctoral work at Columbia University. His forthcoming book is titled “‘We Trace No Semblance of Dishonor’: Virginia Civil War Epitaphs and Elegies—An Analysis, Commentary, and Reference Guide.” Civil War Memorials and Monuments Sarah Way Sherman is an Associate Professor of English

and American Studies at the University of New Hampshire.

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

William L. Slout is Professor Emeritus of Theatre Arts, California State University, San Bernardino, and past editor of Clipper Studies in the Theatre for the Borgo Press. His publications include Theatre in a Tent: The Development of a Provincial Entertainment (1972), Olympians of the Sawdust Circle, A Biographical Dictionary of the Nineteenth Century American Circus (1998), and A Royal Coupling: The Historic Marriage of Barnum and Bailey (2000). Circuses Michael Smedshammer is an English instructor at

Modesto Junior College in California, where he teaches composition and American, British, and world literature survey courses. He earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of New Mexico (1998), and his dissertation emphasizes the modern period in the American Southwest. He published a review of Susan Rosowsky’s book Birthing a Nation: Gender, Creativity, and the West in American Literature in American Literary Realism (2001). Clubs and Salons Andrew Smith is Assistant Professor of English and Chair

of the American Studies program at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. He has written on the American Indian novel and on film, and his current research interests include the intersections of visual and verbal culture in nineteenth-century America. He is co-director of the documentary film Towers of Shadow and Light. Photography Stephanie A. Smith earned her Ph.D. at the University of

California, Berkeley, and is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida. Prior to earning her degree, she freelanced, worked as an editor for Western Imprints, and worked as an assistant at Glamour and Mademoiselle magazines,


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1241


at David Godine in Boston, and at Representations. She is the author of Snow-Eyes (1985), The-Boy-Who-Was-ThrownAway (1987), and Other Nature (1995), and has won fiction residencies at Hedgebrook and Norcroft. Examining the intersection of science, literature, politics, race, and gender, her essays appear in differences, Criticism, Genders, and American Literature. A 1998 Visiting National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles, she is the author of Conceived by Liberty: Maternal Figures and 19th-Century American Literature (1995). Her book “Household Word” will be published by Minnesota University Press in the fall of 2005. Fashion Paul Sorrentino is Professor of English at Virginia Tech,

founder of the Stephen Crane Society, and editor of the journal Stephen Crane Studies. Maggie, A Girl of the Streets Tim Sougstad is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at

Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. His current research interests include social criticism in literature from 1900 to 1920. Anti-Intellectualism; The Jungle J. D. Stahl is Associate Professor of English at Virginia Tech. He is the author of Mark Twain, Culture, and Gender (1994) and many articles on children’s literature in leading journals. He has served as president of the Children’s Literature Association and has studied and done research in German children’s literature at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. Children’s Literature Janis P. Stout is a Professor Emerita at Texas A&M University, where she also served as Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost. Her books include Through the Window, Out the Door: Women’s Narratives of Departure, from Austin and Cather to Tyler, Morrison, and Didion (1998); Willa Cather: The Writer and Her World (2000); and Coming Out of War: Poetry, Grieving, and the Culture of the World Wars (2005). My Ántonia John N. Swift is Professor of English and Comparative

Literary Studies at Occidental College. His recent publications include “Willa Cather and American Plant Ecology,” with Cheryl C. Swift, in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment (2001); “Jack London’s ‘The Unparalleled Invasion’: Germ Warfare, Eugenics, and Cultural Hygiene,” American Literary Realism (2002); and Willa Cather and the American Southwest, coedited with Joseph R. Urgo (2002). Anglo-Saxonism; Jurisprudence; Lochner v. New York

Gary Topping is a Professor of History at Salt Lake Community College and the archivist for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City. He is the author of Glen Canyon and the San Juan Country (1997) and Utah Historians and the Reconstruction of Western History (2003) among other books and articles. Frontier Caren J. Town is Professor of English, Georgia Southern

University, and the author of The New Southern Girl (1994), a book on female adolescence in contemporary southern literature. Her other publications include “Constructing Masculinity in Hike and the Aeroplane,” Midwestern Miscellany; “‘Uncommunicable Forever:’ Nick’s Dilemma in The Great Gatsby,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature (1989); “Voicing the Tragedy: Narrative Conflict in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy,” Dreiser Studies (1995); and “‘A Scarlet Tanager on an Ice-Floe’: Men, Women, and History on Main Street,” in Sinclair Lewis: New Essays in Criticism, edited by James H. Hutchisson (1997). Adolescence; Battle of the Little Bighorn Jennifer S. Tuttle is the Dorothy M. Healy Chair in Literature and Health and Assistant Professor of English at the University of New England in Maine, where she also serves as the faculty director of the Maine Women Writers Collection. Her recent work includes articles on Owen Wister, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and María Amparo Ruiz de Burton. She has produced a scholarly edition of Gilman’s 1911 novel The Crux and has published in Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers and Popular Culture Review. Health and Medicine; Women and Economics Aaron Urbanczyk is Assistant Professor of Literature at

Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida. He has scholarly interests in American literature, literary criticism and theory, and world literature and is the author of “‘In me, many worthies recline, and converse’: The Function of Melville’s References to Philosophers,” Essays in Arts and Sciences (2005); and “Melville’s Debt to Milton: Inverted Satanic Morphology and Rhetoric in The Confidence-Man,” Papers on Language and Literature (2003). Literary Criticism

Ferenc M. Szasz is Regent’s Professor of History at the

University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he specializes in American social and intellectual history. History Matthew Teorey teaches American literature and composi-

tion at the University of New Mexico, and he has published “‘I Write Very Deliberately Indeed’: Four Uncollected Interviews with W. D. Howells,” American Literary Review (2005). Genteel Tradition; Law Enforcement; Political Parties Brook Thomas is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the

University of California, Irvine. He works on intersections between law and literature in U.S. culture. He is author of

1242

Cross Examinations of Law and Literature: Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, and Melville (1987) and American Literary Realism and the Failed Promise of Contract (1997) and is editor of Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents (1997). Plessy v. Ferguson

A M E R I C A N

Melvin I. Urofsky is Professor of Law and Public Policy in the Center for Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is coeditor of The Brandeis Letters, and his most recent publication is Money & Free Speech: Campaign Finance Reform and the Courts (2005). Other People’s Money Kenneth W. Warren is the William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literature (1993) and So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism (2003). Race Novels

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Rick Waters teaches Native American literature, world reli-

gions, and core humanities courses at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada. American Indian Stories; Wounded Knee Jan Whitt is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Author of numerous articles in popular culture, media studies, literary journalism, and American literature, Whitt is completing a book on the history of women in journalism. Her book Allegory and the Modern Southern Novel was published by Mercer Press in 1993. Pragmatism; Winesburg, Ohio Jeffrey R. Williams is an Assistant Professor of English at

the University of Missouri–Columbia. He is completing an intellectual biography on the life of Benjamin Griffith Brawley (1882–1939), a forgotten figure of the Harlem Renaissance era. Brawley’s varied achievments as scholar, teacher, literary critic, and historian reflected the Victorian values of “racial uplift.” Racial Uplift Nicolas S. Witschi is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Michigan University, where he teaches American literature, culture studies, and film. He is the author of articles on topics such as California regionalism; the writers Sinclair Lewis and Mary Austin; teaching Henry James; and the book Traces of Gold: California’s Natural Resources and the Claim to Realism in Western American Literature (2002), which investigates the historical and cultural contributions of genre forms in the development of both the American West and ideas about literary realism. He is working on a much-needed recovery of the life and letters of Alonzo Delano, the California gold rush chronicler and satirist also known as “Old Block.” Resource Management

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Henry B. Wonham is a Professor of English at the University of Oregon. In addition to his most recent book, Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism (2004), he is the author of Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale (1993) and Charles Chesnutt: A Study of the Short Fiction (1998). He is also the coeditor, with Christof Wegelin, of Tales of Henry James (2002). The Conjure Woman; Illustrations and Cartoons Mark Woodhouse is the Head of Technical Services and Archivist at the Gannett-Tripp Library, Elmira College. He also manages the Mark Twain Archive in the Gannett-Tripp Library. His most recent publication is a paper entitled “Elusive Ghosts in Smug Machines: Librarianship and the Changing Nature of Knowledge.” Libraries Arthur Wrobel, Professor Emeritus of English at the

University of Kentucky, has written on Walt Whitman and nineteenth-century American culture, edited Pseudo-Science and Society in Nineteenth-Century America (1987), and edited ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews over a span of twenty-seven years. “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism” Joseph J. Wydeven is Professor of Humanities at Bellevue University. He is the author of Wright Morris Revisited (1998). Art and Architecture Paul Young is Director of the Film Studies program at

Vanderbilt University. He is the author of The Cinema Dreams Its Rivals: New Media and Hollywood’s Public Spheres (2005) and an article on telegraphy in early American films in the collection New Media 1740–1915, edited by Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey B. Pingree (2003). The Birth of a Nation; Motion Pictures


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1243

Thematic Outline The thematic outline provides a general overview of the conceptual scheme of the encyclopedia, listing the titles of each entry. Published works, no matter how rich or expansive, appear under only one other entry. The outline is divided into twelve parts: Genres; Historical Contexts and Events; Language, the Arts, and Entertainment; Philosophical and Aesthetic Concepts; Places; Politics and Society; Publishing; Race and Ethnicity; Religious Beliefs; Science and Technology; Sexuality and Gender; and Social Values.

GENRES Autobiography The Education of Henry Adams Business and Industry Novels Biography Children’s Literature Civil War Memoirs Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant Dime Novels Domestic and Sentimental Fiction A New England Nun and Other Stories Folklore and Oral Traditions Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings Ghost Stories Historical Romance History Humor Journalism Lyric Poetry Lyrics of Lowly Life “The Marshes of Glynn” North of Boston Muckrakers and Yellow Journalism The Jungle Mystery and Detective Fiction

Nature Writing My First Summer in the Sierra Popular Poetry Pornography Regionalism and Local Color Fiction The Country of the Pointed Firs In the Tennessee Mountains Satire, Burlesque, and Parody Science Fiction Short Story The Four Million Tourism and Travel Writing The American Scene The Western War Writing The Red Badge of Courage Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

HISTORICAL CONTEXTS AND EVENTS Annexation and Expansion Battle of the Little Bighorn Centennial

1245

T H E M AT I C O U T L I N E

Imagism Impressionism Naturalism Sister Carrie The Sea-Wolf Orientalism Philosophy Pragmatism Pragmatism Realism Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Scientific Materialism The Man against the Sky Social Darwinism The Theory of the Leisure Class

Disasters Foreign Visitors Haymarket Square Immigration My Ántonia Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism Indian Wars Mexican Revolution The Squatter and the Don Migration Philippine-American War Reconstruction The Voice of the People St. Louis World’s Fair Spanish-American War World’s Columbian Exposition World War I Wounded Knee

PLACES

LANGUAGE, THE ARTS, AND ENTERTAINMENT American Literature Art and Architecture Arts and Crafts Boxing Circuses Civil War Memorials and Monuments Clubs and Salons Dance Fashion Food and Drink Illustrations and Cartoons Lectures Libraries Literary Colonies Literary Criticism Literary Friendships Motion Pictures Museums Music Oratory Photography Slang, Dialect, and Other Types of Marked Language The American Language Sports Theater Wild West Shows

PHILOSOPHICAL AND AESTHETIC CONCEPTS Aestheticism Anti-Intellectualism Bohemians and Vagabondia Genteel Tradition

1246

A M E R I C A N

Boston and Concord Chicago Moon-Calf City Dwellers Frontier New Orleans The Awakening New South New York A Hazard of New Fortunes Parks and Wilderness Areas Resorts The House of Mirth San Francisco McTeague Village Dwellers Main Street Winesburg, Ohio

POLITICS AND SOCIETY Americans Abroad The Ambassadors Daisy Miller The Portrait of a Lady Anarchism Banking and Finance Other People’s Money Capital Punishment Civil Rights Education Farmers and Ranchers Main-Travelled Roads Labor Lochner v. New York Law Enforcement Jurisprudence Billy Budd Mass Marketing

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0


Miscegenation Race Novels The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man Iola Leroy The Marrow of Tradition Racial Uplift The Souls of Black Folk Up from Slavery

Penitentiaries and Prisons Political Parties Populism Presidential Elections Professionalism Reform The Promise of American Life Socialism Appeal to Reason Women’s Suffrage

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS PUBLISHING Best-Sellers Book Publishing Copyright Harper’s New Monthly Magazine Editors Harper & Brothers Houghton Mifflin Little Magazines and Small Presses Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Literary Marketplace Newspaper Syndicates Periodicals The Atlantic Monthly Century Magazine McClure’s Magazine The Nation Overland Monthly Scribner’s Magazine

RACE AND ETHNICITY Anglo-Saxonism Tarzan of the Apes Assimilation Blacks The Conjure Woman The Emperor Jones Chinese Mrs. Spring Fragrance “Plain Language from Truthful James” Ethnology Jim Crow Plessy v. Ferguson Ku Klux Klan The Birth of a Nation Lynching Indians American Indian Stories Ramona Irish Jews The Promised Land The Rise of David Levinsky

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Agnosticism and Atheism “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” The Bible Christianity Christianity and the Social Crisis The Damnation of Theron Ware Catholics Christian Science Mormons Spiritualism

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Darwinism Diseases and Epidemics Health and Medicine Pseudoscience Psychology “The Yellow Wall-Paper” Resource Management The Land of Little Rain Science and Technology Transportation Weaponry

SEXUALITY AND GENDER Cross-Dressing Free Love Prostitution Maggie, A Girl of the Streets Same-Sex Love Sex Education “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism”

SOCIAL VALUES Addiction Adolescence This Side of Paradise Aging and Death


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1247


Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce Feminism Woman’s Journal Women and Economics Poverty Success Self-Help Manuals The Strenuous Life

1248

Tramps and Hobos Temperance Utopias and Dystopias A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Violence Wealth

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

List of Entries to Companion Set In addition to American History through Literature, 1870–1920, Charles Scribner’s Sons and Thomson Gale are pleased to offer a companion set, American History through Literature, 1820–1870 (edited by Janet GablerHover and Robert Sattelmeyer). A list of entries included in the companion set follows.

Abolitionist Writing Agrarianism “Ain’t I a Woman?” Amateurism and Self-Publishing American English Americans Abroad “The American Scholar” An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans Architecture Art The Atlantic Monthly Autobiography The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table Bachelors and Spinsters Baltimore Banking, Finance, Panics, and Depressions Baptists “Bartleby, the Scrivener” Battle-Pieces “Benito Cereno” The Bible “The Big Bear of Arkansas” Biography “The Birth-mark” Blacks Blake The Blithedale Romance The Bondwoman’s Narrative

Book and Periodical Illustration Book Publishing Borders Boston California Gold Rush Calvinism Canada Captivity Narratives Catholics “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” Charleston Cherokee Memorials Childhood Children’s and Adolescent Literature Chinese Cincinnati Circuses and Spectacles Civil War Classical Literature Clotel Colleges Compromise of 1850 and Fugitive Slave Law Concord, Massachusetts The Confessions of Nat Turner The Confidence-Man Confidence Men Courtship Crime and Punishment Cross-Dressing

1249

L I S T O F E N T R I E S T O C O M PA N I O N S E T

“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” Curricula “The Custom-House” Death Declaration of Sentiments Democracy Democracy in America The Dial Dialect Dime Novels Domestic Fiction Dred Scott v. Sandford Editors Education English Literature Ethnology Evangelicals “Experience” Exploration and Discovery Factories “The Fall of the House of Usher” Fashion Female Authorship Feminism Fireside Poets Folklore Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States Foreigners Free Love Friendship Fur Trade The Gates Ajar German Scholarship Gettysburg Address Gift Books and Annuals Godey’s Lady’s Book Gothic Fiction Harpers Ferry Harper’s New Monthly Magazine “Hawthorne and His Mosses” Health and Medicine The Hidden Hand History History of the Conquest of Mexico Honor Hope Leslie The House of the Seven Gables Humor Immigration The Impending Crisis of the South Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Indians “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” Indian Wars and Dispossession Individualism and Community The Innocents Abroad Irish Jews Journals and Diaries

1250

A M E R I C A N

Knickerbocker Writers Labor Landscape Architecture Leatherstocking Tales Leaves of Grass “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” Leisure Letters Letters on the Equality of the Sexes The Liberator Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta Life in the Iron Mills Literacy Literary Criticism Literary Marketplace Literary Nationalism Little Women Lowell Offering Lyceums Lyric Poetry Manhood Manifest Destiny Maritime Commerce Marriage Mental Health Methodists Mexican-American War Miscegenation Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty Moby-Dick The Morgesons Mormons Mourning Music Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Native American Literature Nature Nature Nautical Literature A New Home—Who’ll Follow? New Orleans New York Oral Tradition Oratory The Oregon Trail Orientalism Our Nig “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” Periodicals Philadelphia Philosophy “The Philosophy of Composition” Photography Pictorial Weeklies “Plymouth Rock Oration” Poems of Emily Dickinson “The Poet”

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

L I S T O F E N T R I E S T O C O M PA N I O N S E T

Political Parties Popular Poetry Popular Science Pornography Presbyterians Proslavery Writing Protestantism Psychology Publishers Puritanism Quakers “The Raven” Reform Religion Religious Magazines “Resistance to Civil Government” Revolutions of 1848 Rhetoric “Rip Van Winkle” The Romance Romanticism Ruth Hall Same-Sex Love San Francisco Satire, Burlesque, and Parody The Scarlet Letter Science “Self-Reliance” Seneca Falls Convention Sensational Fiction Sentimentalism Sex Education Sexuality and the Body Short Story Slave Narratives Slave Rebellions

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Slavery Sociology for the South Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs The Song of Hiawatha “Song of Myself ” Spanish Speakers and Early “Latino” Expression Spiritualism Suffrage Swallow Barn Tall Tales Taste Technology Temperance Theater Tourism Trail of Tears Transcendentalism Travel Writing “The Two Offers” Two Years before the Mast Typee Uncle Tom’s Cabin Underground Railroad Unitarians Urbanization Utopian Communities Walden Walker’s Appeal Washington, D.C. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” The Wide, Wide World Wilderness Woman in the Nineteenth Century Young America “Young Goodman Brown”


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1251

Primary Sources for Further Reading The following is a list of related primary sources available through Primary Source Microfilm, the leading provider of archival research materials.

GENERAL American Fiction, 1774–1910. Based on Lyle H. Wright’s American Fiction: A Contribution Towards a Bibliography and the “Library of Congress Shelf List of American Adult Fiction” and includes 10,800 novels, romances, tales, short stories, fictitious biographies, travels and sketches, allegories and tract-like tales typifying the development of American literature in a changing culture. Volume 1: 1774–1850; volume 2: 1851–1875; volume 3: 1876–1900; volume 4: 1901–1905; volume 5: 1906–1910. American Fiction, 1911–1920: From the William S. Charvat Collection of American Fiction at The Ohio State University Libraries. Based on “American Fiction, 1901–1925: A Bibliography” by Geoff Smith, American Fiction, 1911–1920 offers 2,962 first editions of adult American fiction published from 1911 to 1920, comprising approximately three-quarters of all American adult fiction published within the United States. Nineteenth-Century American Literature and History. A comprehensive study of the geographic area known as the Trans-Mississippi West, including the “Old Southwest” and Texas. It includes selected titles from Dr. J. Christian Bay’s bibliography Three Handfuls of Western Books and other material with an emphasis on late-nineteenthcentury imprints. It is an invaluable resource for the study of nineteenth-century Americana.

The Sabin Collection: Selected Americana from Sabin’s Dictionary of Books Relating to America. From Joseph Sabin’s Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from Its Discovery to the Present Time, which has been heralded as a cornerstone in the study of the history of the western hemisphere. The Sabin Collection aims to locate and film as many of the most significant works in the bibliography as possible, as well as a variety of others that provide the greater depth of research material necessary for intensive studies of the history of the New World. To support targeted collection needs, The Sabin Collection is also offered in ten special subject collections: American Women; Campaign Literature; Cities and States; The Civil War; Constitution; Discovery and Exploration of the Americas; Immigration; Indians of North America; Reconstruction; and Slavery.

PERIODICALS The Continent. Published from 1882 to 1884, The Continent was an illustrated weekly magazine that featured contributions from major American writers of the day, including Joel Chandler Harris, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Julian Hawthorne, and other noted writers.

1253

PRIMARY SOURCES FOR FURTHER READING

and his wife Alice’s diaries for 1921–1922 and 1926–1931.

MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. These papers of suffrage proponents Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony span the years 1831 through 1906 and consist of more than 14,000 documents. Included are such items as legislative testimony, correspondence, diaries, speeches, accounts of meetings, and financial papers.

In addition, Primary Source Microfilm is the authorized distributor of the following manuscript collections at the Library of Congress: Scrapbooks of Susan B. Anthony, Collection of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson, Hull-House Maps and Papers, Papers of William Tecumseh Sherman, Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Papers of Booker T. Washington, and Papers of Walt Whitman.

The Paul Laurence Dunbar Collection. By the time of his death in 1906, Paul Laurence Dunbar had written six books of short stories and sketches, in addition to numerous poems, plays, and essays. The Ohio Historical Society’s Dunbar Collection includes the Dunbars’ correspondence, scrapbooks, and financial records; Paul’s school records and literary manuscripts;

For more information and how to order these products, contact your Thomson Gale representative at 1-800699-4253 or your Primary Source Microfilm Representative at 1-800-444-0799 or browse the online catalog at www.gale.com.

1254

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

Index Numbers followed by a colon indicate volume number. Page numbers in boldface refer to major entries about the subject. Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations, maps, and tables.

A Aaron, Daniel, 1:183, 258 Abbey, Edwin A., 2:428; 3:1064 Abbey Theatre (Dublin), 3:1120 Abbott, Edward, 2:647 Abbott, Francis Ellingwood, 1:233 Abbott, Jacob, 1:220 Abbott, Joseph, 2:564 Abbott, Lawrence Fraser, 3:1152 Abbott, Lyman, 1:232; 3:1019, 1032 Booker T. Washington and, 3:1152 Abbott, Madeline Vaughn, 2:647 Abdel-Malek, Anouar, 2:796 Abel, Annie Heloise, 2:457 Abe Lincoln in Illinois (Sherwood), 2:461 A-Birding on a Bronco (Bailey), 2:759 Abraham Lincoln (Drinkwater), 2:461 Abraham Lincoln (Nicolay and Hay), 1:151; 2:459 Abraham Lincoln, the Backwoods Boy (Alger), 1:150 Abrams, Albert, 3:916–817 Abrams, Richard M., 2:803 Absalom, Absalom! (Faulkner) as historical romance, 2:453 tar baby metaphor in, 3:1150 Ab-sa-ra-ka, Home of the Crows (Carrington), 2:522

Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times (Veblen), 3:1126 absinthe, 1:4, 25 Abysmal Brute, The (London), 1:189 academia and American literature, 1:51, 53–54 Accepting the Universe (Burroughs), 2:757 Ackerman, George, 2:874 “Acres of Diamonds” (Conwell), 1:233; 2:676 Active Service (Crane), 2:797 actors famous roles and, 3:1115 non-English performers, 3:1120 Adamic, Louis, 1:101, 104 Adams, Andy, 1:372, 389 Adams, Brooks, 2:828 Adams, Cassilly, 1:135, 135 Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 1:191 Adams, Charles Francis, Sr., 3:898 Adams, Franklin P., 3:1140 Adams, Harriet Stratemeyer, 1:222 Adams, Henry, 1:357; 3:1184 art and, 1:88 on federal government corruption, 1:76, 191 Harvard and, 1:354 Henry James compared to, 1:63 history and, 2:459–460

Orientalism and, 2:797 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:210–211 photography and, 2:842 on politics, 3:900 religious quest of, 1:232 on science and technology, 3:1013 scientific materialism and, 3:1022 travel writing of, 3:1131 See also Education of Henry Adams, The Adams, Henry (freedman from Louisiana), 2:689 Adams, Herbert Baxter, 1:410; 2:459, 460 Adams, John Quincy, 2:719 Adams, Maude, 3:1115 Adams, Samuel Hopkins, 2:444, 548, 715 Adams, William Taylor, 1:220, 221 Edward Stratemeyer and, 1:222 Adams Memorial (Saint-Gaudens), 1:91 Addams, Jane, 1:69, 218–219 autobiography, 1:117 on The Birth of a Nation, 1:162 pacifism and, 3:1172 paternalism and, 1:102 social pragmatism and, 2:838 social reform and, 2:714 success and, 3:1095

1255

INDEX

Addams, Jane (continued) on Women and Economics, 3:1204 See also Hull-House; Twenty Years at Hull-House addiction, 1:1–7 “Address to the Louisville Convention” (Douglass), 2:544 Ade, George, 2:474, 550; 3:1005 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 on literary bohemianism, 1:173 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 Spanish-American War and, 1:78 theater and, 3:1119 Adirondack Stories (Deming), 3:973 Adler, Dankmar, 1:89; 3:1215 Adler, Felix, 1:233 Adler, Jacob, 2:542; 3:1120 Adler, Samuel, 2:536 Adler, Stella, 3:1120 adolescence, 1:7–13; 3:1127, 1129 juvenile delinquency in Lower East Side and, 2:538 Adolescence (Hall), 1:89; 3:1127 Adorno, Theodor W., 1:65 Adventures of Dollie (film; Griffith), 1:158 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain), 1:13–23, 221 on adolescence, 1:10 banned from Concord library, 2:590 the Bible and, 1:141–143 on circus, 1:243 cross-dressing in, 1:303 debates on ending of, 1:282 excerpts in Century Magazine, 1:214 humor and satire in, 3:1005 illustrations, 1:14, 18; 2:482 language and humor in, 2:477 local color and, 3:947 on lynching, 2:564–565 parody of temperance fiction and, 3:1112–1113 on public education, 1:350 race and, 3:930 as regionalist writing, 3:975 use of paired characters, 1:279 village life and, 3:1162–1163 violence in, 3:1168 Adventures of One Terence McGrant (Peck), 1:138 Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The (Twain), 1:15, 221 on adolescence, 1:10 bowie knife and, 3:1188–1189 on public education, 1:350 adventure stories as best-sellers, 1:138–139; 2:614 Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (Lindsay), 1:175

1256

advertising of books, 1:179–180 of business and industry novels, 1:191 of circuses, 1:243, 244–245, 245 consumer society and, 2:677–679 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 2:430 journalism and, 2:547 Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, 1:393 in magazines, 2:822 mass advertising of Harper & Brothers, 2:428 periodicals and, 2:817 poster for The Jungle, 2:553 racial stereotyping in, 1:392; 2:679 advertising agency, 2:677 “Advice for Good Little Girls/Boys” (Twain), 1:10 aestheticism, 1:23–27 “Affair at Coulter’s Notch, The” (Bierce), 3:1104 Africa, emigration to, 2:689 African Americans. See blacks African art influence on The Emperor Jones, 1:361 African Negro Sculpture (Sheeler), 1:361 “After Apple-Picking” (Frost), 2:784, 786 After the Lost War (Hudgins), 2:673 “Afterward” (Wharton), 1:421 Against Odds (Van Deventer), 3:1214–1215 Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary, 2:759 Agassiz, Louis, 3:1076 Age of Innocence, The (Wharton), 1:59; 2:468, 780 gastronomic descriptions, 1:394 on marriage, 1:296 museums and, 2:720 music and, 2:728 on New York elite, 3:1185 sports in, 3:1082 aging and death, 1:27–31 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on women and aging, 2:764 Agitator (paper), 3:1200 agnosticism, 1:31–35 Agricultural Wheel, 2:868 Agriculture, Department of, on nutritive value of food, 1:392 Aguinaldo, Emilio, 2:829 AHA. See American Historical Association Åhnebrink, Lars, 3:962 Ah Sin (Harte and Twain), 2:846 Aiken, Albert W., 1:323 Aiken, Conrad, 3:1025

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Aitken, Harry, 1:159 Aksakof, Alexandre, 3:1075 Akutagawa, Ryunosuke, 3:1101 Aladdin Company house kits, 1:98 Alaska statehood, 1:74 Albee, Edward F., 3:1120 Alcoholics Anonymous, 1:1 alcoholism, 1:14 as literary theme, 1:2; 2:747; 3:1109 medical model of, 1:1 in This Side of Paradise, 3:1128 See also addiction; temperance Alcott, Amos Bronson Concord School of Philosophy and, 2:835 Orchard House, 1:184, 184 Alcott, Louisa May, 1:220–221, 340, 346 on adolescence, 1:11 Civil War and, 3:956 domestic fiction and, 2:470 same-sex love and, 3:994 sentimental realism and, 1:342 temperance and, 3:1111 Alden, Henry Mills, 1:347 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and, 2:429–430 W. D. Howells and, 2:440 Aldington, Richard, 2:484 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 1:12, 16, 347 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 109, 183; 2:463, 465 criticism of realism, 1:413, 416 genteel tradition and, 1:413, 414 Sarah Orne Jewett and, 1:289 short story and, 3:1040–1041 Alexander, Edward Porter, 1:259 Alexander, J. W., 3:1024 Alexander Crummell (Moses), 3:936 “Alexander Dumas” (Lang), 3:1025 Alexander’s Magazine, 3:1070 “Alexander’s Masquerade” (Cather), 2:645 Alexie, Sherman, 1:369 Alger, Horatio, Jr., 1:112, 140; 2:574; 3:1191 on adolescence, 1:11 biography and, 1:150 children’s literature and, 1:220 Christianity and, 1:233 circus theme, 1:243 Edward Stratemeyer and, 1:222 in library collections, 2:590 New York and, 2:780 self-made man and, 3:1093 Stewart H. Holbrook on, 3:1182 as tutor, 1:352 Alger, Russell A., 3:1074


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Alice Adams (Tarkington), 3:974, 1164 Alice of Old Vincennes (Thompson), 2:454 Aliens, The (Keenan), 2:532 “Alleged Banning of The Awakening, The” (Toth), 1:127 Allegheny County Buildings (Pittsburgh), 1:88 Allen, Frederick Lewis, 1:81 Allen, Gay Wilson, 1:184 Allen, James Allen, 3:995 Allen, James Lane historical romance and, 2:453 sexuality and, 2:647 Allen, William Francis, 1:386 All God’s Chillun Got Wings (O’Neill), 1:363 Allminax (Billings), 2:472 Allotment Act (1887). See Dawes Severalty Act (1887) All-Story (magazine), 3:1105, 1106 Along the Trail (Hovey), 1:175 Along This Way (J. W. Johnson), 1:120 Al que quiere! (Williams), 2:638 “Altar of the Dead, The” (H. James), 3:1041 alternative press, 2:548 in Greenwich Village, 2:595 Altgeld, John Peter, 2:436; 3:1172 Altick, Richard, 2:816 Always the Young Strangers (Sandburg), 1:78–79 Amaranth (Robinson), 2:664 Amateur Laborer, A (Dreiser), 2:447 Ambassadors, The (H. James), 1:35–43 on Americans’ interest in European aristocracy, 3:1184 impressionism and, 2:507–508 as international novel, 1:57 on marriage, 1:300 Ambrose Bierce (Grenancer), 3:1104–1105 “America” (Hovey), 3:1072 America (magazine), 2:532 on Main-Travelled Roads, 2:660 “America and I” (Yezierska), 1:105 American, The (H. James) on Americans’ interest in European aristocracy, 3:1184 as business novel, 1:193, 195 as international novel, 1:38, 57, 58 American Antiquities Act (1906), 1:363, 366 American Appetite (Brenner), 1:391 American Association of University Professors, 2:838 “American Authors and British Pirates” (Matthews), 1:284–285

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900 (West), 2:614 American Baptist Education Society, 1:219 American Bar Association, 3:905 American Biograph Company, 1:158 American Boy (magazine), 3:1083 American Catholic Quarterly Review (magazine), 1:205 American Cavalryman, The (Downing), 2:689 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 1:67, 219 American Claimant, The (Twain), 1:130 spiritualism and, 3:1078 American Colonization Society, 2:689 American Commonwealth (Bryce), 1:395–396 American Copyright Club, 1:285 American Copyright League, 1:285, 286; 2:614 American culture Darwinism and, 1:319 impact of anarchism on, 1:66–67 American Dramatists Club, 3:1117 American Economics Association, 3:905 American Equal Rights Association, 3:1209 American Equal Rights Convention (1869), condemnation of free love, 1:404, 405 American Ethnological Society, 1:364 American exceptionalism, 2:687 American Fabian (magazine), 3:1062 American Federation of Labor, 2:572; 3:1171 American Folklore Society, 1:388–389; 3:905 Joel Chandler Harris and, 3:1149 American Girl at College, The (McCade), 3:1034 “American Girl” in literature, 1:305, 382 American Historical Association (AHA), 2:460; 3:905 George Miller Beard and, 2:461 Henry Adams and, 2:459 American Historical Review, 2:460 American History and Its Geographic Conditions (Semple), 2:457 American Indian ledger art, 1:94 American Indian Magazine, 2:515, 516, 548 American Indian Stories (Zitkala-Sˇa), 1:8, 43–46; 2:499, 516 Americanization movement, 1:101–102

T H R O U G H


Americanization of Edward Bok, The (Bok), 1:104; 2:494 American Jewish Committee, 2:539 American Lands and Letters (Mitchell), 1:53 American Language, The (Mencken), 1:46–49 on underworld vocabulary, 3:1055 American League to Abolish Capital Punishment, 1:201 American Library Association, 2:588 criticism of writers for boys, 3:1095 lists of recommended books, 2:590 American Library Journal, 2:588, 591 American Literary Bureau, 2:585 American Literary Criticism, 1800–1860 (Rathburn), 2:598 American Literary Naturalism (Walcutt), 2:751 American literature, 1:49–55 as discipline, 1:355 American Literature (journal), 1:54 American Literature, 1607–1885 (Richardson), 1:52, 54 American Literature and Other Papers (Whipple), 2:598 American Literature Group, 1:54 American Magazine, 2:822 American Medical Association, 3:905 American Men of Letters series (Warner, ed.), 1:154 American Mercury (magazine), 1:47; 2:599 American Moderns (Stansell), 3:1062 American moralizing, foreign visitors on, 1:397 American Museum of Natural History, 2:717, 718 American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 2:705 American Naturalist (periodical), 2:465 American Negro Academy, 3:936 American Negro Slavery (U. B. Phillips), 2:458 American Nervousness (Beard), 2:446 American News Company, 2:611; 3:1142 American Notes (Dickens), 1:393–394 American Notes (Kipling) on American pronunciation, 1:398 on Bohemian Club, 1:269 American Novel and Its Tradition, The (Chase), 2:450 “American Novels” (Perry), 3:944 American Ornithologists’ Union, 2:759 American Party, 2:530 American Peace Society, 2:456

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1257

INDEX

American Poems (Scudder, ed.), 1:352 American Poetry and Prose (Foerster), 1:54 American Political Science Association, 3:905 American Press Association, 2:773 American Printer (periodical), 1:100 American Progress (Gast), 1:86, 87 American Prose (Scudder, ed.), 1:352 American Prose Masters (Brownell), 2:598 American Protective Association, 1:204; 3:1168 American Public Health Association, 3:905 American Publishers’ Copyright League, 2:614 American Publishing Company, 2:612 American Queen (magazine), 3:1184 American Realism (Sundquist), 2:682 American revolution, historical romances and, 2:454 American 1890s, The (Ziff), 2:610 Americans abroad, 1:55–61 exotic foreign travel and aestheticism, 1:25 travel in Europe, 3:1131, 1183–1184 American Scene, The (H. James), 1:61–66, 87; 2:606, 779; 3:1134 “American Scholar, The” (Emerson), 2:790 American Society for Psychical Research, 3:1078 American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, 2:728 American Speech (journal), 1:48 American Statesmen series, 1:154 American Temperance Union, 3:1109 American Tragedy, An (Dreiser), 2:558 on death penalty, 1:203 naturalism and, 2:750 use of news reports, 2:549 American Tramp and Underworld Slang (Irwin), 3:1139 American Village, The (Freneau), 3:1164 American West, The (Hine and Faragher), 1:374 American Woman’s Home, The (Beecher and Stowe), 3:1033 American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), 1:380, 404; 3:1200, 1209 America’s Coming-of-Age (Brooks), 1:81, 416; 3:964 reform and, 3:969–970 “America’s Indian Problem” (ZitkalaSˇa), 1:44

1258

Ammons, Elizabeth, 1:342; 3:971, 973 on The Country of the Pointed Firs, 1:290, 291 on Sui Sin Far, 2:711 Am Olam (Eternal People) groups, 2:538 “Among the Corn Rows” (Garland), 1:373–374; 2:867 anarchism, 1:66–70; 3:1172 Haymarket Square and, 2:434 W. D. Howells’s defense of, 3:966 in the Little Review, 2:621 rich counterculture of, 1:67 Anarchism and American Traditions (Cleyre), 1:67 Anarchism and Other Essays (Goldman), 3:1172 Ancestors (Atherton), 3:1002 Anderson, Charles R., 2:670 Anderson, Hans Christian, 1:211 Anderson, Margaret C. lesbian novel, 2:875 and the Little Review, 2:595, 621, 819 support of Emma Goldman, 1:69 Anderson, Maxwell, 3:1124, 1221 Anderson, Nels, 3:1139 Anderson, Sherwood, 1:81 Alfred Stieglitz and, 2:842 Chicago and, 1:216 Civil War and, 3:1177 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 influence of Huckleberry Finn on, 1:20 in the Little Review, 2:621 in the Masses, 2:601 as Midwest regionalist writer, 3:974 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 short story and, 3:1045 on therapeutic value of sexual expression, 3:927 on village life, 3:1164 See also Winesburg, Ohio Andrew, G. T., 3:1024 Andrews, Stephen Pearl, 1:403, 406 Andrews, W. H., 3:1184 Andrews, William L., 2:528 on Charles W. Chesnutt, 1:277 “Anecdote of the Jar” (Stevens), 2:853 Angel Island, 1:228, 229, 251; 3:1000 Angel of Death and the Sculptor, The (French), 1:91 Anglin, Margaret, 3:1115 Anglo-African (magazine), 3:1113 Anglo-Saxonism, 1:70–74 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and, 3:1206 imperialism and, 2:497 success and, 3:1094

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Animal Locomotion (Muybridge), 2:841 Annals of the War, 1:258 annexation and expansion, 1:74–79 Annie Get Your Gun, 2:1196 Annie Kilburn (Howells) on labor, 1:193, 195; 2:438, 675 socialism and, 3:1063 Annie Reilly (McElgun), 2:531 Anshutz, Thomas, 1:92, 95 “Ante-Bellum Sermon, An” (Dunbar), 2:640 anthologies first of American literature, 1:51 The New Poetry, 2:853 Anthony, Susan B., 1:380, 383; 3:1200, 1209 bloomers and, 1:381 free love and, 1:404 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:210 The Revolution and, 2:713 secularism of, 1:33 on the single woman, 2:764 temperance and, 3:1108 anthropology on Indians, 2:513 Indians as anthropologists, 1:368–369; 2:515 anti-Catholicism, 1:203–204; 3:1168 of Connecticut Yankee, 1:279–280 The Damnation of Theron Ware on, 1:309 Irish and, 2:530 See also Catholics anti-Chinese prejudices satire by Bret Harte, 2:844 See also Chinese; Chinese Exclusion Act Antichrist, Der (Nietzsche), 1:34 anti-imperialism. See imperialism and anti-imperialism Anti-Imperialist League, 2:829 anti-intellectualism, 1:79–82 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (Hofstadter), 1:79–80 anti-Irish prejudicex The Damnation of Theron Ware and, 1:309 See also Chinese; Chinese Exclusion Act antimilitarism, 3:1179 antimiscegenation laws, 1:301; 2:693 Antin, Mary, 1:103; 2:488, 540; 3:969 on immigrant education, 2:490; 3:908, 910 on work, 2:493–494 See also Promised Land, The antipolygamy reform movement, 2:700 Anti-Saloon League, 1:393


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

antitrust laws, Roosevelt and, 2:716; 3:1092 antiwar novels, 1:60 Antoine, André, 3:1120 Apaches of New York (Lewis), 3:1055 Ape, the Idiot, and Other People, The (Morrow), 1:419 “A-Playin’ of Old Sledge at the Settlemint” (Murfree), 2:525 Appalachia, family vendettas in, 3:1169 Appeal to Reason (newspaper), 1:83–86; 3:1062 masthead, 1:83 Upton Sinclair and, 2:553 Appelbaum, Stanley, 3:1214 Appia, Adolphe, 3:1120 “Apples of Gold” (Briscoe), 3:1025 Appleton, William Haney, 2:614 Appleton’s Journal on American expatriates, 1:55 on science, 3:920 Appleton’s National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1:154 apprenticeships, 1:352 April Hopes (Howells), 2:438 Arac, Jonathan, 1:22 Aranda, José F., 3:1089 Arbeter Tsaytung (newspaper), 2:539 Abraham Cahan as editor of, 3:985 Arbuckle, Roscoe “Fatty,” 2:708 Archer, Stevenson, 1:284 Archipenko, Alexander, 1:92 architects as characters in American fiction, 1:90 in Chicago, 1:216 See also architecture Architectural Record (periodical), 1:90; 3:912 architecture, 1:86–97, 88–90 department stores and, 2:676, 679 domestic, 1:89–90 feminism and, 3:1206 Gustave Stickley’s home plans, 1:98 mansions of Gilded Age, 3:1183 World’s Columbian Exposition and, 3:1215 See also architects “Arctic Prairies, The” (Seton), 3:1025 “Ardessa” (Cather), 2:819–820, 822 Arena (magazine), 2:619; 3:967 Hamlin Garland and, 2:659 on Women and Economics, 3:1204 Arensberg, Walter, 1:87 art collection, 1:96 Arethusa (Crawford), 1:137 “Argonauts of ’49, The” (Harte), 2:845 Aristocrats of Color (Gatewood), 3:935 Arizona (Thomas), 3:1118

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Arizona statehood, 1:74 Armat, Thomas, 2:704 Armory Show (1913), 1:96 Mabel Dodge and, 1:272 Armour, J. Ogden, 3:1181 Armour, Philip Danforth, 1:392 Armour & Company, 3:1074 Armstrong, Louis, 2:727 Armstrong, Samuel Chapman, 3:936 Army Life in a Black Regiment (Higginson), 1:261 Arnavon, Cyrille, 1:123, 125, 126 Arnold, Matthew, 1:358 on humor in the United States, 2:475 influence on William Crary Brownell, 2:598 on Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2:825 as target of Mark Twain, 1:278 visit to the states, 1:395, 397–398 Aron, Cindy, 3:977 Around the World on a Bicycle (Stevens), 3:1144 “Arouse, Ye Slaves!” (Debs), 1:85 Arp, Bill, 2:474; 3:1147 Arrow-Maker, The (Austin), 1:368 Arrowsmith (Lewis), 1:337 art, 1:86–97 anarchism and, 1:67–69 Darwinism and, 1:319–320 as instrument of social change, 3:938 Jews and, 2:540–542 art collections American, 1:87 modern, 1:96 art criticism in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1024–1025 “Art for Truth’s Sake in the Drama” (Herne), 3:1117 Arthur, Chester A., 3:899, 1166 Arthur, Timothy Shay, 3:1109 Arthur Bonnicastle (Holland), 1:213 Art Institute of Chicago, 1:87; 3:1183 “Artist in Japan, An” series (Blum), 3:1025 art museums, 1:87, 96 as antidote to urban moral and social decay, 2:717 philanthropy and, 3:1183 art nouveau, 1:26 Art of Biography, The (Thayer), 1:156 “Art of Fiction, The” (H. James), 1:183; 3:946–947 Art of Frank Norris, Storyteller, The (Hochman), 2:648 “Art of Self-Government, The” (illustration; Rogers), 2:500 art pour l’art, l’ [art for art’s sake], 1:23

T H R O U G H


arts and crafts, 1:26, 97–101 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, 1:26 Arts of Intoxication, The (J. T. Crane), 1:3 Art Spirit, The (Henri), 1:95 Art Students League (New York), 1:92 Art Students League (Philadelphia), 1:92 Asbury, Herbert, 1:248 Asch, Sholem, 2:874 Ashbee, Henry Spencer, 2:873 Ashcan school, 1:95 Aspern Papers, The (H. James), 1:152–153 photographic metaphors, 2:842 Assemblies of God, 1:235 assimilation, 1:101–106 of Irish, 2:530 Associated Literary Press. See McClure Newspaper Syndicate Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, 2:883 Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 2:458 Association of American Law Schools, 3:905 Association of American Painters and Sculptors, 1:96 Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutes for the Insane, 3:905 association periodicals, 1:346 Assommoir, L’ (Zola), 2:749; 3:1112 Astor, John Jacob, 3:897, 1181 At Fault (Chopin), 1:123; 2:768 atheism, 1:31–35 Athenaeum (periodical), 3:941 Atherton, Gertrude, 1:421; 3:1002 as imperialist, 2:828 Overland Monthly and, 2:805 Spanish-American War and, 1:78 Atkins, J. D. C., 1:364 “Atlanta Compromise” (speech; Washington), 1:255; 2:544, 794; 3:931, 1152, 1154 on political economy of slavery, 3:955 W. E. B. Du Bois on, 3:1069 Atlanta Constitution, 1:345; 3:1148 Atlanta University Studies of the Negro Problem (conference series), 1:257 Atlantic Monthly, The (magazine), 1:106–111, 108, 182; 2:465–466, 610, 818 anti-immigrant fears and, 2:487 circulation, 1:50 as competition to Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 2:430 Horace Scudder and, 2:464

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1259

INDEX

Atlantic Monthly (continued) on indigenous writers, 1:53 on James Parton, 1:152 literary conservatism and, 1:183 on Main-Travelled Roads, 2:660 Mary Antin and, 3:908 publication of The American, 1:57 on science, 3:920 sentimental and domestic tales and, 1:339 short stories and, 3:1040–1041 southern tales and, 1:275, 276 W. D. Howells and, 1:186 Zitkala-Sˇa published in, 1:44 “At Teague Poteet’s” (Harris), 3:1148, 1149 Atterbury, Grosvenor, 1:98 “At the ’Cadian Ball” (Chopin) on social dance, 1:314 At the Mikado’s Court (Lewis), 2:710 At the Seaside (Chase), 2:505 Atwater, Wilbur Olin, 1:392 Au Bonheur des dames (Zola), 2:679–680 Auden, W. H., 2:737 Auditorium Building (Chicago), 1:89 Audubon, John James, 2:808 Auerbach, Erich, 2:753 “Aunt Chloe’s Politics” (Harper), 2:855 Austen, Jane The Portrait of a Lady compared to, 2:877 realism and, 3:943 Austin, John, 2:557 Austin, Mary, 1:69, 119; 2:499 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:111 Carmel-by-the-Sea and, 2:596 Charles F. Lummis and, 1:367 Heterodoxy Club and, 1:272 influence of William James on, 1:69 nature writing and, 2:759 Overland Monthly and, 2:805 as regionalist writer, 3:975:3:976 Southwest and, 1:76, 368; 2:597; 3:976 as teacher, 1:351 See also Land of Little Rain, The Austin, O. P., 2:493 authors at Harper & Brothers, 2:427–428 London on authorship, 3:903 motives and, 1:21 royalties of, 1:177 Webster’s English Dictionary definition of, 2:603 Authors and Friends (Fields), 1:117

1260

Authors and Publishers (Putnam and Putnam), 2:613 Authors Club, 1:270 Author’s Empty Purse and the Rise of the Literary Agent, The (Hepburn), 2:613 Authors’ Syndicate, 2:774 autobiography, 1:111–120 Henry Adams and, 1:357 P. T. Barnum and, 1:244 Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, The (Stein), 3:924 “Autobiography of an American Jew, The” (Cahan), 3:985 Autobiography of an Androgyne (Lind), 3:997–998 Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, The (Johnson), 1:120–123, 170, 255–256; 2:545; 3:932–933 on lynching, 2:631 on migration of blacks, 2:689 music and, 2:728 New York City and, 2:781, 783 on passing, 2:694–695 police and, 2:583 tensions in racial uplift ideology and, 3:939 utopia and dystopia in, 3:1159 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 1:112 Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, Dissenting Minister (Rutherford), 1:310 Autobiography of Mark Twain, The (Twain), 3:899 automobile, 3:1145–1146 Autumn Leaves (Tincker), 1:205 Auzinger, Max, 3:918 Avariés, Les (Brieux), 2:449 Ave Maria (magazine), 1:205 Average Man, An (Grant), 1:214 Avery, Gillian, 1:224 Avrich, Paul, 2:436 Awakening, The (Chopin), 1:123–128; 2:768; 3:969 Darwinism and, 1:320 death and, 1:29 on discontents of domesticity, 1:341 illness and, 2:447 impressionism and, 2:507 influence of Freud on, 3:926 on marriage, 1:296, 384 music and, 2:728 Orientalism and, 2:797 sexuality and, 3:1038 sports in, 3:1082 AWSA. See American Woman Suffrage Association

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

B Babbitt (Lewis) on American mainstream society, 1:82 on clubs, 1:267 Babbitt, Irving, 1:355 as New Humanist, 2:600 opposition to impressionist criticism, 2:599 T. S. Eliot and, 2:602 Babcock, Winnifred Eaton. See Watanna, Onoto Babes in Toyland (Herbert), 3:1119 Bacheller, Irving, 2:612, 645, 776; 3:976 newspaper syndicate of, 2:774, 775–776 published by Century Magazine, 1:214 The Red Badge of Courage and, 3:960 Bacheller-Johnson Newspaper Syndicate, 2:612 “Back There in the Grass” (Morris), 1:423 Backward Glance, A (Wharton), 2:468, 470, 780 on authorship, 2:615 Badeau, Adam, 2:826 Baden-Powell, Lord (Robert Stephenson Smyth), 1:222 Bailey, Florence Merriam, 2:759 Bailey, Gamaliel, 1:346 Bailey, James A., 3:1119 Bailey, Liberty Hyde nature writing and, 2:759 Bailey v. Alabama (1911), 2:556 Bain, David Haward, 2:829 Baird, Spencer F., 1:364 Baker, Bruce E., 2:629 Baker, George F., 3:1181 Baker, George Pierce, 1:354; 3:1120 Baker, Houston A., 3:1155 on Charles W. Chesnutt, 1:277 Baker, Ray Stannard McClure’s Magazine and, 2:644 as muckraker, 1:348; 2:644–645, 714, 716 Social Gospel and, 1:236–237 Bakunin, Mikhail, 2:434 anarchism and, 1:66 Balcony Stories (King), 2:767 as answer to Cable’s Old Creole Days, 3:975 Baldwin, James, 3:1151 Baldwin, Roger, 1:67 Ball, Charles, 1:280 Ball, Thomas, 1:91


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Ballad of the Harp-Weaver (Millay), 2:636 Ballads and songs of the Shanty-Boy (Rickaby), 1:389 Ballard, Julia Perkins, 3:1111 Ballets Russes, 1:312 Ballin, Ada S., 1:377 Baltimore Evening Sun, 1:34 Balzac, Honoré de, 3:943 Bancroft, Edith, 3:1083 Bancroft, George Atlantic Monthly and, 1:106 frontier and, 1:409 as history writer, 2:455 Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 1:154 on Spanish Borderlands, 2:458 Bandelier, Adolph, 1:366 Bangs, John Kendrick, 1:421; 2:820 Harper & Brothers and, 2:427 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and, 2:431 humor and, 2:475 Banjo Lesson, The (Tanner), 1:92, 168 “Banjo Song, A” (Dunbar), 2:640 Banker and the Bear, The (Webster), 1:193 banking and finance, 1:129–132; 2:801–802 Bank-Robbers and the Detectives (Pinkerton), 2:584 Banner, Stuart, 1:201 banning of The Awakening, 1:127 of The Birth of a Nation, 1:162 of Huckleberry Finn at Concord Free Public Library, 1:19, 185 See also censorship Bannister, Edward, 1:94 Bara, Theda, 2:707, 799 barbershop quartet, 2:725 Barbour, Ralph Henry, 1:188 school sports fiction and, 3:1083 Barnard College, 1:381; 2:591 Barnes, Albert C., 1:87 Barnes, Djuna, 2:607 Barnum, P. T. (Phineas T.), 1:243; 3:917, 1119 autobiography, 1:112, 244 on spiritualists, 3:1076 Baron de Hirsch Fund, 2:540 Barondess, Joseph, 2:539 Barrett, Laurence, 3:1120 Barrett, S. M., 2:522 Barrie, J. M., 3:1025 Barrier, The (Beach), 1:76 Barriers Burned Away (Roe), 1:327 Barry, John D., 2:654 Barry, Philip, 3:1120 Barrymore, Ethel, 3:1115, 1118

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Barrymore, Lionel, 3:1115, 1118 Barthes, Roland, 2:603 Basch, Norma, 1:297 Basket Woman, The (Austin), 1:368 Bassett, John Spencer, 1:354 Bates, Blanche, 3:1115 Bates, Ernest Sutherland, 1:242 Bates, Katharine Lee as anti-imperialist, 2:828 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Battle for Christmas, The (Nissenbaum), 2:682 Battle-Ground, The (Glasgow), 2:453; 3:1174 “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (Howe), 2:791, 793 Battle of Coney Island (“An Eye Witness”), 1:192 Battle of the Books, A (Hamilton), 2:613 Battle of the Little Bighorn, 1:75, 133–137; 3:1167 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 1:258, 260 in Century Magazine, 1:213 source for The Red Badge of Courage, 3:958, 959 Ulysses S. Grant and, 2:824 Battle with the Slum, The (Riis), 2:885 Baudelaire, Charles, 1:24 on Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1867), 1:211 Baum, L. Frank, 1:222–223; 3:1074 Baxter, Sylvester, 1:365 Baym, Nina, 1:339; 3:1111 Bayou Folk (Chopin), 1:123; 2:694, 768; 3:975 Beach, Amy Marcy Cheney, 2:721, 724 Beach, Joseph Warren, 1:37–38 Beach, Rex Ellingwood, 1:76 Beacon Biographies (Howe, ed.), 1:154 Beacon of Lights of History (Lord), 2:456 Beadle & Adams, 1:322, 324 dime novels and, 2:610 Beadles, 2:817 Bean, B. C., 3:1033 Beard, Charles A., 2:460 Beard, Daniel Carter, 1:279, 280; 2:482 Beard, George Miller, 3:923 coining of the term “neurasthenia,” 2:446 Beardsley, Aubrey aestheticism and, 1:24 The Chap-Book and, 2:617 The Yellow Book and, 1:25, 25 “Beast in the Jungle, The” (H. James), 3:1041 Beat movement, 1:175

T H R O U G H


“Beatrice Palmato Fragment” (Wharton), 2:875 Beaumont, Gustave de, 2:813 Beauregard, G. T., 1:259 beauty, aestheticism and, 1:24 Beauvoir, Simone de, 3:1206 Beaux, Cecilia, 1:94 “Because I could not stop for Death” (Dickinson), 1:28 Beccaria, Cesare, 1:199 Bechet, Sidney, 2:727 Becker, Otto, 1:135 Beecher, Catharine, 3:1033 Beecher, Henry Ward, 1:232, 233; 2:819; 3:1019 humor and, 2:472 Muscular Christianity and, 3:1080 scandal and, 3:1184 as speaker, 2:585 on success, 3:1092 Victoria Woodhull on, 1:406 Beecher as a Humorist (Beecher), 2:472 Beer, Thomas on The Damnation of Theron Ware, 1:308 on Stephen Crane, 2:655 Beerbohm, Max, 2:617 Beers, Ethel Lynn, 3:956 Before Adam (London), 1:362 “Beggar King, The” (Freeman), 2:764 Behind the Scenes (Keckley), 1:262 Behold the Child (Avery), 1:224 Being a Boy (Warner), 3:1082 Belasco, David, 2:797; 3:1116, 1117 Orientalism and, 2:796 Bell, Alexander Graham, 3:1008 Bell, Daniel, 3:1061 on Henry George, 3:1062 Bellamy, Edward, 1:140, 232–233 influence on Julius Augustus Wayland, 1:84 labor crisis and, 2:574 politics and, 2:856 See also Looking Backward, 2000–1887 Bellard, Alfred, 1:261 Bell in the Fog, The (Atherton), 1:421 Belloc, Hilaire, 2:698 Bellocq, E. J., 2:841 Bellows, George, 1:95, 96 Beloved (Morrison), 3:1150 as historical romance, 2:453 Benchley, Robert, 2:477, 627 on Moon-Calf, 2:697 Benda, W. T., 2:731 Benedict, Ruth, 1:366 Benét, Stephen Vincent, 1:221 “Benevolent Assimilation” (Miller), 2:828

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1261

INDEX

Benfey, Christopher, 3:960 Ben-Hur (Wallace), 1:137, 181 as best-seller, 2:615 as film, 2:451 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 “Benito Cereno” (Melville), 2:452 Benjamin, Walter, 3:1013–1014 “Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford” (Robinson), 2:665 Bennett, Arnold Floyd Dell and, 2:696–697 on Huckleberry Finn, 1:22 Bennett, Bridget, 1:310 Bennett, Emerson, 3:1190 Bennett, Paula Bernat, 2:633 Benson, Mildred Wirt, 1:222 Benteen, Frederick W., 1:133 Bentham, Jeremy, 2:557 Bentley, D. M. R., 2:673 Benton, Thomas Hart, 1:16 Béraud, Marthe (Eva C.), 3:918 Berenson, Bernard, 1:89; 2:468 Bergson, Henri, 2:838 influence on T. E. Hulme, 2:484 “Bergson and His Critique of Intellectualism” (W. James), 2:838 Berkeley, George, 2:833–834 Berkman, Alexander anarchism and, 1:66, 67 autobiography, 1:116 Berlin, Irving, 2:725, 728; 3:1119 Bern (Germany), American colony in, 1:55 Bernhardt, Sarah, 3:1120 “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (Fitzgerald), 1:379 Berninghaus, Oscar E., 1:94 Bernstein, Herman, 2:540–541 Berry, Brian J., 3:1061, 1062 Berryman, John, 2:626 Bertram Cope’s Year (Fuller), 1:218; 3:997 Besant, Annie, 3:1035 “Best Men, The” (Sproat), 2:855 best-sellers, 1:137–141; 2:614–615 Harper & Brothers titles, 2:425 The House of Mirth as, 2:468–469 invention of, 3:905 Ramona as, 3:941–942 Betty Bloomer. See New Woman Betty Zane (Grey), 1:411 “Between Mass and Vespers” (Jewett), 2:534 Between the Dark and the Daylight (Howells), 1:421 spiritualism and, 3:1077 “Bewick Finzer” (Robinson), 2:663, 665 Beyond Ethnicity (Sollors), 1:103

1262

Beyond the Horizon (O’Neill), 2:595 on Irish family, 2:534 “Beyond the Wall” (Bierce), 1:418 Bhabha, Homi K., 1:105 Bibelot (magazine), 2:618 Bible, the, 1:141–145 higher criticism, 1:32, 231, 309 title page of a 1870 American edition, 1:142 Bible and Church Degrade Woman (Stanton), 1:33 Bible societies and the poor, 2:883 Bibliography of American Autobiographies (Kaplan), 1:113 bicycle, 3:1144–1145 dress and, 1:378–379, 381, 382 Bierce, Ambrose, 3:901, 1102. as anti-imperialist, 2:828 Bohemian Club and, 1:268.1:269 on capital punishment, 1:202 Civil War and, 1:260–261; 3:956, 1177 libraries and, 2:590 Mexican Revolution and, 2:683, 686 on Oscar Wilde, 1:398 on Overland Monthly, 2:805 realism and, 3:947 San Francisco and, 3:999 satire and, 3:1005 science fiction and, 3:1017 scientific materialism and, 3:1021 on The Sea-Wolf, 3:1030 short story and, 3:1043 Spanish-American War and, 1:78 supernatural and, 1:418 western narrative and, 3:1190 See also Tales of Soldiers and Civilians Bierstadt, Albert, 1:92, 94 Century Association and, 1:270 frontier and, 1:408 Big Bonanza, The (De Quille), 3:982, 984 Bigelow, William Sturgis, 3:1184 Biglow Papers, The (Lowell), 2:473; 3:1003 Big Money, The (Dos Passos), 2:561 “Big Rock Candy Mountain, The” (hobo song), 3:1139 “Big Stick” diplomacy, 3:1092 bildungsroman and adolescents, 1:9 Billboard (trade paper), 1:244 Billings, Josh, 2:476 humor and, 2:472, 473, 474 as speaker, 2:586 bill-posting industry, 1:244 Billy Budd (Melville), 1:146–150; 3:997

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

death penalty and, 1:202 on oratory, 2:791 Billy the Kid, 3:1168–1169, 1169 “Biltmore,” 1:89 bimetallism, 2:873 Binder, Henry, 3:960 Bingham, George Caleb, 1:92 biography, 1:150–158 biographical series in McClure’s, 2:644 Harper & Brothers and, 2:426 pulp biographies of boxers, 1:188 “Biological Determinism of McTeague in Our Time, The” (Pizer), 2:648 Birch, Reginald B., 1:224 Bird, Isabella, 2:759 Birds through an Opera Glass (Bailey), 2:759 Birrell, Augustine, 3:1025 Birth (Gale), 3:1163 birth control, 3:1038 Birth of a Nation, The (film; Griffith), 1:158–164, 167; 2:461, 544, 708; 3:932, 957 advertising poster, 1:159 anti-lynching reformers on, 2:630 Ku Klux Klan and, 2:565 Birth of a Race, The (Scott), 2:631 Bishop, W. H., 1:232 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 Bishop, Washington Irving, 3:918, 1076 Bits of Travel (Jackson), 1:138 Black, Hugo, 2:565 Black, Winifred, 2:549 Black Arts movement Frances E. W. Harper and, 2:528 Paul Laurence Dunbar and, 2:641 Blackbird, Andrew J., 2:515 Black Boy (Wright), 3:1051 Blackburn, Douglas, 3:918 Black Cat (magazine), 1:423 “Black Cat, The” (Poe), 3:1109 Black Codes, 1:252–253; 2:562; 3:953 as groundwork for Jim Crow laws, 2:543 “Black Cottage, The” (Frost), 2:785, 787 Black Elk Speaks (Neihardt), 3:1226–1227 black gentility, 3:935 Black History month, 2:458 Black Manhattan (Johnson), 1:122 Black Man’s Burden (Holtzclaw), 1:115 “Black Man’s Burden, The” (Burroughs), 3:1107 Blackmur, Richard P., 2:486 Black Phalanx, The (Wilson), 1:261


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Black Portsmouth (Sammons and Cunningham), 1:291 black pride, Jack Johnson symbol of, 1:190 Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880 (Du Bois), 2:458; 3:955, 957 Black Riders, and Other Lines, The (Crane), 2:635 blacks, 1:164–171 alcoholism and, 1:2 autobiographies, 1:115–116 boxing and, 1:189–190 dance and, 1:315 death penalty and, 1:200 development of stratified society, 3:935 disfranchisement of, 3:934 education, 1:256; 3:937 farmers in South Dakota, 1:375 folklore, 1:386–387 historians, 2:458 Huckleberry Finn and, 1:17 migration of, 2:688–691 music and, 2:726–727 newspapers, 1:346 in New York City, 1:248; 2:781 politics of “passing,” 1:123 during Reconstruction, 1:253 as soldiers in the Civil War, 1:261–262 stereotypes used in advertising, 1:392; 2:679 vote and, 3:931 women’s club movement, 1:170; 3:935 work song tradition, 1:387 World’s Columbian Exposition and, 3:1216–1217 See also black writers “Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization” (West), 3:935 Blackwell, Alice Stone, 3:1201–1202 Blackwell, Henry B., 1:380; 3:1200 Blackwood, Algernon, 1:419 black writers magazines and, 2:820 medical theories of race and, 2:447–448 Radical Republicans and, 2:854–855 reform and, 3:969 on success, 3:1098 temperance fiction, 3:1113 women and issues of social injustice, 1:340 Blaine, James G., 3:899, 900 Blair, Henry, 2:632 Blair, Hugh, 2:791

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Blair, James Gillespie, 2:857 Blair, Walter, 2:476 Blake, Lillie Devereux, 1:383–384 Blanchard, Paula, 1:289 Bland, James A., 2:725 Blansfield, Karen Charmaine, 1:401 Blast (magazine), 2:819 anarchism and, 1:69 vorticism and, 2:485, 607 Blavatsky, Helene Petrovna, 3:918, 921, 1076–1077 Blazed Trail, The (White), 3:982 Bledstein, Burton, 3:904 Blight, David W., 1:261; 2:825 Bliss, Elisha, Jr., 2:612 Bliss, W. D. P., 3:1062 Social Gospel movement and, 1:234 Blithedale Romance, The (Hawthorne), 3:1077 temperance imagery in, 3:1109 Blix (Norris), 1:269 Blom, Frans, 1:368 Blondlot, René, 3:922 Blood-Money (Morrow), 1:419 Bloodworth, William A., 2:552 Bloody Chasm, The (De Forest), 1:258; 3:956 Bloom, Harold on Mormons, 2:699 on Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2:633 Bloomer, Amelia Jenks, 1:376, 381; 2:713 bloomers, 1:376, 379 Bloomfield, Leonard, 1:48 “Blueberries” (Frost), 2:786 “Blue Grass Penelope, A” (Harte), 2:774 “Blue Hotel, The” (Crane), 3:1191 bowie knife and, 3:1189 on immigrants and alcohol, 3:1112 blues songs, 2:726–727 lyrics and sharecropping, 2:545 Blue Vein Societies, 2:545 Blum, Robert, 3:1024, 1025 Blume, Donald T., 1:202–203 Blumenschein, Ernest L., 1:94 Bly, Nellie, 2:549 as investigative journalist, 2:716 travel writing and, 3:1131 Blyden, Edward, 1:396 B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League, 2:539 Board, Travis, 1:361 “Boarded Window, The” (Bierce), 1:418–419 Board of Indian Commissioners, 2:511 Boas, Franz, 1:366; 2:513 immigration and, 2:487–488 Native American folklore and, 1:386

T H R O U G H


Boat Club, The (Optic), 1:12 Boatright, Mody C., 1:390 Bobbsey Twins, 1:222 Boelhower, William, 2:487 Bogan, Louise, 2:866 Poetry and, 2:852 Bohemian (magazine), 2:595 bohemian aestheticism, 3:1184 Bohemian Club (San Francisco), 1:268–270 Bohemian Life (Page), 3:1138 bohemians and vagabondia, 1:171–176 Bok, Edward W., 1:104, 105, 345; 2:494, 547, 611; 3:1032 on syndicates, 2:775 Boker, George Henry, 1:413, 414 Bolden, Buddy, 2:727 Boley, Oklaoma, 2:690 Bolo War. See Philippine-American War Bolton, Guy, 2:725 Bolton, Herbert E., 1:411 Bomb, The (Harris), 3:1172 Haymarket riot and, 2:436 Boni, Albert, 1:181 Bonner, Robert, 2:609 Bonner, Sherwood, 3:975 Bonnin, Gertrude Simmons. See Zitkala-Sˇa Bontemps, Arna, 2:641 book clubs, 2:860 Bookman (periodical), 2:734 Book of American Negro Poetry, The (Johnson, ed.), 1:121, 165; 2:629 on dialect poetry, 2:641 Book of Burlesques, A (Mencken), 3:1005 Book of the American Indian, The (Garland), 2:514 “Book of the Grotesque, The” (Anderson), 3:1198 book publishing, 1:176–182 distribution, 1:180 Henry Houghton and design, 2:464 humor and, 2:472 illustration, 2:482 increase in number of books, 2:608, 860 Book Publishing in America (Madison), 2:614 books for instruction, 1:176 Books of American Negro Spirituals, The (Johnson and Johnson), 1:121 bookstores, 1:180 boomed books. See best-sellers Boone, Daniel, 2:453 Boone and Crockett Club, 1:410 Boorstin, Daniel J. on mail-order catalogs, 2:681

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1263

INDEX

Boorstin (continued) on trademarks and brand names, 2:677 Booth, Edwin, 1:270; 3:1115 Shakespeare and, 3:1120 Boots and Saddles (E. B. Custer), 2:522 bootstrap philosophy, 3:1154 Borden, Gail, 1:392 Borderlands scholarship, 2:458 Borges, Jorge Luis, 3:1101 Borglum, John, 1:91 Borglum, Solon, 1:91 Borus, Daniel H., 2:608 on A Hazard of New Fortunes, 2:442 Boss, The (Sheldon), 3:1118 Boston, 1:182–187 artistic clubs in, 1:270 Christian socialism and, 3:1061 fire of 1872, 1:326 as gastronomic center, 1:394 literary conservatism of, 1:183 loss of literary center to New York, 1:182 Public Library, 2:589 as publishing center, 1:177 Boston (Dreiser), 2:558 Boston Art Club, 1:270 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (Farmer), 1:392 Boston Daily Advertiser, 3:1230 Boston Evening Transcript, 3:1230 Bostonians, The (H. James) ascendance of New York and, 1:246 in Century Magazine, 1:214 cross-dressing and, 1:303 patent medicines in, 2:444 on the press, 2:550 on reformism, 2:859 satire of feminists, 1:382, 383 spiritualism and, 3:1078 woman physician in, 2:445 on women’s oratory, 2:793 Boston marriages, 1:302; 3:995 Boston Public Library, 1:89 Boston Times on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:960 on “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” 3:1230 Botkin, B. A., 1:390 Botta, Anne Lynch, 1:271–272 Boucicault, Dion, 3:1116 Boudinot, Elias, II, 2:687–688 Bound East for Cardiff (O’Neill), 3:1121 Provincetown Players and, 2:595 Bourgeois Experience, The (Gay), 3:1035 Bourget, Paul, 2:468 Bourne, Randolph S., 1:69; 2:600–601 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:111

1264

idea of transnational America and, 1:105 in the Masses, 2:601 on My Ántonia, 2:734 on The Promised Land, 3:908 Bowers, Fredson, 2:655; 3:960 Bowers, Sam, 2:566 “Bowery Detective, The” (Philp), 1:323 bowie knife, 3:1188–1189 Bowker, R. R., 2:591 Bowles, Samuel, 2:804 Boxer Rebellion, United States and, 1:79 boxing, 1:187–191 Jack London and, 3:1082 Boyce, Neith, 1:69 Boyer, Frank, 2:690 Boyer, Paul, 3:968 Boyesen, H. H. (Hjalmar Hjorth), 1:194; 2:820; 3:950 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 on W. D. Howells, 3:948 Boy General, The (as told to Mary E. Burt), 2:522 Boy Life on the Prairie (Garland), 1:374 boys, periodicals for, 2:817 Boys’ Life (magazine), 3:1083 Boys of New York (Tousey), 1:322 Boy’s Town, A (Howells), 1:117; 3:1082 Boy’s Will, A (Frost), 2:636 Brace, Charles Loring, 1:174, 200–201 Newsboys’ Lodging House, 3:1094 on prostitution, 3:914–915 Brace, Ernest, 2:657 Bradbury, Malcolm, 1:414 Braddon, Mary Elizabeth, 3:906 Braden, Charles S., 1:239 Bradford, Gamaliel as anti-imperialist, 2:828 psychography, 1:156–157 Bradlaugh, Charles, 1:31 Bradley, His Book (magazine), 2:620 Bradley, Joseph P., 1:381 Bradley, Will H., 2:620 The Chap-Book and, 2:617, 618 Bradwell v. Illinois (1873), 1:381 Brady, Albert, 2:644 Brady, Nicolas, 3:1181 Brainard, C. T., 2:427 Branch, Mark Alden, 1:222 “Branch Road, A” (Garland), 2:661, 691 Brandeis, Louis Dembitz, 2:538, 557 support of Zionism, 2:539 See also Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It brand names, 2:677 Brant, Joseph, 2:522

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Brass Check, The (Sinclair), 2:550 Bratz College, 2:540 Brave New World (Huxley), 1:368 Bread Givers (Yezierska) education and, 2:490 gender roles and, 2:493 on immigrant career success, 2:490, 494 on intergenerational conflict, 2:491; 3:909 Bread-Winners, The (Hay), 1:193 on labor, 2:574 serialized in Century Magazine, 1:214 Breaking the Chains (Gantt), 1:195 Breil, Joseph Carl, 1:161 Breitmann, Hans, 2:474 Bremer, Sidney H., 1:247 Brennan, Joseph X., 2:655 Brenner, Leslie, 1:391 Brer Fox tales, 3:1044. See also Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings Brer Rabbit tales, 3:1044, 1147, 1148, 1150. See also Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings Brice, Fanny, 3:1119 Bricks without Straw (Tourgée), 2:850; 3:930 “Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, The” (Crane), 2:645; 3:1191 on alcohol, 3:1112, 1113 choice of vocabulary in, 3:1054 on firearms, 3:1188 Bridge, James Howard, 2:805 Bridge, The (Crane), 1:313 Bridges, Robert, 3:1024 Bridgman, Raymond L., 1:78; 2:828 Brieux, Eugène, 2:449 Bright Shawl, The (Hergesheimer), 3:1074 Brimming Cup, The (Fisher), 2:657 “Bringing Up Father” (cartoon, McManus), 2:530, 531 Brinton, Daniel Garrison, 1:386; 2:513 Brisbin, James S., 1:150 Briscoe, Margaret Sutton, 3:1025 British authors in McClure’s, 2:645 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 British ballads in the United States, 1:390 British Theatre (Bell), 2:617 Britten, Emma Hardinge, 3:1075 Broadway Jones (Cohan), 3:1120 Broca, Paul, 3:920 Brockway, Zebulon, 2:814 Brodhead, Richard H., 1:339; 2:615; 3:971, 972, 975 on The Conjure Woman, 1:277


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

on Sarah Orne Jewett, 1:291 Broken Blossoms (film; Griffith), 2:799 Brokenburn (Stone), 1:262 Brokmeyer, Henry Conrad, 2:833 Bronco Buster, The (Remington), 1:91 Bronc to Breakfast (Russell), 1:372 Brook, The (Salsbury), 3:1119 Brooke, Rupert, 2:850 Brookfield, Jane Octavia, 3:1025 Brooklyn Bridge, 1:88 Brooks, Cleanth, 2:602 Brooks, Van Wyck, 1:354 on Boston, 1:186 highbrow vs. lowbrow and, 1:81 influence of George Santayana on, 1:416 influence on Richard Hofstadter, 1:80 on The Innocents Abroad, 1:56 reform and, 3:969–970 as a Young American Critic, 1:69 “Brooksmith” (H. James), 1:271 Broseclose, Barbara, 1:91 “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (Crosby and Harburg), 3:1222 Brown, Albert Curtis, 2:613 Brown, Alice, 3:973 lesbian stories and, 3:995 Brown, Bill, 3:962 Brown, Charles Brockden, 1:418; 3:925 Brown, Charles H., 3:1072 Brown, Henry Billings, 2:556, 847 Brown, John, 2:690 Brown, Milton, 1:88, 90 Brown, Richard Maxwell, 3:1165 Brown, Thomas, 2:833 Brown, William Wells, 3:930 on black soldiers during Civil War, 1:261 historical romance and, 2:453 race and, 3:956 temperance imagery and, 3:1109 Brown Blackwell, Antoinette, 3:1201, 1202 Brown Decades, The (Mumford), 2:809 Browne, Carl, 2:572 Browne, Charles Farrar. See Ward, Artemus Browne, G. Waldo, 3:1169 Brownell, William Crary, 2:598–599 New Humanism and, 2:600 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Brownies’ Book, The (magazine), 1:224 Browning, Oscar, 3:1025 Browning, Robert, 2:784 Bruccoli, Matthew J. on The Sea-Wolf, 3:1028

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

on This Side of Paradise, 3:1127–1128, 1130 Bruce, Blanche K., 1:253 “Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan” (Lindsay), 3:901 Bryan, William Jennings, 1:131; 2:561, 792, 856; 3:901 Philippine-American War and, 2:829 World War I and, 3:1218 Bryant, Louise, 2:595 Bryant, William Cullen, 1:180 American Copyright Club and, 1:285 Central Park in New York and, 2:807 on copyright, 1:284 founder of the Century Association, 1:270 nature writing and, 2:755 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:209 wilderness preservation and, 2:808 Bryce, James, 1:395–396 Bryn Mawr, 1:354, 381 Buck, Dudley, 1:209; 2:728 Buck, Gertrude, 2:791, 793 Buddhists immigrants, 1:231 Buel, James W., 2:522; 3:915 Buenos Aires Convention (on Copyright), 1:286 Buffalo Bill. See Cody, William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Buffalo Bill, the King of Border Men series (Buntline), 1:322 Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, 1:135, 243, 408; 3:1119, 1194–1196 Buffalo Bill’s First Scalp for Custer, 1:135 Building of the City Beautiful, The (Miller), 2:617 Bull, Rene, 1:172 Bull Moose Party. See Progressive Party Bunner, H. C., 2:475 Buntline, Ned, 1:322; 2:885; 3:1190, 1191 Bunyan, John, 1:112, 337; 2:714 Bunyan, Paul, 1:388 Burdette, Robert J., 2:475 Bureau of American Ethnology, 1:364 Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2:511, 512 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. See Freedmen’s Bureau Burgess, Melvin, 3:1128 Buried Caesars (Starrett), 3:1102 Burke, Kenneth, 2:595 Burleigh, Harry T., 2:724, 729

T H R O U G H


Burlingame, Edward Livermore, 3:1023–1024 Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 1:17, 140 Century Magazine and, 1:213 children’s literature and, 1:223 World’s Columbian Exposition and, 3:1214 Burnham, Clara Louise, 3:1214 Burnham, Daniel Hudson, 1:89, 216; 3:1000, 1215, 1216 Burnham, John, 2:874 Burning Daylight (London), 1:194; 3:1000 sex and, 1:195 Burns, Tommy, 1:189 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 1:423 science fiction and, 3:1017 use of western formula, 3:1193 See also Tarzan of the Apes Burroughs, John, 2:757, 758 Bursting Bonds (Pickens), 1:115–116 Busch, Adolphus, 1:135 Busch, Wilhelm, 2:483 business competition and, 2:571 presidency and, 3:897 Supreme Court and, 2:622 business and industry novels, 1:191–197 “Business Relations between Publishers and Writers” (Waldron), 2:773 “Bustle in the House, The” (Dickinson), 1:28 Butler, Benjamin, 2:765 Butler, Ellis Parker, 2:473 Butler, Nicholas Murray, 3:1220 B. W. Dodge & Company, 3:1051 Bynner, Witter, 2:645; 3:1006

C Cabbages and Kings (O. Henry), 1:401 Cabell, James Branch, 1:82, 138, 139; 2:874 agnosticism, 1:34 Cabeza de Baca Gilbert, Fabiola, 3:1089 Cabin, The (White), 3:982 Cabiria (film; Pastrone), 1:158; 2:706 Cable, George Washington, 1:17, 167, 274–275; 2:562 African American folklore and, 1:386 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 black civil rights and, 3:930

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1265

INDEX

Cable, George Washington (continued) criticism of segregation, 2:544 on dance, 1:314 influence of Ambrose Bierce on, 3:1101 local color fiction and, 3:948 Mark Twain and, 1:278 New Orleans and, 2:499, 765, 766–767 race and, 3:956 realism and, 3:951 on Reconstruction, 2:669; 3:956 regionalism, 1:51 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 in Scribner’s Monthly, 1:214 as speaker, 2:586 violence and, 3:1167–1168 See also Grandissimes, The Cady, Edwin H., 2:438, 505 Caesar’s Column (Donnelly), 2:868–869, 871; 3:897 populism and, 3:966 Cahan, Abraham, 1:62, 103, 116, 232; 3:969, 985 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:110 the Bible and, 1:141 on divorce and ethnic identity, 1:299 immigrant education and, 2:490 on intergenerational conflict, 2:491 the Jewish Daily Forward and, 2:548 as labor leader, 2:539 on Lower East Side, 2:540; 3:1168 on marriage, 1:293 on New York City, 1:247 as spokesperson for socialism on the East Side, 2:539 use of dialect in, 3:1052 See also Rise of David Levinsky, The; Yekl Cairns, W. B., 1:54 cakewalk, 1:315 Caldwell, John, 2:728 Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, The (Mooney), 1:386 California constitution and Mexicans, 3:1086 gold rush, 1:225; 3:1182 Ramona boom, 3:942 wine industry, 3:1112 California and Oregon Trail, The (Parkman), 1:409; 2:455 Californian (magazine), 2:803 Californians, The (Atherton), 3:1002 Californios, 3:1086, 1087 Callahan, S. Alice, 3:1226 sentimental realism and, 1:342 Calles, Plutarco, 2:685 Call of the South (Durham), 2:447

1266

Call of the Wild, The (London), 1:76, 139; 2:691; 3:1027, 1182 humanity as a species, 1:28 Calloway, Cab, 1:81 Call to Action, A (Weaver), 2:868 Cambridge History of American Literature, The, 1:54 Camera and the Pencil, The (Root), 2:841 Camera Work (journal), 1:69; 2:841, 843 Camp, Walter, 3:1080 Campbell, Bartley, 3:955, 1116–1117, 1190 Campbell, Ben Nighthorse, 1:136 Campbell, George, 2:791 Campbell, Helen Stuart, 2:885; 3:915, 1205 Campbell, James, 2:838 Campbell, Olive, 1:390 Campbell, William Edward March. See March, William Canada Century Magazine distributed in, 1:212 humorists and, 2:473 Canadian Born (Johnson), 2:516 Canfield, Dorothy, 1:346; 2:558 “Cannibalism in the Cars” (Twain), 2:792; 3:1042 canon. See literary canon Can Such Things Be? (Bierce), 1:418 Cantos, The (Pound), 2:486 “Capital and Its Earnings” (Clark), 1:195 capitalism aestheticism as reaction to, 1:24 captains of industry, 1:281, 356 Populists’ critique of, 2:869 railroad barons, 3:1144, 1180 robber barons, 2:569, 713; 3:1180 The Squatter and the Don on, 3:1089 capital punishment, 1:199–203 death penalty reform movement, 1:199–200 electrocution, 1:201 theoretical underpinnings of, 1:200–202 Captain Farnham (Hay), 1:194 Captain Jinks, Hero (Crosby), 1:78; 2:503 Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (Fitch), 3:1118 Captain Macklin (Davis), 3:1082 Captain of Company K., The (Kirkland), 3:959 “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” (Twain), 3:1016

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Cardozo, Benjamin N., 2:538, 557 Carey, Henry C., 1:283–284 Carleton, Will, 2:861, 863, 865–866 Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1:43, 44 Chiricahua Apaches at, 2:513 Carlos among the Candles (Stevens), 2:853 Carlton, Donna, 3:1216 Carlyle, Thomas, 1:16 Carman, William Bliss, 2:617 as poet of Vagabondia, 1:174–175 Carmany, John H., 2:805 Carmel-by-the-Sea, 2:596–597 Carnegie, Andrew, 2:569; 3:897, 1032, 1033, 1180, 1181, 1183 Authors Club and, 1:270 caricature by Albert Levering, 3:1182 collection of European art, 1:87 Herbert Spencer and, 3:1048 libraries and, 2:592; 3:904 museums and, 1:364 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 the poor and, 2:883 on wealth, 3:1181–1182 See also “Gospel of Wealth, The” and Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays, The Carpenter, Edward, 3:996 Carpenter, Frederic, 1:362 Carpenter, John Alden, 2:724 Carranza, Venustiano, 2:685 Carrington, Charles, 2:874 Carrington, Margaret Irvin, 2:522 Carson, Kit, mythologizing of, 3:1191 Carson, Mina, 1:102 Carson Pirie Scott Building, 1:89 Carter, Everett, 1:20 Carter, Leslie, 3:1115 Caruso, Enrico, 2:724 Cary, Alice, 3:974 regionalism and, 1:51 “Case of Rose Haggerty, The” (Campbell), 3:915 Casey, James, 1:232 Cashman, Nellie, 1:302 “Cask of Amontillado, The” (Poe), 3:1109 “Cassandra” (Robinson), 2:665 Cassatt, Mary, 1:92, 93 as expatriate, 1:86 Orientalism and, 2:796, 799 Cass County Courier (newspaper), 1:83 Cass County News (newspaper), 1:83 Castello, Dan, 1:243 Castle Garden (New York), 2:536, 537 Castlemon, Harry, 1:12 Castle Nowhere (Woolson), 3:974


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Castle of Otranto, The (Walpole), 1:418; 2:451 Catastrophe and Social Change (Prince), 1:327 Cathay (Pound), 2:637, 800 Cather, Willa, 1:411; 2:646, 820 on adolescence, 1:11–12 on The Awakening, 1:126 the Bible and, 1:141 on Christian Science, 1:239, 241–242 on The Country of the Pointed Firs, 1:287; 3:973 death and, 1:30 on food, 1:392 on frontier violence, 3:1169 as graduate of a land-grant school, 1:353 Greenwich Village and, 2:596 highbrow and lowbrow culture and, 1:81 influence of Henri Bergson on, 2:838 journalism and, 2:546 on labor, 2:558 on magazine editors, 2:819–820 McClure’s discovery of, 2:645 on Mary Baker Eddy, 1:238, 241 on museum as place of spiritual enlightenment, 2:720 Sarah Orne Jewett and, 2:606 serialization and, 2:821 short story and, 3:1045 on social dances, 1:314–315 Southwest and, 1:368; 2:597 as teacher, 1:351 Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:902 western novels and, 1:76 on western settlement, 1:373, 375 See also My Ántonia; O Pioneers! Catherwood, Mary Hartwell, 3:974 Catholic Review (newspaper), 1:205 Catholics, 1:203–207 immigrants, 1:231; 2:529 Catholic Sun (newspaper), 1:205 Catholic World (magazine), 1:205 Catlin, George, 1:364 idea of the national park, 2:807–808 Catskills, Jews in the, 2:542 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 3:1211 secularism and, 1:33 Woman Citizen and, 3:1202 on Women and Economics, 3:1204 Cattell, James McKeen, 3:924 “Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with the Administration of Justice, The” (R. Pound), 2:556–557 Cave, Robert Catlett, 1:260, 261

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Cawelti, John, 2:737, 741 on firearms, 3:1188 on pursuit of wealth, 3:1033 on self-help, 3:1032 on the western, 3:1190, 1191 Cayce, Edgar, 3:918, 1077 Cease Firing (Johnston), 1:137 “Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, The” (Twain), 3:947–948, 975, 1042 Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches, The (Twain), 1:15 “Cell Mates” (Smedley), 2:815 censorship anti-vice organizations and, 2:874 avoidance by Century Magazine, 1:214 book publishing and, 1:181 libraries and, 2:590 See also banning centennial. See Philadelphia Centennial Exposition Centennial Edition of the Works of Sidney Lanier, The (Anderson, ed.), 2:670, 673 “Centennial Hymn” (Whittier), 1:209 “Centennial Meditation of Columbia, The” (Lanier), 1:209; 2:672 Century Association, 1:270 Century Club (New York), 1:267 Century Company, 1:213 Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, The. See Century Magazine Century Magazine, 1:50, 109, 182, 211–215; 2:610, 818 Civil War memoirs and, 1:258, 259 cover by Elihu Vedder, 1:212 on Huckleberry Finn, 1:185 illustrations in, 2:480 John Muir’s articles in, 1:367 local color fiction and, 1:273 serialization of The Sea-Wolf in, 3:1027 on Southwest, 1:365–366 See also Scribner’s Monthly Century of Dishonor, A (Jackson), 1:138; 2:512; 3:929, 1168 as frontier romance, 2:453 Ramona as response to failure of, 3:940 Ceremonies of the Pawnee (Murie and Wissler), 2:515 Certain Measure, A (Glasgow), 3:1174 Certain Rich Man, A (White), 1:193–194 Chadwick, George Whitefield, 2:721 Chadwick-Joshua, Jocelyn, 1:22 chain stores, 2:681

T H R O U G H


Chamberlin, Joseph E., 2:740, 741 Chambers, Robert W., 1:421–422 Chambers, Thomas, 3:977 Chamestzky, Jules, 3:986 Champagne, Duane, 1:369 Champney, J. Wells, 1:213 Chance Acquaintance, A (Howells), 1:107 “Chance for Millionaires, A” (Mencken), 3:1185 Channing, William Ellery, 1:152 Chap-Book, The (magazine), 1:216; 2:617 poster by W. H. Bradley, 2:618 Chapin, Frederick H., 1:367 Chaplin, Charlie, 2:708; 3:1139 Chapman, John Jay as anti-imperialist, 2:828 on Josiah Royce, 2:835 Chapters from a Life (Phelps), 3:905 Characteristics (Mitchell), 2:447 characterization and dialect, 3:1052 Charles L. Webster and Co., 1:16; 2:612 Charles Scribner’s Sons, 3:1023 Charleston (dance), 1:315 Charleston earthquake (1886), 1:329 Chase, Richard, 3:1148 on romance novels, 2:450 Chase, Salmon B., 3:898 Chase, William Merritt At the Seaside, 2:505 studies in Munich, 1:86 Chase Act, 2:776 Chasm of the Colorado (Moran), 1:94 Chastity (Lewis), 2:449 Chautauqua movement, 2:587 Elbert Hubbard and, 2:618–619 self-help and, 3:1031 Chautauqua Movement, The (Gould), 2:587 Cheat, The (film; DeMille), 2:800 Cheever, George, 3:1109 Chellis, Mary Dwinell, 3:1111 Chen, Yuanzhu, 1:226 Cherry Mine Disaster (1909), 1:326 Chesnut, Mary Boykin, 3:956 Civil War memoir of, 1:114–115, 116, 262; 3:1178 Chesnutt, Charles Waddell, 2:667 antimiscegenation theory and, 2:448 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:110, 167 biography of Frederick Douglass, 1:253 Booker T. Washington and, 3:1154 on Booker T. Washington, 1:353 on colored aristocrats, 1:166 on convict lease program, 2:813–814

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1267

INDEX

Chesnutt, Charles Waddell (continued) on ethnicity and marriage, 1:294 influence of Albion Tourgée on, 3:1167 Joel Chandler Harris and, 3:1149–1150 mixed-race individuals in work of, 2:694 plantation tradition and, 1:167, 168 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 2:849 pseudoscientific theories of race and, 3:921 realism and, 3:951 Reconstruction as symbol in, 3:956 short story and, 3:1044 Social Darwinism and, 3:1058 S. S. McClure and, 2:776 as teacher, 1:351 See also Conjure Woman, The; Marrow of Tradition, The Chesterton, G. K. on detective stories, 2:741 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Chew, Ng Poon, 2:710 Chicago, 1:215–219, 248, 250 Art Institute, 2:717, 719 black migration to, 2:688, 691 business and industry novels, 1:196 fire of 1871, 1:326, 327, 328 founding of University of, 1:219 jazz and, 1:315 population, 1:246, 246t skyscrapers and, 1:88–89 See also World’s Columbian Exposition “Chicago” (Harte), 1:329 Chicago Daily News as syndicate, 2:777 on “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” 3:1230 Chicago Evening Post, 1:345 Margaret Anderson and, 2:621 “Chicago Poems” (Sandburg), 2:852 Chicago Renaissance, 1:216 Chicago School of architecture, 1:88–89, 216 Chicago Socialist, 2:554, 555 Chicago Times, 2:432 Chicago Tribune (newspaper) on Haymarket trial, 2:435 labor and, 2:432 on Main-Travelled Roads, 2:660 statistics on lynching, 2:628; 3:1167 Chicago World’s Fair. See World’s Columbian Exposition “Chickamauga” (Bierce), 1:260; 3:1104, 1177, 1178 Child, Francis James, 1:174, 389

1268

“Child and the Profligate, The” (Whitman), 3:1109 “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth” (Tolstoy), 2:696–697 child labor, 2:713; 3:964 indentured child laborers, 1:8 Children of Loneliness (Yezierska), 1:105; 2:486–487 Children of the Frost (London), 3:1027 Children of the Night, The (Robinson), 2:635, 662 Children of the Poor (Riis), 2:540 Children’s Aid Society of New York, 2:883 children’s literature, 1:220–225 Joel Chandler Harris and, 3:1148, 1150 Sarah Orne Jewett and, 1:289 Chimes (Herrick), 1:218 Chimes, The (Dickens), 2:682 Chinese, 1:225–230 germ theory of disease and attitudes toward, 2:448 immigrants at the San Francisco Custom House, 1:227 population in the United States, 1870–1920, 1:226t in San Francisco, 1:251; 3:999 Sui Sin Far’s defense of immigrants, 2:884 See also Chinese Exclusion Act Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, 1:226 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 1:77, 228; 2:287, 448, 710, 846; 3:1000, 1168 Chinese in America series, The (Sin Far), 2:488 “Chinese in Los Angeles, The” (Chew), 2:710 Chinese Must Go, The (Grimm), 1:227–228 “Chinese Nightingale, The” (Lindsay), 2:852 Chita (Hearn), 2:768 Choir Invisible, The (Allen), 2:453 cholera, 1:335 Chopin, Kate, 1:124 American Press Association and, 2:773 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:110 Darwinism and, 1:320 death and, 1:29 determinism and, 1:53 lesbian stories and, 3:995 naturalism and, 2:747 New Orleans and, 2:768 Orientalism and, 2:797, 798 race and, 1:169; 2:544, 694

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

realism and, 3:951 short story and, 3:1043 on social dance, 1:314 as southern regionalist writer, 3:975 St. Louis World’s Fair and, 3:993 on “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” 3:1190 See also Awakening, The Chosen People, The (Nyburg), 2:541 Chosen Valley, The (Foote), 3:983 Christianity, 1:230–236 charity organizations and poverty, 2:883 churches and reform, 3:968 Sidney Lanier and, 2:672 Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race (Blyden), 1:396 Christianity and the Social Crisis (Rauschenbusch), 1:236–238 Christianizing the Social Order (Rauschenbusch), 1:237 Christian Labor Union, 3:1061 Christian missionaries imperialism and, 2:496, 497 Indians and, 2:510 Christian Science, 1:233, 238–242; 3:923 Christian Science Church, Boston, 1:240 Christian Science (Twain), 1:240–241 Christian Science Monitor, 1:239 Christian Science Today (Braden), 1:239 Christian socialism, 2:857; 3:968, 1061, 1172 reform and, 3:967 Christian Socialism (Cort), 3:1061–1062 Christian Socialist (periodical), 3:1061 Christian Social Union, 3:1061 Christian Union (periodical), 3:941 Christmas, commercializing of, 2:682 Christmas Carol, A (Dickens), 2:682 “Christmas Fireside, The” (Twain), 1:10 “Christmas Jenny” (Freeman), 2:764 “Chromo-Civilization” (Godkin), 2:745 chromolithographs, 3:1024 Chronicle of Young Satan, The (Twain), 3:1065 Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth (Bancroft), 1:154 Church, F. S., 3:1148 Church, Francis P., 2:682 Church, Frederic Edwin, 1:90 Churchill, Winston American Revolution romance and, 2:454


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

exposition of religious hypocrisy, 1:34 as historical novelist, 1:137–138 on The Jungle, 2:555 “Church Mouse, A” (Freeman), 1:342; 2:764; 3:972, 973 use of dialect in, 3:1052 Church of Christ, Scientist. See Christian Science Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. See Mormons Cincinnati Enquirer, 1:174 Cincinnati School of Design, 1:97 Circular Staircase, The (Rinehart), 2:740 circuses, 1:242–246; 3:1119 cities city beautiful movement, 2:717–718; 3:1000 increase in urban population, 3:1007 migration from rural areas to, 2:691 migration of blacks to, 2:688–691 urban parks, 2:807 See also urbanization City, The (Fitch), 3:1118 City College of New York, 1:89 city dwellers, 1:246–252 “City of Dreadful Night, The” (Thomson), 3:1018 “Civilisation in the United States” (Arnold), 1:278, 398 Civilization in the United States (Stearns, ed.), 1:81 civil rights, 1:252–257 Booker T. Washington and, 3:1155 Civil Rights Act (1866), 1:253; 2:562, 848 Civil Rights Act (1875), 1:253; 2:543, 848 Supreme Court and, 3:1167 “civil rights by copyright” initiative, 1:257 Civil Rights Cases (1883), 2:848; 3:1167 civil society of blacks, 3:935–936 Civil Sundry Bill (1879), 1:364 Civil War altered sense of national consciousness and, 1:49–50 Ambrose Bierce’s participation in, 3:1102 effect on electoral politics, 3:896 Henry Adams and, 1:358 My Ántonia and, 2:732 pornography and, 2:872 romances, 2:453–454 as setting and symbol in Reconstruction literature, 3:955–956

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Stampede of the Eleventh Corps on the Plank Road, 3:959 Ulysses S. Grant on, 2:826 the village and, 3:1161–1162 Winslow Homer and, 1:92 women and, 3:1209 See also Civil War memoirs; Civil War memorials and monuments Civil War Eyewitnesses (Cole), 1:260 Civil War memoirs, 1:113–115, 258–263; 3:1177–1178 black soldiers, 1:261 common soldiers, 1:260–261 generals, 1:258–260 home front, 1:262 See also Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant Civil War memorials and monuments, 1:263–266 Robert Gould Shaw memorial, Boston, 1:265 Clafflin, Victoria. See Woodhull, Victoria Claim Jumpers, The (White), 3:982 Clansman, The (Dixon), 1:258; 2:447, 544, 565, 669; 3:932 The Birth of a Nation and, 1:159, 167; 3:1167 defense of lynching, 2:630 as historical romance, 2:453 Clarel (Melville), 2:798 Clarence and Corrine (Johnson), 2:448 Clark, Caro, 1:179 Clark, Francis E., 3:1032 Clark, John Bates, 1:195 Clark, Thomas March, 1:220 Clark, Walter Van Tiburg, 2:631 Clark, William, 1:408; 2:755; 3:1181 Clarke, Edward H., 2:446; 3:1036 Clausius, Rudolf, 3:921, 1078 Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), 2:574, 803 Clean Books crusade, 2:874, 875 Cleary, David Powers, 2:679 Cleary, Kate McPhelim, 2:532 Cleghorn, Sarah N., 2:820 Clemenceau, Georges, 1:395, 396 Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. See Twain, Mark clergy and self-help manuals, 3:1032 Cleveland, Grover, 2:856; 3:900–901 appointment of former Confederates to cabinet, 3:896 copyright and, 1:285 Hawaii and, 1:77 neutrality of, 3:1071 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 Cleveland population, 1:246, 246t Cleyre, Voltairine de, 1:67 Cliff Dwellers, The (Bellows), 1:96

T H R O U G H


Cliff-Dwellers, The (Fuller), 1:131, 217; 3:899 as business novel, 1:196 Chicago and, 1:250 Cliffs of the Upper Colorado River (Moran), 1:94 Climbers, The (Fitch), 3:1118 Clinton, DeWitt, 2:807 Closson, W. B., 3:1024 Clotel (Brown), 3:930 as historical romance, 2:453 temperance imagery in, 3:1109 Clovernook (Cary), 3:974 clubs, 1:267–273 men’s clubs and pornography, 2:874 Coal Dust on the Fiddle (Korson), 1:390 coal mines, Irish and, 2:529 Coates, Robert, 2:698 Cobb, Irvin S., 1:422 Coburn, Alvin Langdon illustration of New York edition of Henry James and, 2:842 vortographs, 2:842, 843 Cochrane, Elizabeth. See Bly, Nellie Cocoon, The (Stuart), 2:446 “Code, The” (Frost), 2:786 “Code-Heroics, The” (Frost), 2:852–853 Cody, William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” as dime novel western hero, 1:322, 408; 3:1191 George Custer and, 1:135 lithograph by Paul Frenzeny, 3:1195 Wild West shows, 2:514 coercive reform, 3:968 Coeur d’Alene (Foote), 3:976 Coffin, George Yost, 2:857 Cohan, George M., 2:725; 3:1115, 1120, 1219 Cohen, William, 2:690–691 Coin’s Financial School (Harvey), 1:191; 2:873; 3:901 Coit, Lillie Hitchcock, 1:302 Cole, Bob, 1:120 Cole, Garold L., 1:260 Cole, Thomas, 2:808 Cole, W. W., circus of, 1:243 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor influence on Edwin Percy Whipple, 2:598 secondary imagination and, 3:946–947 Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel, 2:728 Collected Works (Bierce), 1:260, 418; 3:1005, 1103 Collection of Popular Cantonese Folk Rhymes in America, A (Hu), 1:226

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1269

INDEX

Collection of Taishan Folk Rhymes, A (Chen), 1:226 collective biographies, 1:154 college humor, 2:472 College Widow, The (Ade), 3:1119 Colles, William Morris, 2:613 Collier, Price, 3:1026 Collier’s Weekly (magazine), 2:610 illustration of Wilmington race riot of 1898, 2:668 muckraking, 2:822 Collins, Wilkie, 3:906 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 Colonel’s Dream, The (Chesnutt), 1:168, 353; 2:813–814 Colonel Sellers as a Scientist (Twain and Howells), 2:605; 3:1078 Colorado silver in, 3:982 statehood, 1:74 women’s suffrage and, 3:1210 Colorado Fuel and Iron Works strike, 2:573–574 Colored American Magazine, 2:548–549; 3:932 Colored Cadet at West Point (Flipper), 1:115 Colored National Labor Union, 2:571 “Colored Soldiers, The” (Dunbar), 2:640 “Color Line, The” (Douglass), 2:544 Color Line, The (Smith), 2:447 “Colour out of Space, The” (Lovecraft), 1:419 Colt, Samuel, 3:1186 Columbia History of American Literature, 1:352 Columbia Literary History of the United States (Brodhead), 2:615 Columbian Exposition. See World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893) Columbian Historical Exposition (Madrid, 1892), 1:366 “Columbian Ode” (Monroe), 2:851 Columbian Orator, The, 2:791 Columbia University New Historians and, 2:460 study of Native American folklore and, 1:386 Colvert, James B., 2:655 Comedy of Conscience, A (Mitchell), 2:447 comic strip, 2:482–483 on tramps, 3:1139 Coming Nation (newspaper), 1:84; 3:1062 “Coming of John, The” (Du Bois), 2:566

1270

Coming Race, The (Bulwer-Lytton), 3:921 Coming through the Rye (Remington), 1:91 Commager, Henry Steele on place of religion in society, 1:230 on St. Nicholas Magazine, 1:221 commercialism literature and, 3:903–904 as subject of poetry, 2:671 Committee on Urban Conditions among Negroes, 2:545 Common Lot, The (Herrick), 1:90, 218 Common Sense in the Household (Harland), 3:1033 Commonweal of Christ, 2:572 communications advances speed and, 3:1008 unified cultural awareness, 1:50 Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), 3:1062 Community Reconstructs, The (Campbell), 2:838 Company K (March), 3:1222 company towns, 2:569 “Complete Poetical Works” (Hulme), 2:484 Complete Tales of Uncle Remus (Chase, ed.), 3:1148 Complete Works of Kate Chopin, The (Syersted, ed.), 1:123–124 Composon, Jason, 1:73 Comptes-Rendus de l’Athénée Louisianais (magazine), 2:769 Comstock, Anna Botsford, 2:759 Comstock, Anthony, 2:873, 874; 3:1036–1037 censorship and, 1:181 Victoria Woodhull and, 1:406 Comstock Act (1873), 2:873 Comstock laws, 3:1035 Comstock Lode, 3:1182 Comte, Auguste, 3:911 influence on Herbert Croly, 3:913 Concerning Children (Gilman), 1:350 Concord, Massachusetts, 1:184–185 Concord School of Philosophy, 1:184; 2:587, 835 Condensed Novels, and Other Papers (Harte), 3:1006 Conder, John J., 2:648 Cone, Claribel, 1:87 Cone, Etta, 1:87 Coney Island, New York, 3:979–980 disaster reenactments, 1:325 “Confederate Memorial Address” (Lanier), 2:671 Confessions (Augustine), 1:357

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Confessions of an English Opium Eater (De Quincey), 1:2 Confidence-Man, The (Melville), 3:1009, 1010 “Confidences” (Chopin), 1:126 “Congo, The” (Lindsay), 2:852 Congressional Union, 3:1211 Congressman Swanson (Post), 2:871 Coniston (Churchill), 1:138 “Conjurer’s Revenge, The” (Chesnutt), 1:276 Conjure Woman, The (Chesnutt), 1:168, 273–277; 2:544, 666 cover of first edition, 1:274 economic hierarchy and, 3:954 marketing of, 3:1149–1150 plantation tradition, 3:975 Connecticut Audubon Society, 2:759 Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A (Twain), 1:195, 196, 278–283 anti-Catholicism, 1:204 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and, 3:1195 Daniel Carter Beard’s illustrations for, 1:279; 2:482; 3:1081 on education, 1:350 excerpts in Century Magazine, 1:214 on firearms, 3:1186–1187 as historical romance, 2:452 on imperialism, 2:499 satire of Anglo-Saxonism, 1:73 satire of genteel tradition, 1:417 as science fiction, 3:1016 Connolly, C. P., 2:645, 716 Conquest, The (Micheaux), 1:375; 2:545 on black settlers in Midwest, 2:688 Conrad, Joseph, 3:1021 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:962 on Stephen Crane, 2:506 on worldview in 1897, 2:663 conservation. See environmental protection “Conservation of Races, The” (Du Bois), 3:937 Conservative Christian Anarchist Party, 3:1184 conspicuous consumption, 3:1122, 1185–1186 origin of term, 2:675 conspicuous display, 3:1123, 1183 conspicuous waste, 3:1186 consumer society, 2:674 celebration in World’s Columbian Exposition, 3:1214 Sister Carrie and, 3:1049 The Theory of the Leisure Class on, 3:1123


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

consumption (tuberculosis), 1:337 Contending Forces (Hopkins), 2:669, 694; 3:932, 969 on effect of violence against black women, 3:1167 influence of psychoanalytic theory on, 3:925 Continent (periodical), 2:621 “Contradictory Impulses” (Aranda), 3:1089 Contributions to North American Ethnology (Powell), 1:364 Conway, Katherine E., 2:531 Conwell, Russell H., 1:233; 2:586, 676; 3:1033, 1094 Cook, Florence, 3:1075, 1077 Cook, George Cram, 1:361; 2:595; 3:1121 Cook, Walter Wheeler, 2:559 Cook, Will Marion, 2:729 Cooke, John Esten, 1:260 Cooke, Rose Terry, 1:290; 3:972–973 domestic fiction and, 1:341 lesbian stories and, 3:995 on marriage, 1:296–297 short stories and, 3:1040 on village life, 3:1162 Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth, 1:369 Coolbrith, Ina, 3:999 Coolidge, Susan, 1:12 Coon Alphabet, A (Kemble), 2:482 Cooper, Anna Julia, 3:930, 937–938, 1098 Cooper, James Fenimore, 1:129 on Christmas, 2:682 English pirated editions, 1:284 frontier and, 1:407, 408 historical romance and, 2:450, 451, 452 realism and, 3:943–944 on sports, 3:1081 on wilderness preservation, 2:808 Cooper, Sarah B., 1:350 Cooper, Susan Fenimore, 2:759 cooperatives, 2:571 of farmers, 2:868 “Cop and the Anthem, The” (I. Henry), 1:400 Copeland and Day, 1:179 Copperhead, The (Thomas), 3:1118 Copperheads, 2:854 copyright, 1:177, 283–287 Huckleberry Finn, 1:19 Copyright Act (1891), 1:286 Copyright Act (1909), 1:286 Corbett, James John “Gentleman Jim,” 1:188, 189 Corbett, Theodore, 3:977

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Corcoran Museum (Washington, D.C.), 1:87 Cordova, Richard de, 2:707 Corliss, George Henry, 1:208 Corliss steam engine (Philadelphia Centennial Exposition), 1:208, 209 “Corn” (Lanier), 2:670, 671 Cornell, Ezra, 3:1183 Cornell University and New Historians, 2:460 Cornhill Magazine, 1:58 Daisy Miller published in, 1:305 Cornplanter, Jesse, 1:368; 2:515 Corporal Si Klegg and His “Pard” (Hinman), 3:959 corporations labor and, 2:569, 570 vertical integration, 2:675 Correspondents’ War, The (Brown), 3:1072 Cort, John C., 3:1061–1062 Cortázar, Julio, 3:1101 Coryell, John Russell, 2:738 Cosmopolitan (magazine), 2:610, 822 on Christian Science, 1:240 halftone printing and, 2:480 muckraking and, 2:822 Cosmopolitan Vistas (Lutz), 3:972 Cost, The (Phillips), 1:194 Cotton States and International Exposition (Atlanta, 1895) as achievement of the New South, 2:772 Booker T. Washington at, 1:255; 2:794; 3:931, 1152 Coultrap-McQuin, Susan, 2:608, 611 Country Doctor, A (Jewett), 1:289, 383; 2:445 Country of the Pointed Firs, The (Jewett), 1:110, 287–292, 342; 3:1042 supernatural in, 1:419 Country School, The (Homer), 1:351 County Chairman, The (Ade), 3:1119 Coup, W. C., 1:243, 244 Coupland, Douglas, 3:1127 courts, traditionalism of, 2:556 “Courts and the Negro, The” (speech; Chesnutt), 2:849 courtship, marriage, and divorce, 1:292–301 literature and, 3:1038 Couse, E. Irving, 1:94 Cousin, Victor, 2:833 Cowboy and the Lady, The (Fitch), 3:1118 Cowboy Metaphysics (French), 3:1188 cowboys and folklore, 1:389

T H R O U G H


Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (Lomax), 1:389 Cowdrick, Jesse C., 1:322 Cowley, Malcolm, 2:751 Cowperwood Trilogy (Dreiser). See the Financier; The Genius; The Titan Cox, F. Brett, 1:414 Cox, James M., 3:972, 1009, 1155 on Up from Slavery, 3:1153 Cox, Kenyon, 3:1024 Coxey, Jacob, 2:572, 871 Coxey’s Army, 2:572; 3:964 Crack-Up, The (Fitzgerald), 3:907 Craddock, Charles Egbert (pseud.). See Murfree, Mary Noailles Craddock, Ira, 3:1037 Crafts, Wilber F., 3:1032 Craftsman (magazine), 1:98 Craftsman organization, 1:98 Craig, Edward Gordon, 3:1120 Cram, Ralph Adams, 1:421 Cranberry Harvest on the Island of Nantucket, The (Johnson), 1:93 Crane, Bruce, 1:87 Crane, Hart Alfred Stieglitz and, 2:842 Isadora Duncan’s effect on, 1:313 the Little Review and, 2:621 Poetry and, 2:852 Crane, Jonathan Townley, 1:33 Crane, Leo, 1:367 Crane, Stephen on adolescence, 1:11 on alcoholism, 1:2, 3 anti-imperialism of, 2:501 in Appeal to Reason, 1:85 the Bible and, 1:141 as bohemian, 1:173–174 The Chap-Book and, 2:617 Civil War and, 2:842; 3:956 on death, 1:28 determinism and, 1:53 difficulty publishing, 1:414 on the effect of mass warfare on the individual, 3:1189 Elbert Hubbard and, 2:619 in Greenwich Village, 2:595 on immigrants and alcohol, 3:1112 influence of Ambrose Bierce on, 3:1101 Irving Bacheller and, 2:776 on life in tenements, 2:532–533 on Lower East Side, 3:1168 lyric poetry and, 2:635 magazine contributions, 2:820 metaphor of the game, 3:1082 as muckraker, 2:576, 822 naturalism and, 2:747, 749 New Critical readings of, 2:751

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1271

INDEX

Crane, Stephen (continued) New York City and, 1:237; 2:780 Orientalism and, 2:797 on police, 2:582 portrait by Corwin Linson, 2:652 on poverty, 2:885 on premarriage sexual relations, 1:295 realism and, 3:947 rejected by Century Magazine, 1:214 in Saturday Evening Post, 1:349 short story and, 3:1044 Social Gospel and, 1:236 Spanish-American War and, 1:78; 3:1073–1074, 1178 S. S. McClure and, 2:776 on urban police, 2:581 W. D. Howells and, 2:442; 3:944, 950 See also Maggie, A Girl of the Streets; “Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, The”; Red Badge of Courage, The Crane, William H., 3:1115 Crapsey, Adelaide, 1:354 Crapsey, Edward, 3:915 Crawford, Francis Marion as historical novelist, 1:137 on novels, 2:451 as professional writer, 2:611 romantic novels, 1:138 supernatural and, 1:420 Crazy Horse, 1:75, 133; 3:1168 death of, 2:520 Creech, James, 3:997 Crime: Its Cause and Treatment (Darrow), 1:202 criminal justice reform, 1:199 “Crippled Hope, A” (King), 2:767 Crisis, The (Churchill), 1:138 Crisis, The (magazine), 2:549 cover of first issue, 3:937 W. E. B. Du Bois editor of, 1:165, 257; 2:458 Critic (magazine), 2:610 Critical Dialogue between Aboo and Caboo, A (Rouquette), 2:767 critical methodology, study of literature and, 1:52 Critical Period of American History 1783–1789 (Fiske), 2:457 critical realism, 3:950–951 George Santayana and, 2:837 Critical Realism (Sellars), 2:837 Critic and the Drama, The (Nathan), 2:599 Criticism (Brownell), 2:598–599 Criticism and Fiction (Howells), 1:182–183, 295; 3:945 on theater, 3:1117 Crofutt, George, 1:87

1272

Croly, David Goodman, 3:911 term “miscegenation” and, 2:692 Croly, Herbert, 1:90; 3:911 Croly, Jane Cunningham (Jennie June), 3:911 Crook, George, 1:134 Crookes, William, 3:1078 Crosby, Bing, 3:1222 Crosby, Ernest Howard, 1:78; 2:502 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 Spanish-American War and, 2:503 Crosby, Margaret, 3:1025 cross-dressing, 1:301–304 in Fettered for Life, 1:384 in postbellum literature, 3:994 Crossing, The (Churchill), 1:138 “Cross of Gold” speech (Bryan), 2:792 Crothers, Rachel, 3:1118–1119 “Crowd and the Public, The” (Park), 1:62 Crowley, John W., 2:604 on alcoholism in W. D. Howells’s fiction, 1:2–3 on W. D. Howells, 2:442 Cruise of the Snark, The (London), 1:139, 269 Cruise of the Vandilis, The (Wharton), 3:1134 Crumbling Idols (Garland), 3:974, 1215 Crummell, Alexander, 3:936, 937 Crunden, Robert M., 2:555 Crux, The (Gilman), 2:445, 447 on sexually transmitted diseases, 2:449 Crystal Palace Exhibition (London). See Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations (London, 1851) Cuba independence of, 3:1072 Spanish-American War and, 1:78; 3:1070 Cullen, Countee, 2:641 cultural critic, 3:969 cultural identity, Mary Antin and, 3:909 cultural relativism, development of, 1:366 cultural studies, naturalism and, 2:751 cultural symbols invented by Thomas Nast, 2:427 Santa Claus, 2:682 culture attack on Native American, 1:75 Harper & Brothers influence on, 2:427 highbrow versus lowbrow, 1:81, 416 magazines and mass culture, 2:714 of New Orleans, 2:768–769

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Cultures of Letters (Brodhead), 1:291, 339 Cummings, Edward Estlin (e. e. cummings), 3:1220 Cummins, Maria Susanna, 2:615 Cunliffe, Marcus, 2:655 Cunningham, Valerie, 1:291 Cupid’s Yokes (Heywood), 1:407 Cup of Death (Vedder), 1:94 Curme, George O., 1:48 Currency Act (1900), 1:131 Currier & Ives Chicago Fire (1871), 1:328 The Progress of the Century, 3:1011 Curti, Merle, 3:1191 Curtis, Cyrus H. K., 1:349; 2:817, 819 Curtis, Edward S., 2:514, 758 photographs of Indians, 2:840–841 Curtis, George William, 1:347 editorials in Harper’s Weekly, 2:427 genteel tradition and, 1:413 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and, 2:430 Curtis, Henry S., 3:1080 Curtis, Louisa Knapp, 2:820 Cushing, Frank Hamilton, 1:364, 365, 386; 2:512–513 Cushman, Charlotte, 1:302 “Custer” (Wilcox), 1:136 Custer, Elizabeth Bacon, 2:522 Custer, George Armstrong, 1:75, 133; 2:522; 3:1168 Custer Battlefield National Monument, 1:136 Custer Died for Your Sins (Delria), 1:369 Custer’s Last Charge (Fuchs), 1:135 Custer’s Last Fight (Adams), 1:135, 135 Custer’s Last Rally (Mulvany), 1:135 “Custom-House, The” (Hawthorne), 1:195 Custom of the Country, The (Wharton), 1:59; 3:1184 on marriage and divorce, 1:297, 298, 300 Cutter, Charles Ammi, 2:588–589 Cutter, Martha J., 2:711 Cynic’s Word Book, The (Bierce). See Devil’s Dictionary, The Cynthia Ann Parker (DeShields), 2:522 Czolgosz, Leon, 1:66

D Daddy-Long-Legs (Webster), 1:223 Daggett, Rollin, 3:981 regionalism and, 1:51


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Daisy Miller (H. James), 1:305–308 on American girl, 1:382 Daniel M. Fogel on, 1:42 death and, 1:29–30 disease and, 1:337; 2:447 on female adolescence, 1:10 frontispiece for 1892 edition by Harry W. McVickar, 1:306 as international novel, 1:38, 57, 58 Daisy Miller: A Comedy (H. James), 1:307 Daly, Augustin, 1:299; 3:1115, 1190 Daly, Joseph, 3:1115 Damaged Goods (Sinclair), 2:449 Damaged Souls (Bradford), 1:157 Damnation of Theron Ware, The (Frederic), 1:140, 233–234, 308–311 advertising poster, 1:309 on Catholics, 1:206 on Irish immigrants, 2:533 on small-town/village life, 2:657; 3:1163 Social Darwinism and, 3:1058 “Damned Thing, The” (Bierce), 1:419; 3:1017 Dana, Charles Anderson, 2:774; 3:1184 Dana, John Cotton, 2:590 dance, 1:311–317 Dancer and Gazelle (Manship), 1:92 “Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s Cove, The” (Murfree), 2:523, 524, 525 Dandy Rock, the Man from Texas (Browne), 3:1169 Dangerous Classes of New York, The (Brace), 1:200–201 on prostitution, 3:914–915 Danger Signals (Clark), 3:1032 Daniel Deronda (G. Eliot), 3:906 Daniels, John, 3:1070 Daniels, Josephus, 2:669 Danites in the Sierras, The (Miller), 2:700; 3:1190 anti-Mormon prejudice and, 3:1193 Danvis Folks (Robinson), 1:387 D. Appleton and Company Maggie and, 2:654 The Red Badge of Courage and, 3:960 Darby, J. N., 1:234 Darkened Room, The (Owen), 3:1075 Dark Laughter (Anderson), 3:1198 Darkness and Daylight (Campbell), 2:885 Darkwater (Du Bois), 1:165 Darrow, Clarence, 1:34; 2:561; 3:1172 abolition of death penalty and, 1:201–202 critical realism and, 3:950

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Freudian theory and, 3:927 Poetry and, 2:851 Darwin, Charles influence on biography, 1:157 Jack London and, 3:1028 Darwin Club (cartoon; Irvin), 1:318 Darwinism, 1:317–321 Christianity and, 1:231 frontier and, 1:411 The House of Mirth and, 2:468, 470 See also Social Darwinism Darwinism and Other Essays (Fiske), 1:317 Dash, J. Michael, 1:361 Dash for the Timber, A (Remington), 1:94 Daughter of Earth (Smedley), 2:815 Daughter of the Middle Border, A (Garland), 2:659 Daughter of the Samurai (Sugimoto), 2:492–493 Daughter of the Tenements, A (Townsend), 2:651 Daughters of Aesculapius, 2:445 Davenport, Charles, 3:1056–1057 Davenport, Fanny, 3:979 Davenport, Guy, 2:865 Davenport, Homer, 1:348 “Dave’s Neckliss” (Chesnutt), 1:276 David Harum (Westcott), 1:139; 3:976 humor and, 2:472 Davidson, Thomas, 2:833 Concord School of Philosophy and, 2:835 David W. Griffith Corporation, 1:159 Davies, Arthur B., 1:95 Davis, Andrew Jackson, 3:1075 Davis, David Brion, 3:1192–1193 Davis, Jefferson, 1:259; 3:956 Davis, Miles, 1:190 Davis, Owen, 3:1117 Davis, Paulina Wright, 3:1208 Davis, Rebecca Harding, 2:555 as precursor of naturalism, 2:747 realism and, 1:342; 2:675; 3:950–951 short stories, 3:1040 Davis, Richard Harding, 1:138; 2:501 journalism and, 2:549 metaphor of the game, 3:1082 Mexican Revolution and, 2:683, 686–687 school sports fiction and, 3:1083 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Spanish-American War and, 1:78; 3:1073 travel writing and, 3:1131, 1141 as war correspondent in World War I, 3:1026

T H R O U G H


Davis, Stuart, 1:95, 96 Davol, Stephen, 2:464 Dawes, Henry, 2:512 Dawes Severalty (General Allotment) Act (1887), 1:75–76; 2:512; 3:900, 942, 1210 Dawn (Dreiser), 1:351 Dawn (journal), 3:1061 Dawn O’Hara (Ferber), 2:550 Dawson, Charles, 3:917–918 Dawson, Emma Frances, 1:419 Dawson, R. W., 2:814 Dayneford’s Library (Stevenson), 3:997 Day of Their Wedding, The (Howells), 1:271 “Day’s Pleasure, A” (Garland), 1:374; 2:661 D. Breen’s Practice (Howells), 1:383 “Dead Smile, The” (Crawford), 1:420 “Dead Valley, The” (Cram), 1:421 Deadwood Dick series, 2:738 “Deal in Wheat, A” (Norris), 2:885 Dearborn, Mary V., 1:104; 2:493 “Dear John Wayne” (Alexie), 1:369 death. See aging and death “Death” (Anderson), 3:1199 Death Comes for the Archbishop (Cather), 1:368 “Death in the Woods” (Anderson), 3:1198 Death of a Salesman (Miller), 2:753 Death of Cleopatra (Lewis), 1:91 “Death of Emma Hartsell, The” (ballad), 2:629 “Death of Halpin Frayser, The” (Bierce), 1:418 “Death of the Author, The” (Barthes), 2:603 “Death of the Hired Man, The” (Frost), 1:30; 2:784, 786, 787 death penalty. See capital punishment death rates, poverty and, 2:883 Debatable Land between This World and the Next, The (Owen), 3:1077 De Bellis, Jack, 2:672, 673 De Bow’s Review (magazine), 2:769 Debs, Eugene V., 1:83, 346; 2:573; 3:1061, 1220 Julius Augustus Wayland and, 1:84 Deck, Alice A., 1:392 Declaration of Sentiments, 1:380; 3:1208 DeCora, Angel, 2:516 illustrator of Old Indian Legends, 1:44 Decoration of Houses, The (Wharton), 1:99; 2:468 Deephaven (Jewett), 1:289, 342; 3:1042 “Defence of Detective Stories” (Chesterton), 2:741

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1273

INDEX

“Defense of General Funston, A” (Twain), 2:502, 830 De Forest, John William, 1:258, 260; 2:461, 767; 3:930, 956 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 satire and, 3:1004 DeGruson, Gene, 2:553 Deland, Margaret, 2:427 De Leon, Daniel, 3:1061 Delight Makers, The (Bandelier), 1:366, 367 Delius, Frederick, 2:728, 729 Dell, Floyd, 2:548; 3:926 Provincetown Players and, 2:595, 698 See also Moon-Calf Delmonico’s (New York), 1:394 Deloria, Ella, 1:368 Deloria, Vine, 1:136, 369 Deluge, The (Phillips), 1:194 DeMille, Cecil B., 2:708; 3:1193 Orientalism and, 2:797, 800 De Mille, Henry C., 1:296 De Mille, William C., 1:294 Deming, Philander, 3:973 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 Democracy: An American Novel (Adams), 1:76; 3:900 Democracy in America (Tocqueville) on individualism, 2:633 on poverty, 2:885, 886 on racial prejudice, 2:543 “Democracy versus the Melting-Pot” (Kallen), 2:487 Democratic Party, 2:854; 3:897, 901 fusion of Populist Party with, 2:872 political machines and, 2:855 populism and, 2:856 women’s suffrage and, 3:1210–1211 Democratic Vistas (Whitman), 1:416; 2:615 Demorest’s Young America (periodical), 1:221 Demos, John, 3:926 Dempsey, Jack (William Harrison), 1:190 Demuth, Charles, 1:96 Dennett, Andrea Stulman, 1:325 Denslow, W. W., 1:223 Densmore, Frances, 2:724 department stores, 2:679–680; 3:1049 Christmas and, 2:682 “Departure” (Anderson), 3:1199 De Quille, Dan Mark Twain and, 3:981 regionalism, 1:51; 3:981–982 De Quincey, Thomas, 1:2 Derrida, Jacques, 3:896

1274

Descendant, The (Glasgow), 3:1173 Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (Darwin), 1:318–319 religious sensibility and, 3:1019 Desdunes, Rodolphe, 2:768 Desert Drums (Crane), 1:367 DeShields, James T., 2:522 Des Imagistes (Pound), 2:484 “Désirée’s Baby” (Chopin), 1:169; 2:544, 694; 3:1043 Desire under the Elms (O’Neill), 2:874 “Desolation Row” (Dylan), 2:630 detective fiction. See mystery and detective fiction determinism, 1:52, 53 in Maggie, 2:652 naturalism and, 2:752 detribalization of Native Americans, 2:509–510 Detroit, migration of blacks to, 2:688 Detroit Free Press, 3:960 “Development Hypothesis, The” (Spencer), 1:319; 3:1056 Devil in the White City (Larson), 3:1215 Devil’s Dictionary, The (Bierce), 3:1005, 1102 DeVoto, Bernard, 1:409; 2:472 on Huckleberry Finn, 1:21 Dewey, George, 2:829 Dewey, John, 1:191; 2:837 Anzia Yezierska and, 2:493 Glenmore Summer School of the Culture Sciences and, 2:833 Helicon Home Colony and, 2:596 pragmatism and, 2:838; 3:889, 890, 891 Dewey, Melvil, 2:588, 591 Dey, Frederic van Rensselaer, 1:178; 2:738 De Zayas, Marius, 1:361 Dharma Bums (Kerouac), 3:1129 Diaghilev, Serge, 1:312 Dial, The (magazine), 1:216; 2:817, 819 on Carl Sandburg, 2:852 The Chap-Book merged into, 2:617 in Greenwich Village, 2:595 on The Land of Little Rain, 2:577 Margaret Anderson and, 2:621 dialect, 3:1051–1055 in children’s literature, 1:222 humor and, 2:474, 475 of Paul Laurence Dunbar, 2:635, 640 village dwellers and, 3:1161 Dialectic of Enlightenment (Adorno and Horkheimer), 1:65

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

“Dialect in Literature” (Riley), 1:388 Dialect Notes (journal), 1:48 Diamond Dick Library, 1:322 “Diamond Mine, The” (Cather), 2:728 Diary from Dixie, A (Chesnut), 1:114–115, 262; 3:956 Diary of Adam and Eve, The (Twain), 1:233 Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker (Malkiel), 1:378 Díaz, Porfirio, 2:684 Dickens, Charles on American manners, 1:397 on Christmas, 2:682 on Crystal Palace Exhibition, 1:211 influence on Huckleberry Finn, 1:16 O. Henry compared to, 1:400 on restaurants in the States, 1:393–394 Dickinson, Anna E., 1:383; 2:585 Dickinson, Clarence, 2:729 Dickinson, Emily, 1:116 critical responses to, 2:633 dance aesthetics and, 1:312–313 on death, 1:28 flexibility in poetry and, 2:633 friendship and, 2:603 oratory and, 2:791–792 realism and, 3:943 songs based on poetry of, 2:729 temperance imagery of, 3:1109, 1111 Dickson, W. K. Laurie, 2:704 Dick Talbot books, 1:323 dictating machine, 3:1008 Dictionary of American Biography, 1:154; 2:460 Dictionary of American English, 1:48 Dietrich, John, 1:101 Diffley, Kathleen, 1:262 Dillingham, William B., 2:648 Dillingham Commission, 3:908 dime novels, 1:178, 321–325; 2:609–610 circus and, 1:243 detective stories in, 2:738 on frontier, 1:408 sports and, 1:188 symbols of potency and manhood and, 3:1096 western, 3:1191 Dime Novels (Pearson), 1:324 Dime Novel Western, The (Jones), 1:322 Dirge for Two Veterans (Holst), 2:729 Dirks, Rudolph, 2:483 Disappearance of John Longworthy, The (Egan), 2:532 disasters, 1:325–331 disaster studies, 1:327


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

“Discomfited Demons, The” (Bierce), 1:418 Discords (Evans), 1:25 Discovery of America, The (Fiske), 2:457 Discovery of the Great West, The (Parkman), 2:456 discrimination, immigration and, 2:487–490 diseases and epidemics, 1:331–338 dispensationalism, 1:235 “Ditch is dear to the Drunken man, The” (Dickinson), 3:1111 Dittemore, John V., 1:242 divorce, 1:297–299, 404. See courtship, marriage, and divorce Divorce (Daly), 1:299; 3:1115 Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 2:814, 816 Dix, Dorothy (Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer), 1:346, 347; 2:549 Dixon, Joseph K., 2:514 Dixon, Royal, 1:102 Dixon, Thomas, 1:71–72, 159, 160, 167, 258; 2:565, 694 defense of lynching, 2:630 pseudoscientific theories of race and, 3:921 on Reconstruction, 2:669 violence and, 3:1167 white supremacy and, 3:957 Dobson, Joanne, 3:1048 Doctor Breen’s Practice (Howells), 2:445 Doctor Zay (Phelps), 1:383; 2:445 Dodge, Mabel in Paris, 2:607 Paterson Strike Pageant (1913) and, 3:1063 See also Luhan, Mabel Dodge Dodge, Mary Abigail. See Hamilton, Gail Dodge, Mary Mapes, 1:221; 2:820 “Does the Higher Education of Women Tend to Happiness in Marriage?” (Gilman), 1:354 “Does The Waste Land Have a Politics?” (Levenson), 2:558 “Do Everything” campaign, 3:1110 Dolph, John Henry, 1:87 domestic and sentimental fiction, 1:338–343 best-sellers and, 2:614–615 The House of Mirth and, 2:470 domesticity Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on, 2:763 novels on discontents of, 1:340–341 domesticity, cult of, 1:339; 3:1208 Harriet Beecher Stowe and, 1:339 Domestic Manners of the Americans (Trollope), 1:220

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

domestic science, development of, 1:393 domestic sphere, 1:381; 2:457 domestic violence, 3:1169 Dominican Republic, United States and, 1:79 Donnelly, Ignatius, 2:868–869, 871, 872; 3:897 Donner Lake from the Summit (Bierstadt), 1:94 “Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War Is Kind” (Crane), 3:1172 Donovan, Josephine, 1:341; 3:971, 973 on The Country of the Pointed Firs, 1:290 Doolittle, Hilda (H.D.), 1:354 dance aesthetics and, 1:313 Ezra Pound and, 2:484, 607 imagism and, 2:484, 636 lyric poetry and, 2:637 Poetry and, 2:620, 850, 851 Dooner, Pierton W., 2:448 Dorfman, Joseph, 3:1125 Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (Major), 1:137 Dorrance, John T., 1:392 Dorsey, James Owen, 1:368, 386 Dos Passos, John modernism and, 2:551 newspapers headlines and, 2:549 on New York City, 1:247 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and, 2:561 on Thorstein Veblen, 3:1122, 1125 on tramps, 3:1139 World War I and, 3:1179–1180, 1221 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 2:439 Doten, Alf, 3:981 Doten, Lizzie, 3:1075 Doty, Douglas Z., 1:215 “Double-Barreled Detective Story, A” (Twain), 3:1006 double consciousness, concept of, 1:165; 2:794; 3:925, 969, 1069 Charles Alexander Eastman and, 3:956 ethnic American writers and, 1:105 Doubleday, F. N., 1:177 Doubleday, Page & Company, 3:1050 “Double Standard, A” (Harper), 1:295 Doughboys, The (Anderson), 3:1222 Douglas, Henry Kyd, 1:261 Douglas, William O., 2:560 Douglass, Aaron, 1:121 Douglass, Frederick, 3:930, 931 autobiography, 1:115 on de facto segregation in the North, 2:544

T H R O U G H


impact of, 1:253–255 opposition to emigration to Africa, 2:689–690 oratory and, 2:791 Paul Laurence Dunbar and, 2:635, 639 politics and, 2:855 temperance, 1:2 Up from Slavery compared to, 3:1154 World’s Columbian Exposition and, 3:1216–1217 on World’s Columbian Exposition’s failure to include blacks, 3:1094 Dove, Arthur, 1:96 Downing, Henry F., 2:689 Doyle, Arthur Conan influence of Allan Pinkerton on, 2:738 narcotics in writings of, 1:4 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 “Dr. Clair’s Place” (Gilman), 2:447 Dr. Sevier (Cable), 1:214 Drachsler, Julius, 1:104 Draft Riots (New York City, 1863), 1:248 drama. See theater Dramatic Mirror (journal), 3:1114 Draper, John W., 1:32 Drawing of the Battle of Little Big Horn (Yellow Nose), 1:94 Dreaming of Heroes (Oriard), 1:189 Dreams of Homespun (Foss), 2:863 Dreiser, Theodore, 1:62; 2:558; 3:1047 on adolescence, 1:11 advertisement for his books, 2:748 agnosticism, 1:34 on alcoholism, 1:3 arts and, 1:87 on banking, 1:130–131, 132 Catholic background, 1:206 character of the businessman and, 3:897 characters as villagers, 3:1164 Chicago and, 1:216, 250 Darwinism and, 1:320 on death, 1:28 death penalty and, 1:203 determinism and, 1:53 difficulty publishing, 1:414 exercise cure, 2:447 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Harper & Brothers and, 2:427, 428 humor and, 2:472 influence of psychoanalytic theory on, 3:925, 926 influence of Randolph Bourne on, 2:600

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1275

INDEX

Dreiser, Theodore (continued) influence of Thorstein Veblen on, 3:1122 Irish characters and, 2:533 on labor and inequity, 2:624 libraries and, 2:590 magazine pieces, 1:87 on Margaret Fuller, 1:217 on marriage, 1:296 naturalism and, 1:417; 2:747, 749–750 New York City and, 2:595, 780 on parochial school education, 1:351 rejected by Century Magazine, 1:214 on robber barons, 3:1181 on sexuality, 1:195, 295 Stephen Crane and, 3:962, 967 on urban police, 2:581 use of news reports in An American Tragedy, 2:549 W. D. Howells and, 2:442, 604 on World’s Columbian Exposition, 3:1214, 1215 See also American Tragedy, An; Financier, The; “Genius,” The; Sister Carrie; Titan, The Dresser, Christopher, 1:26 Dresser, Horatio W., 3:923 Dresser, Paul, 2:725 Dress of Women, The (Gilman), 1:377 Drewry, John, 2:817 “Drifting Down Lost Creek” (Murfree), 2:523, 524–525 Drinkwater, John, 2:461 Dropsie College, 2:540 drugs aestheticism and, 1:25 narcotics, 1:4–5 Drum-Taps (Whitman), 1:113, 262; 3:943 “Drunkard cannot meet a Cork, A” (Dickinson), 3:1111 Drunkard’s Progress, The (print), 1:3 Dubinsky, David, 2:539 Dubois, Charles Edward, 3:1064 Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1:164–165, 256; 3:1068 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:110, 186 autobiography and, 1:115 The Brownies’ Book and, 1:224 color line and, 3:956 criticism of U. B. Phillips, 2:459 cultural revitalization and, 3:937 H. G. Wells on, 1:397 history and, 2:458 influence of Albion Tourgée on, 3:1167

1276

influence of William James on, 1:69 NAACP and, 2:631–632 opposition to Booker T. Washington, 1:256, 352; 2:544; 3:936 oratory and, 2:794 Reconstruction as symbol in, 3:956 review of Up from Slavery, 3:1154 on success for the race, 3:1098 World War I and, 3:1221 See also Souls of Black Folk, The Duchamp, Marcel Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1:96 Others circle and, 1:69 Dudley, Albertus True, 1:188 Duke, James B., 3:1181 Du Maurier, George, 1:174; 2:428, 431 Dunbar, Olivia Howard, 1:420 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 2:604, 639 on adolescence, 1:11 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:110 Civil War and, 3:956 criticism of Booker T. Washington, 1:256 dialect poems, 2:635, 640–641 dual nature of black life and, 2:544 on effects of society on mankind, 2:886 James Whitcomb Riley’s dialect verse and, 2:866 lyric poetry and, 2:635 on migration of blacks, 2:688 on New York City, 1:247 on police, 2:582 slavery and, 3:955 on urban police, 2:581 Dunbar-Nelson, Alice, 2:767–768; 3:975 on domestic abuse, 1:297 short story and, 3:1045 Duncan, Charles, 1:277 Duncan, Isadora, 1:312, 313 Dunn, H. T., 1:3 Dunn, Jacob Piatt, 2:522 Dunne, Finley Peter, 1:73; 2:474, 475, 532, 550, 782 as anti-imperialist, 2:502, 828, 830 satire and, 3:1005 Spanish-American War and, 1:78 “Dunnet Shepherdess, A” (Jewett), 1:289 Dunning, William A., 3:932 Dunninger, Joseph, 3:918 Dunton, Herbert, 1:94 “Dunwich Horror, The” (Lovecraft), 1:419 “Dupont’s Round Fight” (Melville), 1:146

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Dupuy de Lome, Enrique, 1:78 Durant, Will, 1:66 Durham, Robert Lee, 2:447 Duse, Eleanora, 3:1120 Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America (Fiske), 2:457 Duveneck, Frank, 1:86 Duyckinck, Evert A., 2:603 Dvorák, Antonín 2:724 Dwight, Theodore, 2:814 “Dying Lamentation and Advice of Philip Kennison,” 2:813 Dylan, Bob, 2:630 Dynamic Sociology (Ward), 1:319 “Dynamo and the Virgin, The” (Adams), 1:88 dystopias, 3:1155–1160 about Chinese, 2:448 village as, 3:1161, 1162

E Eakins, Thomas, 1:92; 2:840; 3:1008 The Gross Clinic, 3:1009 photograph of Walt Whitman, 2:840 Eames, Emma, 2:724 Earle, Alice Morse, 2:457 Earle, Victoria, 3:955 Earlie, John, 2:687–688 Early Life of Abraham Lincoln, The (Tarbell), 1:156; 2:644 Earth Horizon (Austin), 2:578 Easiest Way, The (Walter), 3:1118 Eastland disaster (1915), 1:326 Eastman, Charles Alexander (Ohiyesa), 1:44; 2:516–517; 3:1226 double consciousness and, 3:956 on experience in Indian school, 1:353 on Native American relationship with the land, 1:371 Society of American Indians and, 2:515 Eastman, Elaine Goodale, 2:516 Eastman, George, 2:840 Eastman, Max, 2:548, 600, 601; 3:1062 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:111 charge under the Espionage Act, 2:698 the Masses and, 2:595 psychoanalysis and, 3:927 Eaton, Edith Maude. See Sui Sin Far Eaton, John, 3:1154 Eaton, Winnifred. See Watanna, Onoto Eben Holden (Bacheller), 3:976


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Eberle, Abastenia St. Leger, 1:92 Eble, Kenneth, 1:123 Eby, Clare Virginia, 3:1048–1049 Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, An (Beard), 2:460–461 Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy (Beard), 2:461 economics Jim Crow laws and, 2:545 laissez-faire, Roosevelt’s rejection of, 3:1091 preservation of wilderness and, 2:809 Eddy, Mary Baker, 1:140, 233, 238–239 Edel, Leon, 1:94, 420 Edelstact, David, 2:541 Edgar Allan Poe (Woodberry), 1:154 Edgar Huntley (Brown), 3:925 Edgefield Real Estate and Homestead Association, 2:688 Edge of Taos Desert (Luhan), 1:368 Edison, Thomas A., 2:703, 705; 3:1008 “Editha” (Howells), 1:78, 295; 2:502–503, 830–831 editors, 1:345–350 Ezra Pound as, 2:637 of periodicals, 2:819–820 S. S. McClure as, 2:643 W. D. Howells as, 1:347 W. E. B. Du Bois as, 1:165, 257; 2:458 Edmunds Act (1882), 2:701 Edmunds-Tucker Act (1887), 2:701; 3:1210 education, 1:350–356 Catholic Church and, 1:204–205 of girls, 3:1208 immigrants and, 2:490–491 industrial, 1:256; 3:931, 1152 Jews and, 2:540 liberal arts and blacks, 1:256 Native Americans, 1:43–44, 45–46, 75; 2:512 populism and, 2:868 progressive, influence by anarchism, 1:66 publishing by Houghton Mifflin, 2:466 See also public schools Education of Henry Adams, The (H. Adams), 1:88, 119, 183, 186, 354, 356–360; 2:460 on future of art in modern society, 3:1013 on World’s Columbian Exposition, 3:1215 “Education of Popo, The” (Mena), 3:975

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, The (Woodson), 2:458 Edwards, Jonathan, 1:149 Egan, Maurice Francis, 2:532 Eggenhoffer, Nick, 1:135 Eggleston, Edward on adolescence, 1:9 the American Folklore Society and, 1:388 children’s literature and, 1:222 on faith healers, 1:234 history and, 2:460, 461 as local color writer, 1:139 as Midwest regionalist writer, 1:51; 3:974 reform and, 3:964 Richard Watson Gilder as mentor to, 1:214 on small-town/village life, 1:657; 3:1162 teacher as hero, 1:351 See also Hoosier Schoolmaster, The Eggleston, George Cary, 1:260 Egoist (magazine), 2:602 anarchism and, 1:69 imagism and, 2:484 “Egyptian Cigarette, An” (Chopin), 2:798 Eiffel, Alexandre-Gustave, 1:88 Eight, The. See Ashcan school Eight Cousins (Alcott), 1:220 Eighteenth Amendment, 3:1223 Eighty Years and More (1815–1897) (Stanton), 1:117 Einhorn, David, 2:536 Einstein, Albert, 3:1008, 1022 “El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional” (Cather), 1:374 “Electioneerin’ on Big Injun Mounting” (Murfree), 2:525 elections blacks and, 1:253–254 crisis of 1876, 3:898–899 presidential election of 1916, 2:858 Elevating the Race (Miller), 3:935–936 elevation of taste, Century Magazine and, 1:212, 213 Eliot, Charles W. curricular revision at Harvard and, 1:354 on The Education of Henry Adams, 1:360 John Fiske and, 2:457 Eliot, George, 3:943 Eliot, T. S., 2:625 dance aesthetics and, 1:313 on death, 1:30

T H R O U G H


Ezra Pound and, 2:607 on Huckleberry Finn, 1:20, 21 imagism and, 2:485 influence of William James on, 1:69 literary criticism and, 2:602 the Little Review and, 2:621 lyric poetry and, 2:637–638 modernism and, 2:558 Poetry and, 2:620, 627, 850, 851 at St. Louis World’s Fair, 3:992–993 Elise Venner (Holmes), 1:310 elite clubs, 1:267–270 Elliott, A. Marshall, 1:52 Ellis, Bret Easton, 3:1128 Ellis, Edward (minister), 3:1061 Ellis, Edward S., 1:322; 3:1191 Ellis, Havelock, 1:319 Ellis Island Henry James on, 1:64 Jewish immigrants and, 2:537 Ellison, Ralph, 1:122 Brer Rabbit tales and, 3:1150 concept of invisibility and, 1:165 influence of Huckleberry Finn on, 1:21 race in literature, 3:929 See also Invisible Man Ellman, Richard, 1:398 Elmer Gantry (Lewis) influence of The Damnation of Theron Ware on, 1:310 as satire of tent revivalists, 2:587 Elmira Reformatory, 2:814 Elsie Dinsmore (Finley), 1:12 Elsler, Fanny, 1:312 Elsmere, Robert (Ward), 1:34 Ely, Richard T., 3:1061 “Elysium is as far” (Dickinson), 1:28 Emancipation Group, The (Ball), 1:91 Emergence of Cinema, The (Musser), 2:703 Emerson, Ralph Waldo anarchism and, 1:66 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:106; 2:463 Concord School of Philosophy and, 1:185; 2:835 on death, 1:30 on Helen Hunt Jackson, 3:942 on individualism, 2:633 influence on Robert Frost, 2:636, 784 John Muir and, 2:810 on lectures, 2:585 memorial celebration on centenary of his birth, 1:186 national consciousness of death of, 1:52 on nature, 2:672 nature writing and, 2:755

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1277

INDEX

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (continued) Radical Club of Boston and, 1:267 statue by Daniel Chester French, 1:91 Emerson, William, 2:585 Eminent Victorians (Strachey), 1:151 “Em’ly” (Wister), 3:1193 Emma McChesney and Co. (Ferber), 2:680 Emperor Jones, The (O’Neill), 1:360–363 Provincetown Players and, 2:595 Empire of Business, The (Carnegie), 3:1032 “Enchanted Bluff, The” (Cather), 1:368 End of the Trail, The (Fraser), 2:514 End to Torment (Doolittle), 2:484 “Enemy of All the World, The” (London), 3:1016 Engel, Edwin Engel, George, 2:432 Engineers and the Price System, The (Veblen), 3:1126 England. See Great Britain English Hours (H. James), 3:1134 English Society (du Maurier), 3:906 Enjoyment of Poetry (Eastman), 2:601 Enormous Room, The (Cummings), 3:1220 enteric fever. See typhoid fever entertainment based on public curiosity about disasters, 1:325 lectures as, 2:586 entropy coinage of the term, 3:921 law of, 3:1021–1022 environment American naturalism and, 2:752–753 as cause of social problems, 2:883 death penalty and, 1:200 environmental literature. See nature writing environmental protection John Muir and, 2:736 Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:1092 women nature writers and, 2:759 environmental reform, 3:968 Epic of Wheat trilogy (Norris), 1:131 epidemics. See diseases and epidemics Epoch, 1:159 Epstein, Jacob, 2:540 Equality (Bellamy), 3:897 Equal Rights Party, 2:855 Equitable Building (New York), 1:89 Equity (periodical), 3:1061 “Ere Sleep Comes down to Soothe the Weary Eyes” (Dunbar), 2:640

1278

“Eros Turannos” (Robinson), 2:664 on domestic violence, 3:1169 Espionage Act, the Masses and, 2:698 “Essay on American Scenery” (Cole), 2:808 Essay on Crimes and Punishements (Beccaria), 1:199 Essay on Population (Malthus), 2:883 Essays in Critical Realism (Sellars, et al.), 2:837 Ethan Frome (Wharton) Darwinism and, 1:320 illness and, 2:444 serialization in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1025 etherealization, Sidney Lanier’s theory of, 2:672 Ethics of Literary Art, The (Thompson), 3:949 ethnic American writers, double consciousness of, 1:105 ethnicity considered as race, 3:1165, 1168 fashion and, 1:379 marriage and, 1:294 Mary Antin and, 3:909 vaudeville stereotyping and, 2:725 ethnic press, 2:548 ethnology, 1:363–370 Indians and, 2:512 ruins at Canon del Muerte, 1:365 The Theory of the Leisure Class and, 3:1122–1123 eugenicism, 2:449 Charles Davenport and, 3:1057 Herbert Spencer and, 3:1056 “Euridice” (Doolittle), 2:637 Europe American travel in, 3:1131, 1183–1184 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in, 3:1194–1195 salons, 1:271 Europeans, The (H. James), 1:57, 59 European Tales among the North American Indians (Thompson), 1:386 Evans, Augusta Jane, 1:339 Evans, Donald, 1:25 aestheticism and, 1:24 Everett, Edward, 2:789–790 Everybody’s Magazine, 1:132; 2:610 muckraking and, 2:822 Zitkala-Sˇa published in, 1:44 Every Saturday (magazine), 1:109; 2:465 Evils of the Cities (Talmage), 3:968 Evil That Men Do, The (Fawcett), 2:651

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

on prostitution, 3:915–916 evolution, theory of Charles Darwin and, 1:317 Christianity and, 1:231 Herbert Spencer and, 3:1020 McTeague and, 2:647 Evolution and Religion (Beecher), 3:1019 evolutionism Charlotte Perkins Gilman and, 3:1203 as distinguished from Darwinism, 3:1019 socialism and, 3:1062 “Evolution of the Cow-Puncher, The” (Wister), 3:1192 Ewing, Elizabeth, 1:378–379 Examiner (newspaper), 1:33; 2:547; 3:999 Excursions of an Evolutionist (Fiske), 1:317 “Exiles, The” (O’Higgins), 2:532 exodus movement, 2:688 expatriation, 1:55 of Henry James, 1:57 “Experimental Novel, The” (Zola), 2:749, 842 experimental psychology, 3:923–925 “Experiment in Luxury” (Crane), 2:549 “Experiment in Misery” (Crane), 2:549, 747, 885 Experiments with Plant Hybrids (Mendel), 3:1057 Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries in 1869, 1870, 1871, and 1872 (Powell), 2:756; 3:983 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, The (Darwin), 2:647 Expressman and the Detective, The (Pinkerton), 2:738 “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” (Twain), 3:1067 Eytinge, Sol, 2:846, 846 Rich and Poor, 2:884 Ezekiel, Moses, 1:266

F Fabian Society of Boston, 3:1062 Fable, A (Faulkner), 3:1223 “Fable of the Bohemian Who Had Hard Luck, The” (Ade), 1:173 Fables in Slang (Ade), 3:1005 “Fables in Slang” series (Ade), 2:474


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Fadiman, Clifton, 1:20 Fairbanks, Douglas, 2:708 Faith Doctor, The (Eggleston), 1:234 Faith of Men, The (London), 3:1027 Faith of Our Fathers (Gibbons), 1:204 Falk, Robert, 1:183 Fallingwater (house), 1:89 families diminishing ties of, 3:1047 of Jewish immigrants, 2:537–538 during Reconstruction, 3:956 sex education and, 3:1034 Family Cupboard, The (Davis), 3:1117 Family Limitation (Sanger), 3:1038 Famous Players-Lasky, 2:708 fan clubs, 1:181 Fanning, Charles, 2:532 Fanny Herself (Ferber), 2:681 “Fantasie Printanière” (Norris), 1:297 Fantastic, The (Todorov), 1:420 Faraguer, John Mack, 1:374 farce, 3:1119 Farewell to Arms, A (Hemingway), 3:1222 Far Journey, A (Rihbany), 1:103; 2:490 Farm Ballads (Carleton), 2:863 Farmer, Fannie, 1:392 “Farmer Feeds Us All, The” (Shaw), 2:868 Farmers’ Alliance, 2:867 farmers and ranchers, 1:371–376 Main-Travelled Roads on western farm life, 2:661 market forces and, 2:867 Farney, Henry, 1:174 Farragut, David, 2:765 Farrell, James J., 1:27, 28 Farrell, James T. influence of Huckleberry Finn on, 1:20 naturalism and, 2:750 Farrell, Jeremiah T., 2:874 Farwell, Arthur, 2:724, 729 fashion, 1:376–380 feminism and, 1:381 “Fatal Pledge, The” (Harper), 3:1111 Fate of Madame La Tour, The (Paddock), 2:700 “Father and Son” (Hughes), 2:566 “Fat of the Land, The” (Yezierska), 2:540 Faulkner, William, 2:558 influence of Sherwood Anderson on, 3:1198 mocking Jason Compson’s antiSemitism, 1:73 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 World War I and, 3:1222, 1223

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Fauset, Jessie, 1:121 graduate of a land-grant school, 1:353 W. E. B. Du Bois and, 3:1069 Faust, Drew, 1:262 Fawcett, Edgar, 2:651 on marriage and social advancement, 1:293 on prostitution, 3:915–916 Fay, Anna Eva, 3:1076 “Fear, The” (Frost), 2:787 Fearful Responsibility, A (Howells), 1:57 “Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park” (Muir), 2:811 Federal Children’s Bureau, 1:219 Federal Council of Churches, 1:237 Federal Reconstruction, 3:953 Federal Reserve System, 2:802 Fedo, Michael, 2:630 Feied, Frederick, 3:1140 Feldtein, Stanley, 2:537 “Felipa” (Woolson), 3:995 feminism, 1:380–386 The Country of the Pointed Firs and, 1:290 Frances E. W. Harper and, 2:528 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and, 2:762 secularism and, 1:33 feminist scholars on domestic and sentimental fiction, 1:338 on regionalism and local color fiction, 3:971 “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” (Twain), 3:944, 1007 Fenollosa, Ernest, 1:86; 2:800 Ferber, Edna, 1:299; 2:550 on department store salespersons, 2:680 on mail-order catalogs, 2:681 Ferens, Dominka, 2:711 Fern, Fanny, 2:615; 3:925 Ferraro, Thomas, 2:487 Ferrer, Francisco, 1:67 Ferrer Center practices, 1:69 Ferris, George Washington Gale, 3:1216 Ferris, Hugh, 1:88 Ferris wheel, 3:1216, 1217 Fettered for Life (Blake), 1:383–384 Fetterley, Judith, 1:342; 3:971, 972 on Sarah Orne Jewett, 1:291 “Few Don’ts by an Imagiste, A” (Pound), 2:484, 851 Fewkes, Jesse Walter, 1:367 Ficke, Arthur Davison, 3:1006 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025

T H R O U G H


fiction Houghton Mifflin’s list, 2:466 in library collections, 2:590 Fictional Death and the Modernist Enterprise (Friedman), 1:29 Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace (Johanningmeier), 2:612 “Fiction-Writing as a Business” (Norris), 2:609 Fiedler, Leslie on Huckleberry Finn, 1:20 on Sister Carrie, 3:1048 Field, Eugene, 2:550, 860, 861, 863 circus theme, 1:243 erotic work, 2:874 humor and, 2:474, 475 on the poet, 2:862 satirical vignettes, 2:862, 864 Field, Kate American Press Association and, 2:773 lecturing and, 2:585, 586, 587 photography and, 2:842 Field, Marshall, 3:1181 Chicago and, 1:250 University of Chicago and, 1:219 Fielden, Samuel, 1:200; 2:432, 434 Field Museum (Chicago), 2:717, 719 Fields, Annie Adams, 1:117 Sarah Orne Jewett and, 1:289; 3:995, 996 Fields, James T., 2:845; 3:1040 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 dispute with Gail Hamilton, 1:347; 2:613 W. D. Howells and, 1:185 Fields, Mary, 1:302 Fields, W. C., 1:222 Fiend’s Delight, The (Bierce), 1:418 Fifteenth Amendment (1870), 1:252, 253–254; 2:543; 3:934, 953, 1209 “Fifty Affirmations” (Abbott), 1:233 Fighting for the Confederacy (Alexander), 1:259–260 Fighting France (Wharton), 3:1134 Fighting in the Cuban Waters (Stratemeyer), 1:79 Fighting the Flames (film), 1:328 film industry. See motion picture industry films. See motion pictures finance. See banking and finance Financier, The (Dreiser), 2:558 on banking, 1:130–131, 132, 196; 2:676 Irish character in, 2:533 naturalism and, 2:747, 750

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1279

INDEX

Financier, The (Dreiser) (continued) on sexuality, 1:195 sports in, 3:1082 fin de siècle writing, 1:23, 24 The Education of Henry Adams as, 1:356 Finley, Martha, 1:12 firearms, 3:1186–1188 Colt Single Army Revolver, 3:1187 Fire in the Flint, The (White), 2:632 Fireside Companion (story paper), 2:609 First Editions of American Authors (Stone), 2:617 First Principles (Spencer), 3:1019, 1048, 1171 Fischer, Adolph, 2:432 Fisher, Bud, 2:483 Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 2:657 “Fishhead” (Cobb), 1:422, 423 Fiske, John, 1:32, 317; 2:837; 3:924, 1019 as popularizer of history, 2:456–457 Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 3:1115 Fisk Jubilee Singers, 2:726 Fisk University, 1:170 Fitch, Clyde, 3:1118 Fitch, George, 3:1084 FitzGerald, Edward, 1:171 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 1:73; 2:538 aestheticism and, 1:26 alcoholism of, 1:6 Catholic background, 1:206 flappers and, 1:379 influence of Sherwood Anderson on, 3:1198 on labor, 2:558 professionalism and, 3:907 See also This Side of Paradise Fitzsimmons, Robert Prometheus, 1:189 Five Civilized Tribes, 2:510 Five Generations Hence (Jones), 3:1158–1159 Five O’Clock Tea (Howells), 3:1117 Five Points (New York City), 1:248; 3:1168 “Fixation of Belief, The” (Peirce), 3:889 Flagg, Wilson, 2:757 Flagler, Henry, 3:1181 “Flammonde” (Robinson), 2:665 flaneur aestheticism and, 1:25 Henry James as, 1:64 flappers, 1:379 Flatiron Building (New York), 1:89 Flaubert, Gustave influence on imagism, 2:486 influence on Kate Chopin, 1:124, 126

1280

influence on Sarah Orne Jewett, 1:289 realism and, 3:943 translations by Lafcadio Hearn, 1:174 Fletcher, Alice Cunningham, 1:368; 2:515, 724 Fletcher, John Gould Ezra Pound and, 2:607 Orientalism and, 2:800 Flexner Report (1910), 2:445 “Flight of Betsey Lane, The” (Jewett), 1:210 Flint, F. S., 2:484 Flint and Feather (Johnson), 2:516 Flipper, Henry Ossian, 1:115 Flock, The (Austin), 1:368 Flower, Benjamin Orange, 2:619, 659 on Main-Travelled Roads, 2:660 reform and, 3:967 Flower, Elizabeth, 2:834, 835, 837 Flynt, Josiah, 3:1137 Foerster, Norman, 1:54; 2:600 Fogel, Daniel M., 1:42 Fogle, Richard Harter, 1:146, 147 folklore and oral traditions, 1:386–391 folktale collections, 3:1147 Joel Chandler Harris and, 3:1148 in music, 2:726 “Folklore of the Southern Negroes” (Harris), 1:386 Follies, 2:725; 3:1119 Following the Equator (Twain), 2:798; 3:1133 Following the Guidon (E. B. Custer), 2:522 Folsom, Michael Brewster, 2:555 Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893), 1:228 “Foo a Little Bally-Hoo” (Calloway), 1:81 food and drink, 1:391–395 Food and Drug Administration, 1:216; 2:552 food processing industry effect of The Jungle on, 2:552 meatpacking during SpanishAmerican War, 3:1074 food reformers, 1:392–393 Fool’s Errand, A (Tourgée), 1:167–168; 2:693; 3:930, 1167 on Ku Klux Klan violence, 2:564, 631 Foote, Mary Hallock, 3:1191 Leadville and, 3:982–983 Richard Watson Gilder as mentor to, 1:214 as western regionalist writer, 3:975, 976

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Foote, Stephanie, 3:972 Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (Owen), 3:1077 “Footnote on Criticism” (Mencken), 2:599 Forbidden Fires (Anderson), 2:875 force, law of the conservation of, 3:1018–1019 Force Acts (1870), 2:564 Ford, Ford Madox (Hueffer) as imagist, 2:484 on impressionism, 2:505 Ford, Henry, 3:1145 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and, 2:539 Ford, Paul Leicester, 1:156 Ford Motor Company, 3:1145 Foregone Conclusion, A (Howells), 1:56–57 Foreground of American Fiction, The (Hartwick), 2:506 “Foreigner, The” (Jewett), 1:289, 291 supernatural and, 1:419 foreign visitors, 1:395–400. See also Tocqueville, Alexis de Forerunner (magazine), 2:548; 3:1202 Forest, Robert de, 1:98 Forest, The (White), 3:982 Forest Leaves (Harper), 2:526 Forest Service, 2:811, 812 Forest Theater (Carmel-by-the-Sea), 2:596 Forging of American Socialism, The (Quint), 3:1062 formalists and social concerns, 2:558 Form and History in American Literary Naturalism (Howard), 1:246 Forrest, Nathan Bedford, 2:563, 628 For the Major (Woolson), 3:956, 974 Fortune Magazine, 1:222 Forty-Five Minutes from Broadway (Cohan), 3:1120 Forum (journal), 1:110; 2:610, 746 Century bought out by, 1:215 Forward (newspaper). See Jewish Daily Forward “Forward March” (Munroe), 3:1074 Foss, Sam Walter, 2:859–860, 862–863 Foster, Gaines M., 1:263 Foster, Stephen, 3:1201 Foucault, Michel, 3:995–997 400 (Officially Supervised), The, 3:1184 Fourier, Charles, 3:1205 free love and, 1:403 socialism and, 3:1060 Four Million, The (O. Henry), 1:400–403


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Foursquare Church, 1:235 Fourteenth Amendment (1868), 1:253; 2:543, 562, 847–848; 3:934, 953, 1209 Fourteen Weeks in Natural Philosophy (Steele), 3:1019 Fox, John, Jr., 3:1025 Fox, Katherine, 3:1075 Fox, Margaret, 3:1075, 1076 Fox, Richard Kyle, 1:188 Fox, Richard Wightman, 2:675 Fox, William, 2:708 Foye, Ada Hoyt, 3:1078 Framing America (Pohl), 1:86 France Century Magazine distributed in, 1:212 See also Paris Francis, David R., 3:990 Francis, Susan, 2:464, 465 Frank, Glenn, 1:215 Frank, Jerome, 2:557, 660 Frank, Leo, 2:539 Frank, the Young Naturalist (Castlemon), 1:12 Frank, Waldo Alfred Stieglitz and, 2:842 as a Young American Critic, 1:69 Frankfurter, Felix, 2:557 attack on Webster Thayer, 2:561 on Herbert Croly, 3:911 Frank Leslie’s Boy’s and Girl’s Weekly, 1:221 Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 3:978 cover on murder trial of Lizzie Borden, 3:1170 Franklin, H. Bruce, 2:814 on Billy Budd, 1:202 Franklin, John Hope, 2:458 Franklin, Rosemary, 1:126 Franklin Evans (Whitman), 3:1109 Franklin Square Library (Harper’s), 2:609 Frank Merriwell series, 1:222; 3:1083 Frank Norris (French), 2:648 Frank Norris: Instinct and Art (Dillingham), 2:648 Frank Norris: The Critical Reception (McElrath and Knight, eds.), 2:648 Frank Norris Revisited (McElrath), 2:648 “Frank Norris Writes Cleverly about Child Fiction for Old Readers” (Norris), 2:647 Franny and Zooey (Salinger), 3:1129 Fraser, James Earl, 2:514

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Frauds Exposed (Comstock), 3:1037 Frazer, James George, 1:32 Freckles (Stratton-Porter), 1:222 Frederic, Harold, 1:140, 193, 233–234; 2:842 on Catholics, 1:206 Christian Science and, 1:242 on Irish immigrants, 2:533 as precursor of naturalism, 2:747 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:962 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 on village life, 3:1163 See also Damnation of Theron Ware, The “Frederick Douglass” (Dunbar), 2:640 “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill” (White), 3:1197 Freedley, Edwin Troxell, 3:1032 Freedmen’s Bank, 1:166 Freedmen’s Bureau, 3:953 Andrew Johnson and, 1:252 Black Codes and, 1:252 collapse of, 1:165–166 John William De Forest and, 3:930 freedom, The Nation and, 2:743 freedom and determinism, in The Ambassadors, 1:38 “Freedom Wheeler’s Controversy with Providence” (Cooke), 3:973 “Free Joe and the Rest of the World” (Harris), 3:1148 free love, 1:403–407; 3:1037 Freeman, Ada, 1:347 Freeman, Legh, 1:347 Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins, 1:290, 300; 2:675, 761; 3:973 death and, 1:30 detective fiction and, 2:740 dialect use, 3:1052 domestic fiction and, 1:341, 342 Harper & Brothers and, 2:427 humor and, 2:474 lesbian stories and, 3:995 local color fiction and, 3:948 on nervousness, 2:446–447 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 Richard Watson Gilder as mentor to, 1:214 regionalism, 1:51 Social Darwinism and, 3:1058–1059 supernatural writing, 1:419 village life and, 3:1162 See also New England Nun and Other Stories, A Freeman, R. Austin, 2:741 “Free Marriage” (Noble), 1:405 Freer, Charles Lang, 1:86 Free Religious Association, 1:233

T H R O U G H


free-silver movement, 1:131 The Nation and, 2:744 Free Speech (newspaper), 2:631 free trade, Mark Twain and, 1:281 free will, 1:52 Freidman, Alan Warren, 3:1189 Frémont, John C., 1:407; 2:756 Fremstad, Olive, 2:728 French, Alice. See Thanet, Octave French, Daniel Chester, 1:91 French, Peter, 3:1188 French, Philip, 3:1193 French, Warren, 2:648 French Foreign Legion, 3:1219 French Revolution (Carlyle), 1:280 “French Traits” (Brownell), 3:1025 French Ways and Their Meaning (Wharton), 3:1134, 1184 Freneau, Philip, 3:1164 Frenzeny, Paul, 3:1195 Frenzied Finance (Lawson), 1:132, 194 Freud, Sigmund atheism of, 1:32 Darwinism and, 1:319 English translation, 3:925 influence on biography, 1:157 influence on Jack London, 3:1029 influence on Moon-Calf, 2:696 Frick, Henry Clay, 3:1181 collection of European art, 1:87 Friday Literary Review, 2:698 Friedan, Betty, 3:1206 Friedman, Alan Warren, 1:29 “Friendship after Love” (Wilcox), 2:864 Friendship of Nature, The (Wright), 2:759 Friendship Village (Gale), 3:1163 Friendship Village Love Stories (Gale), 3:1163 Friml, Rudolf, 2:725 Frohman, Charles, 3:1116 Frohman, Daniel, 3:1116 From Alien to Citizen (Steiner), 1:104 “From Far Dakota’s Cañons” (Whitman), 1:135 From Immigrant to Inventor (Pupin), 1:103; 2:491 From Manassas to Appomattox (Longstreet), 1:259 From Many Lands (Adamic), 1:101 From Puritanism to Postmodernism (Ruland and Bradbury), 1:414 From Slavery to Affluence: Memoirs of Robert Anderson, Ex-Slave, 1:115

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1281

INDEX

From Slavery to Freedom (Franklin), 2:458 From Stores of Memory (Bacheller), 2:775 From the Deep Woods to Civilization (Eastman), 1:353; 2:517; 3:956, 1226 frontier, 1:407–412 law enforcement, 2:583–584 plays based on, 3:1114 romances, 2:453 tales, 3:972 violence on the, 3:1166, 1169 women’s suffrage and, 3:1210 Frontier in American Culture, The (White), 3:1197 Frost, Arthur Burdett (A. B.), 2:479, 482; 3:1024 illustrator for Joel Chandler Harris, 3:1148, 1149 Frost, Robert, 2:784 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:111 on death, 1:30 on E. A. Robinson, 2:664 influence of William James on, 1:69 lyric poetry and, 2:635–636 Paul Laurence Dunbar compared to, 2:635 Poetry and, 2:620, 850, 851, 852–853 See also North of Boston Froude, James Anthony, 1:34 Fuchs, Feodor, 1:135 Fugitive-Agrarians, 2:673 Fuller, Emeline, 2:522 Fuller, Henry Blake, 1:110, 217–218; 2:502 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 business novels, 1:196 Chicago and, 1:216, 250 on finance, 1:131 on same-sex love, 3:997 Spanish-American War and, 1:78 on urban misery, 3:899 on World’s Columbian Exposition, 3:1214 Fuller, Loie, 1:312 Fulton, David Bryant, 2:669 functionalism, effect on education, 1:350 fundamentalism, 1:234–235 Funston, Frederick, 2:829 Furness, Frank, 1:88 “Furnished Room, The” (O. Henry), 1:400, 401, 421 Fusco, Richard, 3:1043 Future of the Race, The (West), 3:935, 937

1282

G Gabin, Jane S., 2:673 Gaboriau, Émile, 1:323 Gaines, Kevin K., 3:934–935 Galaxy (magazine), 1:50; 2:610, 819; 3:920 Gale, Zona Elizabeth Jordan and, 1:346 as local color writer, 1:139, 140 on village life, 3:1163 Galen, Claudius, 1:331 Galicer National Park, 2:811 Gall (Indian leader), 1:133 Gall, Franz Josef, 3:922 Gallagher, Grace Margaret, 3:1083 Gallatin, Albert, 1:364 Galsworthy, John, 3:1026 Galton, Francis, 1:231; 2:581 Galveston Hurricane (1900), 1:326, 329–330 Gambino, Richard, 2:630 gambling and resorts, 3:979 game, metaphor of the, 3:1082 Game, The (London), 1:189 “Game and the Nation, The” (Wister), 3:1193 Games and Songs of American Children (Newell), 1:389 Gangs of New York, The (Asbury), 1:248 Gantt, T. Fulton, 1:195 Garcia, Calixto, 3:1072 garden city movement, 1:98 Garden of Eden, U.S.A. (Bishop), 1:232 Gardens of This World (Fuller), 1:218 Gardiner, W. H., 2:452 Gardner, Alexander, 2:841 Gardner, Isabella Stewart, 1:87, 89 Gardner, Martin, 3:920 Garfield, James A., 3:899 assassination, 3:1166 Garland, Hamlin, 2:661, 820 American Library Association and, 2:590 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 Chicago and, 1:216 debate with Mary Hartwell Catherwood, 3:974 as economic progressivist, 3:1057 on farming, 3:867, 899 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 on A Hazard of New Fortunes, 2:858 on Indians, 2:514 on labor and inequity, 2:624 on McClure’s, 2:611 on Maggie, 2:654 Manifest Destiny and, 2:498–499 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and, 2:761, 763, 765

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

as Midwest regionalist writer, 3:974 on migration, 2:691 as muckraker, 2:822 politics and, 2:856 as precursor of naturalism, 2:747 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:959 reform and, 3:965 Richard Watson Gilder as mentor of, 1:214 in Saturday Evening Post, 1:349 on small-town life, 1:657 Social Gospel and, 1:236 W. D. Howells and, 3:944, 950 on West cure, 2:447 on western settlement, 1:76, 373 World’s Columbian Exposition and, 3:1215 See also Main-Travelled Roads garment industry Jewish immigrants and, 2:538; 3:986 unions and, 2:539 Garner, Stanton on influences on The Damnation of Theron Ware, 1:310 on sources of The Damnation of Theron Ware, 1:309 Garrett, Pat, 3:1169, 1169 Garrison, Frank, 2:464 Garrison, Lucy McKim, 1:386 Garrison, Wendell Phillips, 2:745 Garrison, William Lloyd, 1:78 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 on Christian Science, 1:242 Woman’s Journal and, 3:1200, 1201 Garroters, The (Howells), 3:1117 Gartner, Lloyd, 2:490 Garvey, Ellen Bruby, 2:679 Garvey, Marcus, 2:689 influence of Booker T. Washington on, 3:1155 Gary, Joseph E., 2:436 Gaskell, Charles Milnes, 1:211 Gast, John, 1:86 American Progress, 1:87 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 3:1044 Gates, Lewis E., 1:354 Gates Ajar, The (Phelps), 3:1067 Gatewood, Willard B., 3:935, 936 Gatling, Richard Jordan, 3:1189 Gaul, Gilbert, 1:87 Gay, Peter, 3:1035, 1036 Gay American History (Katz), 3:996 Gayarré, Charles, 2:768 Geary Act (1892), 1:228 Geley, Gustav, 3:922 gender adolescence and stereotypes, 1:11, 12 blacks and conventions of, 3:935


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

coeducation in land-grant institutions, 1:353 immigration and, 2:492–493 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on, 2:760 in My Ántonia, 2:733–734 nervousness and, 2:446 in The Portrait of a Lady, 2:876 during Reconstruction, 3:956 success and, 3:1098 The Theory of the Leisure Class and, 3:1123 utopias and, 3:1156–1157 W. D. Howells’s belief in gender equality, 2:604 westerns and, 3:1188 General Allotment Act. See Dawes Severalty Act General Grant National Park, 2:811 general interest periodicals, 2:819 “General William Booth Enters Heaven” (Ives), 2:729 “Generations of Men, The” (Frost), 2:787 Generation X (Coupland), 3:1127 “Genius,” The (Dreiser), 1:87, 95–96; 3:923, 1164 censorship and, 2:874 on marriage, 1:296 Genteel Endeavor, A (Tomsich), 1:413, 416 genteel magazines, 2:818 genteel socialism and reform, 3:966–867 genteel tradition, 1:413–417 libraries and, 2:589 literary criticism and, 2:598 “Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy, The” (Santayana), 1:415 Genthe, Arnold, 2:841 Gentle Art of Making Enemies, The (Whistler), 1:94 Gentleman from Indiana, The (Tarkington), 2:645 George, Henry, 2:659, 661; 3:964, 1057 muckraking tradition and, 2:713 reform and, 3:965 Socialist Labor Party and, 3:1061 George’s Mother (Crane), 1:3; 3:1112 “Georgina’s Reasons” (H. James), 2:774 Gerlach, John, 3:1040, 1041 “Germany and the Germans” (Collier), 3:1026 Germinal (Zola), 2:749 germ theory, 1:332; 2:448 Gérome, Jean-Léon, 2:799 Geronimo, 1:75; 2:520, 521

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Geronimo’s Story of His Life (Barrett), 2:522 Gertzman, Jay, 2:875 “Getting into Print” (London), 3:903 Gettysburg battlefield monuments, 1:264 Ghost Dance religion, 1:76, 316; 3:1224 Big Foot’s band gathered for ceremony, 3:1225 Ghost Dance Religion and Wounded Knee, The (Mooney), 3:1224 Ghost Dance songs, 3:956 Ghostly Tales of Henry James, The (Edel, ed.), 1:420 Ghosts (Wahrton), 1:420–421 ghost stories, 1:417–424 Mark Twain’s burlesque of, 3:1078 Giants in the Earth (Rölvaag), 1:76, 374–375 gender roles and, 2:492 “Giant Wistaria, The” (Gilman), 1:420 Gibbon, John, 1:134 Gibbons, James Cardinal, 1:204 Gibbs, Herbert, 2:465 Gibson, Charles Dana, 1:378; 2:482; 3:1024 journalism and, 2:549 Gibson, Dorothy, 1:328 Gibson Girl, 2:482. See also New Woman “Gift of the Magi, The” (O. Henry), 1:400, 401–402 Gilbert, Cass, 1:89, 96 Gilbert, Henry Franklin Belknap, 2:724 Gilbert, Sandra, 1:125–126, 420 Gilbert, W. S., 1:173; 3:1119 Gil Blas (Lesage), 1:16 Gilded Age, The (Twain and Warner), 1:76; 2:593, 605, 676, 853–854 on banking, 1:129–130 Irish Americans in, 2:532 on land speculation, 3:1182 on Newport as resort, 3:977–978 satire and, 3:1004–1005 on scandals, 3:1184 on violence, 3:1170 woman physician in, 2:445 Gilder, Richard Watson, 2:819 on art in print, 2:480 Authors Club and, 1:270 Century Magazine and, 1:212 genteel tradition and, 1:413 Grace King and, 2:767 on realism, 3:948, 949 rejection of Stephen Crane’s work, 1:414 Scribner’s Monthly and, 1:213–214 Gillam, Bernhard, 2:481–482, 869

T H R O U G H


Gillette, Francis, 2:593 Gillette, William, 3:1115 Gillman, Susan, 3:971 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1:195, 352; 3:1205 American Press Association and, 2:773 in Appeal to Reason, 1:85 Charles F. Lummis and, 1:367 on education, 1:350 Fabian socialism and, 3:1205 the Forerunner and, 2:548 Heterodoxy Club and, 1:272 higher education and, 1:354 influence of Thorstein Veblen on, 3:1122 on marriage, 1:296 realism and, 3:951 on sexually transmitted diseases, 2:449 Social Darwinism and, 3:1059 social pragmatism and, 2:838 on success, 3:1095–1096 supernatural and, 1:420 utopias of, 3:897 W. D. Howells and, 2:604 Woman’s Journal and, 3:1202 on women and economics, 2:675 on women’s dress, 1:377 on women’s rights, 2:859 See also Herland; Women and Economics; “Yellow Wall-Paper, The” Gilman, George, 2:681 Gilman, Sander, 2:488 Gilmore, F. Grant, 2:688 Gilmore, Patrick, 2:726 Gilmore Band, 2:726 Gilpin, Charles, 1:363 Gilreath, Belton, 3:1154 Gingrich, Arnold, 3:1127 Giovanni, Nikki, 2:641 Girgus, Sam, 2:491 Girl I Left behind Me, The (Johnson), 1:93 Girl of the Golden West, The (Belasco), 3:1116 Girl of the Limberlost (Stratton-Porter), 1:222 Girl with the Green Eyes, The (Fitch), 3:1118 Gish, Lillian, 1:163 Givens, Terryl, 2:699 Glackens, William, 1:95 Gladden, Washington, 1:233, 234, 236; 3:1061 Gladstone, William Ewart, 1:31 Glasgow, Ellen, 2:453 Glaspell, Susan, 3:1121

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1283

INDEX

Glaspell, Susan (continued) Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Heterodoxy Club and, 1:272 Provincetown Players and, 2:595 Glasworthy, John, 3:1025 Glazener, Nancy, 2:610, 805; 3:971 Gleizes, Albert, 1:69 Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (Hearn), 2:800 Glower, Jessie Graham, 3:1083 Glyn, Elinor, 2:874 Goden Bowl, The (H. James), 1:62 Godey’s Lady’s Book (magazine), 2:820 advertisements in, 2:678 social reform articles in, 2:713 “God in the Constitution” (lecture; Ingersoll), 1:33 Godkin, Edwin Lawrence, 2:745, 819 founder of The Nation, 2:743 Henry James compared to, 1:63 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 “Godliness” (Anderson), 3:1197 God of Vengeance (Asch), 2:874 “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” (Crane), 2:501 “Gods, The” (lecture; Ingersoll), 1:33 “God’s First Temples: How Shall We Preserve Our Forest?” (Muir), 2:810 “God’s Raven” (Garland), 2:691 God’s Trombones (Johnson), 1:121 “Goethe’s House at Weimar” (Browning), 3:1025 “Going Abroad” (Putnam’s), 3:1131 Going to the Territory (Ellison), 3:1150 Gold, Michael, 1:247 Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925, The (Moses), 3:935 Golden Argosy (magazine), 1:423; 2:822 Golden Bough, The (Frazer), 1:32 Golden Bowl, The (H. James), 2:842 orientalism in, 2:796 Golden Era (newspaper), 2:844 Golden Hours (Munro), 1:322 Golden Multitudes (Mott), 2:614 Goldfaden, Abraham, 2:542 Golding, William, 3:1101 Goldman, Emma, 3:1172 anarchism and, 1:66, 67 atheism and, 1:33 Haymarket executions and, 1:200 Helicon Home Colony and, 2:596 Mother Earth and, 2:548 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and, 2:561 “Goldsmith’s Friend Abroad Again” (Twain), 1:226, 337 gold standard, 1:131

1284

The Nation and, 2:744 “Goliah” (London), 1:73 “Gomo Zhèbes” (Hearn), 2:768 Gompers, Samuel, 2:539, 572, 574; 3:1171 Gone for a Soldier (Bellard), 1:261 Gone with the Wind (film), 2:461 Gone with the Wind (Mitchell), 2:451 good bad-boy subgenre, Mark Twain and, 1:16 Goodman, Daniel, 2:874 Goodman, Joseph T., 1:347; 3:981 regionalism, 1:51 Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Stories, The (Dunbar-Nelson), 2:767–768; 3:975 Goodrich, Samuel Griswold. See Parley, Peter “Good Templars” (ALcott), 3:1111 Goodwyn, Lawrence, 2:868 “Goophered Grapevine, The” (Chesnutt), 1:167, 275 Gordin, Jacob, 2:542 Gorky, Maxim, 1:396 Gospel of Wealth, 1:233 Booker T. Washington and, 3:936–937 “Gospel of Wealth, The” (Carnegie), 1:233; 3:1032, 1033, 1094, 1181–1182 Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays, The (Carnegie), 2:883; 3:1181–1182 gothic novels, 1:418; 2:451 gothic revival architecture, 1:88 Göttingen (Germany), American colony in, 1:55 Gough, John Bartholomew, 2:585; 3:1111 Gould, Jay, 2:569, 571; 3:1180 Gould Joseph, 2:587 Grace, William R., 2:530 Grady, Henry Woodfin, 1:345; 2:770 Graham, Philip, 2:672 Graham, Sylvester, 3:1065 “Grande Demoiselle, La” (King), 2:767 Grandissimes, The (Cable), 1:214; 2:453, 499, 766–767; 3:930, 1167 criticism of segregation, 2:544 on dance, 1:314 tragic mulatto in, 2:693 Grangers, 2:856, 868 The Nation and, 2:744 Grant, Frederick Dent, 2:433 Grant, Madison, 2:487 Grant, Robert, 1:90 on divorce, 1:297, 298 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Grant, Ulysses S., 2:824

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

in Century Magazine, 1:213 corrupt administration and, 3:898 George Custer and, 1:133 Indians and, 2:511 investigation of the Ku Klux Klan, 2:564 See also Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant Grapes and Thorns (Tincker), 1:205 Grapes of Wrath, The (Steinbeck), 2:624 Grassal, Georges, 2:874 Gray, Asa, 1:317 “Gray Mills of Farley, The” (Jewett), 1:291; 3:972, 1162 Great American Brands (Cleary), 2:679 Great American Fraud, The (S. H. Adams), 2:444 Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P), 2:681 Great Britain Century Magazine distributed in, 1:212 copyright law, 1:284 success of The Red Badge of Courage in, 3:961 Great Chain of Beings (Lovejoy), 2:838 Great Divide, The (Moody), 3:1118 “Greater Problem to Be Solved, The” (Harper), 2:791 Greatest Show on Earth, The, 1:245 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations (London, 1851), 1:207; 3:904 Great Exposition (Paris, 1900), 1:359 Great Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald), 1:73, 379; 2:538 on race, 2:566 sports and, 3:1084 westerns in, 3:1193 “Great Good Place, The” (H. James), 3:1041 Great Meadow, The (Roberts), 2:453 Great Migration Jim Crow laws and, 2:545 map, 1900–1929, 2:690 New York and, 2:781 Great Modern American Stories, The (Howells, ed.), 3:1230 “Great South, The” (King), 1:213 “Great Spirit, The” (Zitkala-Sˇa), 1:44 Great Train Robbery, The (film; Porter), 2:706 Great Uprising (1877), 2:571 Great White Hope, The (Sackler), 1:190 Greeley, Horace, 1:346; 3:898 Central Park in New York and, 2:807 as opponent of death penalty, 1:199 Green, Anna Katharine, 2:740 Green, Hetty, 3:1181


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Green, Martin, 3:1063 Greenback Party, 2:856; 3:899 Greenblatt, Stephen, 2:718 Greene, David L., 1:221 Greene, Lorenzo J., 2:457 Greenslet, Ferris, 2:464, 466 Greenwich Village (New York City), 2:594–596, 636 Grenander, M. E., 3:1104–1105 Grey, Zane, 1:76 the frontier and, 1:411–412 on frontier violence, 3:1169 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 as western writer, 1:139 See also Riders of the Purple Sage Griffes, Charles Tomlinson, 2:724 Griffith, D. W. (David Wark), 1:158, 167; 2:707 film techniques, 2:706 Orientalism and, 2:797, 799 silent movie based on Ramona, 3:942 See also Birth of a Nation, The Griggs, Sutton Elbert, 2:566; 3:932, 1158, 1170 Grigsby, Alcanoan O., 3:1158 “Grilling of Loren Ellery, The” (London), 2:774 Grimké, Angelina Weld, 2:566, 630–631 Grimké sisters, 3:1201 Grimm, Henry, 1:227 Grinnell, George Bird, 2:514, 811 Grinnell, Julius S., 2:435 Griswold, Rufus, 1:154 Gross Clinic, The (Eakins), 1:92; 3:1008, 1009 group biographies, 1:154 Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of (1848), 3:1086 Guam, Spanish-American War and, 1:78 Guazzani, Enrico, 1:158 Gubar, Sudsan, 1:420 Guest, David, 1:202 Guest, Edgar, 2:863 “Guilty Vicarage, The” (Auden), 2:737 Guiney, Louise Imogen, 1:205, 206 Guiteau, Charles, 3:1166 Gulf Stream, The (Homer), 1:92 Gulick, Luther, 3:1080 Gullible’s Travels (Lardner), 1:90 Gunfighter Nation (Slotkin), 3:1196 Gunning, Tom, 2:704

H Hackett, Francis, 2:697 Hadassah, 2:539

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Haeckel, Ernst, 1:31 Hagar Revelly (Goodman), 2:874 Hagar’s Daughter (Hopkins), 2:694 Hagedorn, Herman, 3:1074 Hagerty, Thomas J., 3:1061 hagiography, 1:150 Haigh-Wood, Vivian, 2:627 haiku influence on imagism, 2:486 Hairy Ape, The (O’Neill), 3:1029 Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel, 1:33–34 Hale, Edward Everett, 2:835; 3:1205 on A Hazard of New Fortunes, 2:441 Muscular Christianity and, 3:1080 short stories and, 3:1040 Hale, Ellen Day, 1:94 Hale, Lucretia, 1:221 Hale, Sarah J., 2:820 Half-Breeds, 3:1166 Half Century of Conflict, A (Parkman), 2:456 halftone photoengraving, 2:480, 611, 840 effect on Harper’s art department, 2:428 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1024 Halifax explosion (1917), 1:326 Hall, G. Stanley on academic philosophy, 2:834 on adolescence, 1:8–9; 3:1127 on rugged sports, 3:1080 Haller, John S., Jr., 3:1065 Haller, Robin, 3:1065 Halley, Edmond, 3:918 Hallway, John E., 1:28 Halpern, Moshe Leib, 2:541 Halsey, Harlan Page, 1:323 Halsey v. New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (N.Y., 1920), 2:874 Hambridge, Jay, 3:989 Hamilton, Gail, 1:346–347; 2:613 “Hamlet and His Problems” (Eliot), 2:485–486, 6022:602 Hammett, Dashiell, 2:738 Hampton, Benjamin, 2:716 Hampton, Wade, 1:264 Hampton University, 1:170 Hancock, Winfield Scott, 3:899 Hand, Learned, 2:874 Handbook of Nature-Study (Comstock), 2:759 Handley, William R., 3:1169 Hand of the Potter, The (Dreiser), 3:925, 926, 927 “Hands” (Anderson), 3:1198 “Hands Round” (Whitman), 1:313 Hanna, Mark, 3:901 Hannum, David, 3:917

T H R O U G H


Hanover (Fulton as Thorne), 2:669 Hans Bricker (Dodge), 1:221 Hansen, Harry, 2:697 Hanson, William, 2:516 Hanussen, Erik Jan, 3:918 Hapgood, Hutchins, 2:540, 550 Revolt group and, 1:69 Hapgood, Norman, 2:803 Happy Hooligan series (Opper), 3:1139 “Harbor-Master, The” (Chambers), 1:422 Harburg, E. Y., 3:1222 Harcourt, Alfred, 2:657 Harding, Warren, 2:566 Hardy, Thomas influence on Robert Frost, 2:784 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 Hardy Boys series, 1:12, 222 Hare T. Truxton, 1:188 Harkness, Charles, 3:1181 Harlan, John Marshall Albion Tourgée and, 3:1168 dissent in Lochner v. New York, 2:623 dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, 2:847, 849 Harlan, Louis, 3:1155 Harland, Henry, 1:25 Harland, Marion, 3:1033 “Harlem Dancer, The” (McKay), 1:315 Harlem Renaissance, 1:248, 315; 2:781; 3:939, 970 Paul Laurence Dunbar and, 2:641 Harlem Shadows (McKay), 1:315 Harmon, Moses, 1:407 Harmonium (Stevens), 2:853 “‘Harnt’ That Walks Chilhowee, The” (Murfree), 2:525 Harper, Fletcher, 2:425, 426 periodicals and, 2:427, 429, 430 Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins, 2:526–527, 527, 544; 3:1098 anti-alcohol poetry, 3:1111 black female perspective, 1:168–169 on ethnicity and marriage, 1:294 oratory of, 2:790, 793 race novels and, 3:930 on reconciliation after Civil War, 1:258 sentimental realism and, 1:342 on sexuality, 1:295 slavery and, 3:955 on Tammany Hall, 2:855 on temperance, 1:2; 3:1113 on violence against black women, 3:1167 See also Iola Leroy Harper, J. Henry, 2:427, 430 Harper, James, 2:425, 426

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1285

INDEX

Harper, John, 2:425, 426 Harper, Joseph W. (Brooklyn Joe), 2:426, 427 Harper, Joseph W., Jr., 2:425 Harper, Wesley, 2:425, 426 Harper, William Rainey, 1:219 Harper & Brothers, 1:177; 2:425–429 illustrations and, 2:480 W. D. Howells and, 2:438 Harper & Row, 2:425 Harper’s, 1:186 Harper’s Bazar, 2:427 spelling changed to Harper’s Bazaar, 2:427 Harper’s Monthly circulation, 1:50 Zitkala-Sˇa published in, 1:44 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 1:109, 182; 2:425, 427, 429–431, 610, 818 advertisement, 2:430 humor and, 2:472 illustrations in, 2:479 Lafcadio Hearn and, 1:174 on science, 3:920 W. D. Howells and, 2:438 Harper’s Weekly, 2:425, 427 cartoon by Thomas Nast on the New South, 2:770 on Coney Island, 3:979 cover illustration by W. A. Rogers, 2:500 cover on Chinese immigrants, 1:227 One Vote Less, 2:563 on oratorical mastery of Chief Joseph, 2:794 Rich and Poor (Eytinge), 2:884 Thomas Nast and, 2:481 Harper’s Young People, 2:427 Harrigan, Edward, 2:532 Harrigan, Ned, 3:1115, 1116 Harriman, E. H., 3:1181 Harriman, Job, 3:1061 Harris, Clifton, 1:200 Harris, George Washington, 3:972 Harris, Joel Chandler, 1:167, 222 African American folklore and, 1:386 American Folklore Society and, 1:388 as Catholic writer, 1:205–206 dialect and nonstandard spelling use, 3:1052, 1054 humor and, 2:474 as local color writer, 1:139–140, 274; 3:948 the New South and, 2:771–772

1286

plantation tradition and, 2:544; 3:975 regionalism, 1:51 Richard Watson Gilder as mentor to, 1:214 in Saturday Evening Post, 1:349 short story and, 3:1044 slavery and, 3:955 See also Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings Harris, Lee, 3:1138 Harris, Mark, 1:49 Harris, Sharon M., 1:342 Harris, Thomas Lake, 3:1075 Harris, William Torrey, 1:350; 2:834 Concord School of Philosophy and, 2:835 Harrison, Benjamin, 3:900 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 Harrison, Carter Henry, 3:1214 Harrison, J. B., 1:107 Harrison, W. H., 3:1075 Hart, Albert Bushness, 2:431 Hart, James D., 2:612, 649 Hart, John E., 3:962 Hart, John Mason, 2:684 Hart, John Seely, 1:51 Hart, Tony, 3:1116 Hart, William S., 2:708; 3:1193 Harte, Bret, 2:844 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 Bohemian Club and, 1:268 on Chicago fire, 1:329 Chinese characters of, 1:227 frontier and, 1:408; 2:583–584 influence of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show on, 3:1195 lecturing and, 2:585, 586, 587 on literary agent, 2:613–614 local color fiction and, 1:139; 3:948, 975, 980 magazine contributions, 2:820 Mark Twain and, 2:605, 854 new western genre and, 1:76; 3:1190 O. Henry compared to, 1:400 Orientalism and, 2:797 Overland Monthly and, 1:345; 2:803, 805 parody and, 3:1006 photography and, 2:842 regionalism, 1:51 Richard Watson Gilder as mentor to, 1:214 San Francisco and, 3:999 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 teacher character, 1:351 theme of “hearts of gold” and, 2:525

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

William Frederic Tillotson and, 2:774 See also “Plain Language from Truthful James” Harte, W. B., 2:660 Hartford, George, 2:681 Hartford Courant (newspaper), 1:17 on tramps, 3:1135 Hartland, Claude, 3:997 Hartley, Marsden, 1:96 Hartman, Sadakichi (Sidney Allan), 1:67 Hartmann, Edward George, 1:101 Hartnell, Ella S., 2:710 Hartwick, Harry, 2:506 Harvard Classics, 1:354 Harvard Club, 1:267 Harvard School and genteel tradition, 1:413–414 Harvard Stories (Post), 3:1082, 1084 Harvard University, 1:354, 358, 359 Harvey, Charles M., 1:324 Harvey, George Brinton McClellan, 2:427, 428 Harvey, James C., 2:874 Harvey, William H., 1:191; 2:873; 3:901 Hassam, Childe Mary Cassatt and, 1:93 Theodore Dreiser on, 1:87 Hastings, Caroline E., 1:377 Hatchet, The (newspaper), 3:1110 Hatfields and McCoys, feud between, 3:1168 Havel, Hippolyte, 1:69 “Have you got a brook in your little heart?” (Parker), 2:729 Haviland, Laura Smith, 1:116 Hawaii lynching in, 2:630 statehood, 1:74, 77 Hawley, Joseph, 1:285 Haworth’s (Burnett), 1:213 Hawthorne, Julian, 1:152 as imperialist, 2:828 supernatural and, 1:421 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1:91 on epic historical romances, 2:452 influence on Harold Frederic, 1:310 influence on Sherwood Anderson, 3:1198 prison writing, 2:815 temperance imagery and, 3:1109 “Hawthorne and His Mosses” (Melville), 1:146 Hay, John, 1:213; 3:1184 on Abraham Lincoln, 1:151; 2:459 business novel and, 1:193, 194 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and, 1:172


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

on Spanish-American War, 1:78; 3:1070 Haycraft, Harold, 2:738, 741 Hayden, Ferdinand Vandiveer, 1:364, 371; 2:810 Hayden, Sophia, 1:93; 3:1215 Hayes, Jeff, 1:232 Hayes, Rutherford B., 3:898, 1166 end of Reconstruction and, 1:253; 2:543, 564 Hayford, Harrison, 1:146, 147 Haymarket Martyrs Monument (Weinert), 1:91, 91 Haymarket Square Riot (1886), 1:66, 67, 200; 2:432–437, 539; 3:964, 1171–1172 effect on labor movement, 2:571 in Harper’s Weekly, 2:433 nativists’ anti-Catholicism and, 1:204 W. D. Howells and, 1:69; 2:439; 3:966 Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 1:107 Haynes, Arvilla B., 1:377 Haynes, William, 2:873, 874 Haywood, William D. (“Big Bill”), 3:1061 anarchism and, 1:67 Paterson Strike Pageant (1913) and, 3:1063 Hayworth Publishing House, 1:43 Hazard of New Fortunes, A (Howells), 1:69; 2:437–443; 3:964 on alcoholism, 1:2–3 the Bible and, 1:143–144 Christianity and, 1:232 on clubs, 1:271 on corruption of middle-class values, 3:966 cover of first paperback edition, 2:438 critical realism and, 3:950 Haymarket riot and, 2:435–436 on labor, 1:193, 195; 2:575 on magazine publishing, 2:816 marketing society and, 2:438, 676 on New York City, 1:247; 2:780 police and, 2:581, 582 on politics, 2:857–858 on Saratoga, 3:978 socialism and, 3:1063 Hazel Kirke (MacKaye), 3:1115 Heade, Martin, 1:92 healers, African American, 2:448 health and medicine, 2:443–449 Christian Science and, 1:239 He and She (Crothers), 3:1118–1119 Heap, Jane, 2:621 Hearn, Lafcadio, 1:174; 2:768 Orientalism and, 2:796, 800

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Hearst, William Randolph, 1:33, 188, 347; 2:547 caricature by Homer Davenport, 1:348 periodicals and, 2:819 purchase of Harper’s Bazar, 2:427 Spanish-American War and, 1:77 yellow journalism and, 2:712 Heart of Maryland, The (Belasco), 3:1116 Hearts of Gold (Jones), 2:689 Hearts of Oak (Herne and Belasco), 3:1117 “Heathen Chinee, The” (Harte). See “Plain Language from Truthful James” Hebrew Free School Association, 2:540 Hebrew Union College, 2:540 Hegel, Georg Wilhlem Friedrich, 2:833 influence on Herbert Croly, 3:913 influence on W. E. B. Du Bois, 3:1069 Heidegger, Martin, 3:896 Heinz, Henry J., 1:392 Heir of Slaves, The (Pickens), 1:115–116 Held by the Enemy (Gillette), 3:1115 Helicon Home Colony, 2:596 Hemingway, Ernest, 2:607 on boxing, 1:191 Gertrude Stein and, 2:607 Huckleberry Finn and, 1:20, 21 influence of Ambrose Bierce on, 3:1101 influence of imagism on, 2:486 influence of Sherwood Anderson on, 3:1198 journalism and, 2:549 the Little Review and, 2:621 on Mark Twain, 3:929 Sarah Orne Jewett’s affinities with, 1:290 on Stephen Crane, 2:454 World War I and, 3:1222, 1223 Hemyng, Bracebridge, 1:323 Henderson, Alice Corbin, 2:851, 852 Hendrick, Burton J. Abraham Cahan and, 3:985 muckraking and, 2:645 Henri, Robert, 1:69, 94, 95 anarchism and, 1:66 Henrietta, The (Howard), 3:1117 Henry, Arthur, 3:1050 Henry, O. Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 humor and, 2:477 McClure’s and, 2:645 New York and, 2:780 prison writing, 2:815

T H R O U G H


as professional writer, 2:612 short story and, 3:1040 supernatural and, 1:421 Henry, William W., 1:151 Henry James (Sargent), 1:94 “Henry James, Jr.” (Howells), 1:214 “Henry Neil and His Mother” (Stanton), 3:1108 Henry Ward Beecher (Ward), 1:91 Hepburn, James, 2:613 Herbert, Victor, 2:725, 728 musical comedy and, 3:1119 Herbert S. Stone & Company, 2:617 Herbst, Josephine, 3:1025 “Her Chinese Husband” (Sin Far), 2:477, 711 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 3:1069 heredity Émile Zola and, 2:752 in Tarzan of the Apes, 3:1106 Hergesheimer, Joseph, 2:656; 3:1074 Heritage of the Desert, The (Grey), 1:411 Herland (Gilman), 1:377; 3:897, 1013, 1096, 1156 gender and, 3:1157 Social Darwinism and, 3:1059 socialism and, 3:1063 “Hermes of the Ways” (Doolittle), 2:484 Herndl, Diane Price, 2:443 Herndon, William Henry, 1:151 Herndon’s Lincoln (Herndon), 1:151 Herne, James A., 2:445; 3:1117 on marriage, 1:296 heroes college athletic hero, 1:188, 323 of dime novel westerns, 1:322 in historical romances, 2:453 teachers, 1:351 working class, 3:1096 Heroes of the Plains (Buel), 2:522 “Heroic Salve, The” (Douglass), 3:931 heroines, romanticized invalids as, 2:444 Heron, Herbert, 2:596 “Hero of Tomato Can, The” (Norris), 3:1191 Hero with a Thousand Faces, The (Campbell), 3:962 Herrick, Robert, 1:90, 218 as muckraker, 1:131–132 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 on World’s Columbian Exposition, 3:1215 See also Memoirs of an American Citizen Herriman, George, 2:483 Herron, George Davis, 1:236 Social Gospel movement and, 1:234

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1287

INDEX

Hertzberg, Arthur, 2:537, 538 Hesper (Garland), 2:447 Hester Street (Luks), 1:95, 95 Heterodoxy Club, 1:272 Hewett, Edgar Lee, 1:366 Hewitt, J. N. B., 1:368; 2:515 Heylinger, William, 3:1083 Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub (Dreiser), 1:34 Heywood, Ezra, 1:407 Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast (ColeridgeTaylor), 2:728 Hidden Hand, The (Southworth), 2:615 Higgins, Brian, 2:655 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1:261, 380; 2:613 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:106 Concord School of Philosophy and, 1:185 Emily Dickinson and, 2:603, 633 Helen Hunt Jackson and, 3:940, 942 Muscular Christianity and, 3:1080 nature writing and, 2:757 Woman’s Journal and, 3:1200 Higham, John, 2:487 Highbrow/Lowbrow (Levine), 3:906 high culture Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 109 formula western and, 3:1193 genteel tradition and, 1:414 versus low culture, 3:906 higher biblical criticism, 1:32, 231 effect on The Damnation of Theron Ware, 1:309 higher education, 1:353–355 black colleges, 1:170 Catholic institutions, 1:205 journalism and, 2:549 liberal arts education, blacks and, 1:256 for women, 1:354, 381 See also universities Higher Learning in America, The (Veblen), 1:355; 3:1126 high schools, 1:350–351 Hike and the Aeroplane (Lewis), 1:12 Hill, James J., 3:1181 Hill, Joe, 1:67; 3:1062–1063 Hill, W. R., 2:690 Hillers, Jack, 1:364, 365 Hillquit, Morris, 2:539; 3:1061, 1062 Himan, Wilbur F., 3:959 Hinchley, Margaret, 2:573 Hinden, Michael Hindered Hand, The (Griggs), 3:932, 1170 Hine, Lewis, 2:840

1288

Hine, Robert V., 1:374; 3:1061 historians, professionalization of, 2:455, 460 historical fiction, 2:461 best-sellers, 2:614 historical romance, 2:450–454 best-sellers, 1:137–138; 2:450, 614 market for, 1:181 The Squatter and the Don as, 3:1088 history, 2:454–462 History and Legends of the Alamo (Zavala), 3:1089 History of a Literary Radical and Other Essays (Bourne), 2:601 History of American Literature, 1607–1765 (Tyler), 1:52, 54 History of American Literature, A (Cairns), 1:54 History of American Magazines, The (Mott), 2:608–609 History of Book Publishing in the United States, The (Tebbel), 2:608 History of England in the Eighteenth Century (Lecky), 1:280, 281, 282 History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (Lecky), 1:32 source for The Damnation of Theron Ware, 1:309 History of New York (Irving), 2:682 History of Prostitution, The (Sanger), 3:914 History of Sexuality, The (Foucault), 3:995–997 History of Socialism in the United States (Hillquit), 3:1062 History of the American Frontier, 1763–1893 (Paxson), 1:411 History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (Draper), 1:32 source for The Damnation of Theron Ware, 1:309 History of the Conquest of Mexico (Prescott), 2:455 History of the Expedition, The (Lewis and Clark), 3:1190 History of the Negro Race from 1619 to 1880 (Williams), 2:458 History of the Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865, A (Williams), 1:261 History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan (Blackbird), 2:515 History of the People of the United States (McMaster), 2:460 History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain (Prescott), 2:455

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe (Lecky), 1:32 History of the Standard Oil Company (Tarbell), 1:156; 2:645, 714, 715 History of the United States (Bancroft), 2:455 History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (H. Adams), 2:459 History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (Rhodes), 2:460 History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, A (White), 1:32 Hitchcock, Ripley, 2:654; 3:960 HMS Pinafore (Gilbert and Sullivan), 3:1119 Hoar, George Frisbie, 2:827–828 Hobo, The (Anderson), 3:1139 Hobo Hornbook, The (Milburn), 3:1139 hobos. See tramps and hobos Hochman, Barbara, 2:648 Hodge, Charles, 1:231 Hoffman, Daniel, 1:388 Hofstadter, Richard, 3:1181 anti-intellectualism and, 1:79–80, 82 Holabird, William, 1:216 Holbrook, Stewart H., 3:1181, 1182 Hole in the Bag, The (Ballard), 3:1111 Holiness movement, 1:232, 234 Holland, J. G. (Josiah Gilbert), 1:193 Scribner’s Monthly and, 1:212, 213 on sexuality, 1:195 “Holland from the Stern of a Boeier” (Penfield), 3:1025 Holley, Marietta, 1:210; 2:474; 3:1111 humor and, 2:472 satire and, 3:979, 1005 Hollywood, 2:708–709 Holm, Saxe. See Jackson, Helen Hunt Holmes, John Haynes, 3:1172 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (1841–1935), 1:232 dissent in Lochner, 2:623–624, 5577 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. (1809–1894) Atlantic Monthly and, 1:106; 2:463 humor and, 2:473 on lecturers, 2:586 Muscular Christianity and, 3:1080 national consciousness of death of, 1:52 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:209 on tuberculosis, 1:337


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

W. D. Howells and, 1:185 Holmes, Steven J., 2:736 Holst, Gustav, 2:729 Holt, David, 1:261 Holt, Edwin Bissell, 2:837 Holt, Henry, 1:176, 177; 2:600 copyright and, 2:614 Holtzclaw, William, 1:115 Homberger, Eric, 3:1183 “Home Burial” (Frost), 2:784, 785, 786 Homecoming (Dell), 2:698 Home Defender, The, 3:1110 Home Journal (magazine), 1:306 Homer, Winslow, 1:92 childhood and, 1:117 The Country School, 1:351 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 illustrations in Century Magazine, 1:213 Homestead Act (1862), 1:76, 373 Homesteader, The (Micheaux), 1:375; 2:545, 631 on black settlers in Midwest, 2:688 Homestead strike (1892), 2:572, 871; 3:964, 1171 homosexual, coinage of term, 3:994 homosexuality, 1:302; 3:994–999 intellectuals and, 1:81 homosexual rights movement, 3:996 Honest John Vane (DeForest), 3:1004 Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 2:593 Hooker, John, 2:593 Hooper, Johnson Jones, 1:16; 3:972, 1136 Hoosier Chronicle, A (Nicholson), 2:656 Hoosier School-Boy, The (Eggleston), 1:222 Hoosier Schoolmaster, The (Eggleston), 1:351; 3:905, 974, 1162 on adolescence, 1:10 as historical fiction, 2:461 as local color fiction, 1:139, 222 on small-town life, 1:657 Hope, Anthony, 1:181 Hopkins, Pauline Elizabeth, 2:447, 544, 548; 3:969 detective fiction and, 2:740, 741 on interracial marriages, 3:932 miscegenation and, 2:694 psychoanalytic theory and, 3:925 on Reconstruction, 2:669; 3:956 theme of slavery in, 3:955 on violence against black women, 3:1167 Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca, 2:499, 515 Hopper, Edward, 1:95, 96 Hopper, James, 3:1084

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Horace Greeley (Parton), 1:152 Horace’s definition of satire, 3:1003 Horizon (Daly and Daly), 3:1115, 1190 Horkheimer, Max, 1:65 Horne, Philip, 1:307 “Horseman in the Sky, A” (Bierce), 3:1104 Horses and Men (Anderson), 3:1198 “Horse’s Tale, A” (Twain), 3:1195 Horwitz, Morton J., 2:557 Hospital Sketches (Alcott), 1:342 hotels architecture, 1:90 Henry James on hotel-spirit of America, 1:65 in Saratoga Springs, 3:978 tourism and, 3:1132 Houdini, Harry, 3:918 Hough, Emerson, 3:1193 Houghton, Henry Oscar, 1:177; 2:463, 463–464 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:109 copyright and, 2:614 St. Botolph Club and, 1:270 textbooks and, 1:352 Houghton Mifflin, 2:463–466 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:109 refusal to publish literary realism, 1:181 textbooks and, 1:352 Hours at Home (magazine), 1:212; 3:1023 House behind the Cedars, The (Chesnutt), 1:168, 276; 2:667 on ethnicity and marriage, 1:294 as race novel, 3:932 Household Economics (Campbell), 3:1205 Household Elegancies (Jones and Williams), 3:1033 “Housekeeper, The” (Frost), 2:785, 787 House of Mirth, The (Wharton), 2:466–471, 558, 780 the Bible and, 1:141 on female dependence and powerlessness, 1:384–385 illustration by A. B. Wenzell, 2:469; 3:1025 language of rape in, 3:1170 on marriage, 1:293–294, 298–299, 300; 2:676 Orientalism and, 2:797 serialization in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1025 on society balls, 1:314 House of Yorke, The (Tincker), 1:205 houses arts and crafts and, 1:97, 99

T H R O U G H


in kits, 1:98 ready-to assemble, 2:681 Hovey, Richard as poet of vagabondia, 1:174–175 Spanish-American War and, 3:1072 Hovland, Michael, 2:728 Howard, Bronson, 1:295; 3:1116, 1117 Howard, June, 1:246, 247 on Sarah Orne Jewett, 1:291 Howard, Milford, 2:868 Howard, Oliver Otis, 2:522 Howard, Sidney, 3:1120 Howard University, 1:170 “How Celia Changed Her Mind” (Cooke), 1:296–297 Howe, Daniel Walker, 3:936 Howe, E. W. on adolescence, 1:10 as Midwest regionalist writer, 3:974 on small-town/village life, 1:657 Howe, Irving, 2:537, 538, 542; 3:1061 on Winesburg, Ohio, 3:1199 Howe, Julia Ward, 1:117, 186, 380; 2:446; 3:1209 Authors Club (Boston) and, 1:270 as imperialist, 2:828 oratory and, 2:791, 793 Radical Club of Boston and, 1:267 Woman’s Journal and, 3:1200, 1201 Howe, M. A. DeWolfe, 1:154, 156 Howe, Marie Jennery, 1:272 Howe, Mark, 2:465 Howells, William Dean, 1:17, 185–186; 2:437–439, 604; 3:944 Abraham Cahan and, 3:985 anarchism and, 1:69 as anti-imperialist, 2:828, 830–831 antimodernism of, 1:232 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 186 as autodidact, 1:350 on biography, 1:154, 156 character of the businessman and, 3:897 Christian socialism and, 3:968 Civil War and, 3:956 on commodity culture, 3:904 on The Conjure Woman, 1:277 controversy regarding article published in Century, 1:214 on copyright, 1:286 on Daisy Miller, 1:58, 306, 308 as editor, 1:347 on Émile Zola, 3:949 on Emily Dickinson, 2:633 on female physician, 1:383; 2:445 friendship with Mark Twain, 2:604–606 on The Grandissimes, 2:767

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1289

INDEX

Howells, William Dean (continued) Harper & Brothers and, 2:427, 428 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and, 2:430–431 Haymarket executions and, 1:200; 2:432, 435; 3:1172 humor and, 2:472 influence of Ambrose Bierce on, 3:1101 on international copyright, 2:614 international novel and, 1:56 on labor, 1:193, 195; 2:574, 675 lecturing and, 2:587 Leo Tolstoy and, 2:438 on literary friendships, 2:603 literary support of, 2:603 magazine contributions, 2:820 on Maggie, 2:654 on Main-Travelled Roads, 2:660 male romantic friendship and, 3:995 on Margaret Fuller, 1:217 on The Marrow of Tradition, 2:669 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and, 2:761, 763 Maxim Gorky and, 1:396 museums and, 2:720 The Nation and, 2:743, 746 on nervousness, 2:447 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 as origin of The Ambassadors, 1:38, 42 on Paul Laurence Dunbar, 2:635, 639 on Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, 1:88, 210 plays of, 3:1117 politics and, 2:854, 857–858 as professional writer, 2:611 pseudoscientific theories of race and, 3:921 race and, 1:168; 3:930 Ralph Keeler and, 1:173 realism and, 1:50; 3:943, 944, 948, 1057–1058 realism, definition of, 3:906 rebellion against genteel tradition, 1:416 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:960 reform and, 3:965 on religious fanaticism, 1:34 on the resort, 3:978 return to lost path and, 1:117 serialization and, 2:821 short story and, 3:1040 Spanish-American War and, 1:78; 2:502–503 Spencerian thinking and, 3:924 St. Botolph Club and, 1:270 success and, 3:1095

1290

supernatural and, 1:421 on “The Marshes of Glynn,” 2:671 travel writing and, 3:1131 on Up from Slavery, 3:1154 on urban police, 2:581 utopias of, 1:233; 3:897 visits at Nook Farm, 2:593 on World’s Columbian Exposition, 3:1215 “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and, 3:1229 See also Hazard of New Fortunes, A; Lady of the Aroostook, The; Modern Instance, A; Rise of Silas Lapham, The “How I Became a Socialist” (London), 2:815 Howison, George H., 2:835 Howland, Hewitt H., 1:215 Howland, Marie Stevens, 3:1205 “How Lin McLean Went East” (Wister), 3:976 How the Other Half Lives (Riis), 1:247–248, 249; 2:537, 540, 550, 576, 651, 884, 885; 3:1026 New York City and, 2:781–782 photography and, 2:840 scientific materialism and, 3:1021 how-to books, 3:1031 photography and, 2:841 How to Know the Butterflies (Comstock), 2:759 “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (Perice), 3:889 How to Succeed (Abbott), 3:1032 “How to Tell a Story” (Twain), 1:388; 3:1041, 1042 How We Lived (Howe and Libo), 2:537 Hoyt, Charles, 3:1119 Hoyt, Franklin, 2:464, 466 Hu, Zhapzhong, 1:226 Hubbard, Elbert, 1:98, 100, 173–173; 2:618–619 on Spanish-American War, 3:1072 Hubbard, Elihu, 2:586 Hubbard, Frank McKinney “Kin,” 2:477 Hubbell, Jay B., 1:54 Hubert, Grover, 1:102 Huckleberry Finn. See Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Hudgins, Andrew, 2:673 Hudson, Frederick, 2:472 spirit photography and, 3:1075 Hudson River School, 1:92 Huebsch, B. W., 3:1197 Huerta, Victoriano, 2:684–685 Hughes, C. H., 1:302–303

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Hughes, Langston, 2:566 influence of Huckleberry Finn on, 1:21 influence of Paul Laurence Dunbar on, 2:641 Poetry and, 2:852 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Hughes, Robert, 1:89 Hughes, Thomas, 1:323; 3:1080 Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Pound), 2:637 Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker (Mitchell), 1:137 Hulbert, James R., 1:48 Hull, George, 3:917 Hull, Joseph, 2:844, 845 Hull-House, 1:218–219; 3:964 kindergarten and, 1:350 Hulme, T. E., 2:484; 3:1021 influence of Henri Bergson on, 2:484 Human Figure in Motion (Muybridge), 2:841 Humanist Manifesto (1933), 2:838 Human Proportions in Growth (Ryan), 2:674 Humble Romance and Other Stories, A (Freeman), 2:762 Hume, David, 1:31; 2:833 humor, 2:471–478 Frank Norris and, 2:648 humorists as speakers, 2:586 political, 2:482 press and, 2:550 regional, 3:972 Humoresque (Hurst), 2:540 humor papers, 2:818 editors at, 2:820 on tramps, 3:1139 “Hundred Collars, A” (Frost), 2:787 Huneker, James Gibbons, 2:599, 875 Hungerford, Harold, 3:961 Hungry Hearts (Yezierska), 1:104; 2:540, 782 Hunt, Freeman, 3:1032 Hunt, George, 1:369 Hunt, Lynn, 2:875 Hunt, Richard Morris, 1:89 Hunter, Dard, 1:100; 2:619 Huntington, Collis P., 2:458; 3:901 Huntington, Henry, 2:874 Hurst, Fanny, 2:540 Hurston, Zora Neale, 1:366 influence of William James on, 1:69 Joel Chandler Harris and, 3:1150 Hurt, Melancthon, 2:465 Hutchinson, E. M., 1:414 Huxley, Aldous, 1:368


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1:31 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 1:24 H. W. Wilson Company, 2:590

I “I bring an unaccustomed wine” (Dickinson), 3:1111 Ibsen, Henrik, 1:69; 3:943, 1120 “I cannot dance upon my Toes—” (Dickinson), 1:313 Icebound (Davis), 3:1117 Iceland, Reuben, 2:541 iconic cowboy, 1:76 Iconoclasts (Huneker), 2:599 Idaho statehood, 1:74 women’s suffrage and, 3:1210 Ideal Home, The (Kardon), 1:99 ideology, naturalistic novel and, 2:750 Idle Idylls (Wells), 3:1006 Idylls of the King (Tennyson), 1:279 “Idyl of Red Gulch, The” (Harte), 1:351 “If We Must Die” (McKay), 2:544, 629 “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” (Seeger), 3:1219, 1220 “I Heard a Fly Buzz—When I Died” (Dickinson), 1:28 Illinois, women’s suffrage in, 3:1211 illness, cultural view of, 2:443–444 illustrations and cartoons, 2:479–482 artists at Harper & Brothers, 2:428 in The Chap-Book, 2:617 in color, 3:1024 in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 2:429 humor and, 2:477 in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1024 imagism, 2:483–486 lyric poetry and, 2:636–637 Orientalism and, 2:800 Poetry and 2:851 “Imagisme” (Pound), 2:484 immigrants and immigration, 2:486–496 adolescents, 1:7–8 alcohol and, 3:1111–1112 dance and, 1:312 death penalty and, 1:200 effect on Christianity, 1:231 germ theory of disease and, 2:448 increase of Catholics and, 1:203 in labor force, 2:570 My Ántonia on, 2:733 in New York, 1:247; 2:781 Orthodox Christians, 1:231

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

press and, 2:547 The Rise of David Levinsky on, 3:985–990 in San Francisco, 3:999 underclass in cities and, 1:71 violence against, 3:1166 See also immigrant writers; Irish; Jewish immigrants Immigrants’ Protective League, 1:219 immigrant writers biography and, 1:112, 116 reform and, 3:969 Immigration Act (1904), 1:228 Immigration Act (1924), 2:733 Immigration Restriction League, 1:204; 2:530 Imperative Duty, An (Howells), 1:168; 3:921, 930 imperialism and anti-imperialism, 2:496–504 aestheticism as reaction to imperialism, 1:24 imperial necessity, doctrine of, 1:71 Imperium in Imperio (Griggs), 2:566; 3:932, 1158 “Imported Bridegroom, The” (Cahan), 1:293; 2:782 on intergenerational conflict, 2:491 impressionism, 2:504–508 literary criticism and, 2:599–600 The Red Badge of Courage and, 3:962 short story and, 3:1045 Imre (Price-Stevenson as Mayne), 3:997 “In Amsterdam” (Field), 2:861 “In a Station of the Metro” (Pound), 2:484, 625, 636–637, 800, 851 Ince, Thomas, 2:708 Incorporation of America, The (Trachtenberg), 3:1180–1181 “In Dark New England Days” (Jewett), 1:419 Independent (newspaper) review of Ramona, 3:941 W. E. B. Du Bois on The Souls of Black Folk, 3:1068 Indiana, as shorthand for small town, 3:1164 Indianapolis News, 1:345 Indian Boyhood (Eastman), 1:44; 2:517 “Indian Boy’s Story, An” (La France), 1:353 “Indian Camp” (Hemingway), 3:1193 Indianist movement in music, 2:724 Indian Killer (Alexie), 1:369 Indian Myths of South Central California (Kroeber), 1:386

T H R O U G H


Indian reform movement, 2:515 Indian rights Helen Hunt Jackson and, 1:365; 3:942 Mary Austin and, 1:368 Indian Rights Association, 2:512 Indians, 2:508–518 adolescents, 1:8 anthropology and, 1:368–369 chief narratives, 2:522 dance and, 1:316 education, 1:43–44, 45–46, 352 folklore, 1:386 Mark Twain’s attitudes toward, 1:280–281 native writing, 2:514–517 in Oklahoma Territory, 2:687–688 on relationship with the land, 1:371 violence against, 3:1168–1169 westward expansion and, 1:74–75 white encroachments on Indian lands, 2:499 Willa Cather and, 2:732 Indian Scout Talks (Eastman), 2:517 Indian Service, 2:516 Indians of the Enchanted Desert (Crane), 1:367 Indians of the Terraced Houses, The (Saunders), 1:367 Indian Summer (Howells), 1:59–60 “Indian Teacher among the Indians, An” (Zitkala-Sˇa), 2:516 Indian Territory, 2:510 increased occupation by white settlers, 3:956–957 map, 2:511 Indian Wars, 1:75; 2:518–523 battles, 1870–1890, 2:519 individual and success, 3:1099 industrialization families and, 3:1047 organized sports and, 3:1080 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:208 vertical integration, 2:569 women and, 3:1208 Industrial Worker (newspaper), 3:1062 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), 1:66, 67; 2:573; 3:964, 1061 publications of, 3:1062 industry novels. See business and industry novels “In Duty Bound” (Gilman), 3:1202 “Inevitable White Man, The” (London), 1:73 Infidels and Heretics (Darrow), 1:34 “Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy, The” (Dewey), 3:890

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1291

INDEX

Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660–1783 (Mahan), 2:496 influenza epidemic of 1918–1919, 1:326, 333, 333 Ingersoll, Robert G., 1:33, 233; 3:898 Ingraham, Prentiss, 1:324; 3:1191 as dime novelist, 2:612 In His Steps (Sheldon), 1:140, 232; 2:615; 3:968 Inland Printer (periodical), 1:100 In Mizzoura (Thomas), 3:1118 In Morocco (Wharton), 3:1134 Inness, George, 1:92 Innocents Abroad, The (Twain), 1:16, 55, 138; 3:1131, 1133, 1183 humor and satire in, 2:476; 3:1005 as international novel, 1:56 on pseudoscience, 3:918–919 realism in, 3:947 Western persona and, 1:76 In Ole Virginia (Page), 3:975 violence in, 3:1167 In Our Time (Hemingway), 2:549 influence of imagism on, 2:486 “In Praise of a Literary Pirate” (Le Gallienne), 2:618 “In Praise of Omar” (Hay), 1:173 In re Kemmler (1890) death penalty and, 1:200 In Search of the Golden West (Pomeroy), 3:1132 In Search of the Unkown (Chambers), 1:422 Inside of the Cup, The (Churchill), 1:34 Instinct of Workmanship, and the State of Industrial Arts (Veblen), 3:1126 institutions, Thorstein Veblen on, 3:1124 Insurgent Mexico (Reed), 2:685–686 intellectuals clubs and, 1:267 introduction of word, 1:80 Intercollegiate Socialist Society, 2:858 Interest of America in Sea Power, The (Mahan), 2:496 intergenerational conflicts immigrants, 2:491–492 Jews, 2:535 International Copyright Association, 1:285 international copyright law, 1:283; 2:614 role of Harper & Brothers in debate about, 2:426 International Episode, An (H. James), 1:38–39 International Exhibition of Modern Art (1913). See Armory Show (1913)

1292

international novels, 1:56–57 The Ambassadors, 1:38–39 Daisy Miller, 1:305 international peace movement. See peace movement International Workingmen’s Association, 3:1061 International Working People’s Association, 2:434; 3:1060–1061 Interstate Commerce Act (1887), 2:856 Interstate Commerce Commission, 3:1180 “In the Depths of a Coal Mine” (Crane), 2:576, 645, 747 In the Gates of Israel (Bernstein), 2:541 “In the Land of the Free” (Sin Far), 1:228; 2:711 “In the Night” (Crane), 2:617 In the Palace of the King (Crawford), 1:137 In the Tennessee Mountains (Murfree), 2:523–526; 3:975 Intimate Memories (Luhan), 1:368 Intolerance (film; Griffith), 1:162; 2:799 Introduction to the Science of Language (Sayce), 1:48 Invasion, The (Lewis), 2:453 investigative reporting, 2:716 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 110 in McClure’s Magazine, 1:348; 2:644–645 See also muckrakers and yellow journalism “invisibility,” concept of, 1:165 Invisible Man (Ellison) Brer Rabbit tales and, 3:1150 Jack Johnson invoked in, 1:190 James Weldon Johnson anticipating, 1:122 New York City and, 2:781 Iola Leroy (Harper), 1:168–169, 258; 2:526–529, 790–791, 793 brutalities of sexual exploitation, 3:1170 economic themes, 3:954 on ethnicity and marriage, 1:294 medical theories of race and, 2:447–448 mulatto character in, 2:694 as race novel, 3:930, 931–932 Reconstruction as symbol in, 3:956 reform and, 3:969 as sentimental realism, 1:343 on temperance, 3:1113 Irish, 2:529–534 violence against, 3:1168 Irish American writers, 2:530–532 New York and, 2:782–783

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Irishman in the Iron Brigade (Sullivan), 1:260 Irish Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett, The (Renza and Morgan), 1:291 Irish Voice in America, The (Fanning), 2:532 I Rode with Stonewall (Douglas), 1:261 Iron Heel, The (London), 2:815 science fiction and, 3:1016 socialism and, 2:858; 3:1063 violence and, 3:1172 Ironworkers’ Noontime, The (Anshutz), 1:92 Iroquois Indian Games and Dances (Cornplanter), 2:515 Irvin, Rea, 1:318 Irving, Henry, 3:1120 Irving, Washington on Christmas, 2:682 frontier and, 1:407, 408 humor and, 2:473 nature writing and, 2:755 on western travel, 3:1190 wilderness preservation and, 2:807 Irwin, Godfrey, 3:1139 Irwin, Inez Haynes, 3:1200 Irwin, Will, 2:646 muckraking and, 2:645 Irwin P. Beadle & Co., 1:321 advertising, 1:321 “Isaac and Archibald” (Robinson), 1:30 Isabella Stewart Gardner (Sargent), 1:94 “I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon” (Crane), 2:619 Ise, John, 1:374 Isenberg, Michael T., 1:188 Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940, 1:229 Island Garden, An (Thaxter), 3:973 Israel Potter (Melville), 2:454 Is Religion Necessary? (Darrow), 1:34 Is Violence the Way out of Our Industrial Disputes? (Holmes), 3:1172 Italian Backgrounds (Wharton), 3:1134, 1184 Italian Hours (H. James), 1:62; 3:1134 Italians debate on immigration of, 2:733 violence against, 3:1168 Italian Villas and Their Gardens (Wharton), 3:1134 “I taste a liquor never brewed—” (Dickinson), 3:1111, 1112 Item (newspaper), 2:768 Itinerant House and Other Stories (Dawson), 1:419


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

“Its Wavering Image” (Sin Far), 2:448, 711 “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A History of the American West (White), 1:371 “Ivan Turgénieff” (Perry), 3:944–945 Ives, Charles, 2:724 poetry and, 2:729 Ives, Frederick E., 2:480 IWW. See Industrial Workers of the World

J Jaccaci, August F., 2:644 Jack and the Beanstalk (film; Porter), 2:706 Jackson, Ed, 2:566 Jackson, Helen Hunt, 1:138, 365 Charles F. Lummis and, 1:367 contributions to Scribner’s Monthly, 1:213 on frontier law enforcement, 2:584 frontier romance and, 2:453 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 as reformer of Indian policy, 2:512; 3:929 sentimental realism and, 1:342 See also Century of Dishonor, A; Ramona Jackson, Mercy B., 1:377 Jackson, Peter, 1:189 Jackson, William Henry, 1:364; 2:810, 840, 841 Jack the Fisherman (Phelps), 3:1111 Jacobs, Harriet Ann, 3:930 Jacobs-Bond, Carrie, 2:724 Jacobson, Matthew Frye, 1:101; 2:488 James, George Wharton, 3:941 nature writing and, 2:757 James, Henry, 1:36, 235 on adolescence, 1:10 anarchism and, 1:67–68 arts and, 1:87 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 109 autobiography, 1:117 on automobiles, 3:1145 in Bern, 1:55 the Bible and, 1:144–145 on “Biltmore,” 1:89 biography and, 1:154 on consumer society, 2:675 on creative artist, 2:603 death and, 1:29–30 on The Education of Henry Adams, 1:359 Galaxy and, 2:819

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

George Santayana on, 1:416 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and, 2:431 on A Hazard of New Fortunes, 2:441 humor and, 2:472 illness and, 2:444 illustrations by Charles Demuth, 1:96 illustrations for New York Edition, 2:482 influence of psychoanalytic theory on, 3:925 influence on imagism, 2:486 international novel and, 1:56, 57 Irish characters, 2:532 on The Lady of the Aroostook, 1:59 libraries and, 2:590 magazine contributions, 2:820 museum as symbol of deadening values of city, 2:720 The Nation and, 2:746 as native-born New York writer, 2:779 Newport and, 3:979 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 nonwhite characters, 3:929 Oscar Wilde and, 1:398 photographic metaphors, 2:842 on press, 2:550 as professional writer, 2:611 realism and, 1:50; 3:943, 946–947 rebellion against genteel tradition, 1:416 on salons, 1:271 Sarah Orne Jewett and, 1:290 satire of women lecturers, 2:586 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 serialization, 2:617, 821 short story and, 3:1040, 1041 Social Darwinism and, 3:1059 on society balls, 1:314 on society fashion, 1:377 on The Souls of Black Folk, 3:1069 spiritualism and, 3:1078 supernatural and, 1:420 Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:901 travel writing, 1:61–62; 3:1131, 1133–1134, 1184 W. D. Howells and, 2:441; 3:948 The Yellow Book and, 1:25 See also Daisy Miller; Ambassadors, The; American Scene, The; Portrait of a Lady, The James, Henry, Sr., 2:834 James, Jesse, 3:1061, 1169 James, William, 1:32–33, 186; 2:836; 3:894, 1078

T H R O U G H


on addiction, 1:2 anarchism and, 1:66, 69 anti-imperialism and, 2:501 on Civil War memorials, 1:266 Concord School of Philosophy and, 2:835 E. A. Robinson and, 2:663, 664 George Santayana on, 1:416 Glenmore Summer School of the Culture Sciences and, 2:833 Harvard and, 1:354 Helicon Home Colony and, 2:596 on Herbert Spencer, 3:1020, 1021 on higher education, 1:355 influence of Henri Bergson, 2:838 influence on The Ambassadors, 1:37, 39–40, 42 influence on Herbert Croly, 3:913 informal review of The American Scene, 1:61, 62 Josiah Royce and, 2:835 on law, 2:557 on materialism, 2:837 The Nation and, 2:746 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 pragmatism and, 1:38; 3:889 psychology and, 3:923 reality as ambulatory, 1:37 religion and, 1:233 spirit mediums and, 3:921 success and, 3:1096 use of word “intellectual,” 1:80 W. E. B. Du Bois and, 3:1069 James Gang, 3:1169 “James Parton’s Rules of Biography” (Parton), 1:152 James R. Osgood & Company, 1:184; 2:438 purchase by Houghton Mifflin, 2:465 J. & J. Harper. See Harper & Brothers Japanese Nightingale, A (Watanna), 2:711 Japanese Prints (Fletcher), 2:800 jargon, 3:1054 Jarrow, Joseph, 1:227 Jastrow, Joseph, 3:924 Jay Cooke & Company, 1:130 jazz, 2:726 Harlem and, 1:315 Jazz Age, 1:315 Jeffers, Robinson Carmel-by-the-Sea and, 2:296–297, 596 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Jefferson, Joseph, III, 3:1115 Jeffries, James Jackson (Jim), 1:189–190, 190

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1293

INDEX

Jeffries, James Jackson (Jim) (continued) Jack London and, 1:73 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 1:235 Jenkins, C. Francis, 2:704 Jenney, William Le Baron, 1:215; 3:1215 Jennie Gerhardt (Dreiser) naturalism and, 2:747 on premarital sexual relations, 1:295 Jennings, Gertrude E., 2:446 Jensen, Richard, 2:529 Jest of Fate, The (Dunbar). See Sport of the Gods, The (Dunbar) Jesuits in North America, The (Parkman), 2:456 jewelry production, 1:378 Jewett, Sarah Orne, 1:287–289; 3:973, 974 Annie Fields and, 3:996 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 109, 287, 289; 2:463 on death, 1:27 domestic fiction and, 1:341 on female physician, 1:383; 2:445 on Irish immigrants, 2:533–534 lesbian stories and, 3:995 local color fiction and, 3:948 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and, 2:761 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 on Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, 1:210 regionalism, 1:51 Richard Watson Gilder as mentor to, 1:214 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 short story and, 3:1042 supernatural writing, 1:419 village life and, 3:1162 W. D. Howells and, 3:944 Willa Cather and, 2:606 See also Country of the Pointed Firs, The Jewish Daily Forward (newspaper), 2:490, 539, 540, 548 Abraham Cahan and, 3:985 Jewish immigrants, 1:231 Abraham Cahan on, 3:986 Henry James on, 1:64 Jews, 2:535–543 debate on immigration of, 2:733 population in New York Lower East Side, 2:536 stereotyping in weekly papers, 2:482 Jim Crow, 1:252; 2:543–546, 564 Frederick Douglass opponent of, 1:253 Joens, William, 2:515

1294

Johanningsmeier, Charles, 1:291; 2:612; 3:971 John Armstrong, Mechanic (Whittaker), 3:1096 John Barleycorn (London), 3:1113–1114 on absinthe, 1:4 on alcoholism, 1:3–4 illustration by H. T. Dunn, 1:3 “John Chinaman in New York” (Twain), 1:226 “John D. Rockefeller” (Tarbell), 2:714 John Ermine of the Yellowstone (Remington), 1:94; 3:1188 John Godfrey’s Fortunes (Taylor), 2:691 “John Hardy,” ballad of, 1:387 John Henry, 1:387 John L. Sullivan and His America (Isenberg), 1:188 John March, Southerner (Cable), 2:669 Johns, Cloudesley, 2:606 Johns Hopkins University, 1:354 Johnson, Amelia, 2:448 Johnson, Andrew, 2:562 Reconstruction and, 1:252 Johnson, Columbus M., 2:688 Johnson, E. Pauline, 2:516 Johnson, Eastman, 1:92–93 Girl I Left behind Me, The, 1:93 Theodore Dreiser on, 1:87 Johnson, Elias, 2:515 Johnson, Georgia Douglas, 2:566 Johnson, J. Rosamond, 1:120; 2:729 Johnson, Jack, 1:189, 189–190 Johnson, James Weldon, 1:165 on dialect poetry, 2:641 on Jack Johnson, 1:190 as musician, 2:728 poems set to music, 2:729 pseudoscientific theories of race and, 3:921 race and, 3:956 See also Autobiography of an ExColored Man, The Johnson, Joseph E., 1:259 Johnson, Lyndon, 2:566 Johnson, Merle, 2:860, 860 Johnson, Owen, 3:1082, 1084 Johnson, Paul E., 1:192 Johnson, Robert Underwood, 2:611, 810–811 editor of Century, 1:214–215 on Henry Mills Alden, 2:430 Johnson, Thomas H., 2:635 Johnston, Mary Atlantic Magazine and, 1:110 Ellen Glasgow compared to, 3:1175 as historical novelist, 1:137

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Johnston, Richard Malcolm, 2:475, 671; 3:1147 Johnstown flood (1889), 1:326, 330 John Whopper the Newsboy (Clark), 1:220 John Winthrop (Twichell), 2:594 “Jolly Corner, The” (H. James), 1:87; 2:532, 779; 3:1178 Jonah (Ryder), 1:94 Jones, Alice Ilgenfritz, 3:1157–1159 Jones, C. J. “Buffalo,” 1:411 Jones, Daryl, 1:322 Jones, Hiram, 2:835 Jones, J. McHenry, 2:689 Jones, Lillian B., 3:1158–1159 Jones, Mary (Mother Jones), 2:573 on Ruskin Colony, 1:84 Jones, Mrs. C. S., 3:1033 Jones, William, 1:369 Joplin, Scott, 2:727 Darwinism and, 1:319 Maple Leaf Rag, 2:727 Jordan, Elizabeth Garver, 1:346; 2:551, 764, 832 Jordan, Mary August, 2:791, 793 Jorgensen, Elizabeth Watkins, 3:1125 Jorgensen, Henry Irvin, 3:1125 Joseph, Chief, 1:75; 2:794–795 Joseph and His Friend (Taylor), 2:691; 3:995 Joseph Campbell Preserve Company, 1:392 Josiah Allen’s Wife as a P.A. and P.I. (Holley), 1:210 journalism, 2:546–552 humor and, 2:472 Jews and, 2:540 as literary apprenticeship, 2:550 practice of anonymity in, 1:347 society, 3:1184 Spanish-American War and, 3:1072–1073 See also muckrakers and yellow journalism Journalist (trade publication), 2:549 Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1:388 Journal of Christian Science, 1:239 Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 1:48 Journal of Negro History, 2:458 Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1:350; 2:834, 835 Joyce, James Ezra Pound and, 2:607 as imagist, 2:484 the Little Review and, 2:595 modernism and, 2:558 Poetry and, 2:851 short story and, 3:1045


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Judge (magazine), 2:472, 475, 481–482 Populist Party cartoon by Bernhard Gillam, 2:869 satire and, 3:1005 Judith of Bethulia (film; Griffith), 1:158 Judson, Edward Zane Carroll. See Buntline, Ned Juengling, Frederick, 3:1024 “Julia Bride” (H. James), 2:720 Julius, the Street Boy (Alger), 3:1094 Jung, Carl Gustav, 1:362 Jungian psychology, O’Neill and, 1:362 Jungle, The (Sinclair), 1:29; 2:552–556, 558, 715 advertising poster for, 2:553 Charlotte Perkins Gilman mentioned in, 3:1206 effect on legislation, 1:216; 2:753 Irish characters in, 2:533 on labor, 2:576 on large-scale food processing, 1:236 on police, 2:582 serialization in the Appeal, 1:85 on slaughterhouses and stockyards, 1:216, 248, 250 socialism and, 3:1064 violence and, 3:1172 on worker exploitation, 2:856–856 Jupiter Lights (Woolson), 1:341 Jurgen (Cabell), 1:139 censorship and, 2:874 jurisprudence, 2:556–562 Just around the Corner (Hurst), 2:540 “Justice Denied in Massachusetts” (Millay), 1:67; 2:5591:66 Just Out of College (Ade), 3:1119 Juvenal’s definition of satire, 3:1003 Juvenile Protective Association, 1:219 Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic, 1:219 “J. V. Johnson” (ballad), 2:629

K Kallen, Horace M., 1:105; 2:487, 493 on cultural pluralism, 3:908 against melting-pot concept, 1:101 Kammen, Michael, 1:258 Kansas, black towns in, 2:690 Kaplan, Amy, 2:497, 853 on realism, 2:442 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:961 on regionalism and local color fiction, 3:972 on Sarah Orne Jewett, 1:291 on Theodore Dreiser, 3:1048–1049

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Kaplan, Justin, 3:1078 Kaplan, Louis, 1:113 Kardon, Janet, 1:99 Karpeles, Maud, 1:390 Käsebier, Gertrude, 2:841 Kasson, John, 3:1031 Kate Chopin (Seyersted), 1:123–124 Katz, Jonathan Ned, 3:996 Katzenjammer Kids (Dirks), 2:483 Kay, James Murray, 2:464 Kazin, Alfred, 3:1214 Kearney, Denis, 1:227; 3:999 Keaton, Buster, 2:708 Keckley, Elizabeth, 1:262 Keeler, Ralph, 1:173 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 Keely, John, 3:921 Keenan, Henry F., 2:532 Keith, Benjamin F., 3:1120 Keller, Helen, 1:117 autobiography, 1:118 Kelley, Florence, 3:1204 Kellogg, Ansel Nash, 2:612, 773 Kellogg, Clara Louise, 2:724 Kellogg, John Harvey, 1:392 Kelly, Florence Finch, 1:346 Kelly, Myra, 2:540 Kelly, R. Gordon, 1:221 Kelmscott Press, 1:100 inspiration for Elbert Hubbard’s Roycroft, 2:619 Kelsey, D. M., 2:522 Kemble, Edward Windsor Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 illustration of Huckleberry Finn, 1:14, 16, 18, 19, 22; 2:482 illustration of “Plain Language,” 2:846 Kemble’s Coons (Kemble), 2:482 Kempton-Wace Letters, The (London and Strunsky), 3:1027 Kendrick, Walter, 2:873 Kennan, George, 1:213 as source for Connecticut Yankee, 1:280 Kennedy, John Pendleton, 3:1081 Kenner, Hugh, 2:627 Kensett, John, 1:92 Kent, Rockwell, 1:95 Keppelman, Susan, 3:995 Keppler, Joseph, 2:481, 702 caricature of Mark Twain, 2:585 Kerkering, Jack, 2:672–673 Kern, Jerome, 2:725, 728; 3:1119 Kern, Stephen, 3:1008 Kerouac, Jack, 1:175; 3:1127, 1129 on tramps, 3:1139 Kerr, Howard, 3:1077 Kete, Mary Louise, 1:27

T H R O U G H


Keyes, Daniel, 2:690–691 Keyser, Elizabeth, 1:220 Keystone Company, 2:708 Keys to Success, The (Bok), 3:1032 Kid in King Arthur’s Court, A (Disney), 1:278 Kilmer, Joyce, 2:850, 865 Kimball, Hannibal Ingalls, 2:617 kindergartens, 1:350 King, Clarence, 2:756; 3:983 in Leadville, 3:982 King, Edward, 1:213 King, Grace Elizabeth, 1:169 Civil War and, 3:956 New Orleans and, 2:765, 767 short story and, 3:1044–1045 as southern regionalist writer, 1:51; 3:975 King, John, 1:267 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1:237 King Coal (Dreiser), 2:558 King in Yellow, The (Chambers), 1:422 King Leopold’s Soliloquy (Twain), 2:502; 3:1170 photography and, 2:841 Kingsblood Royal (Lewis), 2:630 King’s Jackal, The (Davis) sporting code in, 3:1082 Kingsley, Charles, 3:1080 Kingsley, Elbridge, 3:1024 Kipling, Rudyard on Bohemian Club, 1:269 on Huckleberry Finn, 1:19 imperialism and, 2:499–501 influence on Stephen Crane, 3:959 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and, 2:761 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 in Saturday Evening Post, 1:349 on the States, 1:397, 398 on Uncle Remus stories, 3:1147 on white man’s burden, 1:71, 72; 2:827 Kirkland, Caroline, 3:1082 Kirkland, Joseph, 1:657; 3:959 compared to Thomas Hardy, 3:974 regionalism, 1:51 “Kirkland at Quarter” (Norris), 3:1082 kitsch, American Orientalism and, 2:798 Kittredge, George Lyman, 1:389 Klondike gold rush, 3:1182 Kloppenberg, James T., 3:913 Knapp, Adeline, 2:847 knickerbockers. See bloomers Knight, Joseph, 1:6 Knights of Columbus, 1:205

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1295

INDEX

Knights of Labor Mark Twain’s sympathy for, 1:281 strike for the eight-hour day, 2:571 Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 2:565 Knights of the White Camellia, 2:563 Knopf, Alfred A., 1:121 knowledge as commodity, 3:904 Know-Nothing Party. See American Party Koch, Robert, 1:333, 337; 2:448 Kodak, 2:840 Koehler, Robert, 1:94 Korson, George, 1:390 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 3:924 Kraft, J. H., 1:392 Krapp, George Phillip, 1:48 Krazy Kat (Herriman), 2:483 Kreymbog, Alfred, 1:69 Kroeber, Alfred Louis, 1:386; 2:514 Kronegger, Maria, 2:506 Kropotkin, Peter, 1:66, 69 Kruell, George, 3:1024 Ku Klux Klan, 2:562–567; 3:1166 anti-Catholicism and, 2:530 The Birth of a Nation and, 1:159 police and, 2:582 Southern Democrats and, 2:854 See also lynching Ku Klux Klan Act (1871), 2:564, 566

L labor, 2:569–577 first Labor Day parade, 3:964 hobos and, 3:1135 The Nation and, 2:744 theory of value, 2:869 World War I and, 3:1220 See also Lochner v. New York Labor-Balance (periodical), 3:1061 labor organizations, 2:570–571 garment industry and, 2:539 in New Orleans, 2:769 women and, 3:1208 Labor Temple (New York City), 1:237 Lachaise, Gaston, 1:92 Ladies’ Home Journal (magazine), 2:610 Craftsman designs in, 1:98 Cyrus H. K. Curtis and, 1:349; 2:820 Edward W. Bok as editor of, 2:547 Juliet Strauss’s column in, 1:345 “Lady, or the Tiger?, The” (Stockton), 3:1039 Lady Baltimore (Wister), 2:630

1296

Lady of the Aroostook, The (Howells) on alcoholism, 1:2–3 cover of first edition, 1:56 travel and, 1:55, 59 Laemmle, Carl, 2:705, 707, 708 La Farge, John, 3:1024, 1184 Henry Adams and, 1:88 Society of American Artists and, 1:92 travel to Asia, 1:86 La Farge, Oliver, 1:368 Lafayette Escadrille, 3:1219 La Flesche, Francis, 1:368; 2:515 La Flesche, Susette, 2:515 La Follette, Robert Marion, 2:802 La France, Daniel, 1:353 Lalor’s Maples (Conway), 2:531 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 1:317 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and, 3:1205 Herbert Spencer and, 3:1056 “Lament of the Forest, The” (Cole), 2:808 La Monte, Robert Rives, 3:1062 Lamplighter, The (Cummins), 1:339; 2:615 Lampman, Archibald Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Landau, Zisha, 2:541 Landlord at Lion’s Head, The (Howells), 1:354 on alcoholism, 1:2–3 spiritualism and, 3:1077 Land of Little Rain, The (Austin), 1:76, 119, 368; 2:499, 577–581, 759; 3:976 title page of first edition, 2:578 water as defining factor and, 3:983 Land of Sunshine (magazine), 1:367 Land of the Cliff-Dwellers, The (Chapin), 1:367 “Land of the Free, The” (Sin Far), 2:884 “Landscape Painter, A” (H. James), 3:1041 Land That I Show You, The (Feldstein), 2:537 Lane, FitzHugh, 1:92 Lang, Andrew, 3:1025 Lang, Margaret Ruthven, 2:724 Langston, John Mercer, 3:931 Langston, Oklahoma, 2:690 Langtry, Lillie, 3:979 Language and the Study of Language (Whitney), 1:48 Lanier, Sidney, 2:633 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:209 See also “Marshes of Glynn, The”

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Lanston, Tolbert, 1:179 Lapham, Lewis, 2:431 Larcom, Lucy, 1:117 Lardner, Ring, 1:90 humor and, 2:477 influence of Huckleberry Finn on, 1:20 professional baseball jargon, 3:1054 sports fiction and, 3:1083–1084 on village life, 3:1164 Lark (journal), 3:1002 Larkin Building (Buffalo, New York), 1:89 Larry Locke, Man of Iron (Whittaker), 1:195; 3:1096 Larson, Erik, 3:1215 Last Days of the Republic (Dooner), 2:448 “Last Night that She lived, The” (Dickinson), 1:28 Last of the Mohicans, The (Cooper), 2:451 Last Trail, The (Grey), 1:411 Last Tycoon, The (Fitzgerald), 2:558 Lathrop, George Parsons, 2:671; 3:945 Lathrop, Rose Hawthorne, 1:205, 206 Laughing Boy (La Farge), 1:368 Laughing in the Jungle (Adamic), 1:104 Laundry Workers Union, 2:573 Laurent, Henry, 3:1033 Law and the Modern Mind (Frank), 2:557, 660 law enforcement, 2:581–585 “Judge Roy Bean conducting a trial,” 2:583 Lawes, Lewis, 1:201 “Law of Life, The” (London), 1:28 Lawrence, D. H. on imagism, 2:484, 486 Poetry and, 2:850, 851 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Southwest and, 1:368 Lawrence, Florence, 2:707 “Laws of Life, The” (London), 2:645 Lawson, Ernest, 1:95 Lawson, Thomas W., 1:194; 2:714 on finance, 1:132 as investigative journalist, 2:716 Lazarus, Emma, 1:225; 2:541; 3:1172–1173 Lea, Homer, 1:71 Leacock, Stephen, 2:473 O. Henry and, 1:400 Leadville, Colorado, 3:982–983 League of Foreign-Born Citizens, 1:102


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

League of Nations, 3:1223 League of Women Voters, 3:1213 Lears, T. J. Jackson, 1:308; 2:444, 675, 679; 3:1020 Lease, Mary E., 2:871 Leatherstocking Tales (Cooper), 1:129; 2:452 sports in, 3:1081 Leatherwood God, The (Howells), 1:34, 232 Leavenworth Case, The (Green), 2:740 Leaver, Florence, 3:961–962 “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian” (Sin Far), 2:492, 493, 695, 711 Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 3:925 Boston and, 1:184; 2:874 on death, 1:30 flexibility in poetry and, 2:633 library ban of, 2:590 oratory and, 2:790 same-sex love and, 3:995–996 Leaves of Life (Wayland), 1:84 Lecky, W. E. H., 1:32 Le Conte, Joseph, 1:317; 3:920 influence on Frank Norris, 3:1002 lectures, 2:585–588 on popular history, 2:455, 456–457 Lectures on Political Economy (Stewart), 1:281 Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (Blair), 2:791 Lecture to Young Men (Graham), 3:1065 Led-Horse Claim, The (Foote), 3:976, 983, 1191 Leed, Eric, 3:1131 Leeser, Isaac, 2:536 Lee the American (Bradford), 1:156, 157 Lefevre, Edwin, 1:131 Lefkowitz, Helen, 3:1066 Left by the Indians (Fuller), 2:522 Le Gallienne, Richard aestheticism and, 1:24 on Bibelot, 2:618 The Yellow Book and, 1:25 legal pragmatism, 2:624 legal realism, 2:559–560, 624 legal system reform, 2:556–557 Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations (Johnson), 2:515 Legends of Vancouver (Johnson), 2:516 Leggett, William, 2:737 legislation effect of naturalist works on, 1:216; 2:753

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

restrictions on Chinese people, 1:227, 228 Legman, Gershon, 2:875 Lehár, Franz, 3:1119 Leib, Mani, 2:541 Leland, Charles Godfrey. See Breitmann, Hans Le Moyne, F. Julius, 1:29 Lenâpé and Their Legends, The (Brinton), 1:386 Leopard’s Spots, The (Dixon), 1:71–72, 167; 2:447, 565, 669; 3:932 The Birth of a Nation and, 1:159 defense of lynching, 2:630 Leopold and Loeb trial, 2:561 Leo XIII (pope), 1:231 Lesage, Alain-René, 1:16 Leslie, Frank, 1:347; 2:819 story papers and, 2:817 Leslie, Miriam, 3:1211 “Lesson of the Hour, The” (Douglass), 1:254–255 Less than the Dust (Stamper), 3:1139 Less than Zero (Ellis), 3:1128 Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians (Catlin), 2:808 Letters from the Earth (Twain), 1:34, 233 Letters Home (Howells), 2:447 Letters on International Copyright (Carey), 1:283–284 “Letter to American Teachers of History, A” (H. Adams), 2:459 “Letter to a Young Contributor” (Higginson), 2:613 Levenson, J. C., 3:960 Levenson, Michael, 2:558 Levenstein, Harvey, 1:392–393 Levering, Albert, 3:1182 Levine, Lawrence, 3:906 Lewelling, Lorenzo D., 2:870, 871 Lewis, Alfred Henry cant terms, 3:1055 frontier and, 1:408 as investigative journalist, 2:716 Lewis, Arthur M., 3:1062 Lewis, Dio, 2:449 Lewis, Edmonia, 1:91 as expatriate, 1:86 Lewis, Henry Harrison, 2:710 Lewis, Janet, 2:453 Lewis, Joseph Vance, 1:115 Lewis, Meriwether, 1:408; 2:755 Lewis, Sinclair, 2:656 alcoholism of, 1:6 on American mainstream society, 1:82

T H R O U G H


anti-intellectualism and, 1:81 on clubs, 1:267 Elizabeth Jordan and, 1:346 Harper & Brothers and, 2:427 Helicon Home Colony and, 2:596 on infections and epidemics, 1:337 influence of Randolph Bourne on, 2:600 influence of Thorstein Veblen on, 3:1122 Jack London and, 2:606 on lynching, 2:630 on village life, 3:1162, 1164–1165 on W. D. Howells, 2:442; 3:966 young adult book, 1:12 See also Main Street Lewis, Wyndham, 2:485 anarchism and, 1:69 Ezra Pound and, 2:607 the Little Review and, 2:621 Leypoldt, Frederick, 2:591 Liberal Republicans, 2:855 Liberator, The (periodical), 2:698 Max Eastman and, 2:601 Liberia, 2:689 Liberty (journal), 1:66 Liberty, Oklahoma, 2:690 liberty of contract in Lochner v. New York, 2:622–623 Liberty Poems: Inspired by the Crisis of 1898–1900, 2:829 Libo, Kenneth, 2:537 libraries, 2:588–593 Andrew Carnegie and, 3:904 Library Bureau, 2:591 Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, A (Stedman and Hutchinson), 1:414 Library of Congress, 2:592 Library of Southern Literature, 1:126 Library War Service, 2:591 Life (magazine), 2:472, 475, 482 Life among the Piutes (Hopkins), 2:499, 515 Life and Adventures of A-No. 1, America’s Most Celebrated Tramp, Written by Himself (Livingston), 3:1138 Life and Death of Mr. Badman, The (Bunyan), 1:337 Life and Growth of Language, The (Whitney), 1:48 Life and Labor in the Old South (U. B. Phillips), 2:458 Life and Legend of Annie Oakley, The (Riley), 3:1197 Life and Times of Aaron Burr, The (Parton), 1:152

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1297

INDEX

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, The, 1:115, 253, 262 oratory and, 2:791 life insurance, clubs and, 1:267 Life in the Iron Mills (Davis), 2:555, 675; 3:1040 realism and, 1:342 sports in, 3:1082 “Life in the New Navy, circa 1900” (Cartoon, Life), 1:381 Life of an American Fireman (film; Porter), 2:706 Life of Black Hawk, 2:522 Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (C. E. Stowe), 1:152 Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . . . (S. Longfellow), 1:152 “Life of Lincoln, The” (Hay and Nicolay), 1:213 Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (Cather), 1:238, 241–242; 2:644 Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, 1:112 Life of Reason (Santayana), 2:836–837 Life on the Mississippi (Twain), 1:15, 17; 3:1133 on death, 1:29 on lynching, 2:565 on meeting Joel Chandler Harris, 3:1147 violence in, 3:1168 Western persona and, 1:76 on yellow fever, 1:334 Lifson, David S., 2:542 Lily, The (magazine), 2:713 Lincoln, Abraham, 2:562 assassination of, 3:1166 oratory and, 2:789–790 Ulysses S. Grant and, 2:826 Lincoln Memorial (Washington, D.C.), 1:91 Lind, Earl, 3:997–998 Linderman, Frank Bird, 2:514 Lindsay, Vachel, 1:95 on William Jennings Bryan’s electoral campaign, 3:901 in the Little Review, 2:621 Poetry and, 2:620, 850, 851, 852 as vagabond poet, 1:175 Ling, Amy, 2:711 Lingeman, Richard, 2:607 on Theodore Dreiser, 3:1046 Lingg, Louis, 2:432, 435 Lin McLean (Wister), 3:976 Linotype, 1:179, 179; 2:611 Linson, Corwin Knapp on Stephen Crane, 3:958 portrait of Stephen Crane, 2:652

1298

Lion of the West, The (play), 2:461 Lipchitz, Jacques, 1:92 Lippincott’s (magazine), 1:58; 2:610 competition to Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 2:430 Lippmann, Walter on Herbert Croly, 3:911 Paterson Strike Pageant (1913) and, 3:1063 psychoanalysis and, 3:927 “Litany of Atlanta, A” (Du Bois), 1:165 literacy increase in, 2:608; 3:1031 during Reconstruction, 3:956 tests, 1:254 literary agents, 2:613–614 Literary Aspects of North American Mythology (Radin), 1:386 literary canon African American, 1:122 Huckleberry Finn and, 1:22 literary colonies, 2:593–598 literary criticism, 2:598–602 in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1025 Literary Digest, 2:715, 819 Literary Friends and Acquaintance (Howells), 1:185; 2:603 literary friendships, 2:603–608 literary historians, 1:52; 2:455–456 Literary History of America, A (Wendell), 1:54 Literary Impressionism (Kronegger), 2:506 literary journalists, 2:551 literary magazines local color fiction and, 3:971 versus popular, 1:339 literary marketplace, 2:608–616 newspaper syndicates and, 2:773 transformation of, 2:860 Literary Mind, The (Eastman), 2:601 literary syndicates, 2:612 Literary World, 2:647 Literature and the American College (Babbitt), 1:355; 2:600 Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, 1:136 Little Blue Books, 1:33–34 “Little Boy Blue” (Field), 2:863 Little Citizens (Kelly), 2:540 “Little Convent Girl, The” (King), 1:169; 2:767; 3:1044–1045 Little Johnny Jones (Cohan), 3:1120 Little Lady of the Big House, The (London), 3:927 Little Lord Fauntleroy (Burnett), 1:17, 140, 223 frontispiece by Reginald B. Birch, 1:224

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Little Love in Big Manahattan, A (Wisse), 2:541 little magazines, 2:548, 616–622, 819 Little Red Songbook (IWW), 3:1062 Little Review, 1:216; 2:621 in Greenwich Village, 2:595 imagism and, 2:484 support of Emma Goldman, 1:69 Little Room, 1:216 Little Theater movement, 3:1120 Little Tour in France, A (H. James), 1:62; 3:1134 Little Women (Alcott), 1:220 on adolescence, 1:11 lesbian view of, 3:994 temperance and, 3:1111 Liveright, Horace, 1:181 Livermore, Mary, 3:1200, 1205 Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, The (Russell), 3:1196 Living Age (magazine), 1:306 Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The (Gilman), 3:1228 Livingston, Leon Ray, 3:1138 Llewellyn, Karl Micherson, 2:559 Lloyd, Henry Demarest, 1:109; 2:868, 870, 871 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 as investigative journalist, 2:716 local color fiction, 1:273–274; 3:971–977 as best-sellers, 1:139–140 distinguished from regionalism, 1:291 frontier and, 1:408 Hamlin Garland and, 2:659; 3:950 hearts of gold theme, 2:525 humor and, 2:474 The Land of Little Rain, 2:577 McTeague and, 2:648 Mark Twain and, 3:947–948 Mary Noailles Murfree and, 2:523 plantation tradition, 1:167, 274 regional American folklore and, 1:387 regional speech patterns and, 3:1052 in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1025 in Scribner’s Monthly, 1:214 symbolic force of land and, 3:966 W. D. Howells support of, 2:604 See also regionalism Lochner v. New York (1905), 2:556, 622–625 Oliver Wendell Holmes’s dissent and legal realists, 2:560 Lock and Key Library (Hawthorne), 1:421 Locke, Alain, 1:248 influence of William James on, 1:69


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Locke, David Ross. See Nasby, Petroleum V. Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, 1:346 Locusts and Wild Honey (Burroughs), 2:757 Lodge, George Cabot, 3:1184 genteel tradition and, 1:413 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 2:431 as imperialist, 2:827 on rugged sports, 3:1080 Spanish-American War and, 1:77–78 St. Botolph Club and, 1:270 on “The White Man’s Burden,” 2:501 Lodge, Oliver Lodge, 3:922 Loew, Marcus, 2:705, 708 Logan, John, 2:632 Logan, Rayford W., 3:933, 934 logging industry folklore, 1:389 Log of a Cowboy, The (Adams), 1:372, 389; 3:1191 Lomax, John Avery, 1:389 London, Charmian, 3:1029 London, Jack, 2:820; 3:1027 as adventure writer, 1:138, 139 on alcohol, 3:1113–1114 on alcoholism, 1:2, 3 on Alice Hegan Rice, 1:222 American Press Association and, 2:773 Anglo-Saxonism and, 1:73 Atlantic Magazine and, 1:110; 2:465 on authorship, 3:903 Bohemian Club and, 1:269 boxing and, 1:189, 190–191 business novel and, 1:194 Carmel-by-the-Sea and, 2:596 on Chinese immigrants, 1:228; 2:448, 488, 710 circus theme, 1:243 on contentioness between writer and publisher, 2:613 Coxey’s Army and, 2:572 Darwinism and, 1:320 on death, 1:28 determinism and, 1:53 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Freudian thought and, 3:927, 1029 friendships of, 2:606 on Herbert Spencer, 3:1020 influence of Ambrose Bierce on, 3:1101 on The Jungle, 2:554, 555 on Klondike gold rush, 3:1182 labor class and, 2:558 libraries and, 2:590–591 magazine contributions, 2:822 in McClure’s, 2:645

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

metaphor of the game, 3:1082 Mexican Revolution and, 2:683, 686 migration and, 2:691 naturalism and, 1:417 Overland Monthly and, 2:805 photography and, 2:842 on plague, 1:337 politics and, 2:858 as prison reformer, 2:816 prison writing of, 2:815 as professional writer, 2:612 religion and, 1:34 San Francisco and, 1:251; 3:1000 science fiction and, 3:1016 sexuality and, 1:195 socialism and, 3:1063–1064 sports and, 3:1082 S. S. McClure and, 2:776 on survival of the fittest, 1:76 tramps and, 3:1137–1138 William Frederic Tillotson and, 2:774 See also Sea-Wolf, The London, Meyer, 2:539 London Films (Howells), 2:842 Lonedale Operator, The (film; Griffith), 2:706 loneliness, as theme in Robert Frost’s poetry, 2:785 Lonely Crowd, The (Reisman), 3:962 Lonely Villa, The (film; Griffith), 2:706 Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903), 2:512 Long, John Luther, 2:797 Long, Stephen H., 1:373, 408 Long, William J., 2:759 “Long Arm, The” (Freeman and Chamberlin), 2:740–741 Long Branch, New Jersey, 3:979 “Long Chamber, The” (O. H. Dunbar), 1:420 Long Day’s Journey into Night (O’Neill), 2:530 on loss of Catholic faith, 1:206 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 2:861 on Battle of the Little Bighorn, 1:135–136 music and, 2:728 national consciousness of death of, 1:52 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:208–209 Longfellow, Samuel, 1:152 Long Roll, The (Johnston), 1:137 Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin, 3:972, 1147 Longstreet, James, 1:259 Long Trail, The (Garland), 2:691

T H R O U G H


Look Homeward, Angel (Wolfe), 3:1129 Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (Bellamy), 1:140, 232–233; 3:964, 1010–1012, 1155–1156 as best-seller, 2:615 equalizing of consumer comforts, 2:676 gender and, 3:1156–1157 influence on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 3:1205 influence on Thorstein Veblen, 3:1125 on labor, 2:575 Nationalist Party and, 3:897 opposition to violence and, 3:1172 populist movement and, 2:856 as socialist work, 3:1063 W. D. Howells and, 2:439; 3:966 “Look of Paris, The” (Wharton), 3:1026 Lord, John, 2:456 Lorimer, George Horace, 1:348–349; 2:610, 611, 811 authors and, 2:820 Loring, Frederick W., 3:995 Los Angeles Sunday Times, 3:1230 Lost Borders (Austin), 1:76, 368; 2:499 Lost Cause, 2:770 Lost Generation, 1:60; 2:698–699 Lost Men of American History (Holbrook), 3:1181, 1182 Lost Rosary, The (McCorry as O’Leary), 2:531 Loti, Pierre, 1:24 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition (1904). See St. Louis World’s Fair (1904) Louisville Courier-Journal, 2:432 “Love and Marriage” (H. James, Sr.), 1:404 Lovecraft, H. P., 1:419 Lovejoy, Arthur O., 2:837, 838 scientific materialism and, 3:1018 “Loves of Alonzo Fitz Clarence and Rosannah Ethelton, The” (Twain), 3:1015 “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The” (Eliot), 2:625–628 on death, 1:30 Ezra Pound and publication of, 2:637 imagism and, 2:485 published in Poetry, 1:216; 2:852 Lovett, Robert Moss, 1:217 “Loving Kindness” (Evans), 1:25 Low, Will H., 3:1024, 1025 Lowell, Amy Atlantic Monthly and, 1:111 imagism and, 2:484, 636

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1299

INDEX

Lowell, Amy (continued) lyric poetry and, 2:637 on nature, 2:579 on North of Boston, 2:784 Orientalism and, 2:796, 800 Poetry and, 2:620, 851 Lowell, Jacqueline Shaw, 3:1048 Lowell, James Russell, 1:6, 347 American Copyright League and, 1:285 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:106, 183; 2:463; 3:1040 Central Park in New York and, 2:807 Henry Mills Alden and, 2:429 humor and, 2:473 national consciousness of death of, 1:52 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:209 on satire, 3:1003 Lowell, Percival, 3:1017 Lowie, Robert H., 1:386 Low Tides on Grand Pré (Carman), 2:617 Loy, Mina, 1:69 Loyal, C. See Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo Loyal Traitors (Bridgman), 1:78 Lubbock, John, 1:32 Lubbock, Percy, 1:37–38 Lubin, Sigmund, 2:704 Lucifer (journal), 1:407 Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches, The (Harte), 1:139 “Luck of Roaring Camp, The” (Harte), 1:76; 2:804; 3:975, 980, 1190 “Luck of the Bogans” (Jewett), 2:534 Luedtke, Luther, 1:310 Luhan, Mabel Dodge, 1:272; 3:1184 Taos salon of, 1:368; 2:597 “Luke Havergal” (Robinson), 3:901 Luks, George, 1:95 Hester Street, 1:95 Lukundoo (White), 1:423 Lume spento, A (Pound), 2:637 Lumière, Auguste, 2:704 Lumière, Louis, 2:704 Lummis, Charles F., 1:367 Lummis, Elizabeth Fries, 2:759 Lund, Michael, 2:821 Lusitania (ship), 1:55; 3:1132, 1218 Lustra (Pound), 2:637 Lutz, Tom, 3:972 Lynch, Charles, 2:628 Lynch, John R., 1:253 Lynch, William, 2:628 lynching, 1:201; 2:564, 628–632; 3:931, 1167

1300

Frederick Douglass and antilynching compaign, 1:254 “Lynching, The” (McKay), 1:315; 2:629 “Lynchings in Duluth, The (Fedo), 2:6302:630 Lynch Law in Georgia (Wells-Barnet), 2:629 Lynn, Kenneth, 2:612 Lyon, Thomas, 2:754 lyric poetry, 2:632–638 Lyrics of Lowly Life (Dunbar), 2:635, 638–641 dual nature of black life and, 2:544 Lystra, Karen, 1:293, 295

M Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 3:1153 criticism of W. D. Howells, 1:416 review of Silas Lapham, 3:949 McAllister, Samuel Ward, 3:1184 Macbeth Gallery (New York), 1:95 McCabe, E. P., 2:690 McCabe, James Dabney, 1:150 McCade, Lida Rose, 3:1034 McClellan, George (Diamond Dick), 1:323 McClellan, George B., 1:258–259 McClellan, Mosher and Company, 2:618 McClellan’s Own Story (McClellan), 1:258–259 McClure, S. S. (Samuel Sidney), 1:110, 348; 2:547, 611, 646, 819, 820 newspaper syndicates and, 2:774, 775–776 purchase of Harper’s Weekly, 2:427 Walter Hines Page and, 1:110 McClure Newspaper Syndicate, 2:774 McClure’s: The Magazine of Romance, 2:647 McClure’s Magazine, 1:110; 2:547, 610, 643–647 Abraham Cahan and, 3:985 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and, 2:431 muckraking and, 2:576, 714, 822 Spanish-American War and, 3:1073 Stephen Crane and, 2:549 Willa Cather at, 2:733 McClurg, Alexander C., 3:1068 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:961 MacComb, Debra Ann, 1:297–298, 299 McConnell, Stuart, 1:265

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

McCormick, Cyrus, 2:851 McCorry, Peter, 2:531 McCosh, James, 1:231; 2:833, 835 McCullers, Carson, 3:1198 McCullough, John, 3:1120 McDavid, Raven I, 1:48 MacDowell, Edward, 2:721, 729 McElgun, John, 2:531 McElrath, Joseph R., Jr., 2:648 McFeely, William, 2:826 McGivney, Michael J., 1:205 machine gun, 3:1189 McKay, Claude, 2:544 on dance, 1:315 on lynching, 2:629 MacKaye, Steele, 1:296; 3:1115 McKim, Charles, 2:589 McKim, Mead, and White, 1:89 McKinley, William, 2:497, 498, 829; 3:901 assassination, 3:1166, 1171 Spanish-American War and, 1:77–78; 3:1071–1072 MacLeish, Archibald imagism and, 2:486 modernism and, 2:558 McManus, George, 2:530 McMaster, John Bach, 2:460 McMath, Robert, 2:873 MacMonnies, Frederick, 1:91 McPheeters, William, 1:335 McPherson, Aimee Semple lecturing and, 2:587 McSorley’s Ale House (Sloan), 1:96 McTeague (Norris), 1:28, 29, 203, 251; 2:558, 647–651 anti-Catholicism, 1:204 on apprenticeship, 1:352 on domestic violence, 3:1169 on early projected films, 2:704 influence on The Emperor Jones, 1:361 Irish characters and, 2:532 naturalism and, 2:747, 749, 750 San Francisco and, 3:1002 sexuality and, 3:1035, 1038 on vigilantism, 2:582 McVeys, The (Kirkland), 3:974 McVickar, Harry W., 1:306 McWilliams, Dean, 1:277; 3:1044 Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 1:125, 126 Madame Butterfly (Belasco and Long), 2:797; 3:1116 Madame Delphine (Cable), 2:544 Madame X (Sargent), 1:94; 2:878 “Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski” (Aldrich), 3:1041 Madison, Charles A., 2:614


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Madwoman in the Attic, The (Gilbert and Gubar), 1:420 magazines, 2:608–609 Catholic, 1:205 circus and, 1:243 covers, 2:818 division between literary and popular, 1:339 on “marriage problem,” 1:296 mass-market versus quality, 2:610 in New Orleans, 2:769 psychoanalytic terms and concepts and, 3:926 on resorts, 3:977 socialism and, 3:1062 as training grounds for writers, 2:610 See also little magazines; popular magazines Magazine Writing and the New Literature (Alden), 1:347 Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (S. Crane), 2:558, 651–656 on adolescence, 1:11 on alcohol, 3:1112 boxing in, 1:189 censorship and, 2:874 compared to The Story about “Meg,” 3:968 critical realism and, 3:950 determinism and, 1:53 on life in tenements, 2:532–533 naturalism and, 2:747, 749 on New York City, 1:237; 2:780 on police, 2:582 popular music and, 2:728 on poverty, 2:886 on prostitution, 3:916 reform and, 3:967 scientific materialism and, 3:1021 on sexuality, 1:295; 3:1038 stage dancing in, 1:313 writing of, 3:958 “Magi, The” (Yeats), 2:851 Magic Mountain, The (Mann), 1:337 Magic Wand and Medical Guide, The (Young), 3:1065 Magnificent Ambersons, The (Tarkingon), 3:974, 1164 Mahan, Alfred T., 1:77; 2:496 mail order, 1:180 Roycroft Press and, 1:100 mail-order catalogs, 2:680–681; 3:1049 Sears, Roebuck, and Company catalog, 2:680 mail-order magazines, 2:817 Main Currents in American Thought (Parrington), 2:750–751

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Maine Augusta and mail-order magazines, 2:817 movement against capital punishment, 1:200 Maine (ship), sinking of, 1:78; 2:712; 3:1071, 1074 Maine Woods, The (Thoreau), 3:984 Main Street (Lewis), 1:6; 2:656–658; 3:1164–1165 on American mainstream society, 1:82 on clubs, 1:267 librarian in, 2:591–592 Moon-Calf published just after, 2:697 Main-Travelled Roads (Garland), 1:76, 373–374; 2:659–662; 3:899, 974 published by Stone & Kimball, 2:617 realism and, 3:950 on rural migration to cities, 2:691 on small-town life, 1:657 W. D. Howells and, 2:604 Major, Charles, 1:180 as historical novelist, 1:137 Major Crimes Act (1885), 2:511 Majors and Minors (Dunbar), 2:635, 639 Makers of Moons (Chambers), 1:421 Making of Americans, The (Stein), 3:924 Making of an American, The (Riis), 1:116 Making of Buffalo Bill, The (Walsh), 3:1196 Malaeska (Stephens), as first dime novel, 1:321 Male Generative Organs in Health and Disease, from Infancy to Old Age, The (Hollick), 3:1065 Malkiel, Theresa, 1:378 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 1:67 Malthus, Thomas, 2:883 Malvar, Miguel, 2:830 Mammon of Unrighteousness, The (Boyeson), 1:194 Man, The (Hubbard), 2:619 Man against the Sky, The (Robinson), 2:635, 662–666 Man and Nature (Marsh), 2:809 “Man and the Snake, The” (Bierce), 3:1104–1105 Manassas (Sinclair), 2:553 Manhattan Transfer (Dos Passos), 1:247 Manifest Destiny, 1:71; 2:496; 3:1178 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and, 3:1194

T H R O U G H


Man in Lower Ten, The (Rinehart), 2:740 manliness, ethos of, 3:1084 in middle-class publications, 3:1096 Philippine-American War and, 2:829 Mann, Thomas, 1:337 manners, 1:397–398 “Man of Letters as a Man of Business, The” (Howells), 1:195; 2:610, 675, 777 “Man of the Year Million, The” (Wells), 3:921 Mansfield, James Vincent, 3:1075, 1078 Mansfield, Richard, 3:1120 Manship, Paul, 1:92 Man’s World, A (Crothers), 3:1118 Mantell, Robert, 3:1120 “Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, The” (Twain), 3:1163 Manual of American Literature (Hart), 1:51 manuals for success, 3:1031–1032 Man Who Tramps, The (Harris), 3:1138 “Man Who Was King, The” (T. S. Eliot), 3:992 Man with a Hoe, The (Millet), 2:570 “Man without a Country, The” (Hale), 2:835; 3:1040 “Man with the Hoe, The” (Markham), 2:570, 749; 3:901 Many-Sided Franklin, The (Ford), 1:156 Marble Faun, The (Hawthorne), 1:91 The American compared to, 1:56 photography as illustration for, 2:842 reference in Indian Summer, 1:60 travel literature and, 1:56 March, William, 3:1222 Marcus, Steve, 3:926 Marden, Orison S., 3:1031, 1032, 1033 Marey, Étienne-Jules, 2:703 Margaret Fleming (Herne), 3:1117 on marriage, 1:296 on physicians, 2:445 Marietta (Crawford), 1:137 Marin, John, 1:96 “Marjorie Daw” (Aldrich), 3:1040–1041 Mark, the Match Boy (Alger), 3:1094 marked languages, 3:1051–1055 Market-Place, The (Frederic), 1:193 Markham, Edwin, 2:570, 749; 3:901 Mark Twain Company, 2:476 Mark Twain in Eruption (Twain), 2:854 Mark Twain Project (University of California, Berkeley), 1:18–19

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1301

INDEX

Mark Twain’s Library of Humor, 2:476 Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, 3:1064 Marlowe, Julia, 3:1115, 1120 Marne, The (Wharton), 3:1179, 1220 Marovitz, Sanford, 2:494 Marquis, A. N., 1:154 Marquis, Don, 2:477 marriage, 1:295–297 Before and After, 1:294 Charlotte Perkins Gilman on, 3:1203 free choice contrasted to arranged, 1:293 high expectations of, 1:299 The House of Mirth on, 2:469, 471 outlawing of interracial marriage, 1:301 in popular fiction, 1:404 See also courtship, marriage, and divorce Married Woman’s Property Act (New York, 1848), 1:380 Married Women’s Property Act (Mississippi, 1839), 3:1208 Marriott, Frederick, 2:805 Marriott-Watson, H. B., 3:961 Marrow of Tradition, The (Chesnutt), 1:168, 254, 277; 2:566, 666–670 allusions to Plessy v. Ferguson, 2:849 antimiscegenation theory and, 2:448 based on 1898 race riot in Wilmington, N.C., 2:544; 3:1167 on police and vigilantism, 2:582, 583 as race novel, 3:932 on racism in politics, 2:855 reform and, 3:969 Marsden, Dora, 1:69 “Marse Chan” (Page), 3:975, 1167 Marsh, George Perkins, 2:809 Marsh, Mae, 1:163 Marshall, Edward, 3:960 Marshall, Louis, 2:538 “Marshes of Glynn, The” (Lanier), 2:670–674 “Martha’s Lady” (Jewett), 3:995 Martin, Robert K., 3:997 Martin, Ronald, 3:1019 Martin Chuzzlewit (Dickens), 1:397 Martin Eden (London), 1:320 on contentiousness between writer and publisher, 2:613 on magazine publishing, 2:821 philosophy in, 2:832–832 Martinet, Louis, 1:256 Marvin, Carolyn, 3:1007 Marvin, Walter T., 2:837

1302

Marx, Karl influence on biography, 1:157 socialism and, 3:1060 Marx, Leo, 1:21 Marxian Socialism in the United States (Bell), 3:1061 Mary Baker Eddy (Bates and Dittemore), 1:242 Mason, Charles, 1:363 Masque of Poets, A, 2:671 Massachusetts Normal Art School, 1:98 Massacres of the Mountains (Dunn), 2:522 Masses (magazine), 2:595, 822; 3:1062 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Max Eastman and, 2:601 mass marketing, 2:674–683; 3:1049 mass-market periodicals, 2:610 mass production, 2:674; 3:1049 food, 1:391–392 “Master Eustace” (H. James), 3:1041 Masterpieces of American Literature (Scudder, ed.), 1:352 Masters, Edgar Lee, 1:216 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 death and, 1:27–28 influence of Sherwood Anderson on, 3:1198 influence on Sherwood Anderson, 3:1164 Poetry and, 2:620, 850 on small-town/village life, 2:657; 3:1163–1164 materialism, 2:837 Mather, Stephen T., 2:811–812 Mathes, Valerie, 3:943 Mathews, John Joseph, 1:369 Matthews, Brander, 2:600 in Century Magazine, 1:213 on copyright, 1:285 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 on short story, 3:1039, 1040 Matthews, Washington, 1:367, 386 Matthiessen, F. O. on George Santayana, 1:415 on naturalism, 1:417 Maum Guinea and Her Plantation “Children” (Victor), 1:322 Maupassant, Guy de influence on American short story, 3:1039 influence on Kate Chopin, 1:124, 126 O. Henry compared to, 1:400 Maurer, Alfred, 1:96 Maurer, David, 1:48 “mauve decade,” 1:23 “Maverick” (Foote), 3:976 Maxwell, Charles A., 2:511

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Maxwell, James Clerk, 3:922 Maxwell, William B., 2:446 May, Antoinette, 3:940, 942, 943 May, Elaine Tyler, 1:296, 299 Maybeck, Bernard, 1:90 “May Day” (Fitzgerald), 2:558 Mayo, Frank, 3:1115 Me, a Book of Remembrance (Watanne), 2:711 Mead, Edwin, 2:604 Mead, George Herbert, 3:892–893 pragmatism and, 2:838 as tutor, 1:352 Mead, Margaret, 1:366 Meadow Grass (Brown), 3:973 Meaning of Truth, The (W. James), 1:40; 3:894 Meat Inspection Act, 1:216; 2:552 medicine, 1:331 pseudoscience and, 3:921 in Vienna, 1:332 See also physicians Mediums, and Spirit-Rappers, and Roaring Radicals (Kerr), 3:1077 Meet Me in St. Louis (film), 3:993 “Meet Me in St. Louis” (song), 3:993 “Melanctha” (Stein), 3:924–925 Melendy, Mary Ries, 3:1033 Méliès, Georges, 2:706 Mellon, Andrew, 3:1181 Mellon, Richard, 3:1181 Mellon, Thomas, 3:1032 melodramas, 3:1117 western, 3:1190 Melting-Pot, The (Zangwill), 1:101 on intergenerational conflict, 2:491 Melville, Herman, 1:146; 3:997 as autodidact, 1:350 friendship and, 2:603 Orientalism and, 2:798 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:210 The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and, 1:172 temperance imagery and, 3:1109 See also Billy Budd Members of the Family (Wister), 3:1169 Memoirs (Sherman), 1:259 Memoirs of an American Citizen, The (Herrick), 1:131–132, 193, 194, 196 Haymarket riot and, 2:436 Memoirs of a Revolutionist (Kropotkin), 1:69 Memoirs of Dolly Morton, The (Grassal as Rebell), 2:874 “Memorial” (Ward), 2:671 Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw (SaintGaudens), 1:91


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Memphis Free Speech, 1:346 men cross-dressing and, 1:302–303 nervousness and, 2:447 See also manliness, ethos of Mena, María Cristina, 3:975, 976 “Menagerie, The” (Moody), 3:1018 Men and Religion Forward Movement, 1:237 Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis), 1:47; 2:550 anti-intellectualism and, 1:81 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:111 humor and, 2:477 impressionist criticism and, 2:599–600 influence of Ambrose Bierce on, 3:1005 on Mark Twain, 1:34 on millionaires, 3:1185 on My Ántonia, 2:734 on Scopes trial, 1:34, 81 Smart Set and, 2:819 on underworld vocabulary, 3:1055 on W. D. Howells, 2:442; 3:966 Mendel, Gregor, 3:1057 “Mending Walls” (Frost), 2:784, 786 “Men in the Storm” (Crane), 2:780 mental healing, Eddy and, 1:238 Merchant, Ella, 3:1157–1159 Mergenthaler, Ottmar, 1:178–179 Merry Widow, The (Lehár), 3:1119 mesmerism, 3:918 Mary Baker Eddy and, 1:238 spiritualism and, 3:1075 Message to Garcia, A (Hubbard), 1:100; 3:1072 Messenger of the Sacred Heart (magazine), 1:205 metaphors in The Ambassadors, 1:40–42 dance as, 1:312 game as, 3:1082 photographic, 2:842 slavery as, 3:955 tar baby, 3:1150 Metaphysical Club, 3:895 “Metropolis and Mental Life, The” (Simmel), 1:62 Metropolitan Club (New York), 1:267, 268 Metropolitan Life Unveiled (Buel), 3:915 Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), 1:87; 2:717, 719; 3:1183 “Mexican, The” (London), 2:683, 686 Mexican-American War, 3:1086 Mexican Revolution, 2:683–687 rebels, 2:684

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Meyer, B. H., 2:802 Mezzotints in Modern Music (Huneker), 2:599 Michaels, Walter Benn, 2:487, 675, 752 Micheaux, Oscar, 1:375; 2:545, 631 on black settlers in Midwest, 2:688 Michel, Louise, 1:67 middle class adolescence and, 1:7 advertising and white middle-class culture, 2:679 Coney Island and, 3:980 Irish in, 2:530 magazines targeting, 2:643; 3:1023 managers and professionals, 2:675 racial uplift and, 3:935 resorts and, 3:977 sports and, 3:1080 success manuals and, 3:1031 Middle Five, The (La Flesche), 2:515 “Middle Toe of the Right Foot, The” (Bierce), 1:418–419 Middle Years, The (H. James), 1:117 Midwest, the authors from, 1:51 black migration to, 2:690 popular poets from, 2:861 regionalist writers from, 3:974 Midwinter International Exposition (San Francisco, 1894), 3:1000 Mifflin, George, 1:110, 177; 2:464–465 St. Botolph Club and, 1:270 migration, 2:687–692 My Ántonia and, 2:733 See also Great Migration Milburn, George, 3:1139 Miles, Nelson A., 2:522; 3:1070 Military Memoirs of a Confederate (Alexander), 1:259 Military Memoirs of John Pope, The (Pope), 1:259 Milk White Flag, A (Hoyt), 3:1119 “Mill, The” (Robinson), 1:29 Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 1:354; 2:636 award from St. Nicholas Magazine and, 1:221 lyric poetry and, 2:636 Poetry and, 2:852 Provincetown Players and, 2:595 trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and, 1:66, 67; 2:559 Miller, Albert G., 3:935–936 Miller, Cincinnatus Hiner. See Miller, Joaquin Miller, Joaquin, 1:209; 2:617, 700 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 Bohemian Club and, 1:268

T H R O U G H


frontier and, 1:408 San Francisco and, 3:999 western narrative and, 3:1190 Miller, May, 2:566 Miller, Olive Thorne (Harriet Mann), 2:759 Miller, Stuart Creighton, 2:828 Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch Wild West show, 3:1194, 1196 Millet, Jean-François, 1:288; 2:570 Mills, Enos, 2:811 nature writing and, 2:757 Mills, Frederick Allen “Kerry,” 3:993 Milmine, Georgine, 1:238; 2:644 Mimesis (Auerbach), 2:753 “Mind Approached through Behavior— Can Its Study Be Made Scientific?” (Mead), 3:893 Mind in the Making, The (Robinson), 2:460 Mind of Primitive Man, The (Boas), 2:487–488 Mind of the Traveler, The (Leed), 3:1131 “Mingo” (Harris), 3:1148 mining folklore, 1:390 Minister’s Charge, The (Howells), 1:186; 2:438 on corruption of middle-class values, 3:966 “Miniver Cheevy” (Robinson), 1:30 Minneapolis Tribune cartoon, 2:831 Minor, Charles L. C., 1:156 minorities and prisons, 2:814 Minor v. Happersett (1874), 3:1209, 1210 Minpor, Robert, 1:69 minstrel shows, 1:315; 2:725 Minstrels of the Mine Patch (Korson), 1:390 Minute Man, The (French), 1:91 miscegenation, 2:447, 692–696 Mississippi Rebel in the Army of Northern Virginia, A (Holt), 1:261 Mississippi River cholera and, 1:335 yellow fever and, 1:334 Mississippi Valley in the Civil War, The (Fiske), 2:457 Miss Lulu Bett (Gale), 1:140; 3:1163 Miss Ravenel’s Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (De Forest), 2:461, 767; 3:930 possible influence on Stephen Crane, 3:959 satire and, 3:1004

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1303

INDEX

“Miss Tempy’s Watchers” (Jewett), 1:27, 28 “Mistaken Charity, A” (Freeman), 1:30 Mitchell, Donald G., 1:53 Mitchell, John Ames, 2:482 Mitchell, Joseph, 1:96 Mitchell, Langdon on divorce, 1:297 theater and, 3:1118 Mitchell, Margaret, 2:451 Mitchell, Silas Weir, 2:440, 446; 3:923 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and, 3:1228 as historical novelist, 1:137 published by Century Magazine, 1:214 rest cure, 2:446 Mix, Tom, 3:1193, 1194, 1196 Mob Rule in New Orleans (WellsBarnett), 3:957 Moby-Dick (Melville), temperance imagery in, 3:1109 Moccasin-Maker, The (Johnson), 2:516 Modern American Spiritualism (Britten), 3:1076 Modern English (Krapp), 1:48 “Modern Fiction” (Warner), 3:948 Modern Illustration (Pennell), 2:480 Modern Instance, A (Howells), 1:156; 3:948 on alcoholism, 1:2–3 on apprenticeship, 1:352 on marriage and divorce, 1:297, 299, 300, 404; 3:1038 newsman in, 2:550 photography and, 2:842 police officer in, 2:581 politics in, 2:854 serialized in Century Magazine, 1:214 modernism, 2:558–559 death and, 1:27–28 impressionism as bridge to, 2:508 influence of anarchist principles, 1:66,1:69 “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and, 2:625 opposition to mass culture, 2:551 The Portrait of a Lady and, 2:880 rejected by Century Magazine, 1:214 short story and, 3:1045–1046 temperance fiction and, 3:1113–1114 William Carlos Williams and, 2:638 “Modernizing ‘Difference’” (Stewart), 3:933–934 Modern Language Association, 1:52; 3:905

1304

Modern Philology (journal), 1:48 Modern Schools, 1:67 modern society Henry Adams on, 1:358 Sherwood Anderson on, 3:1198–1199 Modern Spiritualism (Podmore), 3:1078 Modern Woman (mural; Cassatt), 1:93 Modjeska, Helena, 3:1217 Modoc War, 2:520 “Molière” (Lang), 3:1025 Molly Maguires, 1:66, 67; 2:571 Monaghan, Little Joe, 1:302 Moneychanger, The (Sinclair), 1:132 Monotype, 1:179 Monroe, Harriet, 1:216; 2:548, 620–621, 819, 852 Ezra Pound’s collaboration with, 2:607 imagism and, 2:484 World’s Columbian Exposition and, 3:1214 See also Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Monroe, Lucy, 1:127 Monroe Doctrine, 1:77; 2:496 “Monsieur Motte” (King), 2:767 “Monster-Maker, The” (Morrow), 1:419 Montague, William Pepperell, 2:837 Montana statehood, 1:74 Montcalm and Wolfe (Parkman), 2:456 Monteiro, George, 3:962 Montezuma, Carlos, 2:515 Montgomery Ward, 1:98 Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (H. Adams), 1:88, 358; 2:460 Moody, D. L., 1:234 Moody, William Vaughn, 3:1018 as anti-imperialist, 2:828; 3:901 genteel tradition and, 1:413 Spanish-American War and, 1:78 theater and, 3:1118 Moon, Michael, 3:995 Moon-Calf (Dell), 2:696–699 Mooney, James, 1:386; 2:513; 3:1224 “Moonlit Road, The” (Bierce), 1:418 Moore, Clement, 2:682 Moore, George Edward, 2:837 Moore, Marianne, 1:354; 2:595 the Little Review and, 2:621 Poetry and, 2:850 Moore, William Underhill, 2:559 Moran, Thomas, 1:94; 2:810, 811 frontier, 1:408 Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 2:810 Moran of the Lady Letty (Norris), 2:649

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

More, Paul Elmer as New Humanist, 2:600 opposition to impressionist criticism, 2:599 Morehouse College, 1:170 Morgan, Anna, 1:216 Morgan, J. P. (John Pierpont), 1:132; 2:569; 3:897, 1180, 1181 bankruptcy of Harper & Brothers and, 2:431 as collector of pornography, 2:874 Louis Brandeis and, 2:801 Metropolitan Club and, 1:267 Morgan, Jack, 1:291 Morgan, Julia, 1:90 Mormon novels (Grey), 1:411. See also Riders of the Purple Sage Mormons, 2:699–703 suspicion of political influence, 2:702 Morning Star (newspaper), 1:205 morphine, 1:4 Morrill Act (1862), 1:353 Morris, George Sylvester, 2:837 Morris, Gouverneur, 1:422–423 Morris, William in Appeal to Reason, 1:84 arts and crafts movement and, 1:26, 97 Kelmscott Press, 1:100 protesting the Haymarket trial, 2:435 Morrisey, John, 3:979 Morrison, Gertrude, 3:1083 Morrison, Toni, 3:1158 influence of Huckleberry Finn on, 1:21 tar baby metaphor and, 3:1150 Morrow, Prince A., 2:449 Morrow, W. C., 1:419 Morse, Samuel F. B., 1:92 Mort du duc de Guise, La (film), 2:706 Morte d’Arthur (Malory), 1:278 Morton, David, 3:1025 Morton, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll,” 2:727, 769 Morton, Samuel George, 3:920 Mosby, John S., 1:259 Mosby’s War Reminiscences and Stuart’s Cavalry Campaigns (Mosby), 1:259 Moser, J. H., 3:1148 Moses, Leonard G., 3:1196–1197 Moses, Wilson Jeremiah, 3:935, 936 Mosher, Thomas Bird, 1:173; 2:617–618 Most, Johann, 1:69; 2:434 anarchism and, 1:66 mother, Social Darwinism and role of the, 3:1058–1059


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Mother and Child (Cassatt), 1:93 Mother Earth (magazine), 1:67; 2:548 covers by Man Ray, 1:69 Mother Earth Bulletin, 1:68 Mother Goose in Prose (Baum), 1:223 “Mother of Felipe, The” (Austin), 1:368 Mother Was a Lady (Kelly), 1:221 Moths of the Limberlost (Porter), 2:759 motion picture industry black entrepreneurs in, 2:545 D. W. Griffith and, 1:158 Motion Picture Patents Company, 2:705 motion pictures, 2:703–709 based on Bret Harte’s stories, 3:1190 based on The Sea-Wolf, 3:1028 based on The Virginian, 3:1193 of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1:278 on disasters, 1:327–328 effect on dime novels, 1:324 historical romances as, 2:451 historical themes in, 2:461 humor and, 2:477 impact of The Birth of a Nation, 1:162–163 Orientalism and, 2:799 “Motive of the Critic, The” (Mencken). See “Footnote on Criticism” (Mencken) Motley, John, 2:455 Motor Boys series, 1:222 Motor-Flight through France, A (Wharton), 3:1134, 1145 Mott, Frank Luther, 2:608–609, 614, 817 on Appeal to Reason, 2:553 on Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 2:431 on Musey’s, 2:822 on number of magazines, 2:816 Mott, Lucretia, 3:1208 bloomers and, 1:381 Mount, William Sydney, 1:92 “Mountain, The” (Frost), 2:786 Mountain Chant, The (Matthews), 1:386 Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (King), 2:756; 3:982 Mountain House Press, 1:100 Mountain Interval (Frost), 2:636 Mountain Meadows Massacre (1857), 2:700 Mountains of California, The (Muir), 2:758 Mount Holyoke, 1:354, 381; 3:1208 Mourning Victory (French), 1:91

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Moveable Feast, A (Hemingway), 2:607 movement culture, 2:868 Movies, 5 Cents (Sloan), 1:95 Moving Picture World (magazine), 1:158 Moving the Mountain (Gilman), 3:897 “Moxon’s Master” (Bierce), 1:419; 3:1017, 1021 “Mr. Baptiste” (Dunbar-Nelson), 2:768 “Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt’s Stories” (Howells), 1:277 Mr. Crewe’s Career (Churchill), 1:138 Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War (Dunne), 2:830 satire in, 3:1005 “Mr. Flood’s Party” (Robinson), 3:1163 Mr. George Jean Nathan Presents (Nathan), 2:599 Mr. Isaacs (Crawford), 1:138 Mrs. Astor’s New York (Homberger), 3:1183 “Mrs. Flint’s Married Experience” (Cooke), 3:1162 “Mrs. Ripley’s Trip” (Garland), 2:661 Mrs. Spring Fragrance (Sin Far), 1:103, 228, 251; 2:488, 695, 709–712 on marriage, 1:293 “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” (Sin Far), 2:710–711 Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (Rice), 1:222 “Much madness is divinest sense” (Dickinson), 2:635 muckrakers and yellow journalism, 1:191, 348; 2:712–717, 817, 822 best-sellers and, 2:614 Jacob Riis and, 1:248 labor and, 2:575–576 McClure’s and, 2:547–548, 644–645 Other People’s Money and, 2:801 Robert Herrick and, 1:131–132 Stephen Crane’s influence on, 3:967 Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:902 Upton Sinclair and, 2:555 mug books, 1:154, 155 Mugwumps, 2:856; 3:900 cartoon by George Yost Coffin, 2:857 The Nation and, 2:744 Muir, John, 1:119, 367, 410; 2:758, 810–811 forests and, 3:982 influence of George Perkins Marsh on, 2:809 nature writing and, 2:757–758 See also My First Summer in the Sierra

T H R O U G H


mulattoes in fiction, 2:545 coded racial composition in DunbarNelson, 2:768 tragic mulatto, 2:693, 767; 3:932 Mules and Men (Hurston), 1:366 Brer Rabbit tales and, 3:1150 Mulford, Clarence, 3:1193 Mullany, Patrick, 1:310 Muller, Thomas, 2:493 Muller v. Oregon (1908), 2:801 Mullett, Alfred B., 1:88 Mulvany, John, 1:135 Mumford, Lewis, 2:809 on artists, 1:92 on “Brown Decades,” 1:86 as a Young American Critic, 1:69 Mumler, William, 3:1075 “Municipal Report. A” (O. Henry), 1:401 Munro, George, 2:609 cheap paperbacks and, 2:609 dime novels and, 1:322 Munro, Norman L., 1:323; 2:609 dime novels and, 1:322 Munroe, Kirk, 3:1074 Munsey, Frank A., 1:423; 2:610, 611 story papers and, 2:817, 819 Munsey’s (magazine), 2:610, 822 halftone printing and, 2:480 muckraking and, 2:822 Munsterberg, Hugo, 3:924 murder. See violence “Murders in the Rue Morgue, The” (Poe), 2:737, 738 Murfree, Mary Noailles Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 local color fiction and, 3:948 as southern regionalist writer, 3:975 See also In the Tennessee Mountains Murie, James R., 1:369; 2:515 Murphey, Murray G., 2:834, 835, 837 Murphy, Lawrence, 2:610 Murvale Eastman, Christian Socialist (Tourgée), 1:195; 2:575 Muscular Christianity, 3:1080 Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), 1:87; 2:717; 3:1183 Museum of Modern Art (New York), 1:87 Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago), 3:1215 museums, 2:717–721 music, 2:721–730 chronology of, 2:722–723 musical comedy, 2:724–725; 3:1119–1120 Musical Settings of American Literature (Hovland), 2:728 Muslim immigrants, 1:231

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1305

INDEX

Musser, Charles, 2:703 Musto, David, 1:4 Mutt and Jeff (Fisher), 2:483 Muybridge, Eadweard, 2:703, 839, 841 “My Adventures in Zuni” (Cushing), 1:366 My Ántonia (Cather), 2:730–734 on adolescence, 1:11–12 the Bible and, 1:141 death and, 1:30 on food, 1:392 as historical romance, 2:453 illustration by W. T. Benda, 2:731 on immigrant settlers, 1:375 on Mormons, 2:702 on social dance, 1:315 as western, 1:76 My Bondage and My Freedom (Douglass), 1:115, 253 Myers, F. W., 3:918 Myers, Robert, 1:308, 309 My First Summer in the Sierra (Muir), 1:119; 2:734–737, 757, 758 “My Friend Bingham” (H. James), 3:1041 “My Life in the Underworld” (London), 2:815 My Life on the Plains (Custer), 2:522 My Mark Twain (Howells), 1:396; 2:605 “My Mysterious Mademoiselle” (Alcott), 3:994 My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s (Holley), 3:1005 My Partner (Campbell), 3:1117, 1190 My People, the Sioux (Luther Standing Bear), 1:75; 3:1226 Mysteries and Miseries of New York, The (Buntline), 2:885 Mysteries of New Orleans, The (Reizenstein), 2:769 Mysterious Stranger, The (Twain), 1:34; 3:1189 mystery and detective fiction, 2:584, 737–742 in dime novels, 1:323 “Mystery of Marie Roger, The” (Poe), 2:738 Mystery of Metropolisville (Eggleston), 3:965 Mystic Trumpeter, The (Holst), 2:729 Myths and Myth-Makers (Fiske), 1:32 Myths and Traditions of the Crow Indians (Lowie), 1:386 Myths of the Cherokee (Mooney), 1:386 My Wife and I (Stowe), 1:2, 339, 341 sports in, 3:1082 women physician in, 2:445

1306

My Year in a Log Cabin (Howells), 1:117

N NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP Crusade against Lynching, 1909 to 1950, The (Zangrando), 2:632 Nadelman, Elie, 1:92 Nagel, James, 3:962 on impressioniam, 2:505 on Stephen Crane, 1:93 Nails and Thorns (Miller), 2:566 Nancy Drew series, 1:12, 222 narcotics, 1:4–5 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, 1:115, 253 temperance imagery in, 3:1109 Nasby, Petroleum V., 2:473, 474, 476 as speaker, 2:586 Nash, Roderick, 3:1105 Nashville American, 1:346 Nast, Thomas, 2:479 anti-Irish caricatures, 2:532 attacks on Tammany Hall, 2:481, 481 cartoon on the New South, 2:770 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 humor and, 2:473 political cartoons, 2:427 Santa Claus and, 2:682 as speaker, 2:586 on Victoria Woodhull, 1:406 Nathan, George Jean impressionist criticism and, 2:599 Smart Set and, 2:819 Nathan Hale (Fitch), 3:1118 Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (J. Hawthorne), 1:152 Nation, Carrie, 3:1110, 1110 “Nation, Region, and Empire” (Kaplan), 1:291 Nation, The (magazine), 2:610, 743–746, 819, 822 on The Birth of a Nation, 1:162 on John Fiske, 2:457 on Main-Travelled Roads, 2:660 Paul Elmer More editor of, 2:600 travel sketches by Henry James, 3:1134 on Women and Economics, 3:1204 National Academy of Design, 1:92

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

National American Woman Suffrage Association, 3:1202 cover of procession program, 3:1212 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1:116, 170; 2:689 data on lynching, 2:628 foundation, 2:545 Ida B. Wells-Barnett and, 3:1167 James Weldon Johnson and, 1:121 Jane Addams and, 1:219 opposition to The Birth of a Nation, 2:630 origin of, 1:257 National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, 3:1211 National Bureau of Education, 1:351 National Child Labor Committee, 2:840 National Conservatory of Music (New York), 2:724 National Consumers League, 1:219 National Desertion Bureau, 2:537–538 National Educational Association, 1:351 National Federation of Woman’s Clubs, 3:1211 National Female Anti-Slavery Society, 3:1208 national forests, 2:811 National Geographic (magazine), 2:841 national identity, museums and, 2:719 National Institute of Arts and Letters, 3:905 Nationalist (magazine), 3:967 Nationalist movement, 3:1205 National Labor Union, 2:571 National League for the Protection of Colored Women, 2:689 National Negro Business League, 2:689 National Nonpartisan League, 2:658 National Park Service, 2:811, 812 National Park System, 2:809–810 John Muir and, 2:735 National Reform Press Association, 2:868 National Sin of Literary Piracy, The (Van Dyke), 1:285 National Temperance Society, 3:1109, 1111 National Urban League, 2:545, 689 National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), 1:404; 3:1200, 1209, 1210 Native Americans. See Indians Native of Winby, and Other Tales, A (Jewett), 1:210 Native Son (Wright), 2:750


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

nativism, 1:231 anti-Catholicism and, 1:204 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and, 3:1206 Frank Norris and, 1:251; 3:1098 view of the poor and, 2:882 writers on inner city, 1:247 natural history. See nature writing naturalism, 1:52, 53, 182; 2:551, 746–754; 3:951 on alcohol, 3:1112 boxing motif and, 1:188–189 difficulty of publishing, 1:414 Edith Wharton and, 2:467 George Santayana and, 2:836–837 Herbert Spencer’s influence on, 3:1020 Horace Scudder and, 2:464 McTeague and, 2:648, 649–650 in Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, 2:651 New York and, 2:780 opposition to The Country of the Pointed Firs, 1:290 police in, 2:582 pragmatism and, 3:890 psychoanalytic theory and, 3:925 rebellion against genteel tradition, 1:417 The Red Badge of Courage and, 3:962 rejection by Century Magazine, 1:214 San Francisco and, 1:251 Thomas Bailey Aldrich and, 1:183–184 on tramps, 3:1136 violence and, 3:1170–1171 writers in Greenwich Village and, 2:595 Naturalism in American Fiction (Conder), 2:648–649 natural philosophy. See nature writing Nature (Emerson), 2:579, 672, 755 Nature (journal), 3:920 Nature of the Judicial Process, The (Cardozo), 2:557 nature writing, 2:754–760 Naughty Marietta (Herbert), 3:1119 Nebraska statehood, 1:74 Neebe, Oscar, 2:432 “Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, The” (Dewey), 3:891 “Need of a Literary Conscience, The” (Norris), 3:890 Negro, The (Du Bois), 1:165; 2:458 Negro American Family, The (Du Bois), 3:935 Negro in Our History, The (Woodson), 2:458

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Negro in the American Rebellion, The (Brown), 1:261 Negro in the United States, The (Logan), 3:934 Negro question, 1:71, 164 Negro Question, The (Cable), 2:544; 3:1167 Negro World (newspaper), 2:689 Neihardt, John G., 3:1226–1227 Nelles, William, 1:125 Nellis, George, 3:1144 Nelson, Knute, 2:827 Nemesis of Faith, The (Froude), 1:34 Nequa (Grigsby), 3:1158 nervousness, 2:446–447 Nether Side of New York, The (Crapsey), 3:915 Neue Deutsche Zeitung (newspaper), 2:768–769 Nevada statehood, 1:74 New Age (Marsden), 1:69 “New Battle of the Books, The” (Pellew), 3:949 New Biography, 1:156 “New Colossus, The” (Lazarus), 1:225; 2:541; 3:1172–1173 Newcomb, Simon, 1:191 New Criticism, 2:601–602 naturalism and, 2:751 on Sidney Lanier, 2:673 New Criticism, The (Ransom), 2:602 “New Criticism, The” (Spingarn), 2:601–602 New Day, The (Conwell), 3:1033 Newell, Robert Henry, 3:1006 Newell, Stub, 3:917 Newell, William Wells, 1:389 New England E. A. Robinson and, 2:635 See also New England regionalists New England Girlhood, A (Larcom), 1:117 “New England in the Short Story,” 3:973 New England Magazine on Main-Travelled Roads, 2:660 “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in, 3:1228, 1229 “New England Nun, A” (Freeman), 1:300, 342; 2:763 New England Nun and Other Stories, A (Freeman), 2:760–765; 3:973, 1162 New England regionalists, 1:51; 3:972–973 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:106 domestic fiction and, 1:341 supernatural writing and, 1:419

T H R O U G H


New England Woman Suffrage Association, 3:1200 New Era, The (Strong), 1:236 New Era in American Poetry, The (Untermeyer), 2:601 Newer Ideals of Peace (Addams), 3:1172 New Essays on “The Country of the Pointed Firs” (Howard), 1:291 New Flag, The (Fuller), 2:502 “New Freedom, The” (Crosby), 2:502 New History, 2:460–461 naturalism and, 2:751 New History, The (Robinson), 2:460 New Humanism, 2:600 Newlands Reclamation Act (1902), 3:983 New McClure’s Magazine, 2:647 New Mexico black migration to, 2:690–691 statehood, 1:74 “New Mexico” ( Lawrence), 1:368 New Moral World, A (Casey), 1:232 New Necklace, The (Paxton), 2:799, 800 New Negro, The: An Interpretation (Locke), 1:248 New Negro Movement, 3:938 New Orleans, 2:765–770, 766 cholera and, 1:335 jazz and, 2:727 Old Absinthe House, 1:5 yellow fever and, 1:334 New Orleans Crusader (newspaper), 1:256; 2:768 New Orleans Deutsche Zeitung (newspaper), 2:768 New Orleans Item (newspaper), 1:174 New Orleans Picayune (newspaper), 1:346 New Orleans Times-Democrat (newspaper), 1:174; 2:768 New Orleans Times-Picayune (newspaper), 2:768 New Poetry, The (Monroe, ed.), 2:853 Newport, Rhode Island, 3:979 New Redemption, The (Herron), 1:236 New Republic (magazine), 2:746, 817, 819, 822 Herbert Croly and, 3:913 New Schoolma’am, The (Alger), 1:351 Newsom, Joseph, 1:90 Newsom, Samuel, 1:90 New South, 2:770–773 Joel Chandler Harris and, 3:1148 Queen of Industry; or, The New South (Nast), 2:770 in The Voice of the People, 3:1175 “New South, The” (Lanier), 2:671

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1307

INDEX

“New South, The” (speech; Grady), 2:771 Newspaper Days (Dreiser), 3:1215 newspapers black, 2:548 Catholic, 1:205 daily, 1:347–348 disasters and, 1:325 humor and, 2:472 local color fiction and, 3:971 in New Orleans, 2:768–769 prominence of wealth and, 3:1184 on resorts, 3:977 socialism and, 3:1062 society columns, 3:1184 special women’s editions, 1:346 sports page, 1:188 newspaper syndicates, 2:547, 773–778 satires and, 3:1005 “New Story-tellers and the Doom of Realism, The” (Thayer), 3:949 New Theology, 1:233 New Thought, 3:923 Newton, J. R., 3:1075 New Western Historians, 3:1196 New Woman, 1:379, 381–382 biography and, 1:112 nervousness and illness used to criticize, 2:447 in Sister Carrie, 3:1049 New York (Bellows), 1:96 New York Age, 1:346 New York City, 1:246–248; 2:778–783 architecture, 1:89 black migration to, 2:688, 691 Brooklyn Bridge, 2:779 clubs, 1:267, 270 Delancey Street market, 1:63 Five Points, 1:248; 3:1168 garment industry, 1:378 as gastronomic center, 1:394 Gotham Court Tenement, 1:249 Greenwich Village, 2:594–596, 636 juvenile delinquency in Lower East Side, 2:538 Lower East Side as Jewish ghetto, 2:536, 537; 3:986 organized crime in, 1:248 population, 1:246, 246t; 2:537 as publishing center, 1:177 tenements, 1:247, 249; 2:537 theater and, 2:725 transportation in, 3:1145 Wall Street, 1:192 W. D. Howells’s move to, 2:440 See also Harlem Renaissance New York Clipper (newspaper), 1:188

1308

New York Commercial Advertiser, 3:985 New York Detective Library, 1:323 New York Dramatic Mirror, 1:158 New Yorker, The (magazine), 2:477 New York Evening Mail (newspaper), 1:81 New York Evening Post, 2:745 New York Family Story Paper, 2:609 New York Five Cent Library, 1:188 New York Globe (newspaper), 1:162 New York Idea, The (Mitchell), 3:1118 on divorce, 1:297 New York Journal (newspaper), 1:347 Spanish-American War and, 3:1071, 1073 as syndicate, 2:777 Yellow Kid comic and, 2:483 New York Ledger (story paper), 2:609 New York Morning Journal (newspaper), 1:78 New York 1913 (Green), 3:1063 New York Sketches (S. Crane), 1:62 New York Society for the Suppressions of Vice, 2:873 New York State Inebriate Asylum in Binghamton, 1:1 women’s suffrage and, 3:1211 New York Stock Exchange, 1:89 New York Sun (newspaper), 1:4; 3:1184 New York Times (newspaper) on garden city movement, 1:98 Haymarket riot and, 2:432 on Johann Most, 2:434 on Moon-Calf, 2:697 on reaction to Daisy Miller, 1:306 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:960 New York Times Saturday Review of Books, 2:469 New York Tribune (newspaper) on Main-Travelled Roads, 2:660 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:960 society column, 3:1184 New York Weekly (story paper), 2:609 New York World (newspaper), 1:347; 2:547 society column, 3:1184 Spanish-American War and, 1:78; 3:1073 as syndicate, 2:777 Yellow Kid comic and, 2:483 New York Yacht Club, 1:267 Nez Percé War, 2:520 Nguyen, Viet Thanh, 2:711 Niagara Movement, 1:257; 3:1167 Nicholas Minturn (Holland), 1:213 Nicholson, Elizabeth “Eliza” Jane Poitevent, 1:346 Nicholson, Meredith, 2:656

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Nick Carter books (Dey), 1:178; 2:738 Nick Carter Library, 1:323; 2:739 nickelodeons (nickel-and-dime theaters), 2:705 Nickerson, Catherine Ross, 2:740 Nicodemus, Kansas, 2:690 Nicolay, John G., 1:151, 213 “Niece of Snapshot Harry’s, A” (Harte), 2:842 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 2:838 influence of, 1:32 influence on Eugene O’Neill, 1:206 Jack London and, 3:1028 William James and, 3:896 Nigger, The (Sheldon), 3:1118 on ethnicity and marriage, 1:294 Night in Acadie, A (Chopin), 1:123; 2:768 Night Sides of City Life, The (Talmage), 2:651 Nights with Uncle Remus (Harris), 1:139; 3:1150 Nijinsky, Vaslav, 1:312 Niles, W. J., 2:690 Nineteenth Amendment, 3:1212–1213, 1223 Nineteenth Century Miracles (Britten), 3:1076 Nine-Tenths, The (Oppenheim), 2:541 Nissen, Axel, 3:995 Nissenbaum, Stephen, 2:682 Nobel Prize establishment of, 3:919 Jane Addams, 1:219 Sinclair Lewis, 2:656 Noble, Lulu Gray, 1:405 Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, 2:571 Nocturne: Blue and Silver—Chelsea (Whistler), 2:799 Nocturne in Black and Gold (Whistler), 1:94 nonfiction, Houghton Mifflin and, 2:466 nonnative speech, 3:1052 nonstandard spellings, 3:1053–1054 Nook Farm, 2:593–594 Mark Twain’s home, 2:594 Nord, David Paul on Appeal to Reason, 1:85 on Julius Augustus Wayland, 1:84 Nordenskiöld, Nils Adolf, 1:366 Nordica, Lillian, 2:724, 728 normal schools, 1:351 Norris, Frank, 1:76, 401; 2:488 on agriculture and finance, 1:131 Bohemian Club and, 1:269 on business and industry, 1:193, 195 on the business of writing, 2:609


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

character of the businessman and, 3:897 Chicago and, 1:216, 250 criticism of the press, 2:550 death penalty and, 1:203 determinism and, 1:53 on domestic abuse and, 1:297 in Greenwich Village, 2:595 on guns, 3:1188 on increased demand for reading matter, 2:608 influence of Ambrose Bierce on, 3:1101 influence of psychoanalytic theory on, 3:925 influence of Thorstein Veblen on, 3:1122 Irish characters and, 2:532 on issues of manhood and success, 3:1096, 1098 on labor and inequity, 2:624 metaphor of the game, 3:1082 naturalism and, 1:417; 2:747, 749 Overland Monthly and, 2:805 parody and, 3:1006, 1007, 1191 on poverty, 2:885 pragmatism and, 3:890 on prizefighting, 1:188–189 on racial destiny, 1:72 San Francisco and, 1:251; 3:1002 school sports fiction and, 3:1083 on science and technology, 3:1013 sexual relations and, 1:195 on Sister Carrie, 3:1050–1051 Social Gospel and, 1:236 Spanish-American War and, 1:78; 3:1073 S. S. McClure and, 2:776 Stephen Crane compared to, 3:962 Stephen Crane’s influence on, 3:967 on urban police, 2:581 on W. D. Howells, 2:442 See also McTeague; Octopus, The; Pit, The North American Indian, The (Curtis), 2:514, 840–841 North American Review, 1:182; 2:610 anti-immigrant fears and, 2:487 on Christian Science Church, 1:233, 240 on Daisy Miller, 1:306 Harper & Brothers and, 2:427 on oratorical mastery of Chief Joseph, 2:794 on science, 3:920 “North Carolina Lynching Ballads” (Baker), 2:629 North Dakota statehood, 1:74

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Northern Alliance, 2:868 North of Boston (Frost), 2:636, 783–788 Norton, Charles Eliot, 2:744 genteel tradition and, 1:413 influence on Herbert Croly, 3:913 on John Lord, 2:456 The Nation and, 2:745 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 nostalgia in literature, 2:624 Notes of a Son and Brother (H. James), 1:117 Notes of a War Correspondent (Davis), 1:78 “Notes on Journalism” (Mencken), 1:82 “Nothing and Something” (Harper), 3:1111 “‘Not Men’: A Natural History of American Naturalism” (Cowley), 2:751 Not on the Screen (Fuller), 1:218 Nott, Josiah Clark, 2:447 Novel, The (Crawford), 2:451 “Novel and Its Future, The” (Lathrop), 3:945 Novelist in the Making, A (Hart), 2:649 novels anti-war, 1:60 gothic, 1:418; 2:451 loss of faith, 1:34 pamphlet novels and train travel, 3:1142 on resorts, 3:977 on same-sex relationships, 3:995 See also business and industry novels; dime novels; race novels; western, the “Novel-Writing as a Science” (R. P.) on The Rise of Silas Lapham, 3:949 “Now Finale to the Shore” (Whitman), 1:30 Noyes, John Humphrey, 1:403, 404 Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Duchamp), 1:96 Nugent, Thomas, 2:869, 870–871 nurses portrayed as African Americans, 2:448 Nurses (Henry Street) Settlement, 2:540 NWSA. See National Woman Suffrage Association Nyburg, Sidney L., 2:541 Nye, Edgar Wilson (“Bill”), 2:475, 550 Nye, Mary Jo, 3:920

T H R O U G H


O Oak and Ivy (Dunbar), 2:635, 639 Oakley, Annie, 3:1196 Oberlin College, 1:381; 3:1208 Obregón, Alvaro, 2:685 O’Brien, Fitz-James, 1:418, 419 short stories and, 3:1040 obscenity, concept of, 2:873 Obsolete Necessity, The (Roemer), 3:1156–1157 occupational folklore, 1:389–390 “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, An” (Bierce), 1:202, 260; 3:1043, 1103, 1104 ocean as symbol of Darwinism, 1:320 O’Connor, Flannery, 1:145 O’Connor, Richard, 1:402 Octopus, The (Norris), 1:29, 76, 250; 2:558, 676 on agriculture and finance, 1:131, 193; 3:902 mass marketing and, 2:676 naturalism and, 2:747, 749, 750 police and, 2:581 on racial destiny, 1:72 on railroads and rural society, 3:966, 1144 violence and, 3:1172 “Ode in a Time of Hesitation” (Moody), 3:901 Ode to Death (Holst), 2:729 “Ode to Ethiopia” (Dunbar), 2:640 O’Dowd, The (Boucicault), 3:1116 “Odyssey of the North, An” (London), 2:691 Oehlschlaeger, Fritz, 1:310 “Of Alexander Crummell” (Du Bois), 3:1068 Offenbach, Jacques, 3:1119 Office of Indian Affairs, 2:520 “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” (Du Bois), 3:1069 Of One Blood (Hopkins), 2:447, 694 on effect of violence against black women, 3:1167 “Of the Coming of John” (Du Bois), 3:1068 “Of the Passing of the First-Born” (Du Bois), 3:1069 O’Higgins, Harvey J., 2:532 Ohmann, Richard, 2:611, 679, 680, 817, 822 Oil! (Dreiser), 2:558 oil industry, 2:713 folklore of oil field workers, 1:390 O’Keeffe, Georgia, 1:96 Oklahoma black migration to, 2:690

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1309

INDEX

Oklahoma (continued) Land Rush, 2:687–688 statehood, 1:74 “Olana,” 1:90 Olcott, Henry Steel, 3:1077 “Old Age’s Lament” (Whitman), 1:30 “Old Age’s Ship and Crafty Death’s” (Whitman), 1:30 Old Cap. Collier Library, 1:323 Old Creole Days (Cable), 1:214; 2:766; 3:1167 Balcony Days written in answer to, 3:975 “Old Detective’s Pupil, The” (Smith and Coryell), 2:738 Old Indian Legends (Zitkala-Sˇa), 1:44; 2:516; 3:974 Old Jules (Sandoz), 1:373, 374 “Old King Cole” (Robinson), 2:665 “Old Rogaum and His Theresa” (Dreiser), 1:11 “Old Times Were the Best, The” (Riley), 1:388 Oldtown Fireside Stories (Stowe), 3:1161 Oldtown Folks (Stowe), 3:1161 Old Virginia and Her Neighbours (Fiske), 2:457 “Old Woman Magoun” (Freeman), 3:972 O’Leary, Con (pseud). See McCorry, Peter Oliphant, Herman, 2:560 Oliver, Joe “King,” 2:727 Oliver Optic’s Magazine, 1:221 Olivier, Laurence, 1:270 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 1:89, 98 Central Park in New York and, 2:807 influence of George Perkins Marsh on, 2:809 The Nation and, 2:746 World’s Columbian Exposition and, 3:1216 Olympic Games (1904), 3:990 Omaha Platform (People’s Party, 1792), 2:868, 870, 871 Omaha Tribe, The (Fletcher and La Flesche), 2:515 Omar Khayyám, 1:171. See also Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, The omnibus collections of American literature, 1:53 “On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines” (Moody), 2:828; 3:901 Onderdonk, J. L., 3:961 One Day (Hubbard), 2:619 “One Good Man” (Alexie), 1:369 One-Hoss Philosophy (magazine), 2:553

1310

O’Neill, Eugene, 1:363; 2:874; 3:1029, 1121 Catholic background, 1:206 on Irish, 2:530, 534 Marsden Hartley and, 1:96 Provincetown Players and, 2:595 Yale and, 1:354 See also Emperor Jones, The O’Neill, James, 3:1115 O’Neill, William, 1:299 One of Our Girls (Howard), 3:1117 Only Yesterday (Allen), 1:81 “On the Big Horn” (Whittier), 1:136 On the Origin of Species (Darwin) American audience and, 1:317 effect on Western thinking, 1:52–53 philosophical ramifications, 1:31 On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France (Beaumont and Tocqueville), 2:813 “On the Quai at Smyrna” (Hemingway), 3:1223 On the Road (Kerouac), 3:1127 On the Stairs (Fuller), 1:131 “Open Boat, The” (Crane), 2:549; 3:1044, 1074 Darwinism and, 1:320 in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1025 “Opening for Novelists, An” (Norris), 3:1002 operetta, 2:725 O Pioneers! (Cather) on adolescence, 1:11–12 on farm management, 1:375 as western, 1:76 opium, 1:4 “Opium’s Varied Dreams” (Crane), 1:4 Oppenheim, James, 2:449, 540, 541 Opper, Frederick Burr, 2:479, 481; 3:1139 illustration from Puck, 1:382 Oscar the Apostle, 1:399 Optic, Oliver, 1:12 the West and, 3:1191 See also Adams, William Taylor oral tradition. See folklore and oral traditions oratory, 2:789–796 “Orchard House,” 1:184, 185 orchestras, 2:723 “Oread” (Doolittle), 2:485, 637 Oregon Trail, The (Parkman). See The California and Oregon Trail O’Reilly, Edmund, 1:2 O’Reilly, John Boyle, 1:107 Oriard, Michael, 1:189

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Orientalism, 2:796–801 Asian influence in art and architecture, 1:86 Orientalism (Said), 2:796 Ornithological Biography (Audubon), 2:808 Orpen, Adela, 3:1158 Ory, Edward “Kid,” 2:727 Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 3:918 Osgood, James R., 2:464, 465, 846 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 109 Walt Whitman and, 2:874 Osgood, Samuel, 1:220 O’Sullivan, Timothy, 2:840; 3:982 Otero, Miguel, 3:1089 “Other Half, The” (lecture; Riis), 2:884 Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It (Brandeis), 2:801–803 Others (journal), 1:69 Other Things Being Equal (Wolf), 2:446 “Other Two, The” (Wharton), 1:298 Otis, Elisha Graves, 1:88 Otis, Elwell, 2:829 O’Toole, G. J. A., 3:1072 Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée), 2:777 “Our Better Halves” (Ward), 3:1205 Our Business Boys (Clark), 3:1032 Our Country (Strong), 1:71; 2:883 Our First Families (Fawcett), 1:293 Our Homes (Chellis), 3:1111 “Our Land and Land Policy” (George), 3:965 “Our Little Woman” (Phelps), 2:445 Our Man’s Initiation: 1917 (Dos Passos), 3:1179–1180 Our National Parks (Muir), 2:758 “Our New Madness” (Dunbar), 1:256 Our Pioneer Heroes and Their Daring Deeds (Kelsey), 2:522 Our Young Folks (magazine), 1:221 Ouspensk, Peter Demianovich, 3:922 “Outcasts of Poker Flat, The” (Harte), 1:76; 3:975, 1190 Outcault, Richard, 2:483 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy (Fiske), 2:457; 3:1019 Outlines of Zuñi Creation Myths (Cushing), 1:386; 2:513 Outlook (magazine), 2:819; 3:1152, 1153 Out of the Ditch (Lewis), 1:115 “Out of the Sun” (Stevenson), 3:997 Out West Magazine, 2:805 Overland Monthly (magazine), 1:50; 2:803–806; 3:999, 1190 cover of first edition, 2:806 John Muir and, 2:810


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

on Main-Travelled Roads, 2:660 “Plain Language from Truthful James” in, 2:843 “Over on the T’Other Mounting” (Murfree), 2:525 “Over There” (song, Cohan), 3:1219 Owen, Alex, 3:1075 Owen, Robert, 3:1205 socialism and, 3:1060 Owen, Robert Dale, 3:1077 Ox-Bow Incident, The (Clark), 2:631 Oxford English Dictionary, 1:48 definition of lyric, 2:633 on history, 2:454 Oxford History of Art, 1:86 Oxford History of British Music, The (Caldwell), 2:728 Oz series (Baum), 1:222–223

P Pacific series (Alger), 3:1191 “Pact, A” (Pound), 2:637 Pactolus Prime (Tourgée), 1:195; 2:693, 850 Paddock, Mrs. A. G., 2:700 Paderewski, Ignace, 2:724 “Paderewski and the New Gods” (M. Anderson), 2:621 Page, Thomas Manning, 3:1138 Page, Thomas Nelson, 1:22, 167; 2:641; 3:1167 Ellen Glasgow compared to, 3:1175 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and, 2:431 on Ku Klux Klan, 2:565 plantation tradition and, 1:274; 2:544; 3:975 Reconstruction and, 2:669; 3:932 Richard Watson Gilder as mentor to, 1:214 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Page, Walter Hines, 2:820 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 110; 2:465 Booker T. Washington and, 3:1152 as imperialist, 2:828 publication of The Conjure Woman and, 1:276 Paine, John Knowles, 2:721 Paint and Clay Club, 1:270 Painted Veils (Huneker), 2:875 painting American modernism, 1:94–96 late nineteenth century, 1:92–94 “Palace-Burner, The” (Piatt), 2:634, 635

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Palmer, Bertha, 3:1217 Palmer, Potter, 1:250 Panama Theodore Roosevelt and canal zone, 3:1092 United States and, 1:79 Pancoast, Henry, 2:512 “Pandora” (H. James), 2:774 Panunzio, Constantine M., 1:104; 2:488, 490 paper, 1:178 new process and magazines, 2:611 paperbacks, 2:609 “Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids, The” (Melville), 1:195, 196 “Paradise of Mediocrities, The” (Norton), 2:744 Paradise on Earth (Hayes), 1:232 Paris Americans in, 1:55; 2:606, 607 impressionism in, 2:504 medicine in, 1:332 Universal Exhibition (1867), 1:55 Paris, Treaty of (1898), 2:827 Paris Conference (1919), 3:1223 Park, Robert, 1:62 Parker, Alton B., 3:901 Parker, Arthur C., 2:515 Parker, Dorothy, 2:477 Parker, Ely S., 2:511 Parker, Hershel, 2:655 Parker House (Boston), 1:394 Parkhurst, Charley (Charlotte), 1:302 Parkman, Francis frontier and, 1:407, 408–409 as history writer, 2:455–456 Parks, Edd Winfield, 2:673 parks and wilderness areas, 2:807–812 national parks, 1920, 2:808 Parley, Peter, 1:220 parody, 3:1006, 1007 Frank Norris and, 3:1191 Mark Twain and, 3:1067, 1112–1113 Parrington, Vernon Louis, 2:750–751 Parrish, Essie, 1:369 Parrish, Maxfield, 3:1024 Parsons, Albert, 1:200; 2:432, 433, 434, 435 Parsons, Charles, 2:428 Parton, James, 1:151–152 Parton, Sara Payson Willis. See Fern, Fanny “Party, The” (Dunbar), 2:640 “Passage to India” (Whitman), 2:499, 797; 3:1143–1144 photographs and, 2:839 “passing,” 1:301; 2:527, 694; 3:1044

T H R O U G H


“Passing of Cock-Eye Blacklock, The” (Norris), 3:1188 “Passing of Grandison, The” (Chesnutt), 3:1044 Passing of the Great Race, The (Grant), 2:487 “Passionate Pilgrim, A” (H. James), 3:1041 Passion-Flowers (Howe), 2:793 Pasteur, Louis, 1:333, 392 Pastor, Tony, 3:1120 Pastrone, Giovanni, 1:158 patent medicines, 2:444 Pater, Walter, 1:24 paternalism the poor and, 2:883 of settlement houses, 1:102 Paterson (Williams), 2:660 Paterson Strike Pageant (1913), 3:1063 Patience (Gibson), 1:378 Patience (Gilbert and Sullivan), 1:173 Patriarchs, 3:1184 Patrick Henry (Henry), 1:151 “Patriotism” (Goldman), 1:66 patriotism, H. L. Mencken and, 1:47 patronage Poetry and, 2:851 Republican Party and, 3:899 Pattee, Fred Lewis, 1:54, 353; 2:762; 3:1040 on Mark Twain, 3:1042 Patten, Gilbert. See Standish, Burt L. Patterson, Ada, 2:549 Paul, Alice, 2:814 on success, 3:1095 Paul, Robert, 2:704 Paul Bunyan (Hoffman), 1:388 “Paul’s Case” (Cather), 1:81; 2:645; 3:1045 Pavletich, JoAnn, 1:104 Pavlova, Anna, 1:312 Pawnee Indian Societies (Murie), 2:515 Paxson, Frederick Logan, 1:411 Paxton, William McGregor, 2:799 Payne, Oliver, 3:1181 Payne, William M., 3:961 Peace Crusade (speeches, Howe), 2:793 peace movement, 3:1179 Jane Addams and, 1:219; 3:1172 Pearce, Roy Harvey, 2:673 Pearl of Orr’s Island (Stowe), 1:289 Pearson, Edmund, 1:324 Peck, George Wilbur, 1:16 as adventure writer, 1:138–139 Civil War and, 3:956 humor and, 2:475 Peckham, Rufus Wheeler, 2:556 in Lochner v. New York, 2:622–623

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1311

INDEX

Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa (Peck), 1:16, 138 “Pecksniffiana” (Stevens), 2:853 peddlers, Jews as, 2:538 Peirce, Benjamin, 1:185 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 2:834 pragmatism and, 3:889 William James and, 3:895 Peirce, Melusina, 3:1205 Peixetto, Ernest C., 3:1024 Pellew, George, 3:949 Pemberton, J. C., 2:825 Pemberton, T. Edgar, 2:845 Pembroke (Freeman), 2:763; 3:972 Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883), 3:899 Penfield, Edward, 3:1025 penitentiaries and prisons, 2:812–816 Pennell, Joseph, 2:480 illustrations in Century Magazine, 1:213 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1:88, 92 Pennsylvania Station, 1:89 Pen Photographs of Charles Dickens’s Readings (Field), 2:842 Penrod and Sam (Tarkington), 3:1127 Penrod novels (Tarkington), 3:1164 Pentecostal Azusa Street revival, 1:235 People of the Abyss, The (London), 2:558; 3:1027 photography by Jack London, 2:842 socialism and, 2:858 People’s Art Guild, 1:69 People’s Literary Companion, 2:817 People’s Party, 2:868–871; 3:964. See also Populist Party Perfection City (Orpen), 3:1158 Perfectionists and free love, 1:403–404 Perfect Womanhood for Maidens-WivesMothers (Melendy), 3:1033 performers, Jews as, 2:542 periodicals, 2:816–823 Catholic, 1:205 for children, 1:221–222 competition, 2:430 disasters and, 1:325 of Harper & Brothers, 2:425, 427, 429–431 increase in subscriptions to after Civil War, 1:50 Irish, 2:530 magazine covers, 2:818 peer-reviewed journals, 3:920 syndication and, 2:612 See also magazines; popular magazines

1312

Perry, Bliss as anti-imperialist, 2:828 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 110; 2:465 The Land of Little Rain and, 2:577 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Perry, Matthew C., 1:364; 2:797 Perry, Ralph Barton, 2:837 Perry, Thomas Sergeant, 3:943, 944–945, 949 on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 3:947 Pershing, John J., 3:1219 Mexican Revolution and, 2:685 on necessity of tobacco, 1:5–6 Pershing Expedition, 2:685 Personality: How to Build It (Laurent), 3:1033 Personal Memoirs (Sheridan), 1:259 Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (Grant), 1:113, 259; 2:823–827; 3:1178 publication by Mark Twain, 1:17 Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles, 2:522 Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Twain), 1:19; 2:431 perverted state, aestheticism and, 1:24–25 “Perverted Tales” (Norris), 3:1006, 1007 Peterkin Papers, The (Hale), 1:221 Peterson, Theodore, 2:816 “Peter the Great” (Schuyler), 1:213 Petrie, William Matthew Flinders, 3:922 Pfaelzer, Jean, 3:1157 Pfeffer, William, 2:868 “Phases” (Stevens), 2:853 “Ph.D. Octopus, The” (W. James), 1:355 Phelan, James, 3:1000 Phelps, E. J., 2:608 Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart (Elizabeth Ward), 3:905 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 on female physician, 1:383; 2:445 lesbian stories and, 3:995 on magazines, 2:611 published by Century Magazine, 1:214 short stories and, 3:1040 Social Gospel and, 1:236 temperance and, 1:393; 3:1111 See also Silent Partner, The Philadelphia black migration to, 2:688, 691 Museum of Art, 1:87; 3:1183

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

population, 1:246, 246t as publishing center, 1:177 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition (1876), 1:207–211; 3:904 art at, 1:88 arts and crafts and, 1:98 bicycle at, 3:1144 catalog cover, 1:208 Indian displays, 1:364 photography and, 2:841 sculpture at, 1:91 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition (1976), 1:207–211 Philadelphia Negro, The (Du Bois), 1:164; 2:458; 3:1067 Philadelphia Press, 3:960 Philadelphia Weekly Times, 1:258 philanthropy libraries and, 2:592; 3:904 museums and, 1:364; 3:1183 Philippine-American War (1899–1902), 2:827–832 Philippines in Spanish-American War, 1:78; 3:1070 “Philippine Tangle, The” (W. James), 2:501 Philistine (magazine), 2:619–620 Phillips, Bert G., 1:94 Phillips, David Graham, 1:131, 194; 2:550, 714, 874 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 as muckraker, 1:348; 2:548, 555, 716 on prostitution, 3:916 Phillips, Duncan, 1:87 Phillips, James Duncan, 2:464 Phillips, John S., 2:643–644 Phillips, Kate, 3:942 Phillips, Kevin, 3:1180 Phillips, Moses, 1:106 Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell, 2:458–459 Phillips, Wendell, 1:383 Phillips Collection (Washington, D.C.), 1:87 philosophy, 2:832–839 in This Side of Paradise, 3:1129 “Philosophy 4” (Wister), 1:354 “Philosophy of Atheism and the Failure of Christianity, The” (Goldman), 1:33 Philosophy of the Short-Story, The (Matthews), 3:1040 Philp, Kenward, 1:323 Phipps, Henry, 3:1181 phonograph, 3:1008 music and, 2:725, 727 photoengraving, 2:480 Photographic History of the War of the Rebellion (Muybridge), 2:841


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Photographic Sketch Book of the War (Gardner), 2:841 photography, 2:839–843 illustrations and, 2:479 prominence of wealth and, 3:1184 spiritualism and, 3:1075 photojournalism, Riis and, 1:247–248 Photo-Secession, 2:840, 841 phrenology, 3:918 advertisement for the Phrenology Journal, 3:919 Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America, The (Haller and Haller), 3:1065 physicians Charles A. Eastman as first Indian physician, 2:516 mulatto, 2:448 rise of medical profession, 2:444–445 sex education and, 3:1035 women, 1:383; 2:445 physiognomy, 3:918, 920 Piatt, John, 1:107 Piatt, Sarah Morgan Bryan, 2:634–635 Pickens, William, 1:115 Pickford, Mary, 2:707, 708 Picture and Text (James), 2:428 Picture of Dorian Gray, The (Wilde), 1:25 Pictures of the Floating World (Lowell), 2:800 Picturesque America (Bryant), 1:180 Pidgin, Charles Felton, 1:179 “Piece of Steak, A” (London), 1:189 Pierce, Vivian, 1:201 Pierre (Melville), 3:1009 “Pigs Is Pigs” (Butler), 2:473 Pike, Zebulon, 1:408 Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), 1:112; 2:714 Pinchback, P. B. S., 1:253 Pinchot, Gifford, 2:716, 811; 3:982 Pink and White Tyranny (Stowe), 1:339 Pinker, James Brand, 2:613 Pinkerton, Allan, 2:584 detective series by, 2:738 inspiration for detective stories, 1:323 use of cant terms, 3:1055 Pinkerton Detective Agency, 2:584 Pinsker, Sanford, 1:20 Pioneers, The (Cooper), 1:129; 2:452, 808 on Christmas, 2:682 Pioneers of France in the New World (Parkman), 2:456 Pipe and Pouch (Knight), 1:6 Piper, Lenora, 3:1075

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

piracy of British works by Harper & Brothers, 2:425 cheap paperbacks and, 2:609 copyright and, 1:284 Pirkis, Catherine Louisa, 2:740 Pissaro, Lucien, 2:617 Pit, The (Norris), 1:193, 194, 196, 250; 3:902.1:131 manliness, 2:447 mass marketing and, 2:676 naturalism and, 2:750 sex and, 1:195 Pita, Beatrice, 3:1089 Pitkin, Walter B., 2:837 Pittenger, Mark, 3:1062 Pitts, Zasu, 1:222 Pixley, Annie, 3:1115 Pizer, Donald, 2:648, 751 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:960 Place of Science in Modern Civilisation and Other Essays, The (Veblen), 3:1126 “Plain Language from Truthful James” (Harte), 1:227; 2:797, 843–847; 3:1000 illustration by Joseph Hull, 2:845 illustration by Sol Eytinge, 2:846 Plana, Manuel, 2:685 plantation tradition, 3:975 Frances E. W. Harper’s writing in reaction to, 2:527 Paul Laurence Dunbar’s dialect poems seen as a continuation of, 2:640–641 short stories and, 3:1044 sports in, 3:1081 See also local color fiction Platform Echoes (Gough), 3:1111 Platte County Argus, 2:868 Platt-Simonds Act (1891), 2:614 Play Days (Jewett), 1:289 Players Club, 1:270 playground movement, 3:1080 Playing in the Dark (Morrison), 3:1158 Playwright’s Theater, 2:595 “Plea for Romantic Fiction, A” (Norris), 2:647 Pleasant Ways of St. Médard, The (King), 2:767 “Please for Copyright” (G. H. Putnam), 2:614 “Pleasure Boat” (Parley), 1:220 Plessy, Homer, 1:255; 2:847 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), 1:255; 2:528, 847–850; 3:934, 1167 education and, 1:353

T H R O U G H


Homer Plessy represented by Albion Tourgée, 1:167; 3:1167 “separate but equal,” 2:544, 556 Plumed Serpent, The (Lawrence), 1:368 Plum Tree, The (Phillips), 1:194 Plunkitt, George Washington, 2:855 Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (Riordon), 2:855 Pluralistic Universe, A (W. James), 2:838 Podmore, Frank, 3:1078 Poe, Edgar Allan on alcohol, 3:1109 detective fiction and, 2:737–738 full edition published by Stone & Kimball, 2:617 ghost stories and, 1:418 illustrations by Charles Demuth, 1:96 influence on bohemians, 1:171 science fiction and, 3:1015 Poems (Eliot), 2:638 Poems (Williams), 2:638 Poems, 1909–1935 (Eliot), 2:638 Poems by Emily Dickinson, 2:635 Poems of Places (Longfellow, ed.), 2:671 Poems of Sidney Lanier, 2:671 Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (Harper), 2:526, 527 “Poetess, A” (Freeman), 2:764 poetry anti-imperialism in, 2:501 Battle of the Little Bighorn and, 1:135–136 dance aesthetics in modern, 1:313 Jewish, 2:541 Max Eastman and, 2:601 music and, 2:728 against the Philippine-American War, 2:829 realism and, 3:943 in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1025 Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, 1:216–217; 2:548, 620–621, 819, 850–853 imagism and, 2:484 Poets of America (Stedman), 1:414 Poganuc People (Stowe), 1:339, 340; 3:1161–1162 Pohl, Frances K., 1:86, 92, 94 Point of View, The (Harvey), 2:874 “.007” (Kipling), 3:1025 Poiret, Paul, 1:379 Pokagon, Simon, 2:516 Police!!! (Chambers), 1:422 Police Gazette (newspaper), 1:188; 2:817

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1313

INDEX

political corruption, 3:898 Henry Adams on, 1:76, 191 Lincoln Steffens on, 1:236 satire and, 3:1004 political parties, 2:853–859 American Party, 2:530 Conservative Christian Anarchist Party, 3:1184 Equal Rights Party, 2:855 Greenback Party, 2:856; 3:899 Social Democratic Party, 2:434; 3:1061 Socialist Labor Party, 3:1061 third parties and presidential elections, 3:897 Women’s Party, 3:1211 Women’s Peace Party, 1:219; 2:838 See also Democratic Party; Progressive Party; Republican Party; Socialist Party; Workingmen’s Party politics Herbert Croly and, 3:912 Huckleberry Finn and, 1:17 humor and, 2:482 oratory and, 2:792 in westerns, 3:1193 Politics of Letters (Ohmann), 2:611 Pollack, Norman, 2:869 Pollard, Edward A., 2:770 poll taxes, 1:254 Pollyanna (Porter), 1:223 polygamy Mormons and, 2:699–700 reform movement against, 2:700 Pomeroy, Earl, 3:1132 Pond, J. B. (James Burton), 2:586 “Ponkapog Papers” (Aldrich), 1:414, 416 Poole, Ernest, 1:111 Poole, William Frederick, 2:588 Poor White (Anderson), 3:1198 Pope, Albert Augustus, 3:1144, 1145 Pope, John, 1:259 popularizers of history, 2:456–457 Popular Magazine, 1:423 sports fiction and, 3:1083 popular magazines local color fiction and, 3:971 on sports, 3:1080 sports fiction in, 3:1083–1085 supernatural and, 1:421 popular poetry, 2:859–867 popular publishers, 1:178 marketing and, 1:179 population Chicago, 1:216 increase in urban, 1:246, 246; 2:537

1314

of Jews in New York City, 3:986–987 of New York, 2:537, 781 of prison population, 2:813 of tramps, 3:1135 of United States, 2:674; 3:1007 populism, 2:867–872; 3:966 reform and, 3:967 women’s suffrage and, 3:1210 xenophobia and, 3:901 Populist Party, 2:856. See also People’s Party pornography, 2:872–876 Porter, Edwin S., 2:706 Porter, Eleanor, 1:223 Porter, Gene Stratton, 2:759 Porter, Horace, 2:826 Porter, Noah, 2:835 Porter, William Sydney. See Henry, O. Portion of Labor, A (Freeman), 2:675 Portrait of a Lady, The (H. James), 1:41; 2:876–882 as international novel, 1:38–39, 57, 58 on marriage, 1:296, 300, 404; 3:1038 Social Darwinism and, 3:1059 on women journalists, 2:550 Portrait of the Artist, A (Joyce), 2:607 portraits by Eakins, 1:92 Portraits of Places (H. James), 3:1134 “Po’Sandy” (Chesnutt), 1:276 positivism, 2:837 Post, Charles C., 1:392; 2:871 Post, George B., 1:89 Post, Waldron Kintzing, 3:1082, 1084 Postal Act (1879), 2:713 postal rates and periodicals, 2:611, 713, 817 postcards, 2:841 Potter, Beatrix, 3:1147, 1150 Potter, Edward Clark, 1:91–92 Potter, Edward T., 1:90 Pound, Ezra anarchism and, 1:69 friendships and, 2:606–607 imagism and, 2:484–485, 636 the Little Review and, 2:621, 819 lyric poetry and, 2:636–637 Orientalism and, 2:796, 800 Poetry and, 2:620, 819, 850, 851 publishing of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and, 2:627 on Robert Frost, 2:784 vortographs, 2:842–843 William Carlos Williams and, 2:638 Pound, Louise, 1:48 on The American Language, 1:48 Pound, Roscoe, 2:556–557, 559

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

legal realism and, 2:624 poverty, 2:882–887 germ theory of disease and, 2:448 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on women and, 2:764 as moral flaw, 3:1048 Rich and Poor (Eytinge), 2:884 Powderly, Terence, 2:571 Powell, E. Alexander, 3:1026 Powell, John Wesley, 1:364 on grazing lands, 1:371 on importance of water in the West, 3:983 Native American folklore and, 1:386 nature writing and, 2:756 study of primitive Indians, 2:512 Powell, Maud, 2:724 Power of Personality (Bean), 3:1033 Practical Treatise on Business (Freedley), 3:1032 pragmatism, 2:838; 3:889–893 effect on education, 1:350 influence of anarchism on, 1:69 influence on Henry James, 1:38 religious life and, 1:233 World War I and, 3:1220 See also legal pragmatism Pragmatism (W. James), 1:40; 3:891, 892, 894–896, 1022 Prairie, The (Cooper), 3:1190, 1192 environmental ethics in, 3:1193 as historical romance, 2:450, 453 Prairie Songs (Garland), 2:617 Pratt, Richard H., 1:8, 44, 75; 2:512 Pre-Historic Times (Lubbock), 1:32 Prejudices (Mencken), 2:600 “Preliminary Report upon the Yosemite Valley and Big Tree Grove” (Olmsted), 2:809 “Preludes” (Eliot), 2:485 premillennialism, 1:235 Prendergast, Maurice, 1:95 Pre-Raphaelites, 1:24 Prescott, William H. frontier and, 1:409 as history writer, 2:455 presidency Long Branch and, 3:979 Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:1092 scandals and, 3:897, 898 presidential elections, 3:896–903 increase in votes, 3:897 President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (Beard), 2:461 press mass circulation and, 2:547 Yiddish, 2:539, 540, 541; 3:985 presses, small, 2:616–622 Price, Kenneth, 2:816


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Price, William L., 1:98 “Price of the Harness, The” (Crane), 3:1178 Price-Stevenson, Edward, 3:997 Primitive Culture (Tylor), 1:32 Prince, J. Bradford, 1:366 Prince, Samuel Henry, 1:325, 327 Prince and the Pauper, The (Twain), 1:15, 221 use of switched characters, 1:279 Princess Casamassima, The (H. James), 1:67, 68 Princess of Mars, A (Burroughs), 3:1017 Princeton Stories (Williams), 3:1083, 1084 Princeton University, 1:354 Principles of Literary Criticism (Richards), 2:864 Principles of Psychology, The (W. James), 1:2; 3:892, 1078 Principles of Scientific Management, The (Taylor), 2:674; 3:1008 Pringle, Sarah Ann, 1:253–254 print culture expansion and copyright, 1:283 printing technology erotic books and pamphlets and, 2:873 Henry Houghton and, 2:463 illustrations and, 2:479, 480 magazines and, 2:611 periodicals and, 2:817 Prisoner of Zenda, The (Hope), 1:181 prisoners, writings by, 2:813 Prisoners of Poverty (Campbell), 3:915 Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (Berkman), 1:116 prisons. See penitentiaries and prisons Pritchard, John Paul, 2:601 on T. S. Eliot, 2:602 “Private History of a Campaign That Failed” (Twain), 1:262 “Private Life, The” (H. James), 2:603 Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries, 1:115, 262 Private Theatricals (Howells), 3:995 Problem, The (Gilmore), 2:688 Prodigious Hickey, The (Johnson), 3:1084 “Productive Conditions of American Literature” (Garland), 3:950 products, new, and mass marketing, 2:674 Proefriedt, William, 2:490 professional associations, 3:904 for journalists, 2:549 of literary scholars, 1:52 professionalism, 3:903–908

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

professionalization historians, 2:455, 460 police force, 2:581 writers, 2:777 professions, Jews in the, 2:538 “Professor Fargo” (H. James), 3:1078 Professor’s House, The (Cather), 1:368 on labor, 2:558 “Program and First Platform of Six Realists, The,” 2:837 progress aestheticism as reaction to, 1:24 scientific materialism and, 3:1021 success and conception of, 3:1094 technology as model for, 3:1007 Progress and Poverty (George), 3:964, 965, 1062 influence on Hamlin Garland, 2:659 muckraking tradition and, 2:713 Progressive Business Man, The (Marden), 3:1033 Progressive Democracy (Croly), 3:913 Progressive Era, 1:237 biographies in, 1:156 labor and, 2:572–573 progressive literary reform, 3:967–969 Progressive Party, 3:902 Jack London and, 2:858 women’s suffrage and, 3:1211 “Progressive Realism of American Fiction, The” (Boyeson), 3:950 Progressives, 2:716 muckraking and, 2:802 Progress of the Century, The (Currier & Ives), 3:1011 prohibitionism, 3:1110 policy and, 2:859 proletarian literature, 2:555 Promenades of an Impressionist (Huneker), 2:599 Promised City, The (Rischin), 2:537, 539–540 Promised Land, The (Antin), 1:102, 104, 116; 2:540; 3:908–911 on American education opportunities, 2:488 photograph from 1912 edition, 3:909 “Promised Land, The” (Wister), 3:976 Promise of American Life, The (Croly), 3:911–914 Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, The (Murfree), 2:524 prostitution, 3:914–916 in New Orleans, 2:769 in New York’s Lower East Side, 2:538

T H R O U G H


Protestant Church black church and music, 2:726 liberal Protestantism, 1:232–233 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The, 2:539 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 2:434 Proust, Marcel, 1:26 “Providential Match, A” (Cahan), 3:1052 Provincetown Players, 2:595; 3:1120–1121 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Provincetown Playhouse (New York), 1:360; 2:595 Prufrock and Other Observations (Eliot), 2:602, 627, 638 Pryse, Marjorie, 3:971, 972 on The Country of the Pointed Firs, 1:290 on Sarah Orne Jewett, 1:291 “Psalm of the West, The” (Lanier), 2:672 pseudoscience, 3:916–923 American Heritage Dictionary’s definition of, 3:917 psychoanalysis Floyd Dell and, 2:697 influence on American literature, 3:925, 926, 927 psychological realism in The Red Badge of Courage, 3:961 in “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” 3:1227 Psychologic Foundations of Education (Harris), 1:350 psychology, 3:923–928 atheism and, 1:32 pragmatists’ interest in, 3:892 realism and, 3:946–947 separation from philosophy, 2:833 Psychopathia Sexualis (Krafft-Ebing), 3:924 P. T. Barnum’s Great Traveling World’s Fair, 1:243, 244 Ptomaine Street (Wells), 2:657 public aid to the poor, 2:883 Publications of the Modern Language Association, 1:52, 54 public conscience, scholarly articles of, 1:191 public education, 1:350–351 public health, 2:448–449 Public Libraries in the United States (U.S. Bureau of Education), 2:588 public library movement, 2:588–589 “Public-School Failure, The” (White), 1:351 public schools Jews and, 2:490

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1315

INDEX

public schools (continued) wind band music and, 2:726 public spaces, ads in, 2:677 public sphere, women’s entry in, 1:383 Publishers for Mass Entertainment in Nineteenth Century America (Murphy), 2:610 publishing advances in, 1:50 of The American Language, 1:47 growing dominance of the periodical press, 2:610 of Huckleberry Finn, 1:19 industrialization and Harper & Brothers, 2:425 sheet music, 2:725 university presses, 1:181, 354 See also serial publication; subscription publication Puccini, Giacomo, 3:1116 Puck (magazine), 1:382; 2:472, 475, 481, 482, 702, 702 caricature of Mark Twain, 2:585 satire and, 3:1005 Pudd’nhead Wilson. See The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson Puerto Rico and Spanish-American War, 1:78; 3:1070 Pujo, Arsène Paulin, 2:801 Pulitzer, Joseph, 1:188, 347; 2:547 Glenmore Summer School of the Culture Sciences and, 2:833 Spanish-American War and, 1:78 yellow journalism and, 2:712 Pulitzer Prize A Daughter of the Middle Border, 2:659 Amy Lowell, 2:637 Booth Tarkington, 3:1164 E. A. Robinson, 2:635, 662 Edna St. Vincent Millay, 2:636 The Education of Henry Adams, 1:359–360 History of the American Frontier, 1763–1893, 1:411 William Faulkner, 3:1223 Pullman, Mrs. George M., 2:851 Pullman strike (1894), 3:572, 900, 1171 pulp magazines, 1:324 Punch (magazine), 3:904 “Pupil, The” (H. James), 1:352 Pupin, Michael, 1:103; 2:491 Purdy, Charles W., 1:29 Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), 1:216; 2:552, 715 Pure Sociology (Ward), 3:1122 Puritanism

1316

anti-intellectualism and, 1:80 work ethic in Robert Frost and, 2:786 “Purloined Letter, The” (Poe), 2:738 Pushing to the Front (Marden), 3:1032 Putnam, Frederic W., 1:367 Putnam, G. P., 1:177 defense of free literary expression and, 1:181 Putnam, George Haven, 2:613 copyright and, 1:285, 286; 2:614 Putnam, Gideon, 3:978 Putnam, Herbert, 2:592 Putnam, John Bishop, 2:613 Putnam’s (magazine), 2:610 on travel, 3:1131 Putnam’s Monthly, 1:212 “Puvis de Chavannes” (La Farge), 3:1024 Pyle, Howard, 1:71 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 Pyrhönen, Heta, 2:737

Q Quaker City (ship), 1:55; 3:1131 Quakers and prisons, 2:813 Quality of Mercy, The (Howells), 1:195 Quantrill’s Raiders, 3:1169 Queen Elizabeth (film), 2:706 Queen of Chinatown, The (Jarrow), 1:227–228 Queen of the Woods (Pokagon), 2:516 “Queen’s Twin, The” (Jewett), 1:289 Queen’s Twin and Other Stories, The (Jewett), 1:289; 3:1043 “Queries to My Seventieth Year” (Whitman), 1:30 Questionable Shapes (Howells), 1:421 spiritualism and, 3:1077 Quest of the Golden Girl (Le Gallienne), 1:25 Quest of the Silver Fleece, The (Du Bois), 3:932 Quiller-Couch, A. T., 3:1025 Quimby, Phineas Parkhurst, 1:238; 3:923 Quincy Adams Sawyer (Pigdin), 1:179 Quint, Howard H., 3:1062 Quia Pauper Amavi (Pound), 2:637 Quirk, Tom, 2:838; 3:1042 Quo Vadis? (film; Guazzani), 1:158; 2:706 Quo Vadis (Sienkiewicz), 2:451

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

R race cultural influence of, 1:301 fictional friends of mixed race, 3:1150 foreign visitors on racial divisions, 1:396 industrial and trade schools and, 1:352 medical theories of, 2:447–448 in My Ántonia, 2:733 prisons and, 2:813 racial impact of Huckleberry Finn, 1:22 racial self-hatred among Chinese immigrants, 1:228 rape and, 3:1170 in Reconstruction literature, 3:956–957 in short stories, 3:1044–1045 Social Darwinism and, 3:1058 socially constructed nature of, 1:166–167 success and, 3:1098 in utopias, 3:1158–1159 violence and, 3:1165–1166 in The Voice of the People, 3:1174–1175 race novels, 3:929–933 race relations nervousness and, 2:446 pseudoscience of white supremacy and, 3:920 race riots, 2:544; 3:931 Wilmington Massacre of 1898, 1:170; 2:668 Race Track, The (Ryder), 1:94 Rachel (Grimké), 2:566, 630–631 racial accommodation, 1:256; 3:1154 racial ideologies Anglo-Saxonism and, 1:71 Manifest Destiny and, 2:496 racial stereotypes in advertising, 1:392; 2:679 in Up from Slavery, 3:1154 racial uplift, 3:933–940 Harper & Brothers and, 2:528 racism in boxing, 1:189 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and, 3:1206 critique by María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, 3:1086 Henry James and, 1:64 Huckleberry Finn and, 1:17, 22 immigration and, 2:487–490 intermarriage and, 2:692 Jack London, 1:73


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

military enthusiasm and, 3:1179 Orientalism and, 2:797 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:208 “Plain Language from Truthful James” and, 2:844 of police, 2:582 populism and, 2:871–872 racialization of Mormons, 2:701 Radcliffe (Harvard Annex), 1:354, 381 Radical Club of Boston, 1:267 Radical Reconstruction, 3:953 Radical Republicans, 1:253; 2:562, 854 black franchise and, 3:934 Radin, Paul, 1:386 radio and music, 2:725 Ragged Dick (Alger), 1:11, 112, 140, 220; 2:676; 3:1093, 1094, 1182 title page, 3:1093 rags to riches theme, 2:651, 691, 780 ragtime, 2:272, 727 railroad barons, 3:1144, 1180 Rail-Road Forger and the Detectives, The (Pinkerton), 2:584 railroads, 2:713; 3:1141–1144 circuses and, 1:244 food distribution and, 1:391 Irish and, 2:529 labor and, 2:569.2:570 A Limited Express (Worth), 3:1143 mass marketing and, 2:675 monopolistic land ownership and, 3:966 Oklahoma land rush and, 2:687 San Francisco and, 3:999 theater and, 3:1115 tramps and hobos and, 3:1135 transcontinental routes, 3:1142 travel and, 3:1132 Railroad Strike (1877), 2:432–433 Rainbow, The (Lawrence), 2:486 Rainbow Trail, The (Grey), 1:76, 139, 411 Rainey, Joseph Hayne, 1:253 Ralph, Julian, 2:551 Ramona (Jackson), 1:138; 3:929, 940–943, 1168 on frontier law enforcement, 2:584 as frontier romance, 2:453 history and, 2:461 on miscegenation, 2:693 as sentimental realism, 1:342 tourist attraction based on, 3:942 ranchers. See farmers and ranchers Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (Roosevelt), 3:1191 Ranch Romances (magazine), 1:139 Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (Rockefeller), 3:1032

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Ranke, Leopold von, 2:455 Rankin, Daniel S., 1:123, 126–127 Rankin, Jeanette, 3:1211 Ransom, John Crowe, 2:601–602 Rathburn, John W., 2:598 Rauschenbusch, Walter Social Gospel movement and, 1:234 See also Christianity and the Social Crisis Raw Pork and Hardtack (Cave), 1:261 Ray, Man, 1:69 Read, Opie, 2:475 reading circles, 2:860 influence of train travel on, 3:1142 Reading for Realism (Glazener), 2:610 Real Billy the Kid, The (Otero), 3:1089 realism, 1:52; 2:550–551; 3:943–953 Ambrose Bierce and, 3:1101 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 Boston’s disapproval of, 1:186 Century Magazine and, 1:214 compared to photography, 2:842 definition by W. D. Howells, 3:906 description of society balls, 1:314 dialect of village types and, 3:1162 Edith Wharton and, 2:467 effect on biography, 1:153–154 genteel tradition and, 1:414, 416–417 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and, 2:430–431 Horace Scudder’s support of, 2:464 influence of W. D. Howells on Mark Twain, 2:605 journalism and, 2:548 McClure’s and, 2:645 McTeague and, 2:648 Mark Twain and, 1:17 as opposed to romantic idealism, 1:182 police in, 2:582 rebellion against genteel tradition, 1:416–417 reform and, 3:963 rise of, 1:50–51 San Francisco fiction and, 3:1000 sexual candor and, 2:875; 3:1038 short story and, 3:1039, 1040 Sir Walter Scott and, 2:452 theater and, 3:1115, 1117–1118 W. D. Howells and, 1:186; 2:438, 442; 3:945–946 the West and, 1:76 the western and, 3:1191 “Realism in Literature and Art” (Darrow), 3:950, 951 Real Issue, The (White), 1:374 Real Lincoln, The (Minor), 1:156

T H R O U G H


“Realm of the Unreal, The” (Bierce), 1:269 “Real Objection to Smoot, The” (Keppler), 2:702, 702 “Real Thing, The” (H. James), 1:87; 2:842 “Real ‘White Man’s Burden’” (Crosby), 2:502 Reamer, Owen T., 2:673 Reamer, Robert, 1:90 reason, Ambrose Bierce and, 3:1102 Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Wiggin), 1:181 Rebel’s Recollections, A (Eggleston), 1:260 Recollections of Eminent Men with Other Papers (Whipple), 2:598 Recollections of My Youth (Renan), 1:309 Reconstruction, 1:252–253; 3:953–958, 954 end of, 2:564 fiction and, 2:669; 3:1168 in New Orleans, 2:765 Reconstruction Acts, 2:562, 628 Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage project, 3:1089 Red Badge of Courage, The (Crane), 3:958–963 American Library Association and, 2:590 Bacheller-Johnson Newspaper Syndicate and, 2:612, 645 the Bible and, 1:141 as Civil War romance, 2:454, 461; 3:1177 impressionism and, 2:506–507 James Nagel on, 1:93 naturalism and, 2:747, 749 New Criticism and, 2:751 sports metaphors in, 3:1082 Red Cross, 1:331 Reddin, Paul, 3:1197 Redding, Arthur, 1:69 Red Hunters and the Animal People (Eastman), 2:517 Redpath, James, 2:585 Redpath Lyceum Bureau, 2:585 Red Record, A (Wells-Barnett), 2:631; 3:957, 1167 Red Rock (Page), 2:669; 3:932 on Ku Klux Klan, 2:565 Red Scare of 1919 and 1920, 2:561 Red Thumb Mark, The (Freeman), 2:741 Redwood, A. C., 3:959 Reed, John, 3:1221 Mexican Revolution and, 2:683, 685–686

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1317

INDEX

Reed, John (continued) Paterson Strike Pageant (1913) and, 3:1063 Provincetown Players and, 2:595 Reese, Lizette Woodworth, 2:863, 866 Reeve, Arthur B., 2:741 reference books, 2:426 reform, 3:963–971 effect on policy, 2:859 important dates for, 3:964 law and, 2:556–557 magazines and, 2:822 poverty and, 2:883 of prisons, 2:814–814 Sidney Lanier and, 2:671 Reform Darwinism, 3:1205 Reform Judaism, 2:535–436 reform movement, 1:232 reform writers around World War I, 2:558 critical realism and, 3:950–951 Hamlin Garland, 2:659 Indian, 2:515 Regina v. Hicklin (1868), 2:873 regional American folklore, 1:387–388 regionalism, 1:50–51; 3:971–977 alcoholism and, 1:2 children’s literature and, 1:222 dance in, 1:314 distinguished from local color, 1:291 history and, 2:458–459 humor and, 2:475 McClure’s and, 2:645 Manifest Destiny and, 2:498 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and, 2:762 negative perception of black racial identity and, 1:169–170 newspaper syndicates and, 2:776 North of Boston as regional poetry, 2:784 realism and, 3:943 regional American folklore and, 1:387 symbolic force of land and, 3:966 See also local color fiction Regnault, Henri, 2:799 Reid, James, 1:90 Reid, Merritt, 1:90 Reid, Thomas, 2:833 Reinhardt, Max, 1:363; 3:1120 Reinhart, Charles Stanley, 2:428 Reisman, David, 3:962 Reitman, Ben L., 3:1139 Reizenstein, Ludwig von, 2:769 religion ecstatic dance and, 1:316

1318

Great Awakening, women and, 3:1208 loss of faith novels, 1:34 success and, 3:1092 symbolism of Civil War memorials and, 1:264 work ethic and, 1:231 See also religious writing Religion (Schopenhauer), 1:309 Religious Education Association, 1:237 religious writing as best-sellers, 1:140; 2:615 Harper & Brothers as publisher of, 2:426 remarriage, 1:299–300 Remington, Frederic, 1:78, 91, 94; 2:514 criticism of Indian boarding schools, 1:352–353 on guns, 3:1188 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 illustrations for Zitkala-Sˇa, 2:516 influence of The Virginian on, 3:1193 Under Attack, 1:408 Reminiscences, 1819–1899 (Howe), 1:117; 2:791 Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops (Taylor), 1:261; 2:448 Renascence (Millay), 2:636 Reno, Marcus A., 1:133 Renouvier, Charles, 3:894 Renwick, James, 1:88 Renza, Louisa, 1:291 “Repairer of Reputations, The” (Chambers), 1:422 Report on Prisons and Reformatories of the United States and Canada (Wines and Dwight), 2:814 Republican Party, 2:854; 3:896–897 Half Breeds, 3:899 Stalwarts, 3:899,3:1166 Rereading Sex (Lefkowitz), 3:1066 Rerum Novarum (Leo XIII), 1:231 “Resemblance” (Evans), 1:25 reservations, 2:520, 521 Resist Not Evil (Darrow), 1:201–202; 3:1172 resorts, 3:977–980 resource management, 3:980–985 “Responsibilities of the Novelist, The” (Norris), 2:749 restaurants, 1:393–394 Rest Cure, A (Jennings), 2:446 Rest Cure, a Novel, The (Maxwell), 2:446 Resurgence of Race, The (Toll), 3:936

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

retribution as justification for death penalty, 1:201 “Return of the Private, The” (Garland), 2:661 Return Passages (Ziff), 3:1132 “Reuben’s Last Wish” (WHitman), 3:1109 “Réveil” (Maupassant), 1:126 “Reveille, The” (Harte), 3:1070–1071, 1072 Revels, Hiram Rhoades, 1:253 “Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face” (Longfellow), 1:135–136 Review of Reviews (magazine), 2:819 “Revised Catechism, The” (Twain), 1:279 Revolt (journal), 1:69 “Revolt of ‘Mother,’ The” (Freeman), 2:763; 3:1058–1059 Revolution (Anthony), 3:1200 Revolution, The (weekly), 2:713 Revolution in Tanner’s Lane, The (Rutherford), 1:310 Reynolds, David S., 3:1109 Reynolds, G. W. M., 2:590 Reynolds, George, 2:701 Reynolds, Paul Revere, 2:613 Reynolds v. United States (1878), 2:701 rhetorical analysis of Huckleberry Finn, 1:19–20 rhetorical theory, 2:791, 793 Rhode Island School of Design, 1:98 Rhodes, Eugene Manlove, 3:1193 Rhodes, James Ford, 2:460 Rhymes to Be Traded for Bread (Lindsay), 1:175 Rhys, Ernest, 2:633 Ribhany, Abraham, 2:490 Rice, Alice Hegan, 1:222 Rice, Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy,” 2:542 “Richard Carr’s Baby” (Davis), 3:1082 Richard Carvel (Churchill), 1:138; 2:454 “Richard Cory” (Robinson), 1:416; 2:635; 3:1163 on guns, 3:1188 Richards, Grant, 2:649 Richards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong) on Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 2:864 imagism and, 2:486 Richardson, Charles F., 1:52, 54 Richardson, Dorothy, 2:621 Richardson, Gary A., 1:295 Richardson, Henry Hobson, 1:88 Henry Adams and, 1:88 Richet, Charles, 3:922 Rickaby, Franz, 1:389 Rickenbacker, Edward Vernon, 3:1223


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Riddle of the Universe, The (Haeckel), 1:31–32 Riders of the Purple Sage (Grey), 1:76, 139, 411 anti-Mormon prejudice and, 3:1193 guns and, 3:1188 on Mormons, 2:702 “Rifle, The” (Leggett), 2:737 Right Marital Living (Craddock), 3:1037 Rihbany, Abraham, 1:103; 2:492 Riis, Jacob, 1:64; 2:884–885 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:110 autobiography, 1:116 on Lower East Side, 3:1168 as muckraker, 1:348 on New York City, 1:247–248; 2:537, 540 photography and, 2:840 social reform and, 2:714 temperance and, 3:1112 See also How the Other Half Lives Riley, Glenda, 1:293; 3:1197 Riley, James Whitcomb, 1:345, 388; 2:861 humor and, 2:475 influence on Paul Laurence Dunbar, 2:640 “Rill from the Town Pump, A” (Hawthorne), 3:1109 Rinehart, Mary Roberts, 2:740 “Ring Fetter, The: A New England Tragedy” (Cooke), 3:972–973 Ringling Brothers, 3:1119 Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, 1:245 Riordon, William, 2:855 riots, 3:1168 Draft Riots (New York City, 1863), 1:248 Tompkins Square labor riot, 3:964 See also race riots Ripostes (Pound), 2:484, 637 Rischin, Moses, 2:536, 539–540 on tenements, 2:537 Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America, The (Griffith), 1:162 Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, The (Davis), 1:259; 3:956 Rise of David Levinsky, The (Cahan), 1:116; 2:540; 3:985–990 the Bible and, 1:141 on Catskills, 2:542 education and, 2:490 illustration by Hambridge, 3:989 on immigrant career success, 2:494 intergenerational conflict in, 2:535 Jewish assimilation and, 1:232

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

on New York City, 1:247; 2:782 as rags to riches story, 2:780 Rise of Industrial America, The (Smith), 3:1182–1183 Rise of Silas Lapham, The (Howells), 1:156, 186, 193, 195; 3:964 on business ethics, 2:438, 676 Christianity and, 1:232 on clubs, 1:271 on corruption of middle-class values, 3:966 food and, 1:394 on moral threat of acquisition of wealth, 3:1184–1185 photography and, 2:842 on police, 2:581 on politics, 2:857 on professionalization, 3:905 realism war and, 3:948 serialized in Century Magazine, 1:214 Rise of the Dutch Republic, The (Motley), 2:455 “Rise of the ‘Short Story,’ The” (Harte), 3:1190 Rising Tide of Color, The (Stoddard), 1:73 Ritter, Mary, 2:460 Ritz-Carlton (New York), 1:394 Rivé-King, Julie, 2:724 Riverside Literature Series (Houghton, Mifflin), 1:53; 2:464 Riverside Magazine for Young People, 1:221–222; 2:464 Riverside Press, 2:463 Roach, John, 2:883 Road, The (London), 3:1138 photography by Jack London, 2:842 Road Beef, Medium (Ferber), 1:299 “Road Less Traveled, The” (Frost), 2:636 robber barons, 2:569, 713; 3:1180 Robert Elsmere (Ward), 1:310 Roberts, B. H., 2:701 Roberts, Charles G. D., 2:673 Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 2:453 Roberts Brothers, 2:609; 3:941 Robeson, Paul, 1:363; 2:607 Robie House (Chicago), 1:89, 90 Robinson, Edwin Arlington as anti-imperialist, 2:828 death and, 1:29, 30 on domestic violence, 3:1169 lyric poetry and, 2:635 Poetry and, 2:620, 850, 851 rebellion against genteel tradition, 1:416 scientific materialism and, 3:1021

T H R O U G H


Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:901 on village life, 3:1163 See also Man against the Sky, The Robinson, James H., 2:460 Robinson, Rowland E., 1:387–388, 388; 3:973 Robinson, Theodore, 1:93 Rob Roy (Scott), 2:452 Roche, Martin, 1:216 Rochemont, Richard de, 1:391 Rockefeller, John D., 2:569; 3:897, 964, 1032, 1180, 1181 Christianity and, 1:233 museums and, 1:364 Standard Oil Trust and, 2:713 University of Chicago and, 1:219 Rockefeller, William, 3:1181 Rockville Tribune (newspaper), 1:345 Rockwell, Norman, 1:16; 2:476 Roderick Hudson (H. James), 1:87, 91; 3:995 Rodin, Auguste, 1:312 “Rodman, the Keeper” (Woolson), 3:974 Roe, Edward Payson, 1:232, 327 Roebling, John, 1:88; 2:779 Roebling, Washington, 1:88 Roemer, Kenneth, 3:1156 Roger, Henry, 3:1181 Rogers, Clara Kathleen, 2:724 Rogers, Will, 2:477; 3:1119 Rogers, William Allen (W. A.), 2:440, 479 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 opposition to lynching, 2:631 Rohmer, Sax, 2:741 narcotics in writings of, 1:4 Roh-Spaulding, Carol, 2:711 Roland Blake (Mitchell), 2:447 Rölvaag, O. E., 1:374–375 on gender roles, 2:492 on pioneers, 1:76 Romalov, Nancy Tillman, 1:222 Roman, Anton, 2:803, 804 Roman, Sallie Rhett, 2:768, 769 romance, McTeague and, 2:648 “Romance of Sunrise Rock, The” (Murfree), 2:524 Romanesque revival, 1:88 Romanticism children’s literature and, 1:223–224 death and, 1:27 effect on biography, 1:152 influence on imagism, 2:486 “Romanticism and Classicism” (Hulme), 2:484 Romberg, Sigmund, 2:725

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1319

INDEX

Rome, American colony in, 1:55 Romines, Ann, 1:340, 341; 3:973 Rookery, 1:89 Roos, David, 3:920 Roosevelt, Theodore, 1:71, 356; 2:829; 3:901–902, 1090 Booker T. Washington and, 3:1154 coining of term “muckraker,” 2:555, 714 E. A. Robinson and, 2:635, 662 on The Education of Henry Adams, 1:359 on firearms, 3:1186 frontier and, 1:409 in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 2:431 influence of muckrakers on, 2:716 John Muir and, 1:367 The Jungle and, 2:552 on Mormon polygamy, 2:701 mythology of the West and, 1:94 nature writing and, 2:759 Progressive Party and, 2:858 on The Promise of American Life, 3:913 reform and, 3:968 on rugged sports, 3:1080 Spanish-American War and, 1:77–78, 78; 3:1070, 1072 tobacco and trusts, 1:5 on “The White Man’s Burden,” 2:501 Yosemite National Park and, 2:811 Root, John Wellborn, 1:89 Root, Marcus Aurelius, 2:841 Root, Waverley, 1:391 Roots (Haley), 2:453 Rope and Faggot (White), 2:628, 632 Rorer, Sarah, 1:393 Rorty, Richard, 3:890 Roseboro’, Viola, 2:645 Rosenberg, Charles, 1:332 Rosenfeld, Morris, 2:541 Rosenwald, Julius, 3:1215 Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, 1:98 Rosowski, Susan, 2:733 Ross, Edward, 2:487 Ross, Robert, 2:673 Roth, Henry, 1:247 Rothman, Ellen, 1:295 Rothstein, Arnold, 2:538 Rouge-Macquart cycle of novels (Zola), 3:1058 Roughing It (Twain), 1:15, 138; 3:981, 1133 on Chinese immigrants, 1:226 on gold rush, 3:1182 on Mormons, 2:700 on Native Americans, 1:280

1320

on traveling by train, 3:1141 use of mining jargon in, 3:1054 use of slang in, 3:1053 on weapons on the frontier, 3:1187 on the West, 3:1190 western persona and, 1:76 Rough Riders, 1:78; 2:501 Rough Riders, The (Hagedorn), 3:1074 Rough Riders, The (Roosevelt), 3:1070 Rouquette, Afrien, 2:767 Rover Boys series, 1:222 Row, Peterson & Company, 2:425 Rowan, Andrew, 3:1072 Royce, Josiah, 2:836; 3:1020–1021 academic idealism and, 2:835 E. A. Robinson and, 2:663 Glenmore Summer School of the Culture Sciences and, 2:833 influence on Herbert Croly, 3:913 Roycroft, 1:98, 100; 2:619 Royle, Edwin Milton, 3:1118 Rozario, Kevin, 1:330 Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, The (FitzGerald, trans.), 1:171 edition by Thomas B. Mosher, 2:618 illustration by Rene Bull, 1:172 illustrations by Elihu Vedder, 1:94 Rubin, Louis D., Jr., 2:672, 673 Ruiz de Burton, María Amparo, 2:498. See also Squatter and the Don, The Ruland, Richard, 1:414 “Rule of Phase Applied to History, The” (H. Adams), 2:459 “Run That Turned the Game, The” (Johnson), 3:1084 Rural Hours (Cooper), 2:759 rural living, mail-order catalogs and, 2:681 Ruskin, John in Appeal to Reason, 1:84 arts and crafts movement and, 1:26, 97 gothic revival architecture and, 1:88 influence on Julius Augustus Wayland, 1:84 James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s lawsuit against, 1:92, 94 Ruskin Colony, 1:84; 3:1062 Russell, Ada, 2:637 Russell, Andrew, 2:839 Russell, Annie, 3:1115 Russell, Bertrand, 1:111; 2:837 Russell, Charles Edward, 2:555 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Russell, Charles M., 1:372; 3:1192 Indian themes, 2:514

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

influence of The Virginian on, 3:1193 Russell, Don B., 3:1196 Russell, Irwin, 2:640 Russell, Lillian, 3:979 Russell, William Howard, 3:1143 Ruth Fielding series, 1:12 Ruth Hall (Fern), 2:615; 3:925 Ryan, Daniel Edward, 2:674 Ryan, Thomas Fortune, 3:1181 Ryder, Albert Pinkham, 1:92 Society of American Artists and, 1:92 symbolism of, 1:94

S Sabbath in Puritan New England, The (Earle), 2:457 Sacco, Nicola, 2:561 anarchism and, 1:66, 67 death mask, 2:560 Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, 2:561 Sackler, Howard, 1:190 sacred, images of the, in aestheticism, 1:25 sacred song, 2:725 Sacred Wood, The (Eliot), 2:602 Sadlier, Mary Anne, 2:783 as Catholic writer, 1:205 Safford-Blake, Mary J., 1:377 Sage, Russell, 1:98; 3:1181 museums and, 1:364 Sagebrush School (Nevada), 1:51 “Sahara of the Bozart, The” (Mencken), 1:82 Said, Edward, 2:796 St. Botolph Club, 1:270 Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 1:91; 3:1184 Henry Adams and, 1:88 monument to William T. Sherman, 1:265 Robert Gould Shaw memorial, Boston, 1:265, 266 Stomach Club and, 3:1064 St. Louis, 1:250–251 cholera and, 1:335 Philosophical Society, 2:834 St. Louis World’s Fair (1904), 1:250, 366; 3:991–994, 992 St. Nicholas Magazine, 1:221; 2:820 school sports stories in, 3:1083 Salinger, J. D., 3:1129 “Sally Parson’s Duty” (Cooke), 3:972


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Salome of the Tenements (Yezierska), 1:102, 102; 2:488, 490 on gender roles, 2:493 on immigrant career success, 2:494 salons, 1:267–273 in Chicago of Mary Hallock Foote in Leadville, 3:982–983 Salsbury, Nate, 3:1119 Salvation Nell (Sheldon), 3:1118 Salvini, Tomasso, 3:1120 Samantha Allen collection (Holley), 2:474 Samantha at Saratoga (Holley), 3:979 same-sex love, 3:994–999 Samet, Elizabeth, 2:824 Sam Lawsons’s Oldtown Fireside Stories (Stowe), 3:1040 Sammons, Mark, 1:291 Samsher’s Mail (newspaper), 3:1110 Sánchez, Rosaura, 3:1089 Sanctuary (Wharton), 1:90; 2:468 Sandburg, Carl Atlantic Monthly and, 1:111 Chicago and, 1:216 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Industrial Workers of the World and, 2:573 in the Masses, 2:601 Poetry and, 1:216–217; 2:620, 851, 852 Spanish-American War and, 1:78–79 on traveling by train, 3:1141 Sanders, Ronald, 2:538 Sandoz, Mari on clashes between cattlemen and farmers, 1:372–373 on homesteading, 1:374 San Francisco, 1:251; 3:999–1003 Chinese in, 1:225 earthquake of 1906, 1:326, 330, 330–331; 3:1000 reconstruction after earthquake, 3:1001 San Francisco: Aftermath of Earthquake (film), 1:327 San Francisco Examiner (newspaper) Ambrose Bierce and, 3:1103 Spanish-American War and, 1:77–78 Sanger, Margaret arrest of, 3:1038 Revolt group and, 1:69 Sanger, William W., 3:914 Santayana, George, 1:415; 2:836–837 genteel tradition and, 1:413, 414 Harvard and, 1:354 influence on Herbert Croly, 3:913 Saratoga (Howard), 3:1117

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Saratoga Springs, New York, 3:978–979 illustration by Harry Ogden, 3:978 Sargent, John Singer, 3:1184 on Biltmore, 1:89 as expatriate, 1:86 Madame X, 2:878 murals in Boston Public Library, 1:89 portraits of, 1:94 Theodore Dreiser on, 1:87 Sargent, Mrs. John T., 1:267 Sarmiento, Domingo, 1:395, 397 Saroyan, William, 3:1025 satire, burlesque, and parody, 3:1003–1007 cultural satire, 3:1004–1005 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 social satire in weekly papers, 2:482 in theater, 3:1119 The Theory of the Leisure Class and, 3:1125 Saturday Evening Post (magazine), 1:348–349; 2:610, 817 anti-immigrant fears and, 2:487 authors and, 2:820 Saunders, Charles Francis, 1:367 Saved from the Titanic (film), 1:328 “Save the Boys” (Harper), 3:1111 Sayce, A. H., 1:48 Sayers, Dorothy L., 2:738 Sayre, Zelda, 1:206 Scaife, Roger, 2:464 scandals due to lack of presidential leadership, 3:897 during the second Grant administration, 3:898 of the wealthy, 3:1184 scarlet fever, 1:334–335 Scarlet Letter, The (Hawthorne), 2:450 Scarlet Plague, The (London), 1:337 “Scarlet Plague, The” (London), 3:1016 Schiaparelli, G. V., 3:1017 Schlereth, Thomas J., 2:679, 681 on self-help manuals, 3:1031 Schnaubelt, Rudolph, 2:436 Schneirov, Matthew, 2:817 Schockman, Carl S., 3:1139 Schoen, Carol, 2:491 “School Days of an Indian Girl, The” (Zitkala-Sˇa), 1:75; 2:789; 3:974 school stories in dime novels, 1:323–324 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 2:838 Schrager, Cynthia, 3:925 Schriber, Mary, 3:1134 Schroeder, Theodore, 2:874

T H R O U G H


Schurz, Carl, 2:811 Philippine-American War and, 2:828 Schuyler, Edward, 1:213 Schwab, George, 2:436 Schwab, Michael, 2:432 Schwartz, Julia Augusta, 3:1083 Schwartz, Maurice, 2:542 Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures (Eddy), 1:140, 239 science and technology, 3:1007–1015 mass tourism and, 3:1132 at St. Louis World’s Fair, 3:990 science fiction, 3:921, 1015–1018 in dime novels, 1:324 scientific materialism and, 3:1021 westerns and, 3:1193 Science of Dress in Theory and Practice, The (Ballin), 1:377 Science of English Verse, The (Lanier), 2:673 Science of Man, by Which the Sick Are Healed, The (Eddy), 1:238 Scientific Circle, 3:1031 scientific management. See Taylorism scientific materialism, 3:1018–1023 scientific racism, 3:1021 Scientific Socialism movement, 3:1062 scientists coinage of term, 3:919 museums and, 2:718 Scopes “monkey trial,” 2:561 H. L. Mencken and, 1:34, 81 Scott, Duncan Campbell, 3:1025 Scott, Emmett Jay, 2:631 Scott, Walter American public and, 2:451 historical romance and, 2:451–452 influence on William H. Prescott, 2:455 realism and, 3:943–944 renewed interest in, 1:71 Scottish common sense realism, 2:833 Scouts of the Plains, The (Buntline), 3:1190 Scribner, Charles, 1:177 copyright and, 2:614 founding of Scribner’s Monthly and, 1:212 Scribner and Company, 1:212, 213 Scribner’s Magazine, 1:109, 193; 2:610; 3:1023–1026 advertising poster, 3:1024 competition to Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 2:430 local color fiction and, 1:273 serial publication of The House of Mirth, 2:468

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1321

INDEX

Scribner’s Monthly (magazine), 1:50; 2:610; 3:1023 criticism of lectures, 2:586 name change to Century Magazine, 1:212 on Sidney Lanier, 2:670 See also Century Magazine Scudder, Horace Elisha Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107, 109–110; 2:465 Houghton Mifflin and, 2:464, 465 textbooks and, 1:352 “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and, 1:186; 3:1229 sculpture, 1:90–92 Sea Drift (Delius), 2:729 Sea Garden (Doolittle), 2:637 Sealts, Merton M., Jr., 1:146, 147 “Search for a Capitalist Hero: Businessmen in American Fiction, The” (Smith), 1:193 Sears, Richard W., 2:680 Sears, Roebuck and Company, 2: 680, 681 house kits, 1:98 Sea Symphony, A (R. V. Williams), 2:729 Sea-Wolf, The (London), 1:76, 139; 3:1026–1031 ocean symbolism and, 1:320 pragmatism and, 3:890 “Second Generation, The” (Crane), 2:501 Second New England School (Boston Classicists), 2:721 Secret Garden, The (Burnett), 1:140, 223 “Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The” (Thurber), 2:627 Secret Service (Gillette), 3:1115 secularism, 1:31 Sedgwick, Ellery, 1:107, 111; 2:465, 818 “Seeds” (Anderson), 3:927 Seeger, Alan, 3:1219–1220 “See Yup” (Harte), 1:227 segregation, 2:544. See also “separate but equal” laws Seigfried, Charlene Haddock, 2:838 Selected Writings of James Weldon Johnson, The, 1:190 self-fulfillment, 3:970 self-help manuals, 3:1031–1034 Self-Made Men (Seymour), 3:1032 self-made men tradition of biography, 1:112 Self Portrait (Hale), 1:94 “Self-Seeker, The” (Frost), 2:784 Sellars, Roy Wood, 2:837 Selling Culture (Ohmann), 2:822

1322

Semmelweis, Ignaz, 1:332 Semple, Ellen Churchill, 2:457 Senarens, Luis, 1:324 Senator North (Atherton), 1:78 “Sence Mary Jined the Club” (Foss), 2:860 Seneca Falls Convention (1848), 1:380; 3:1208 Sennett, Mack, 2:708 “Sennight of the Centennial, A” (Howells), 1:88, 210; 3:904 Sense of Beauty, The (Santayana), 2:836 Sense of the Past, The (H. James), 1:420 sentiment, rhetoric of, 2:791 sentimental fiction. See domestic and sentimental fiction sentimentalism in Theodore Dreiser’s work, 3:1048–1049 sentimental love stories as best-sellers, 1:138–140 sentimental realism, 1:342–343 “separate but equal” laws, 2:693; 3:1167 Separate Car Act (1890), challenge to, 1:255 separate spheres, idea of, 1:339; 3:1208 domestic sphere, 1:381; 2:457 public sphere, women’s entry in, 1:383 Sequoia National Park, 2:811 Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley, 2:731 serial publication, 2:820–821 in Century Magazine, 1:213–214; 3:1027 Edith Wharton and, 2:821; 3:1025 Henry James and, 2:617 of The Jungle, 1:85; 2:553 in McClure’s, 2:645 in New Orleans papers, 2:769 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 of Ramona, 3:941 in Scribner’s Magazine, 2:468; 3:1025 of Ulysses in the Little Review, 2:621 of Up from Slavery, 3:1153 Willa Cather and, 2:821 series books in children’s literature, 1:12, 222–223 “Servant to Servants, A” (Frost), 2:785–786 Serving the Republic (Miles), 2:522 Seth Jones (Ellis), 1:322 Seton, Elizabeth Seton, 1:205 Seton, Ernest Thompson, 1:410; 3:1025 Boy Scouts of America and, 1:222 settlement houses Americanization and, 1:102 Hull-House, 1:218–219, 350; 3:964

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

poverty and, 2:883 reform and, 3:967 Social Gospel and, 1:237 Seven Ages of Washington, The (Wister), 1:156 Seventeen (Tarkington), 3:1127 Seventh-Day Adventist Church, 1:235 Severance, Caroline, 3:1201 Sewanee Review (journal), 1:354 sewing machine and mass production of clothing, 1:378 Sex and Character (Weininger), 3:924 Sex and Education (Howe, ed.), 2:446 Sex and Work series (Brown Blackwell), 3:1202 sex education, 3:1034–1039 Sexes throughout Nature, The (Brown Blackwell), 3:1202 Sex in Education (Clarke), 2:446; 3:1036 sexual advice literature, 3:1035–1036 sexuality in business and industry novels, 1:195 changing ideas about, 1:295 concept of, 3:994, 995–997 Frank Norris on, 2:749 in McTeague, 2:647 in Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, 1:295; 3:1038 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on, 2:761 masturbation, 3:1036, 1065 new consumerism and changing views of, 3:1049 virginity, 3:1035 See also free love; same-sex love sexually transmitted diseases, 2:449 sexual selection in American fiction and Darwinism, 1:320 Seyersted, Per, 1:123, 125 Seymour, Charles C. B., 3:1032 Shadow and Act (Ellison), 3:1150 Shadow of a Dream, The (Howells), 3:995 Shagganappi, The (Johnson), 2:516 Shakers, 1:316 Shakespeare, William A Hazard of New Fortunes title taken from, 2:437 influence on Herman Melville, 1:147 influence on Huckleberry Finn, 1:16 performances in the United States, 3:1120 Yiddish theater and, 2:542 “Shame of Minneapolis” (Steffens), 2:645 Shame of the Cities, The (Steffens), 1:249, 250–251


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Shapiro, Hannah, 2:573 sharecropping, 2:545 Sharp, Cecil, 1:390 Sharp, Dallas Lore, 2:757 Sharp, Joseph Henry, 1:94 Shaughraun, The (Coucicault), 3:1116 Shaw, George Bernard, 3:1120 Anthony Comstock and, 1:181 protesting the Haymarket trial, 2:435 Shaw, Henry Wheeler. See Billings, Josh Shaw, Knowles, 2:868 Sheeler, Charles, 1:96, 361 Shelburne Essays (More), 2:600 Sheldon, Charles, 1:140, 232; 2:615; 3:968 Sheldon, Edward, 3:955 on ethnicity and marriage, 1:294 theater and, 3:1118 Shelley, Mary, 3:1015 “Shell of Sense, The” (O. H. Dunbar), 1:420 Shelton, Robert, 2:566 Shenandoah (Howard), 1:295; 3:1116, 1117 advertising poster, 3:1116 Shepherdess Guarding Her Flock (Millet), 1:288 Shepherd of the Hills, The (Wright), 1:138 Sheridan, Philip Henry, 1:259; 2:520, 521 George Custer and, 1:133 Sheriff, Mary, 3:941 “Sheriff of Siskyou, The” (Harte), 2:583–584 Sherlock Holmes (Gillette), 3:1115 Sherman, French and Company, 1:120 Sherman, John, 3:899 Sherman, Sarah Way, 1:290, 291 Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 2:746 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 1:259; 3:900 in Century Magazine, 1:213 Indian Wars and, 2:519–520, 521 on labor, 2:433 monument, 1:265 Sherman Antitrust Act, Roosevelt’s use of, 2:716; 3:1092 Sherwood, Robert, 2:461 Shillaber, B. P., 2:473 Shinn, Everett, 1:95 Shklovsky, Victor, 1:279 Shopkeeper’s Millennium (Johnson), 1:192 Shore, Elliott, 1:84 Shore Acres (Herne), 2:445 short stories, 3:1039–1046 encouraged by Saturday Evening Post, 1:349

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

newspaper syndicates and, 2:777–778 on same-sex relationships, 3:995 in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1025 “Shorty Stack, Pugilist” (Norris), 1:188–189 “Shotgun Episode, A” (Remington), 3:1188 Shreve, Anita, 1:200 Shubert brothers, 3:1116 Shuster, W. Morgan editor of Century, 1:215 “Siberia and the Exile System” (Kennan), 1:213 Sidney Lanier (Starke), 2:673 Sielke, Sabine, 3:1170 Sienkiewicz, Henryk, 1:397; 2:451 Sierra Club, 1:410 John Muir and, 2:735 Sievers, F. William, 1:265 “Significance of the Frontier in American History, The” (Turner), 1:81, 407–408; 3:1105–1106, 1178 “Signing the Pledge” (Harper), 3:1111 Sigourney, Lydia, 3:1111 Silber, Nina, 2:825 Silent Partner, The (Phelps), 1:195, 342–343; 2:675 Silent South, The (Cable), 2:544; 3:1167 Silver Pitchers (Alcott), 3:1111 “Simian Irishmen—St. Patrick’s Day 1867” (Nast), 2:532 Simmel, Georg, 1:62 Simmons, William J., 2:565 Simms, William Gilmore, 2:452 Simons, A. M., 3:1062 Simpson, Brooks, 2:826 Sims, George R., 2:740 Sinclair, Upton, 2:715 on Alice Hegan Rice, 1:222 attack on the commercial press, 2:550 on banking and finance, 1:132 Chicago and, 1:216, 248, 250 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Helicon Home Colony and, 2:596 Intercollegiate Socialist Society and, 2:858 on labor and inequity, 2:624 libraries and, 2:590 magazine contributions, 2:822 in the Masses, 2:601 as muckraker, 2:548 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and, 2:561 Spanish-American War and, 3:1074 Stephen Crane’s influence on, 3:967

T H R O U G H


Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:902 on urban police, 2:581 See also Jungle, The Sin Far, Sui, 1:103, 228, 251; 2:488, 710, 884 gender roles and, 2:492, 493 germ theory of disease and, 2:448 on intergenerational conflict, 2:492 on marriage, 1:293 on mixed race, 2:695, 711 San Francisco and, 3:1000 on violence against Chinese, 3:1168 See also Mrs. Spring Fragrance Singer, Isaac Merritt, 1:378 Singleton, Benjamin “Pap,” 2:688 broadsides advertising, 2:689 “Sing Song Woman, The” (Sin Far), 2:711 “Sioux Outbreak in South Dakota” (Remington), 3:1188 Siringo, Charles A. (Charlie), 2:584; 3:1193 Sister Carrie (Dreiser), 1:62; 2:558, 676; 3:1046–1051 on alcoholism, 1:3 censorship and, 2:874 characters as villagers, 3:1164 Chicago and, 1:250 Darwinism and, 1:320 on department stores, 2:676, 679 difficulty publishing, 1:414 on labor, 2:576 naturalism and, 2:747, 750 New Woman in, 1:379 New York and, 2:780 police and, 2:581, 582 popular music and, 2:728 on premarital sexual relations, 1:295 stage dancing in, 1:313 success and, 3:1095 on Tammany Hall, 2:855 tobacco in, 1:5 violence and, 3:1172 Sister Jane (Harris), 3:1150 “Sister Josepha” (Dunbar-Nelson), 2:768; 3:975, 1045 Sister of the Road (Reitman), 3:1139 “Sisters, The” (Lowell), 2:637 Sita and Sarita (Beaux), 1:94 Sitting Bull, 1:75, 133; 2:520; 3:1168, 1225 Sitting in Darkness (Bain), 2:829 Siwash stories (Fitch), 3:1084 Six-Gun Mystique, The (Cawelti), 3:1188 Six Songs Addressed to Mrs Proctor Smith (Dickinson), 2:729 Six Sunny Months (Tincker), 1:205 Six Trees (Eilkins), 2:447

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1323

INDEX

Sizemore, W. A., 2:688 Skeptic’s Dictionary, The (Todd), 3:917 Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., The (Irving), 2:682 travel literature and, 1:56 sketches, Ambrose Beirce and, 3:1103 Sketches of Southern Life (Harper), 2:544 Sketches of the Life of William Stuart, 2:813 Skinner, Otis, 3:1115 skyscrapers, 1:88 in Chicago, 1:215–216, 250 Slade, Henry, 3:1075 slang, 3:1051–1055 in O. Henry, 1:402 “Slave Auction, The” (Harper), 2:527 Slaveholding Indians, The (Abel), 2:457 Slave Mother, The—A Tale of Olivia” (Harper), 2:527 slave narratives, 1:112, 115; 3:955 slavery children of former slaves, 1:8 criticism in Connecticut Yankee, 1:280 effects of on southern society, 2:453 Frances E. W. Harper and, 2:526 Grace King and, 2:767 as metaphor in Reconstruction literature, 3:955 as setting and symbol in Reconstruction literature, 3:954 Ulysses S. Grant on, 2:826 Slavery in the United States (Ball), 1:280 slave songs in classical music, 2:724 Slave Songs of the United States (Allen, Ware, and Garrison), 1:386 Slayer of Souls, The (Chambers), 1:423 Sloan, Joan, 3:1063 Sloan, John, 1:94, 95 The Chap-Book and, 2:617 “Slob Murphy” (Sullivan), 2:783 Slogum House (Sandoz), 1:373 Slotkin, Richard, 3:1188, 1196 Smack (Burgess), 3:1128 Small Boy and Others, A (H. James), 1:117 smallpox, 1:336–337 Smalls, Robert, 1:253 small-town life, 1:656–657 interest in, 1:345 See also village dwellers Smart Set (magazine), 1:47; 2:599, 817, 819 authors and, 2:820 cover, 2:599 editors at, 2:820 Smedley, Agnes, 2:815 Smedley, W. T., 3:1024 Smiley, Jane, 1:22

1324

Smith, Azariah, 2:464 Smith, Carl, 1:325 Smith, Charles H. See Arp, Bill Smith, Dan, 1:402 Smith, F. Hopkins, 3:1025 Smith, Francis S., 1:178 Smith, G. A., 3:918 Smith, G. E. Kidder, 1:90 Smith, Henry Nash, 1:193; 3:1191, 1196 on Huckleberry Finn, 1:21 Smith, Johnston. See Crane, Stephen Smith, Joseph, 2:699 Smith, Ormond G., 2:738 Smith, Page, 3:1061, 1182–1183 Smith, Roswell, 1:212, 213 Smith, Susan Belasco, 2:816 Smith, Thomas R., 1:215 Smith, William Banjamin, 2:447 Smith College, 1:354, 391 Smith’s Magazine, 1:139 Smithson, James, 2:718 Smithsonian Institution, 1:364; 2:717 Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery (Washington, D.C.), 1:88 Smoot, Reed, 2:701 Snap the Whip (Homer), 1:92 “Snow Man, The” (Stevens), 2:853 Snyder, W. P., 3:1076 social classes Charlotte Perkins Gilman and, 3:1206 class distinctions, 1:397 dance and, 1:312 journalism and cross-class adventures, 2:549 marriage and advancement, 1:293 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on, 2:760 nervousness and, 2:446 success and, 3:1094 social commentary in westerns, 3:1193 social conditions. See environment Social Construction of American Realism, The (Kaplan), 2:753 social control, Thorstein Veblen on, 3:1124 Social Creed of the Churches, 1:237 social dance, 1:313–314 Social Darwinism, 1:319; 3:1055–1060 business competition and, 2:571 Charlotte Perkins Gilman on, 3:1204 Edith Wharton and, 2:467 expansionism and, 1:74; 3:1178 Lochner v. New York and, 2:622 mechanistic death and, 1:28 pseudoscience and, 3:920 success and, 3:1094 Thorstein Veblen and, 3:1122

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

view of the poor, 2:882 wealth and, 3:1181 Social Darwinism in American Thought (Hofstadter), 3:1181 Social Democratic Party, 2:434; 3:1061 Social Diseases and Marriage (Morrow), 2:449 Social Gospel movement, 1:234, 236–237; 2:713; 3:968, 1061 reform and, 3:967 social history, Earle and, 2:457 socialism, 3:1060–1064 Appeal to Reason and, 1:83 Fabian, 3:1205 Floyd Dell and, 2:698 Jack London and, 2:858 Jews and, 2:539 Julius Augustus Wayland and, 1:84 in The Jungle, 2:555 Socialism and America (Howe), 3:1061 socialist communities, 3:1060 Socialist Labor Party, 3:1061 socialist organizations, 3:1060–1061 Socialist Party, 2:573, 856; 3:1061 Sinclair Lewis in, 2:658 Upton Sinclair in, 2:553 women’s suffrage and, 3:1211 socialized housekeeping, 3:1205 social purity movement, 3:1037 social reform movement photography and, 2:840 women writers and, 2:713 Social Register, 3:1184 Social Salvation (Gladden), 1:236 social sciences, history and, 2:460 social welfare state, 3:1099 society balls, 1:314 Society for Ethical Culture, 1:233 Society for the Suppression of Vice, 1:181; 3:1036 Society of American Artists, 1:92 Society of American Indians, 2:515, 516 Society of Christian Socialists, 3:1061 sociological fiction as best-seller, 1:140 sociology economic, 1:191 prostitution and, 3:914 Sod and Stubble (Ise), 1:374 Soderberg, Susan Cooke, 1:265 Soitos, Stephen F., 2:741 Solberg, S. E., 2:711 Soldiers of Fortune (Davis), 1:78, 138 sports metaphors in, 3:1082 Soldiers’ Pay (Faulkner), 3:1222 Sole Survivor, A (Bierce), 1:260 Solidarity (newspaper), 3:1062 Sollors, Werner, 1:103, 105; 2:490 Solomon, Eric, 3:961 Somebody’s Neighbors (Cooke), 3:1040


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

“Some Conditions of Progress in Philosophy” (Lovejoy), 2:838 “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities” (Peirce), 3:889 Some Imagist Poets (Lowell, ed.), 2:485 “Some Little Heathens” (Hartnell), 2:710 Some Mistakes of Moses (Ingersoll), 1:33 Some Old Puritan Love-Letters—John and Margaret Winthrop— 1618–1638 (Twichell, ed.), 2:594 “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism” (Twain), 3:1064–1067 Song, Min, 2:711 “Song at Sunset” (Whitman), 1:30 “Song of Myself” (Whitman), 1:312; 2:790 Song of Solomon (Morrison), 3:1150 “Song of the Centennial” (Miller), 1:209–210 “Song of the Exposition” (Whitman), 1:209 Song of the Lark, The (Cather), 1:368 on community dances, 1:314–315 museum as place of spiritual enlightenment, 2:720 music and, 2:728 “Song of the Open Road, The” (Whitman), 1:173 Song of the Sirens, The (White), 1:423 Song of the South (film; Disney), 2:772; 3:1147 songs, hobo, 3:1138–1139 Songs from Vagabondia (Carman and Hovey), 1:174–175 Songs of Farewell (Delius), 2:729 Songs of Gold Mountain, 1:229 Songs of the Average Man (Foss), 2:859–860 Songs of the Cowboys (Thorp), 1:389 Songs of the Golden Gate (Coolbrith), 3:999 songwriting of James Weldon Johnson, 1:120 “Sonnet” (Robinson), 1:416 Sonnets from the Patagonian (Evans) aestheticism and, 1:25 Sonntag, William Louis Theodore Dreiser on, 1:87 “Son of the Gods, A” (Bierce), 3:1104 Son of the Middle Border, A (Garland), 1:374; 2:659, 660 Son of the Wolf, The (London), 1:139; 3:1182 Sons and Lovers (Lawrence), 2:696 “Sophistication” (Anderson), 3:1198

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Sophocles’ influence on Herman Melville, 1:147 Sorceress, The (Goldfaden), 2:542 Sorosis Club, 1:272 Sothern, E. H., 3:1120 Soul of an Immigrant, The (Panunzio), 1:104; 2:488 Soul of the Indian, The (Eastman), 1:371; 2:517; 3:956 Souls of Black Folk, The (Du Bois), 1:115, 165, 256; 2:544, 566; 3:1067–1070 Negro spirituals and, 2:728 on political economy of slavery, 3:954 on politics, 2:854 on problem of the color line, 2:693 reform and, 3:969 speeches included in, 2:794 Sound and the Fury, The (Faulkner), 1:73 Sour Grapes (Williams), 2:638 Sousa, John Philip, 2:726, 728 South, the black migration within, 2:690–691 lynching in, 2:630 regionalist writers from, 3:975 See also New South “South as a Field for Fiction, The” (Tourgée), 3:930 South Atlantic Quarterly, 1:354 South Dakota statehood, 1:74 Southern Horrors (Wells-Barnett), 3:957, 1167 Southern writers, 1:51 Scribner’s Monthly and, 1:212 South Sea Idyls (Stoddard), 3:997 Southwest, the cliff dwellings, 1:364 ethnology and, 1:364 writing and, 1:367–368; 3:976 Southworth, E. D. E. N. (Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte), 1:339; 2:615 in library collections, 2:590 published in story papers, 2:609 Sowing and Reaping (Harper), 1:2; 3:1113 Spanish-American War, 1:71, 77–78; 3:1070–1074, 1071, 1166 fiction and, 2:502–503; 3:1179 journalists and, 3:1178 origin of, 2:712–713 Spanish War, The (O’Toole), 3:1072 Spaulding, Edward Gleason, 2:837 Spear, John Murray, 1:403 Specimen Days and Collect (Whitman), 1:113–114, 262; 3:982 on railroads, 3:1143

T H R O U G H


Spectator (periodical), 2:647 Spectra literary hoax (1916), 3:1006 speed and perceptions of self and world, 3:1008 Spencer, Herbert, 1:231, 319; 2:496; 3:1019, 1056 influence on Frank Norris, 2:750 influence on Mark Twain, 3:1010 John Fiske on, 2:457 term “agnosticism” and, 1:31 Theodore Dreiser and, 3:1048 Spies, August, 1:69, 200; 2:432, 434, 435 Spiller, Robert E., 2:460 Spingarn, Joel Elias, 2:601 spinsterhood, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on, 2:761, 764 Spirit of the Border, The (Grey), 1:411 Spirit of the Ghetto, The (Hapgood), 2:540, 550 Spirits & White (Cram), 1:421 spiritualism, 3:918, 1075–1079 spirit mediums, 3:918, 922 Spiritual Materializations: The Spirit Body (Snyder), 3:1076 Splendid, Idle Forties, The (Atherton), 3:1002 Spoilers, The (Beach), 1:76 Spoil of Office, A (Garland), 2:856 Spoon River Anthology (Masters), 3:1163–1164 death and, 1:27–28 on small-town life, 2:657 Sport of the Gods, The (Dunbar), 2:886 on adolescence, 1:11 on migration of blacks, 2:688 on New York City, 1:247; 2:781 on police, 2:582 popular music and, 2:728 as race novel, 3:932 sports, 3:1079–1086 sports fiction, 1:188; 3:1082–1083 in dime novels, 1:323 Spring, Elizabeth, 1:393 Spring and All (Williams), 2:638 Springfield Republican, 2:804 Sproat, John G., 2:855 Spy, The (Cooper), 2:452 “Squadron A’s Games” (Remington), 3:1188 square dancing, 1:312 Squatter and the Don, The (Ruiz de Burton), 2:498; 3:1086–1089 Squatter Sovereignty (Harrigan), 2:532 Squaw Man, The (Royle), 3:1118 stage dancing, 1:313 Staiger, Janet, 2:708

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1325

INDEX

Stallings, Laurence, 3:1221 Stallman, R. W., 2:655 on The Red Badge of Courage, 3:962 Stalwarts. See Republican Party Standard Oil Company, 2:569, 715; 3:964 Standard Oil Trust, 2:713 Standard Written English, 3:1053 Standing Bear, Chief, 2:515; 3:1168 Standing Bear, Luther (Ota Kte or Plenty Kill), 1:75; 3:1226 Standish, Burt L., 1:188, 222, 323 as dime novelist, 2:612 sports fiction and, 3:1083 Stanford, Leland, 3:1183 Stansell, Christine, 3:1062 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1:380; 3:1200 atheism of, 1:33 autobiography, 1:117 bloomers and, 1:381 on divorce, 1:299 free love and, 1:404 The Revolution and, 2:713 temperance and, 3:1108 “Star in the Valley, The” (Murfree), 2:524, 525 Starke, Aubrey Harrison, 2:671, 673 Starr, Ellen Gates, 1:218 Starrett, Vincent, 3:1102 Star Rover, The (London), 2:815 State, War, and Navy Building (Washington, D.C.), 1:88 Station for Experimental Evolution (Cold Spring Harbor, New York), 3:1057 statism, 3:968 steamships, 3:1146 Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 1:413, 414 Steel, William Gladstone, 2:811 Steele, E. L. G., 3:1103 Steele, J. Dorman, 3:1019 steel industry, 2:713 Steerage, The (Stieglitz), 2:489 Steffens, Lincoln, 2:431 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 Carmel-by-the-Sea and, 2:596 on cities, 1:249, 250 Jews and, 2:540 on Mabel Dodge Luhan salon, 1:272 McClure’s Magazine and, 2:644 Mexican Revolution and, 2:683, 686 as muckraker, 2:548, 555, 644–645, 714 on political corruption, 1:236 on St. Louis, 1:250–251 Stegner, Wallace, 1:373

1326

Steichen, Edward, 2:841 Stein, Gertrude, 1:96, 354 Alfred Stieglitz and, 2:842 Camera Work and, 2:841 influence of William James on, 1:69 influence on Sherwood Anderson, 3:1198 the Little Review and, 2:621 on marriage, 1:300 modernism and, 2:551 newspapers headlines and, 2:549 in Paris, 2:606 on Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 1:113; 2:825 psychology and, 3:924–925 salon of, 2:607 short story and, 3:1045 Stein, William Bysshe, 3:961–962 Steinbeck, John, 2:624 influence of Sherwood Anderson on, 3:1198 on tramps, 3:1139 Steinberg, Ted, 1:325, 329, 331 Steiner, Edward A., 1:104 Steiner, Rudolf, 3:918 Stella, Joseph, 1:96 Stelzle, Charles, 1:237 Stemper, Joseph, 3:1139 Stenhouse, Mrs., 2:701 Stepan, Nancy Leys, 2:488 Stephen, Leslie, 1:305 term “agnosticism” and, 1:31 Stephen Crane (Beer), 2:655 Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism (Nagel), 3:962 Stephens, Ann Sophia, 1:321 Stephens, Uriah, 2:571 Stephenson, David, 2:566 “Stepmother, The” (Cleary), 2:532 stereotype printing plates, 1:178 Sterling, Andrew B., 3:993 Sterling, George, 3:1027 agnosticism, 1:34 Carmel-by-the-Sea and, 2:596 Jack London’s friendship with, 2:606 Sterne, Maurice, 2:597 Sterngrass, Jon, 3:977 Stetson, Charles Walter, 3:1227, 1229 Steunenberg, Frank, 3:1061 Stevens, Thaddeus, 2:562 Stevens, Thomas, 3:1144 Stevens, Wallace, 2:625 dance aesthetics and, 1:313 influence of William James on, 1:69 the Little Review and, 2:621 Poetry and, 2:620, 850, 851, 853 Stevenson, James, 1:364 Stevenson, Matilda, 1:364, 365

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Stevenson, Robert Louis on Huckleberry Finn, 1:19 narcotics in writings of, 1:4 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Stewart, Dugald, 1:281; 2:833 Stewart, James Brewer, 3:933–934 Stickley, Gustave, 1:98 arts and crafts living room, 1:99 Stickney, Joseph Trumbull, 3:1184 genteel tradition and, 1:413 Stieglitz, Alfred, 1:96; 2:840, 841, 842 promotion of anarchist artists, 1:69 The Steerage, 2:489 Stillman, James, 3:1181 Stockton, Frank R. (Francis Richard), 1:421; 2:820 humor and, 2:475 Richard Watson Gilder as mentor to, 1:214 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 short story and, 3:1039 stockyards in Chicago, 1:216, 248 Stoddard, Charles Warren Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 on same-sex love, 3:997 San Francisco and, 3:999 Stoddard, Lothrop, 1:73 Stoddard, Richard Henry, 1:413, 414 Stoddard, Seneca Ray, 2:841 Stoic, The (Dreiser), 1:132 stoicism, Ambrose Bierce and, 3:1102 Stomach Club (Paris), 3:1064 Stone, Herbert Stuart, 2:617 Stone, Kate, 1:262 Stone, Lucy, 1:380; 3:1208, 1209 Woman’s Journal and, 3:1200, 1201 Stone, William L., 2:522 Stone & Kimball, 1:179; 2:617 Stones of Venice, The (Ruskin), 1:97 “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (Frost), 1:30; 2:625, 636 Storey, Moorfield, 1:186 Stories of a Western Town (Thanet), 3:974, 1025 “Stories Three” (Harte), 3:1006 Story, William Wetmore, 1:91 as expatriate, 1:86 Story about “Meg,” The (Talmage), 3:968 Story of a Bad Boy, The (Aldrich), 1:12, 16 sports in, 3:1082 Story of a Country Town, The (Howe), 1:657; 3:974, 1162 on adolescence, 1:10


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

“Story of a Good Little Boy, The” (Twain), 1:221; 3:1095 “Story of a Great Monopoly” (Lloyd), 1:109 Story of a Life, The (Hartland), 3:997 “Story of an Hour, The” (Chopin), 1:296; 3:1043 “Story of Aqua Pura, The” (White), 1:374 Story of Avis, The (Phelps), 1:341; 3:905 “Story of a Year, The” (H. James), 3:1041 “Story of Iso, The” (Sin Far), 2:493 “Story of Mamie Grant, the ChildMissionary, The” (Twain), 3:1067 Story of Mary MacLane, by Herself, The, 3:997 Story of My Life, The (Keller), 1:117, 118 Story of My Life and Work, The (Washington), 3:1152 “Story of One White Woman Who Married a Chinese” (Sin Far), 2:711 Story of Sevenoaks, The (Holland), 1:193, 213 “Story of the Good Little Boy, The” (Twain), 1:10, 221 “Story of the Highlands, A” (White), 1:374 Story of the Normans, The (Jewett), 1:289 “Story of the War, A” (Harris), 2:771 story papers, 2:609, 817 Stover at Yale (Johnson), 3:1082, 1084 This Side of Paradise compared to, 3:1127 Stowe, Charles Edward, 1:152 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1:167; 3:1033 on alcoholism, 1:2 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:109; 2:463 Charlotte Perkins Gilman and, 3:1227 domestic fiction and, 2:470 influence of James Russell Lowell on, 3:1040 national consciousness of death of, 1:52 at Nook Farm, 2:593 regionalism, 1:51 temperance imagery and, 3:1109 on Victoria Woodhull, 1:406 See also Uncle Tom’s Cabin; We and Our Neighbors Strachey, Lytton, 1:151 Strand, Paul, 2:841, 843

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

“Strange Experience of Alkali Dick, The” (Harte), 3:1195 Stratemeyer, Edward L., 1:12, 222; 3:1093 Spanish-American War and, 1:79 Stratemeyer Literary Syndicate, 1:12, 222; 3:1093 Stratton-Porter, Gene, 1:222 Strauss, Juliet, 1:345, 347 Street, Francis Scott, 1:178 Street & Smith, 2:609; 3:1083 dime novels and, 1:322; 2:610 “Strength of the Weak, The” (Johnson), 3:1084 Strenuous Life, The (Roosevelt), 3:1089–1092 Strickland, Arvarh, 2:458 Strictly Business (O. Henry), 1:401 Strike, The (Koehler), 1:94 Strike of Millionaires against Miners, A (Lloyd), 2:871 strikes, 2:571 for eight-hour day, 2:571 Homestead strike (1892), 2:572, 871; 3:964, 1171 in New Orleans, 2:769 Paterson Strike Pageant (1913), 3:1063 Pullman strike (1894), 3:572, 900, 1171 Railroad Strike (1877), 2:432–433 violence and, 3:1171–1172 “Strivings of the Negro People” (Du Bois), 1:186 Stroheim, Erich von, 1:160 Strong, Josiah, 1:71, 236 opposition to immigration, 2:883 Strongheart (W. C. De Mille), 1:294–295 Strouse, Isaac, 1:345 Struggles and Triumphs (Barnum). See Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself Strunsky, Anna, 3:1027 Stuart, Ruth McEnery, 2:446, 768 “Studies in Contemporary Criticism” (Eliot), 2:602 Studies in the Psychology of Sex (Ellis), 1:319 Studs Lonigan Trilogy (Farrell), 2:750 Study of History (Toynbee), 2:460 Study of Siouan Cults (Dorsey), 1:386 Study of Sociology, The (Spencer), 3:1020 stump speeches, 2:792 “Stupendous Procession, The” (Twain), 2:830 Sturgis, Howard, 2:468 Sturgis, Russell, 3:1024

T H R O U G H


subscription publication, 1:180; 2:612 The Jungle, 2:553 Mark Twain and, 1:15–16, 180; 2:612 Picturesque America, 1:180 Subterranean Brotherhood, The (Hawthorne), 2:815 success, 3:1092–1100 linked to idea of evolution, 1:319 Success and Its Achievers (Thayer), 3:1096, 1097 Successful Men of Today and What They Say of Success (Crafts), 3:1032 Successward (Bok), 3:1032 suffrage movement. See women’s suffrage Sugimoto, Etsu, 2:492–493 Sui Sin Far/Edith Maude Eaton (White-Parks), 2:711 “Suitable Surroundings, The” (Bierce), 3:1103, 1104–1105 Sula (Morrison), 3:1150 Sullivan, Arthur, 1:173; 3:1119 Sullivan, James P., 1:260 Sullivan, James W., 2:532, 783 Sullivan, John L., 1:188, 189 Sullivan, Louis, 1:216; 3:1215 Chicago School and, 1:88–89 on skyscraper, 1:88 Sullivan, Mark, 2:644 Summer (Wharton), 1:10; 2:676 on female adolescents, 1:10 Summer in Arcady (Allen), 2:647 Summins, Maria Susanna, 1:339 Sumner, Charles, 2:562 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:106 as speaker, 2:585 Sumner, William Graham, 1:231; 3:1122, 1181 Social Darwinism and, 3:1094 Sumurun (Reinhardt), 3:1120 Sun (newspaper), 2:599 Sun Also Rises, The (Hemingway), 3:1128 Sun Dance Opera, The (Zitkala-Sˇa and Hanson), 2:516 Sunday, Billy, 1:234 “Sunday Morning” (Stevens), 2:625, 853 Sunday Morning in the South, A (Johnson), 2:566 Sunday schools, 2:883 fiction lampooned by Mark Twain, 3:1095 publications, 1:221 Sundquist, Eric, 2:682 on Charles W. Chesnutt, 1:277 “Sunrise” (Lanier), 2:670

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1327

INDEX

supernatural writing East Coast school, 1:419–421 West Coast school, 1:418–419 Suppressed Desires (Cook and Glaspell), 2:595; 3:1121 Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870, The (Du Bois), 1:164; 2:458; 3:1067 Supreme Court business and, 2:622 Civil Rights Act (1875) and, 3:1167 death penalty and, 1:199–200 dissolution of Standard Oil and, 2:715 status of married women and, 1:381 support of segregation, 2:544 survival of the fittest, 3:1171 Jack London on, 1:76 Susan Lenox (Phillips) censorship and, 2:874 on prostitution, 3:916 Susman, Walter, 3:1033 Swallow Barn (Kennedy), 3:1081 Sward, Robert, 2:607 Sweatshop Poets, 2:541 sweatshops Jews and, 2:538 labor and, 2:576 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1:289 Sweeney, Charles, 1:360 Sweeney among the Nightingales (T. S. Eliot), 3:1029 Sweet, Henry, 1:48 Sweet Cicely (Holley), 3:1111 Sweet Clover (Burnham), 3:1214 Swift, Charles H., 2:851 Swift, Morrison, 1:69 symbolism cultural symbols invented by Thomas Nast, 2:427, 682 of guns, 3:1187 Jack Johnson as symbol of black pride, 1:190 of the ocean, 1:320 of Reconstruction, 3:956 sexual, 3:1038 of slavery, 3:954 on the tramp, 3:1139–1140 symbolists aestheticism and, 1:24 influence on imagism, 2:486 Symonds, John Addington, 3:996 sympathy as device and idea in Theodore Dreiser, 3:1048 “Symphony, The” (Lanier), 2:671 Szerbula, Guy, 3:1215 Szold, Henrietta, 2:539

1328

T Taber, Henry Parson, 2:619 Taft, Lorado, 1:216 Taft, Oklahoma, 2:690 Taft, William Howard, 3:902 reform and, 3:968 World War I and, 3:1172 Tagore, Rabindranath, 2:620, 819, 851 Taine, Hippolyte, 3:1010 Talbot, Winthrop, 1:102 talented tenth, concept of the, 1:165, 256; 3:932 Tale of the City Room (Jordan), 2:551 Tale of Two Nations, A (Harvey), 3:901 Tales of a Wayside Inn (Longfellow), 2:861 Tales of Men and Ghosts (Wharton), 1:420 Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (Bierce), 1:202, 418; 3:1043, 1101–1105 possible influence on Stephen Crane, 3:959 Tales of the Fish Patrol (London), 2:710 Tales of the North American Indians (Thompson), 1:386 Talks to Teachers (W. James), 3:892 Tallmadge, John, 2:756 “Tall Office Building Artistically Considered, The” (Sullivan), 1:88 tall tales and regional writers, 1:388 Talmage, Thomas DeWitt, 2:651, 655; 3:968 “Talma Gordon” (Hopkins), 2:741 Tammany Hall, 1:247; 2:855 cartoons by Thomas Nast, 2:481, 532 Tanner, Henry Ossawa, 1:92 The Banjo Lesson, 1:168 “Tantramar Revisited” (Roberts), 2:673 Taos, 2:597 Society of Artists, 1:94 Tar Baby (Morrison), 3:1150 Tarbell, Ida M., 2:431, 646 biography and, 1:156 McClure’s Magazine and, 2:644 as muckraker, 1:348; 2:548, 555, 714, 715 Tarkington, Booth, 1:192 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 as Midwest regional writers, 3:974 on village life, 3:1164 Viola Roseboro’ and, 2:645 Tarzan of the Apes (Burroughs), 3:1105–1108

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

“Tarzan Theme, The” (Burroughs), 3:1107 Tate, Allen New Criticism and, 2:602 Poetry and, 2:852 Tattered Tom (Alger), 3:1094 Tauchnitz, Bernhard, 2:842 Tavern Club (Boston), 1:270–271 Taylor, Bayard, 2:672, 691; 3:995 as genteel poet, 1:413, 414 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:208–209 travel writing, 1:56; 3:1136 Taylor, Buck, 3:1196 Taylor, C. Jay, 2:481 Taylor, Charles, 2:841 Taylor, Frederick W., 2:572, 674; 3:1008 Taylor, Susie King, 1:261 Taylor, Tom, 1:323 Taylor, W. L., 3:1024 Taylorism, 2:572, 674 teachers in fiction, 1:351 Irish, 2:529 professionalization of, 1:351; 3:905 “Tears” (Reese), 2:863 Tebbel, John, 2:608, 615 technology. See science and technology Teed, Cyrus Reed, 3:918 telegraph and nonlinear news, 3:906 telepathy, 3:918 telephone, 3:1008 Tell It All (Mrs. Stenhouse), 2:701 temperance, 1:2, 393; 3:1108–1114 Frances E. W. Harper and, 2:527 Stephen Crane’s family and, 3:962 Temperance Town, A (Hoyt), 3:1119 Tempers, The (Williams), 2:638 Ten Days That Shook the World (Reed), 2:686; 3:1221 Tendencies in Modern Poetry (Lowell), 2:485 Tender Buttons (Stein), 3:924 Tenement Tales of New York (Sullivan), 2:532, 783 “Ten Greatest Yalies That Never Were, The” (Branch), 1:222 “Tennessee’s Partner” (Harte), 3:1190 Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (Arthur), 3:1109 Tenting on the Plains (E. B. Custer), 2:522 “Tenzone” (Pound), 2:866 “Terminus” (Emerson), 1:30 Terra Gotta Guide, The (Stone & Kimball), 2:617 Terrell, Mary Church, 3:398


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Territorial Enterprise (newspaper), 1:347; 3:981 territories, U.S. See U.S. territories Terry, Alfred, 1:134 Terry, Edward Aloysius, 1:310 Texas Alliance, 2:868 Texas Steer, A (Hoyt), 3:1119 textbook publishing, 1:176 emergence of standard in, 1:352 Harper & Brothers, 2:425, 426 Thanet, Octave, 2:820; 3:974 lesbian stories and, 3:995 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 “Thar’s More in the Man than Thar Is in the Land” (Lanier), 2:671 That Lass o’ Lowries (Burnett), 1:213 “That We Might All Be Rich” (George), 3:1057 Thaxter, Celia Laighton, 3:973 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 nature writing and, 2:759 Thayer, Scofield, 2:819 Thayer, Webster, 2:561 Thayer, William Makepeace, 3:1096 success and, 3:1094, 1097 Thayer, William Roscoe biography and, 1:150, 156 term “epidermism” and, 3:949 theater, 3:1114–1122 anti-lynching plays, 2:566 experimental theater in Greenwich Village, 2:595 historical themes in, 2:461 in New Orleans, 2:769 slavery in Reconstruction, 3:955 Tom troupes, 3:955 Yiddish, 2:541–542 theater groups and anarchists, 1:69 Theatrical Syndicate, 3:1116 Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston), 3:1150 Their Pilgrimage (Warner), 3:979 Their Wedding Journey (Howells), 2:440–441; 3:948 use of French accent in, 3:1052 Theodore Dreiser (Matthiessen), 1:415 theology, 1:233–234 Theology for the Social Gospel, A (Rauschenbusch), 1:234 Theology of an Evolutionist, The (Abbott), 3:1019 Theory of Business Enterprise, The (Veblen), 3:1126 “Theory of Population, Deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility, A” (Spencer), 3:1056 Theory of the Leisure Class, The (Veblen), 2:675; 3:1049, 1096, 1122–1127, 1185–1186

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Theosophical Society, 3:1077 theosophy, 3:918 thermodynamics, coinage of the term, 3:921 “They Was Just Niggers” (Fedo), 2:6302:630 They Who Knock at Our Gates (Antin), 1:104; 2:488, 490 “Thinker, The” (Anderson), 3:1198–1199 Third Violet, The (Crane), 1:174 “Thirteen Pragmatisms” (Lovejoy), 2:838 Thirteenth Amendment, 2:847; 3:953 Thirty Years a Detective (Pinkerton), 3:1055 This Incomparable Land (Lyon), 2:754 This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald), 1:6; 3:1127–1131 Catholicism and, 1:206 dust jacket illustration of the 1921 edition, 3:1128 on education, 1:352 on jazz age, 1:315 on labor, 2:558 on Princeton, 1:354 sports and, 3:1084 World War I and, 3:1220 Thomas, Augustus, 3:1117–1118 Civil War and, 3:956 Thomas, Ronald R., 2:741 Thomashevsky, Boris, 2:542 Thomas Mellon and His Times (Mellon), 3:1032 Thompson, Denman, 3:1115 Thompson, Maurice American Press Association and, 2:773 American Revolution romance and, 2:454 moral bias and, 3:949 Thompson, Stith, 1:386, 389 Thompson, William Tappan, 1:16; 3:1147 Thomson, James, 3:1018 Thomson, Virgil, 2:607 Thomson, William (Lord Kelvin), 3:921, 1078 Thoreau, Henry David, 3:984 anarchism and, 1:66 influence on vagabond poets, 1:173 nature writing and, 2:755 on parks and wilderness preservation, 2:807, 808 on walking, 3:1136 Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist (Channing), 1:152 Thorne, Jack. See Fulton, David Bryant Thornton, Lawrence, 1:126

T H R O U G H


Thorp, N. Howard “Jack,” 1:389 Thorp, Willard, 1:183 Thorstein Veblen (Jorgensen and Jorgensen), 3:1125 Thorstein Veblen and His America (Dorfman), 3:1125 “Thoughts on War” (Galsworthy), 3:1026 Thrasher, Max Bennett, 3:1152 Three Lives (Stein), 1:300; 3:924, 1045 Three Nocturnes (R. V. Williams), 2:729 Three of Us, The (Crothers), 3:1118 Three Soldiers (Dos Passos), 3:1221 Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise (Stevens), 2:853 “Three Vagabonds of Trinidad” (Harte), 3:975 criticism of imperialism, 3:1193 Three Weeks (Glyn), 2:874 Three Women (Wilcox), 2:864–865 Throckmorton, Cleon, 1:363 Through One Administration (Burnett), 1:214 Through the Eye of the Needle (Howells), 1:232; 3:897, 1215 Thurber, James, 2:477 Thurman, Allen, 2:846 Tibawi, A. L., 2:796 Tibbles, Thomas, 2:515 Ticket of Leave Man, The (Taylor), 1:323 Ticknor and Fields, 2:465 Tietze, Thomas R., 3:1029 Tiffany, Louis Comfort, 1:378 Tiffany and Company, 1:378 Tilden, Samuel, 3:898 Tilden-Hayes compromise of 1877, 3:898–899, 934 Tillotson, William Frederic, 2:774 Tillotson’s Newspaper Fiction Bureau, 2:774 Tilman, Rick, 3:1124 Tilzer, Harry von, 2:725 timber, 3:984 Time Machine, The (Wells), 3:921 Tincker, Mary Agnes, 1:205 Tin Pan Alley, 2:725 Tip Top Weekly, 3:1083 Titan, The (Dreiser), 1:132, 195 Irish character in, 2:533 naturalism and, 2:750 Titanic (ship), 1:55, 326, 329 Titchener, Edward, 3:923, 924 Tiverton Tales (Brown), 3:973 tobacco, 1:5–6. See also addiction Tobenkin, Elias, 2:541 “To Build a Fire” (London), 2:691 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 2:885, 886 on America as a nation of joiners, 1:267

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1329

INDEX

Tocqueville, Alexis de (continued) on American prison system, 2:813 on individualism, 2:633 on racial prejudice in the United States, 2:543 Todd, Robert, 3:917 Todorov, Tzvetan, 1:420 Tog (newspaper), 2:541 To Have and to Hold (Johnston), 1:137 Atlantic Magazine and, 1:110 Toinette (Tourgée), 2:693 Toklas, Alice B., 2:607 Told by Uncle Remus: New Stories of the Old Plantation (Harris), 1:386 “Told in the Drooling Ward” (London), 3:925 Toll, William, 3:936, 937 Tolstoy, Leo influence on Stephen Crane, 3:959 influence on W. D. Howells, 2:438 realism and, 3:943 on World’s Columbian Exposition, 1:211 Tom Brown’s School Days (Hughes), 1:323 Tompkins, and Other Folks (Deming), 3:973 Tompkins, Jane, 1:293, 338, 339; 3:1188 Tom Sawyer, Detective (Twain), 2:741 Tomsich, John, 1:413, 416 Tom Swift series, 1:12, 222 Tonie (Roman), 2:769 “Tony’s Wife” (Dunbar-Nelson), 1:297; 2:768 Tooker, L. Frank, 2:819 Top-Notch (magazine), 3:1083 Topping, Gary, 3:1105, 1106 Torrent and the Night Before, The (Robinson), 2:635, 662 Torrey, Bradford, 2:757 “To Science” (Sterling), 1:34 Toth, Emily, 1:124, 127 “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (Twain), 2:501–502, 829, 830; 3:901 “To the White Fiends” (McKay), 2:629 Touchstone, The (Wharton), 1:268; 2:468 Toughest Indian in the World, The (Alexie), 1:369 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 2:617 Tourgée, Albion W., 1:167–168, 276; 2:693 business novel and, 1:195 on Ku Klux Klan, 2:564, 631 labor crisis and, 2:574 Plessy v. Ferguson and, 1:256; 2:847, 848

1330

Reconstruction and, 3:930, 956, 1167 tourism, 3:1131–1135 “‘Tournament’ in A.D. 1870, The” (Twain), 1:279 Tour of the Prairies, A (Irving), 3:1190 Tousey, Frank, 1:323 dime novels and, 1:322 science fiction and, 1:324 Tousey, Sinclair, 2:611 Toward the Unknown Region (R. V. Williams), 2:729 Town down the River, The (Robinson), 2:635 “Town Poor, The” (Jewett), 3:972 Townsend, Edward W., 2:651 Toynbee, Arnold, 2:460 Trachtenberg, Alan, 2:569; 3:1180–1181, 1182 on A Hazard of New Fortunes, 2:442 on World’s Columbian Exposition, 3:1214 tract societies and the poor, 2:883 trademarks, 2:677 trade publishing, 1:176, 177 Harper & Brothers and, 2:425 Houghton Mifflin and, 2:463, 466 “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (Eliot), 2:627 Traffic in Souls (film), 2:708 Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, The (Twain) on bank failures, 1:129 cross-dressing and, 1:303 detective in, 2:741 humor and satire in, 3:1005 mulatto characters in, 2:693 race and, 1:169; 2:544–545; 3:930 satire of temperance meeting in, 3:1113 village life and, 3:1163 Yale and, 1:354 tragicomedy, The Ambassadors as, 1:42–43 Train, George Francis, 3:1200 Traitor, The (Dixon), 1:167; 2:630 “Tramp, The” (speech; London), 3:1138 Tramp Abroad, A (Twain), 2:593; 3:1133, 1183 on food in Europe, 1:391 on German opera, 2:728 photography and, 2:841 tramp acts, 3:1139 tramps and hobos, 3:1135–1141 The Tramp Hang-Out, 3:1137 Transatlantic Sketches (H. James), 3:1134 transcendentalism

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

academia and, 2:834 influence on naturalism, 2:751 “Transferred Ghost, The” (Stockton), 1:421 Transformation of American Law, The (Horwitz), 2:557 translations copyright and, 1:284 pornography and, 2:873 “Trans-National America” (Bourne), 3:908 transportation, 3:1141–1146 periodicals and, 2:817 unified cultural awareness and, 1:50 transvestitism as distinguished from cross-dressing, 1:301 travel lecturing and, 2:587 See also Americans abroad Traveler from Altruria, A (Howells), 2:442; 3:897, 924, 1156, 1157 on corruption of middle-class values, 3:966 socialism and, 3:1063 as utopia, 1:233 travel writing, 1:56; 3:1131–1135 Harper & Brothers as publisher of, 2:426 by Henry James, 1:61–62 by Mark Twain, 1:15 realism and, 3:947 in Scribner’s Magazine, 3:1025 on the West, 3:1190 “Travis Hallett’s Half-Back” (Norris), 3:1082, 1084 “Treasure of Yosemite, The” (Muir), 2:811 Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore (Botkin), 1:390 treaties with Indian nations, 2:509, 518 Treatise on the Gods (Mencken), 1:34 Trent, William P., 1:354 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (1911), 1:326, 329, 378; 2:538; 3:964 Tribute to Jack Johnson, A (Davis), 1:190 Tri-Cities Workers’ Magazine, 2:698 Trifles (Glaspell), 2:595; 3:1121 Trilby (Du Maurier), 1:174; 2:428, 431 Trilling, Lionel, 1:21 Trilogy of Wheat (Norris), 2:499, 749 Trinity Church (Boston), 1:88 Trip to Chinatown, A (Hoyt), 3:1119 Tristram (Robinson), 2:662 Triumph of the Egg, The (Anderson), 3:927, 1198


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Trollope, Anthony, 3:1143 Trollope, Frances, 1:220 Trotter, William Monroe, 1:256–257; 2:630 “True Art Speaks Plainly” (Dreiser), 2:749, 750 True George Washington, The (Ford), 1:156 True History of Deacon Giles’ Distillery, The (Cheever), 3:1109 “True Story, A” (Twain), 2:605; 3:1042 trusts, 2:713 Herbert Croly on, 3:912–913 Theodore Roosevelt and, 2:716 Truth, Sojourner, 3:1209 Truth, The (Fitch), 3:1118 Tsukunft (newspaper), 3:985 tuberculosis, 1:337 Tubman, Harriet, 3:1209 Tucker, Benjamin, 1:66 Tufts, James Hayden, 2:838 Turbyfill, Mark, 1:216 Turgenev, Ivan, 3:943 Turmoil (Tarkington), 1:192 Turner, Benjamin, 1:253 Turner, Bryan, 2:796 Turner, Darwin T., 2:641 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 2:459, 459; 3:1105–1106 on frontier, 1:71, 76–77, 407–408, 410–411; 3:1178 frontier hypothesis, 1:81 Turner, George Kibbe, 2:645 Turner, Joseph Addison, 3:1147 Turner, Michael R., 2:862 Turn of the Screw, The (H. James), 1:352 controversy of Billy Budd compared to controversy of, 1:147, 149 supernatural and, 1:420 Tuskegee Institute, 1:9, 170, 353; 3:1152 statistics on lynching, 2:628 Tuskegee Machine, 1:165, 256; 3:1155 Twachtman, John, 1:93 Twain, Mark, 1:76; 2:476, 604; 3:981 as adventure writer, 1:138 American Folklore Society and, 1:388 as anti-imperialist, 2:498, 499, 501–502, 830; 3:901 antimilitarism and, 3:1179 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 autobiography, 1:119 Bohemian Club and, 1:268 on Book of the Mormon, 2:699

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

on Bret Harte, 2:846 on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, 3:1194 on burial practices, 1:29 burlesque, 2:874 cartoon of, 2:831 in Century Magazine, 1:213, 214 children’s literature and, 1:221 on Christian Science, 1:240–241 on Civil War, 1:262 Clarence King and, 2:767 compared to Herman Melville, 3:1009–1010 copyright and, 1:285 on criminology, 2:581 Dan De Quille and, 3:981–982 dialect use, 3:1052 on fear of scarlet fever, 1:334 friendship with W. D. Howells, 2:604–606 frontier and, 1:408 Galaxy and, 2:819 genteel tradition and, 1:182, 416 George Santayana on, 1:415–416 Harper & Brothers and, 2:427, 428 historical romances and, 2:453, 454 on Horace Greeley, 3:898 house of, 1:90; 2:593, 594 humor and, 2:472, 475–477 influence of Joel Chandler Harris on, 3:1148–1149 influence of Allan Pinkerton on, 2:738 on James Fenimore Cooper, 3:944 Joseph Hopkins Twichell and, 2:593 as journalist, 1:347 lampooning of Sunday school fiction, 3:1095 lecturing and, 2:585, 585, 586, 587 on lynching, 2:564–565, 631 magazine contributions, 2:820, 822 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and, 2:761 on Maxim Gorky, 1:396 on music, 2:728 on Native Hawaiian life, 1:77 newspaper syndicates and, 2:775 O. Henry compared to, 1:400 on Oklahoma Territory, 2:688 Orientalism and, 2:797, 798 parody and, 3:1006, 1112–1113 on Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, 1:211 Philippine-American War and, 2:829 photography and, 2:841 Players Club and, 1:270 politics and, 2:854 portrayals of Chinese, 1:226

T H R O U G H


on pseudoscience, 3:918–919, 921 race and, 1:169; 2:544–545; 3:930 realism and, 1:50, 417 religion and, 1:34, 233 on Robert G. Ingersoll, 3:899 San Francisco and, 3:999 satire, 3:1004–1005, 1183 as science fiction writer, 3:1015–1016 semiautobiographical works, 1:117–118 short story and, 3:1040, 1041–1042 slavery and, 3:955 on smallpox, 1:336–337 Spanish-American War and, 1:78 spiritualism and, 3:1077–1078 St. Louis World’s Fair and, 3:993 subscription publishing, 1:15–16, 180; 2:612 tall tales and, 1:388 Tavern Club and, 1:271 on temperance, 1:2; 2:859; 3:1112–1113 travel writing and, 3:1131, 1133, 1184 Ulysses S. Grant and, 2:824 violence and, 3:1169, 1170 as western regionalist writer, 3:975 See also Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The; Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, A; Gilded Age, The; Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, The “Twas the Night before Christmas” (Moore), 2:682 Tweed, William M. “Boss,” 1:247; 2:855 Twenty Years at Hull-House (Addams), 1:117, 219; 3:967 on environment as cause of social problems, 2:883 on industrial education, 1:352 Twichell, Joseph Hopkins, 2:593; 3:1064 Two College Friends (Loring), 3:995 “Two Friends” (Freeman), 3:995 Two Friends and Other NineteenthCentury Lesbian Stories by American Women Writers (Koppelman, ed.), 3:995 “Two Gentlemen of Kentucky” (Allen), 3:995 Two Little Pilgrims’ Progress (Burnett), 3:1214 Two Men of Sandy Bar (Harte), 2:846; 3:1190 Chinese character in, 1:227

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1331

INDEX

291 Gallery (New York), 1:96; 2:841 “Two Offers, The” (Harper), 2:527; 3:1113 “Two Prayers” (Fuller), 2:502 Tyler, Moses Coit, 1:52, 54 Tylor, Edward Burnett, 1:32 typhoid fever, 1:335–336 typographic style, 1:179

U Ulm, John, 2:874 Ulysses (Joyce) review by T. S. Eliot, 2:559 serialization in the Little Review, 2:621 sexual candor and, 2:875 Umbra (Pound), 2:637 “Unbroken Chain, The” (Cobb), 1:423 Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings (Harris), 1:139, 167, 205, 222, 386; 2:771; 3:1044, 1147–1152 violence in, 3:1167 Uncle Remus and His Friends (Harris), 3:1149 Uncle Remus stories (Harris), 1:222; 3:975 satire in, 3:1005 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 1:167, 339 abolitionist literature and, 3:931 as first best-seller, 3:905 as historical romance, 2:453 pirated editions in Great Britain, 1:284 precursor of critical realism, 3:951 stage play based on, 2:461 temperance imagery in, 3:1109 Uncle Tom’s Children (Wright), 2:566 Uncrowned Kings (Wise), 3:1032 Under Attack (Remington), 1:408 Underground Railroad, Frances E. W. Harper and, 2:526 “Under the Bamboo Tree” (Johnson and Johnson), 2:729 Under the Gaslight (Daly), 3:1115 “Under the Lion’s Paw” (Garland), 1:374; 2:624, 661, 867; 3:972, 974, 1057 Under the Oaks (Bannister), 1:94 Underwood, Francis, 1:106 Undiscovered Country, The (Howells), 1:232 spiritualism and, 3:1077 unemployed, Populists and, 2:871 Union, states and territories added to 1870–1900, 1:75

1332

Union Benevolent Association, 2:883 Union Club (New York), 1:267 Union News Company, 3:1142 unions. See labor organizations Union Station (Washington, D.C.), 1:89 United Artists, 2:708 United Klans of America, 2:566 United Negro Improvement Association, 3:1155 “United States of Lyncherdom, The” (Twain), 2:564, 631, 3:1170 United States v. Kagama (1886), 2:512 United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), 1:228–229 Unity Temple (Oak Park, Illinois), 1:89 Universal Film Manufacturing, 2:708 Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), 2:689 universities literary journals and, 1:354 modern, 3:904, 905 in New Orleans, 2:769 theater and, 3:1120 See also higher education university presses, 1:181, 354 Unleavened Bread (Grant), 1:90 on divorce, 1:297, 298 influence on Herbert Croly, 3:913 “Unmanifest Destiny” (Hovey), 3:1072 “Unmasking of a Cad, The” (London), 2:774 “Unparalleled Invasion, The” (London), 1:73, 228; 2:448; 3:1179 Unpopular Review, 2:600 “Unpublished Letters of Thackeray” (Brookfield, ed.), 3:1025 Unseen Universe, The (Thomson), 3:921 Untermann, Ernest, 3:1062 Untermeyer, Louis, 2:600, 601 in the Masses, 2:601 Untermyer, Samuel, 2:802 Unveiling a Parallel (Jones and Merchant), 3:1157–1159 Up from Slavery (Washington), 1:8, 115, 165, 353; 2:544, 794; 3:1152–1155 on political economy of slavery, 3:955 as rags to riches story, 2:780 Uplifting the Race (Gaines), 3:934–935 “Upper Berth, The” (Crawford), 1:420 upper class resorts and, 3:977 sports and, 3:1080

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

“Up the Coulee” (Garland), 2:661, 691 U.P. Trial, The (Grey), 1:76 Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief (Smith), 1:325 Urban Intersections (Bremer), 1:247 urbanization, 1:246 effect on Christianity, 1:230–231 families and, 3:1047 law enforcement and, 2:581–582 organized sports and, 3:1080 Urban League, 1:170 U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, 1:364 migration and relocation of blacks and, 2:688 in the post–Civil War period, 2:519–520 Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:1091 U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1:364 U.S. Navy, 3:1091 U.S. Steel, 3:1180 U.S. territories, 2:497 Utah polygamy and, 2:701 statehood, 1:74 utilitarian ideology, Henry James’s critique of, 1:65 “Utility of Trees, The” (Bryant), 2:809 utopian communities free love and, 3:1037 socialism and, 3:1062 Utopian socialist movement, 3:1205 utopias, 3:1008–1009, 1155–1160 based on Christianity, 1:233 as best-sellers, 2:615 free love, 1:403 labor and, 2:574–575 political views in, 3:897 village as, 3:1161

V vacation as institution, 3:980 Vagabond Adventures (Keeler), 1:173 vagabond poets, 1:174–175 vagrancy ordinances, 3:1135 Valentine, Edward, 1:265 Valley of Decision, The (Wharton), 2:468 Valley of the Moon, The (London), 1:251; 3:1000–1001 Carmel-by-the-Sea description in, 2:596 Freudian thought and, 3:927


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 3:897, 1180, 1183 Victoria Woodhull and, 1:405 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, II, 1:89 Newport mansion of, 3:979 Vanderbilt, George Washington, III, 1:89 Vanderbilt, William K., 3:1181 Newport mansion of, 3:979 Vanderlip, Frank Arthur, 2:802 Van Deventer, Emma Murdoch, 3:1214 Van Doren, Carl, 1:657 “Revolt from the Village,” 3:1162, 1165 Vandover and the Brute (Norris), 2:747, 750; 3:1002 influence of Freud, 3:926 on poverty, 2:886 Van Dyke, Henry, 1:285 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Van Dyke, John Charles, 2:757 Vanishing Race, The (Dixon), 2:514 Vanity Fair (magazine), 2:817 Van Loan, Charles E., 3:1083 Van Petten, John B., 3:959 Van Vechten, Carl, 1:121; 2:607 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 2:561 anarchism and, 1:66, 67 death mask, 2:560 Varieties of Religious Experience, The (W. James), 1:2, 32–33, 233; 2:836 Varmint, The (Johnson), 3:1084 Vassar College, 1:354, 381 Vassar Stories (Gallagher), 3:1083 Vassar Studies (Schwartz), 3:1083 vaudeville, 2:725; 3:1120 Vaux, Calvert, 2:807 Veblen, Thorstein, 1:191, 355; 2:675; 3:1049, 1096. See also Theory of the Leisure Class, The Vedder, Elihu, 1:94 illustration for Century Magazine, 1:212 illustration for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, 1:173 Vedder, H. C., 3:949 vegetarianism, 1:393 veil, living behind the, 1:165; 3:1069. See also double consciousness, concept of Vendetta (Gambino), 2:630 Venetian Life (Howells), 1:56 Veracruz, Mexico, United States and, 1:79 “veritism,” 3:950 Verne, Jules, 3:1015 Versailles, Treaty of, 3:1223

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Versatilities (Newell), 3:1006 Very Good Eddie (Kern), 3:1119 Vescio, Bryan, 3:894, 896 Vested Interests and the Common Man, The (Veblen), 3:1126 “Veteran, The” (Crane), 2:645; 3:961 Veysey, Laurence R., 1:355 Via Crucis (Crawford), 1:137 Victim as Criminal, The (Franklin), 2:814 Victor, Metta, 1:322 “Victorian Culture in America” (Howe), 3:936 Victorian era courtship and marriage, 1:293, 295 death, 1:27 Victorian Poets (Stedman), 1:414 Victorian Prose Masters (Brownell), 2:598 Vidocq, François Eugène, 2:738 Views A-Foot (Taylor), 3:1136 vigilantism, 1:201 Ku Klux Klan and, 2:562 in small towns, 2:582–583 Villa, Pancho, 2:683 U.S. army and, 2:685 village dwellers, 3:1161–1165. See also small-town life “Village Singer, A” (Freeman), 2:764 Villard, Oswald Garrison NAACP and, 3:969 The Nation and, 2:745, 746 review of The Souls of Black Folk, 3:1069 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A (Wollstonecraft), 3:1205 “Vintage, The” (Gilman), 2:449 violence, 3:1165–1173 Ku Klux Klan and, 2:563 Mark Twain and, 1:14 Violets and Other Tales (DunbarNelson), 2:767; 3:975 Virginian, The (Wister), 1:76, 139; 3:975–976, 1191–1193 based on performer of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, 3:1196 on food, 1:391 game metaphor and, 3:1082 gun violence and, 3:1188 as historical romance, 2:453 illustration by Charles M. Russell, 3:1192 on lynching, 2:630 manhood and, 2:447 saloon scene, 1:2 teacher in, 1:351 on vigilantism, 2:582 Virgin Islands, United States and, 1:79

T H R O U G H


Virgin Land (Smith), 3:1196 “Visit from St. Nicholas, A” (Moore), 2:682 visual arts, 1:86–97 Battle of the Little Bighorn and, 1:135 Jews in the, 2:542 visual culture ads and, 2:677 spread of, 2:479 Vlag, Piet, 3:1062 vocational schools, Jews and, 2:540 Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South, A (Cooper), 3:398, 1098 on political economy of slavery, 3:954 Voice of the People, The (Glasgow), 3:1173–1175 voice recording, 3:1008 Volunteer’s Adventures, A (De Forest), 1:260 Vorse, Mary Heaton, 2:595 vorticism, 2:485, 607 “Vorticism” (Pound), 2:484, 485 Vortograph by Coburn, 2:843 Voyage Perilous, The (Rosowski), 2:733

W Waddell, Alfred Moore, 2:669 wage-earning workers, 2:675 wage slavery, 2:433 Wagner, Louis F. H., 1:200 Wakeman, George, 2:692 Wake-Robin (Burroughs), 2:757 Walcutt, Charles C., 2:751; 3:962 Wald, Lillian, 2:540 Wald, Priscilla, 1:102, 104; 2:491 Walden (Thoreau), 1:173; 2:580, 755; 3:906 Walden Pond, 1:185 Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 1:62, 65 Waldron, Adelaide Cilley, 2:773 Walker, Alice, 3:1150 Walker, Francis, 2:487 on rugged sports, 3:1080 Walker, Frank Brisbane, 2:820, 822 Walker, John Brisben, 2:611 Walker, Mary, 1:303, 303 Walker, William, 1:73 Walkowitz, Abraham Revolt group and, 1:69 Wall, Evander Berry, 3:979 Wallace, Alfred Russell, 3:1077 Wallace, John H., 1:22

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1333

INDEX

Wallace, Lew (Lewis), 1:181; 3:900 in Century Magazine, 1:213 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 as historical novelist, 1:137; 2:451 Wall Street Stories (Lefevre), 1:131 Walpole, Horace, 1:418 Walsh, Raoul, 1:160 Walsh, Richard, 3:1196 Walter, Eugene, 3:1118 “Walter Scott at Work” (White), 3:1025 Walthall, Henry B., 1:163 “Walt Whitman’s Actual American Position” (Whitman), 1:209 Wanamaker, John, 2:819 Wandering Ghosts (Crawford), 1:420 “Wan Lee, the Pagan” (Harte), 1:227; 3:975 war. See Civil War; Indian Wars; Philippine-American War; Spanish-American War; World War I Ward, Artemus, 1:347; 2:473, 474 as speaker, 2:585, 586 Ward, David, 2:886 Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. See Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart Ward, John Quincy Adams, 1:91 Ward, Lester Frank, 1:319; 3:1122 influence on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 3:1205 Ward, Montgomery, 2:680 Ward, Mrs. Humphrey (Mary Augusta), 1:34; 2:428 Ward, William Hayes, 2:671 Ware, Charles Pickard, 1:386 Ware, William, 1:232 Warfel, Harry R., 2:673 War Is Kind (Crane), 2:635 “War Memories” (Crane), 3:1074 Warner, Charles Dudley, 1:76; 2:593; 3:948 as anti-imperialist, 2:828 on banking, 1:129–130 editor of the American Men of Letters, 1:154 Harper & Brothers and, 2:427 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and, 2:431 indictment of realism, 1:183 on local color fiction, 3:976 on Newport, 3:979 See also Gilded Age, The Warner, John, 1:332 Warner, Nicholas, 1:2 Warner, Susan, 1:339; 2:470, 615 temperance imagery and, 3:1109 Warnke, Nina, 1:325 war novels, 1:60

1334

War of the Worlds (Wells), 3:921 “War Prayer, The” (Twain), 2:792, 831–832; 3:1179 Warren, Fred D., 2:553 Appeal to Reason and, 1:85 Warren, Josiah, 1:66–67 Warren, Joyce W., 1:342 war writing, 3:1177–1180 Washington, Booker T., 2:544; 3:1153 adolescents and, 1:8, 9 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:110 autobiography, 1:115 biography of Frederick Douglass, 1:253; 3:936 education and, 1:353 Frances E. W. Harper compared to, 2:528 Gospel of Wealth and, 3:936–937 H. G. Wells on, 1:397 ideal of the New South and, 2:772 James Weldon Johnson and, 1:120 oratory and, 2:794 success and, 3:1098 Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:901 W. E. B. Du Bois as ideological opponent of, 1:165 See also Atlanta Compromise; Up from Slavery Washingtonian Temperance Society, 1:1 Washington Irving (Warner), 1:154 Washington Square (H. James), 1:294; 2:779 Washington Star, 2:802 Washington State statehood, 1:74 “Was It Heaven? Or Hell?” (Twain), 1:335–336 Wasp (journal), 3:999 Waste Land, The (Eliot), 2:625 Ezra Pound editor of, 2:607, 637 imagism and, 2:485 Watanna, Onoto, 2:711 Watch and Ward Society, 2:873, 874 Watch Your Step (Berlin), 3:1119 “Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall, The” (Bangs), 1:421 water in the West, 3:983 Waterman, Thomas, 2:514 watershed of the 1890s, 1:409–410 Watson, E. L. Grant, 1:146 Watson, Tom, 2:868, 869, 872 Watt, Alexander P., 2:613 Waugh, Arthur, 3:960 Wave, The (magazine), 1:188 Frank Norris and, 2:649; 3:1002 Waverley (Scott), 2:452 Wa-Wan Press, 2:724 Way and Williams, 1:179 Wayland, Julius Augustus, 1:83–84 Ruskin Colony and, 3:1062

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Way of an Indian, The (Remington), 1:94 Way of White Folks, The (Hughes), 2:566 “Wayside” (Hawthorne), 1:185 Wayside Press, 2:620 “Ways That Are Dark, The” (Knapp), 2:847 wealth, 3:1180–1186 American fortunes of 1901–1914, 3:1181 “Wealth” (Carnegie), 3:904 Wealth against Commonwealth (Demarest), 2:868 Wealth and Democracy (Phillips), 3:1180 Wealth and Wine (Chellis), 3:1111 We and Our Neighbors (Stowe), 1:2, 339 poverty and, 2:883 on prostitution, 3:915 weaponry, 3:1186–1189 Wear and Tear (Mitchell), 2:447 Wearing of the Gray (Cooke), 1:260 “wearing the breeches,” 1:302 Weatherbee, Mary, 1:173 Weaver, James, 2:868, 869, 872 Webb, Sidney, 1:111 Webb, Walter Prescott, 1:411 “We—Bee and I—live by the quaffing” (Dickinson), 3:1111 Weber, Max, 1:96; 3:1069 Revolt group and, 1:69 “Web of Circumstance, The” (Chesnutt), 1:254 Web of Life, The (Herrick), 1:218; 3:1215 Webster, Alice Jane Chandler (Jean Webster), 1:223–224 Webster, Henry Kitchell, 1:193 Webster, Noah, 1:47 Webster’s English Dictionary, 2:603 weeklies illustrations in, 2:480–482 political humor in, 2:482 popular fictional genres and, 2:817 Weems, Parson Mason Locke, 3:909 Weems v. United States (1910), 1:200 We Fed Them Cactus (Cabeza de Baca Gilbert), 3:1089 Wegelin, Christof, 1:55 Weichsel, John, 1:69 Weightman, William, 3:1181 Weinberg, Alvin, 3:919 Weinert, Albert, 1:91, 91 Weininger, Otto, 3:924 Weir, J. Alden Mary Cassatt and, 1:93 Theodore Dreiser on, 1:87


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Weir, Thomas B., 1:134 Weissbach, Lee Shai, 2:537 Weitenkampf, Frank, 3:1024 Welch, Richard E., Jr., 2:828, 830 Wellesley College, 1:354, 381 Wells, Carolyn, 2:477, 657 parody and, 3:1006 Wells, H. G., 1:397 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428 science fiction and, 3:921, 1015 Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 1:346; 2:629, 793; 3:398 anti-lynching campaign and, 1:254; 2:629, 631; 3:1167 foundation of NAACP, 2:545; 3:969 journalism and, 2:548 W. E. B. Du Bois and, 3:1069 white supremacy and, 2:582; 3:957 on World’s Columbian Exposition’s failure to include blacks, 3:1094 Welsh, Herbert, 2:512 Welträthsel, Die (Haeckel), 1:31–32 Welty, Eudora, 1:221 Wendell, Barrett, 1:54 “Wendigo, The” (Blackwood), 1:419 Wenzell, A. B., 2:469; 3:1025 West, Cornel, 3:935, 937 West, James L. W., III, 2:614; 3:1140 West, the black migration to, 2:690 cross-dressing of women in, 1:302 divorce and, 1:297–298 landscape and photography, 2:839–840 as means of national rejuvenation, 1:117–118 miners in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, 3:982 mythology behind, 1:94 natural resources and postbellum growth, 3:980 Oscar Wilde in, 1:398 regionalist writers from, 3:975 travel in, 3:1131–1132 Westcott, Edward Noyes, 2:472; 3:976 as local color writer, 1:139 West cure, 2:447 western, the, 1:76, 139; 2:624–625; 3:1190–1194 authors, 1:51 in dime novels, 1:322–323, 408 realism and, 1:76 western democrat, icon of, 3:912 Western Federation of Miners, 3:1061 “Western Geologists and Explorers” (Tallmadge), 2:756 Western Story Magazine, 1:139 West from a Car-Window, The (Davis), 3:1141

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

westward expansion, 1:74–75 Wetherill, Richard, 1:363, 366 We Turned Hobo (Schockman), 3:1139 “We Wear the Mask” (Dunbar), 2:544, 635, 641 Weyerhaeuser, Frederick, 3:1181 Wharton, Edith, 1:90; 2:467, 467 on adolescence, 1:10 aestheticism and, 1:26 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 on authorship, 2:615 automobiles and, 3:1145 the Bible and, 1:141; 2:467 on clubs, 1:267–268, 271 Darwinism and, 1:320 depiction of nonwhite characters, 3:929 description of society balls, 1:314 determinism and, 1:53 on divorce, 1:297, 298 on female dependence and powerlessness, 1:384–385 gastronomic descriptions, 1:394 on house decoration, 1:99 influence of The Europeans on, 1:59 influence of Thorstein Veblen on, 3:1122 on invalids and illness, 2:444 magazine contributions, 2:820, 822 on marriage and social advancement, 1:293–294 on mass production and rural areas, 2:676 on museums, 2:720 as native-born New York writer, 2:779–780 naturalism and, 2:747 on Newport, 3:979 patent medicines in work of, 2:444 pornography and, 2:875 as professional writer, 2:612 realism and, 3:947 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025, 1026 serialization, 2:821; 3:1025 on society fashion, 1:377 supernatural and, 1:420–421 Theodore Roosevelt and, 3:902 travel writing, 3:1131, 1134, 1184 W. D. Howells and, 2:604 on World War I, 3:1179, 1220 See also Age of Innocence, The; House of Mirth, The “What I Believe” (Warren), 1:85 What I Have Done with Birds (Porter), 2:759 “What Is a White Man?” (Chesnutt), 2:694 What Is Man? (Twain), 1:34; 3:1021

T H R O U G H


What Katy Did (Coolidge), 1:12 “What Life Means to Me” (Sinclair), 2:554 What Maisie Knew (H. James) on female adolescence, 1:10 serialization in The Chap-Book, 2:617 “What Need, Then, for Poetry?” (Cox), 1:414 What Price Glory? (Anderson and Stallings), 3:1221 What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (Sumner), Social Darwinism and, 3:1094 What’s O’Clock (Lowell), 2:637 “What the Railroad Will Bring Us” (George), 2:804, 805 “What to Do with the Tramp?” (Flynt), 3:1138 “What Was It?” (O’Brien), 1:419 Wheel and Recreation (magazine), 3:1144 Wheeler, Edward L., 1:322; 3:1191 Deadwood Dick novels, 2:583 When Knighthood Was in Flower (Major), 1:137, 180 “When Malindy Sings” (Dunbar), 2:640 “Where ‘De Gang’ Hears the Band Play” (Crane), 2:651 “Where’s Duncan?” (Faulkner), 3:1150 Whewell, William, 3:919 Whipple, Edwin Percy, 2:598 Whipple, Leonidas Rutledge, 1:126 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill, 1:67, 92, 94 Darwinism and, 1:319 as expatriate, 1:86 Orientalism and, 2:796, 799 “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Story” (O. Henry), 2:645, 815 White, Alfred T., 2:884 White, Andrew D., 1:32; 3:1025 White, Edward D., 1:161 White, Edward Lucas, 1:423 White, Richard, 1:371; 3:1197 White, Richard Grant, 2:820 on public school, 1:351 White, Stanford Century Association and, 1:270 Metropolitan Club and, 1:268 White, Stewart Edward, 3:982 White, Walter Francis, 2:628, 631–632 White, William Allen, 1:193–194, 345, 374; 2:867 muckraking and, 2:644 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 on western settlement, 1:373

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1335

INDEX

White Fang (London), 1:76, 139; 3:1028 Whitehead, Alfred North, 3:1008 “White Heron, A” (Jewett), 3:1042 White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 2:566 “White Man’s Burden, The” (Kipling), 1:71, 72; 2:500–501, 827 counterresponses to, 1:73 in McClure’s, 2:645 White-Parks, Annette, 2:711 White Slave (Eberle), 1:92 White Slave, The (Campbell), 3:1116–1117 White Terror and the Red, The (Cahan), 2:536–537 White Wampum, The (Johnson), 2:516 Whitman, Albery Allson, 3:955 Whitman, Walt on artistic inspiration, 3:903 Civil War and, 3:956 on Civil War, 1:113–114, 262; 3:1165 in Colorado, 3:982 dance as metaphor, 1:312 on death, 1:30 on democratic authorial ideal, 2:615 on depravity of the business classes, 3:897 on George Custer, 1:135 George Santayana on, 1:415 imperialist imperatives and, 2:499 influence on Charlie Chapin, 1:126 influence on Isadora Duncan, 1:312 influence on Robert Frost, 2:784 influence on vagabond poets, 1:173 music and, 2:728–729 on New York City’s diversity, 1:246 Orientalism and, 2:797 on Oscar Wilde, 1:398 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:209 photograph by Thomas Eakins, 1:92; 2:840 photography and, 2:841 Ralph Waldo Emerson and, 1:185 realism and, 3:943 rebellion against genteel tradition, 1:416 same-sex love and, 3:995–997 slavery and, 3:955 temperance imagery and, 3:1109 on transcontinental railroad, 3:1143 on walking, 3:1136 Whitney, A. D. T., 1:339 Whitney, Caspar, 3:1080 Whitney, Josiah D., 2:810 Whitney, William Dwight, 1:48 Whitney Museum (New York), 1:96

1336

Whittaker, Frederick business and, 1:195 as dime novelist, 1:324 working-class heroes of, 3:1096 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 1:136 in Century Magazine, 1:213 national consciousness of death of, 1:52 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and, 1:209 “Whittier Dinner Speech, The” (Twain), 3:975 Whole Family, The (novel), 2:428 Who’s Who in America, 1:154 Who Would Have Thought It? (Ruiz de Burton), 3:1087 Who Wrote the Bible? (Gladden), 1:233 “Why I Am a Pagan” (Zitkala-Sˇa), 1:46 Why Is the Negro Lynched? (Douglass), 1:254–255 Why My Photographs Are Bad (Taylor), 2:841 “Why We Have No Great Novelists” (Boyeson), 3:950 Wide, Wide World, The (Warner), 2:615 temperance imagery in, 3:1109 Widener, Peter, 3:1181 Widmer, Kingsley, 3:1140 Wife, The (H. C. De Mille), 1:296 “Wife of His Youth, The” (Chesnutt), 1:116, 166, 276; 2:545 migration of blacks and, 2:689 racial uplift and, 3:938–939 society ball in, 1:314 Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, The (Chesnutt), 1:166, 168, 277; 2:666–667 on Reconstruction, 1:254 Wiggin, Kate Douglas, 1:110, 181 Century Magazine and, 1:214 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Wigwam Evenings (Eastman), 2:517 Wilberforce, Samuel, 1:31 Wilberforce University, 1:170 Wilcox, Ella Wheeler, 1:136; 2:861, 864–865 on tobacco, 1:6 Wild Animals I Have Known (Seton), 1:222 Wilde, Oscar, 1:399 aestheticism and, 1:24, 25, 173 arts and crafts and, 1:97 influence on the bohemians, 1:173 narcotics in writings of, 1:4 protesting the Haymarket trial, 2:435 at Saratoga Springs, 3:979 visit to the United States, 1:395, 398

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

wilderness John Muir and, 2:735, 736 new attitude toward, 2:808–809 “Wild Frank’s Return” (Whitman), 3:1109 Wild Life on the Plains and Horrors of Indian Warfare (Custer), 2:522 Wild Oats (Oppenheim), 2:449 “Wild Oats and Tame Wheat” (Gilman), 2:449 “Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West, The” (Muir), 2:809 Wild West shows, 3:1194–1197 Indians and, 2:514 See also Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show Wild West Shows (Reddin), 3:1197 Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians (Moses), 3:1196–1197 Wilentz, Gay, 2:491 on Anzia Yezierska, 1:102 Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (Goethe) as bildungsroman, 1:9 as youth-culture novel, 3:1127 Wilkerson v. Utah (1879), 1:199–200 Wilkins, Mary E., 1:354 Willa Cather (Sergeant), 2:731 Willard, Emma Hart, 3:1208 Willard, Frances E., 1:255, 345 temperance and, 3:1110 Willard, Josiah Flynt. See Flynt, Josiah “William Dean Howells” (Perry), 3:948 Williams, Charles R., 1:345 Williams, George Washington, 1:261; 2:458 Williams, Henry T., 3:1033 Williams, Jesse Lynch, 3:1083, 1084 Williams, Michael, 2:596 Williams, Patrick, 2:590 Williams, Ralph Vaughan, 2:729 Williams, Susan S., 1:342 Williams, William Carlos, 2:660 Alfred Stieglitz and, 2:842 art collection, 1:96 correspondence with Ezra Pound, 2:607 dance aesthetics and, 1:313 imagism and, 2:484, 486 lyric poetry and, 2:638 Others circle and, 1:69 Poetry and, 2:620, 850, 851 Williams, William Henry, 3:1142 Williams Lecture and Musical Bureau, 2:585 “William’s Wedding” (Jewett), 1:289 William Wetmore Story and His Friends (H. James), 1:91, 154


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Willis, Nathaniel, 1:221 Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 1:56 “Will to Believe, The” (W. James), 1:40; 3:892 Wilson, Angela Cavender, 1:369 Wilson, Charles Reagan, 1:264 Wilson, Christopher P., 2:608, 611, 819 Wilson, Edmund on Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 1:113 on quality of Civil War literature, 1:258 on This Side of Paradise, 3:1129 on The Turn of the Screw, 1:420 Wilson, Edward, 1:110 Wilson, Joseph T., 1:261 Wilson, Richard Guy, 1:100 Wilson, Woodrow, 2:858–859; 3:902 The Birth of a Nation and, 1:161, 162; 2:461, 565 Harper & Brothers and, 2:428, 431 Louis Brandeis and, 2:801 The Nation and, 2:743 Other People’s Money and, 2:803 reform and, 3:968 Walter Hines Page and, 1:110 World War I and, 3:1217 Yale and, 1:354 Wimsatt, William K., 2:602 Winchevsky, Morris, 2:541 wind band, 2:725 Wind in the Rose-Bush, The (Freeman), 1:419 “Window” (Sandburg), 3:1141 Windy McPherson’s Son (Anderson), 3:1177 Wines, Enoch Cobb, 2:814 Winesburg, Ohio (Anderson), 1:81; 3:1197–1200 on homosexuality, 3:998 as impressionistic short fiction, 3:1045 on mass production and rural areas, 2:676 scientific materialism and, 3:1022 on sexuality, 1:295 on small-town/village life, 2:657; 3:1164 teacher in, 1:351 “Wings” (Yezierska), 1:104; 2:493 Wings of the Dove, The (H. James) the Bible and, 1:144–145 illness and, 2:444 Winnemucca, Sarah. See Hopkins, Sarah Winnemucca Winning of Barbara Worth, The (Wright), 3:983 Winning of the West, The (Roosevelt), 1:71, 409; 3:1186

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

Winona (Hopkins), 2:544, 694 Winsor, Justin, 2:588 Winter in Taos (Luhan), 1:368 Winter Place Hotel (Boston), 1:394 Winters, Yvor, 2:852 “Winter Shooting on the Gulf Coast of Florida” (Remington), 3:1188 Winthrop, John, 3:1161 “Wisdom of the New, The” (Sin Far), 2:492 Wise, Daniel, 3:1032 Wise, Isaac Mayer, 2:536, 540 Wisse, Ruth R., 2:541 Wissler, Clark, 2:515 Wister, Owen, 1:76 biography and, 1:156 on food, 1:391 on frontier violence, 3:1169 on lynching, 2:630 metaphor of the game, 3:1082 mythology of the West and, 1:94 teacher character, 1:351 theme of alcoholism, 1:2, 3 as western regionalist writer, 1:139; 3:975–976 See also Virginian, The Witching Hour, The (Thomas), 3:1118 “Witch of Coös, The” (Frost), 2:853 Witham, W. Tasker, 3:1129 Witherspoon, John, 2:833 With Her in Ourland (Gilman), 3:897 Withim, Phil, 1:147 Within Our Gates (Micheaux), 2:631 With the Procession (Fuller), 1:196, 217 Witte Arrives (Tobenkin), 2:541 Wittenmyer, Annie, 3:1110 Wobblies. See Industrial Workers of the World Wodehouse, P. G., 2:725 Wolf, Emma, 2:446, 541 Wolfe, Thomas, 3:1129 influence of Sherwood Anderson on, 3:1198 Scribner’s Magazine and, 3:1025 Wolff, Adolf, 1:69 Wolf Willow (Stegner), 1:373 Wolosky, Shira, 2:634 Womack, Craig, 1:369 “Woman” (Bogan), 2:866 “Woman, The” (Dunbar-Nelson), 2:767 Woman Citizen (journal), 3:1200, 1202 Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Fuller), 3:1205 Woman’s Bible, The (Stanton), 3:1210 Woman’s Book, The, 3:1034 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 1:393

T H R O U G H


“Woman’s Experience as a Newspaper Editor, A” (Dix), 1:346 Woman’s Journal, 1:380; 3:1200–1203, 1201 Woman’s Life-Work, A (Haviland), 1:116 Woman’s Reason, A (Howells), 1:214 woman’s rights, concept of, 1:380 women advertising aimed at, 2:547 as audience of Main Street, 2:658 autobiography and, 1:116–117 Charlotte Perkins Gilman on traditional work of, 3:1203 as composers, 2:724 as consumers, 2:679 cross-dressing and, 1:302 dance modernist movement and, 1:311 Darwinism and, 1:318–319 as detectives in fiction, 1:323 domestic and sentimental fiction and, 1:338 dress reform movement, 1:376, 377, 381 effect of Civil War on lives of, 1:340 history and, 2:457 as humorists, 2:477 Irish, 2:529 lecturing and, 2:586 library work and, 2:591 lynching of, 2:629–630 as magazine editors, 2:820 Mary E. Wilkins Freeman on work of, 2:761, 762 nervousness and, 2:447 oratory and, 2:793 pavilion at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, 1:210 periodicals for, 2:817 regional fiction and, 3:971 self-help and, 3:1033–1034 social condition in literature, 1:382–383 strikes and, 2:573 success and, 3:1095 temperance and, 3:1109–1110 violence against, 3:1166 Wild West shows and, 3:1195 in the workforce, 2:675, 680; 3:914 See also women’s movement; women’s suffrage; women writers Women and Economics (Gilman), 1:195; 2:675; 3:1013, 1203–1207 Social Darwinism and, 3:1059 socialism and, 3:1063 The Theory of the Leisure Class compared to, 3:1122

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1337

INDEX

Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 3:1110 female political activism and, 3:1209 Frances E. W. Harper member of, 2:527 on tobacco, 1:5 women’s clubs and salons, 1:271–272 oratory and, 2:793 Women’s Congress, 3:1217 Women’s Crusades, 3:1110 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1:219 Women’s Ku Klux Klan, 2:565 Women’s Literary Club of Baltimore, 2:863 women’s movement divorce and, 1:299 free love and, 1:404–405 policy and, 2:859 Women’s National Indian Association, 3:942 Women’s Party, 3:1211 Women’s Peace Party, 1:219; 2:838 Women’s Sanitary Commission, 3:1209 women’s suffrage, 1:380; 3:1207–1214 Frances E. W. Harper and, 2:527 Jane Addams and, 1:219 Sinclair Lewis’s support of, 2:657 Woman’s Journal and, 3:1201 women writers black, 3:1098 college-life genre and, 3:1083 denouncing of positivist scientific wordview, 3:1012–1013 detective fiction and, 2:740 in journalism, 2:549 nature writing and, 2:759–760 realist short stories and, 3:1042–1043 reform and, 3:969 temperance and, 3:1111 Won at Last (MacKaye), 1:296 Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The (Baum), 1:222; 3:1074 illustration by W. W. Denslow, 1:223 Wood, Ann Douglas, 3:971 Wood, Ellen, 3:906 Wood, Robert, 3:922 Woodberry, George, 1:154 woodcuts and illustrations, 2:480; 3:1024 Woodhull, Victoria, 1:405–406; 3:1037–1038, 1200 as speaker, 2:585 spiritualism and, 3:1075 Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, 1:406; 3:1038

1338

Woodhull Memorial, 1:406 “Wood Nymph, The” (Anderson), 1:211 “Wood-Pile, The” (Frost), 2:786, 787 Woodress, James, 2:730 Woodruff, Wilford, 2:701 Woods, Frank E., 1:159 Woodson, Carter G., 2:458 Woodward, C. Vann, 2:867 Woodward, Smith, 3:917–918 Woolf, Virginia, 2:860 Woolson, Abba Louisa Goold, 1:377 Woolson, Constance Fenimore, 1:341; 3:956 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:107 Harper & Brothers and, 2:427 lesbian stories and, 3:995 as Midwest regionalist writer, 3:974 race and, 3:956 Woolworth, Frank W., 2:681; 3:1181 Woolworth Building, 1:89 Wordsworth, William, 1:289 Work (Alcott), 1:342 “Workers, The” (series, Wyckoff), 3:1026 working class Coney Island and, 3:979–980 sports and, 3:1080 working men, periodicals for, 2:817–818 Workingmen’s Party, 2:434; 3:999, 1061 Working People and Their Employers, The (Gladden), 3:1061 Works of Stephen Crane, The (Bowers, ed.), 3:960 World (newspaper), 1:19 World of Chance, The (Howells), 2:614 World of Our Fathers (Howe), 2:537, 542 “World of the Lord of Havana, The” (Hovey), 3:1072 World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893), 1:216, 250; 3:1214–1218 art at, 1:88 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show at, 3:1195–1196 Daniel Burnham and, 1:89 Franz Boas and, 1:366 Frederick Jackson Turner’s speech at, 2:459 Henry Adams and, 1:359 influence on St. Louis World’s Fair, 3:990 influx of immigrants and, 1:218 photography and, 2:841 sculpture at, 1:91

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

T H R O U G H

Woman’s Building, 1:93 world’s fairs, 1:207 commodity culture and, 3:904 Indians at, 2:514 See also Cotton States and International Exposition (Atlanta, 1895); St. Louis World’s Fair; World’s Columbian Exposition World’s Work (magazine), 2:819 World War I, 3:1166, 1218–1224 labor and, 2:574 My Ántonia and, 2:732 recruitment poster, 3:1222 writing and, 3:1179–1180 Worth, Charles Frederick, 1:377, 378 Worth, Thomas, 2:482 Worth and Wealth (Hunt), 3:1032 Wounded Knee Massacre, 1:76, 316; 3:1166, 1224–1227 Wounds in the Rain: War Stories (S. Crane), 1:78; 3:1178 Wovoka, 1:76, 316; 3:1224–1225 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1:89; 3:1215 Darwinism and, 1:319 Robie House, 1:90 travel to Asia, 1:86 Wright, Harold Bell, 1:138; 3:983 Wright, Mabel Osgood, 2:759 Wright, Nathalia, 2:523 Wright, Orville, Paul Laurence Dunbar and, 2:635, 639 Wright, Richard, 2:566, 750 influence of Huckleberry Finn on, 1:21 influence of Sister Carrie on, 3:1051 Wright, William. See De Quille, Dan Wright of Water, The (Shreve), 1:200 Writing Home (Schriber), 3:1134 Writing out of a Place (Fetterley and Pryse), 1:291; 3:973 “Written History as an Act of Faith” (Beard), 2:461 Wu, William, 2:488 Wundt, Wilhelm, 3:923 Wyckoff, Walter A., 3:1026 Wyld, H. C., 1:48 Wyllie, Irvin, 3:1032 Wyman, Lillie Chase, 1:107 Wyndham, George, 3:961 Wynema (Callahan), 3:1226 sentimental realism and, 1:342 “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod” (Field), 2:863 Wyoming statehood, 1:74

X “Xingu” (Wharton), 1:271


1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

INDEX

Y Yale Club (New York), 1:267 Yale University, 1:354 “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” 3:1120 Yard, Robert Sterling, 1:215 Years of My Youth (Howells), 1:117 on spiritualism, 3:1077 Yeats, William Butler the Little Review and, 2:621 Poetry and, 2:850, 851 Ye Giglampz (weekly), 1:174 Yekl (Cahan), 1:62, 103; 2:538 boxing and, 1:188 on divorce and ethnic identity, 1:299 W. D. Howells’s review of, 3:985 Yellow Book, The (journal), 1:25 advertisement by Aubrey Beardsley, 1:25 yellow fever, 1:334; 2:769 Yellow Hand, 1:135 yellow journalism origin of term, 2:483, 547 See also muckrakers and yellow journalism Yellow Kid (cartoon character), 2:483, 547 Yellow Nose, 1:94 “Yellow Peril, The” (London), 1:73 “yellow peril” fiction, 2:741, 797 “Yellow Sign, The” (Chambers), 1:422 Yellowstone Park, 2:809–810 Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (Moran), 2:810 “Yellow Wall-Paper, The” (Gilman), 1:352; 3:923, 969, 1012–1013, 1227–1230 illustration in New England Magazine, 3:1228 on marriage, 1:296, 384 refusal by Horace Scudder, 1:186 on rest cure, 2:446, 447 supernatural and, 1:420 Yemassee, The (Simms), 2:452 Yerkes, Charles Tyson, 1:130; 3:1049 “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus!” (Church), 2:682 Yezierska, Anzia, 1:102, 102, 104, 247; 2:540; 3:969 on immigrant career success, 2:494 on immigrants, 2:486–487, 490, 493

A M E R I C A N

H I S T O R Y

on intergenerational conflict, 2:491 on New York City, 2:782 Yiddish Art Theater (New York City), 2:542 Yiddish theater, 3:1120 Yiddish Theatre in America, The (Lifson), 2:542 York, Alvin Cullum, 3:1223 Yosemite, The (Muir), 2:757, 758 “Yosemite Glaciers” (Muir), 2:810 Yosemite National Park, 2:735 You Know Me Al (Lardner), 3:1164 Young, Anna Eliza, 2:586 Young, Elizabeth, 1:262 young adult books, 1:11, 12 Young American Critics, 1:69 Young Christian Soldier (periodical), 1:221 Young Evangelist (periodical), 1:221 “Young Grimes” (Whitman), 3:1109 “Young Housewife, The” (Williams), 2:638 Young John Muir, The (Holmes), 2:736 Young Man Entering Business, The (Marden), 3:1031 Young Men’s Christian Association, 2:883; 3:1080 Young Men’s Hebrew Association, 2:540 Young Mrs. Winthrop (Howard), 3:1117 “Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night” (Whitman), 1:30 youth-culture novels, 3:1127 Youth’s Companion (magazine), 1:221 school sports stories in, 3:1083 Youth’s Temperance Banner (periodical), 1:221

Z Zaborowska, Magdalena, 2:491, 492, 493 Zagarell, Sandra, 3:971 on The Country of the Pointed Firs, 1:290, 291 Zangrando, Robert L., 2:632 Zangwill, Israel, 1:101 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:110

T H R O U G H


on intergenerational conflict, 2:491 published in Century Magazine, 1:214 Zavala, Adina de, 3:1089 Zayas, Marius de, 1:361 Zaza (Belasco), 3:1116 Ziegfeld, Florenz, 2:725; 3:1119 Ziff, Larzer, 2:610; 3:1132, 1133–1134 Zimmerman, Eugene (“Zim”), 2:482 Zimmermann Note, 3:1219 Zionism, 2:539 Zirkle, Conway, 3:1029 Zitkala-Sˇa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin), 1:44, 75; 2:516; 3:974 American Indian Magazine and, 2:548 on the American Indian’s relation to place, 1:371 Atlantic Monthly and, 1:111 on Native American schools, 1:8 oratory and, 2:789 Society of American Indians and, 2:515 See also American Indian Stories Zogbaum, R. F., 3:1024 Zola, Émile, 2:842 on department stores, 2:679–680 illustrations by Charles Demuth, 1:96 influence on Frank Norris, 2:649, 749 influence on Kate Chopin, 1:126; 2:647–648; 3:1002 influence on Stephen Crane, 2:651; 3:959 Maurice Thompson on, 3:949 naturalism and, 1:183; 2:747 realism and, 3:943 W. D. Howells and, 3:1057–1058 “Zola as a Romantic Writer” (Norris), 2:649 “Zola’s Last Novel” (Perry), 3:949 Zorach, William, 1:361 Zoroaster (Crawford), 1:137 Zuni Breadstuff (Cushing), 1:366 “Zuni Fetishes” (Cushing), 1:366; 2:512 Zury, the Meanest Man in Spring County (Kirkland), 1:657; 3:974 Zwick, Jim, 2:829

1 8 7 0 – 1 9 2 0

1339

American History Through Literature 1870-1920, Volume 3

American History Through Literature - 1820-1870

Multicultural American History: Through Children's Literature

The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature 3 Volume Hardback Set: The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, Vol. 3: Brazilian Literature bibliographies (Volume 3)

History Of American Literature

History of American Literature

History of American Literature

History of American Literature

John Brown: A Biography (American History Through Literature)

Retrospect of Western Travel (American History Through Literature)

A History of American Literature

A History of American Literature (Blackwell History of Literature)

The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature 3 Volume Hardback Set: The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, Volume 2: The Twentieth Century

American History Stories, Volume I

American History Stories, Volume IV

American History Stories, Volume III

American History Stories, Volume II

Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. 3: Prose Writing, 1860-1920 (The Cambridge History of American Literature)

The 2000s (American Popular Culture Through History)

The Cambridge History of African American Literature

Brief History of English and American Literature

A History of Indian Literature, Volume VI: Scientific and Technical Literature, Part 3, Fasc. 3: Sāṃkhya Literature

Cambridge History of Irish Literature: Volume 1

A History of Indian Literature, Volume VII: Buddhist and Jaina Literature, Fasc. 3: The Purāṇas

Through Other Continents: American Literature across Deep Time

Encyclopedia of African American History 3 volumes (American Ethnic Experience)

Major Problems in American History, Volume I

The Origins of American Literature Studies: An Institutional History (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture)

Outline of American Literature

Crossing Boundaries: Thinking Through Literature

A History of Indian Literature, Volume VI: Scientific and Technical Literature, Part 3, Fasc. 5: Mīmāṃsā Literature

American History Through Literature 1870-1920, Volume 3

American History Through Literature - 1820-1870

Multicultural American History: Through Children's Literature

The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature 3 Volume Hardback Set: The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, Vol. 3: Brazilian Literature bibliographies (Volume 3)

History Of American Literature

History of American Literature

History of American Literature

History of American Literature

John Brown: A Biography (American History Through Literature)

Retrospect of Western Travel (American History Through Literature)

A History of American Literature

A History of American Literature (Blackwell History of Literature)

The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature 3 Volume Hardback Set: The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature, Volume 2: The Twentieth Century

American History Stories, Volume I

American History Stories, Volume IV

American History Stories, Volume III

American History Stories, Volume II

Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. 3: Prose Writing, 1860-1920 (The Cambridge History of American Literature)

The 2000s (American Popular Culture Through History)

The Cambridge History of African American Literature

Brief History of English and American Literature

A History of Indian Literature, Volume VI: Scientific and Technical Literature, Part 3, Fasc. 3: Sāṃkhya Literature

Cambridge History of Irish Literature: Volume 1

A History of Indian Literature, Volume VII: Buddhist and Jaina Literature, Fasc. 3: The Purāṇas

Through Other Continents: American Literature across Deep Time

Encyclopedia of African American History 3 volumes (American Ethnic Experience)

Major Problems in American History, Volume I

The Origins of American Literature Studies: An Institutional History (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture)

Outline of American Literature

Crossing Boundaries: Thinking Through Literature

A History of Indian Literature, Volume VI: Scientific and Technical Literature, Part 3, Fasc. 5: Mīmāṃsā Literature

Recommend Documents