“Frederic, Norris, and the Fear of Effeminacy” by Donna Campbell, from Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915. 75-108
Donna Campbell argues that fears of the feminine illuminate both The Damnation of Theron Ware and Vandover and the Brute. She begins by suggesting that naturalists were hostile to “the feminine” in literature, without noticing that the decadent, one of the strongest strands of the feminine, was often either in accord with or a parody of naturalism. Caught up in a general social mistrust of the “mollycoddle” and admiration for the “bully” (T. Roosevelt’s words), the naturalists rushed to the defense of the masculine, particularly in the two novels mentioned, but failed to appreciate the complexity of their undertaking.
Campbell notes three possible arrangements of the masculine and the feminine. The first is the standard naturalist one: brutish people are exposed to brutish conditions, and the result is the brutality of McTeague or L’Assomoir – something deplored by both Lombroso and the middle-class naturalists (77). Another option is the healthy compromise; over-civilized men are confronted with brutish nature, and, thanks to their genetic “good stock,” develop into healthy men – this is the model of Moran of the Lady Letty and Sea-Wolf (78). The final option, the option of Vandover and Theron, is to become so civilized that, paradoxically, one becomes a degenerate. By repeatedly surrendering to civilizations emphasis on taste, the feminine man eventually becomes a creature totally devoted to his desire – the brute (80).
From the start, Theron occupies the position of the woman – the novel repeatedly describes him in womanly terms, both him specifically and his profession particularly. Even his wife declares that he should carry a parasol like a woman (84). And he feigns illnesses to get out of responsibilities, just as a woman of the period (82-83). Perhaps most interestingly, Campbell notes that he displays all of William James candidates for the degenerate: they “show fear, anger, pity, tears, and fainting … they are ‘oversensitive’ and show an ‘excessive response’ which can include neurasthenia and dependency” (84). Ultimately, Campbell concludes that Theron falls because, rather than taking up any of the ideas of those surrounding him, he merely apes their taste or style, and thus gives himself over to the feminizing influence that causes Ledsmar to view him as a lizard. “He begins, in fact, to see himself as a victim of impersonal forces and to measure things by only the most elemental laws of nature: greed, self-interest, and sexual attraction. The education of this local minister has led him only into a self-delusional justification of the naturalistic brute within” (91). The only escape the novel affords is to throw off his profession altogether, and become a man of business.
Vandover, as Campbell points, out, could hardly be more similar to Dorian Grey: an artist who is distracted from his art by sensual pleasures, who impregnates a woman who commits suicide, who attempts to redeem himself but fails, and who is beset by an almost supernatural malady ( 93). Ultimately, Vandover fails as an artist because he’s not a naturalist – with a vibrant city scape in front of him, and an exciting shipwreck in his past, he does nothing but plan a romantic landscape in a desert. To succeed as an artist, he would have needed to become another Ash-can School painter, but instead he’s just another failure (105). He can’t reconcile his artistic impulses with his everyday life because his attempts to unite the masculine and the feminine “lead him not only into misreadings but into exaggerations or perverse visions of traditional masculine and feminine behavior” (94). Vandover needs to simply grind out a great work of art, to apply a masculine force of will to a masculine subject, but instead he allows himself to be feminized, by virtue of the pliancy the novel always mentions in connection to him. As with Theron, allowing his whims free range in the rarefied air of culture eventually just turns him into a brute, as he becomes controlled by his desires (105). All of this stems from his belief that the feminine manner of art can be reconciled with the masculine, when in fact no reconciliation is possible and, as a man abandoning himself to the feminine, “he becomes the brute that the new age demanded without any of the brute’s traditional vitality” (107).
Quite simply, both of these characters foolishly try to cultivate feminity, to graft it on to their masculine natures, and the result is a masculine brute who lacks even the brutes raw power. Campbell argues that this plight which the two authors attempt to depict affects them as well. By obsessing over all of the topics of the decadents – philosophy, vividly “real life,” lists of facts, and in depth descriptions of “things, money, clothes, houses, phrases – the naturalists recapitulate to a lesser degree those very symptoms they sought to critique. Like their characters, they walked dangerously close ‘to the edge of the slope, at the bottome of which lie pessimism and the nightmare or suicide view of life,” which constitute the real menace of degeneration” (108).
Once again, as I repeatedly mentioned in the case of Nordau, when one tries to separate naturalism from decadence, one manages only to tie the two closer together.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
Vandover and the Brute
Vandover and the Brute
More than anything else, Vandover and the Brute resembles a sort of naturalist retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The novel has a pretty standard view of the dichotomous nature of humanity: Vandover has a good side, which is appealed to by art, interested in high class women, and must be prodded into action by external forces in society. He also has a bad side, which is activated by alcohol, looks for sex with lower class women, and is waiting at every moment to spring forth and overwhelm him. It does so in one particularly notable moment: Van takes the mid-class girl Ida to The Imperial, which seems to be some sort of oyster bar/brother, where he sleeps with her (79). This is the seed of his ruination: Ida becomes pregnant, commits suicide, Van leaves town but is shipwrecked coming back, his father dies of the shock of the shipwreck, Van fails to take care of his father’s business well, Ida’s father sues Van and Van’s old friend Geary is the lawyer, but swindles Van by pretending to be acting on his interests, and then Van, swindled, loses the rest of his money gambling before being employed by Geary as a cleaner for some slum apartments Geary owns. The novel’s most interesting sequence by far is its last: Van cleans a vacated apartment while a family moves into it; the wife harshly supervises him, the child mocks him, and the father finally takes pity on him and gives him a quarter (340-354). Furthemore, the novel makes it quite clear that Van could have avoided all of this is someone had pushed him in the direction of his better interests – he is a skilled painter – but in the absence of a positive influence, the brute was destined to win.
Some points of interest. First, the brute in Vandover manifests itself in a remarkably strange way: he literally barks like a dog when the brute is uppermost (citation needed). Furthermore, there only seems to be so much room inside Van’s psyche; after his father dies, he goes to work on his masterwork, trying to redeem himself by virtue of his art, but he finds that his ability to make art has left him – not his hands, but his imagination (225). Vandover is very much like Edna Pontellier; the novel makes it clear over and over again that he has no will of his own but his pliable nature adapts to his environment (17, 120, 207). It is this pliability that allows the brute to become dominant: “he, pleasure-loving, adapting himself to every change of environment, luxurious, self-indulgent, shrinking with the shrinking of a sensuous artist-naure from all that was irksome and disagreeable, had shut his ears to the voices that shouted warnings of the danger, and had allowed the brute to thrive” (215). Perhaps there is an important distinction to make, that Edna was seized by whims and impulses while Van simply adapts to his environment; perhaps not.
Finally, Van seems to have a great deal in common with Des Esseintes of Au Rebours. Just I have suggested that McTeague is a creature of sensuous pleasures like Dorian Gray, just in a lower environment, Vandover too seems to be such a creature. Furthermore, we have a sequence straight from Au Rebours when Vandover chooses rooms, obsessed with their light and windows, and then gives us a lengthy list of the furnishings he intends to put in them, to make them suitable (169-172). Of all the American naturalists, Norris seems the one most in line with the European tradition which unites naturalism and aestheticism, and Vandover is clearly the novel that demonstrates that connection most fully.
More than anything else, Vandover and the Brute resembles a sort of naturalist retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The novel has a pretty standard view of the dichotomous nature of humanity: Vandover has a good side, which is appealed to by art, interested in high class women, and must be prodded into action by external forces in society. He also has a bad side, which is activated by alcohol, looks for sex with lower class women, and is waiting at every moment to spring forth and overwhelm him. It does so in one particularly notable moment: Van takes the mid-class girl Ida to The Imperial, which seems to be some sort of oyster bar/brother, where he sleeps with her (79). This is the seed of his ruination: Ida becomes pregnant, commits suicide, Van leaves town but is shipwrecked coming back, his father dies of the shock of the shipwreck, Van fails to take care of his father’s business well, Ida’s father sues Van and Van’s old friend Geary is the lawyer, but swindles Van by pretending to be acting on his interests, and then Van, swindled, loses the rest of his money gambling before being employed by Geary as a cleaner for some slum apartments Geary owns. The novel’s most interesting sequence by far is its last: Van cleans a vacated apartment while a family moves into it; the wife harshly supervises him, the child mocks him, and the father finally takes pity on him and gives him a quarter (340-354). Furthemore, the novel makes it quite clear that Van could have avoided all of this is someone had pushed him in the direction of his better interests – he is a skilled painter – but in the absence of a positive influence, the brute was destined to win.
Some points of interest. First, the brute in Vandover manifests itself in a remarkably strange way: he literally barks like a dog when the brute is uppermost (citation needed). Furthermore, there only seems to be so much room inside Van’s psyche; after his father dies, he goes to work on his masterwork, trying to redeem himself by virtue of his art, but he finds that his ability to make art has left him – not his hands, but his imagination (225). Vandover is very much like Edna Pontellier; the novel makes it clear over and over again that he has no will of his own but his pliable nature adapts to his environment (17, 120, 207). It is this pliability that allows the brute to become dominant: “he, pleasure-loving, adapting himself to every change of environment, luxurious, self-indulgent, shrinking with the shrinking of a sensuous artist-naure from all that was irksome and disagreeable, had shut his ears to the voices that shouted warnings of the danger, and had allowed the brute to thrive” (215). Perhaps there is an important distinction to make, that Edna was seized by whims and impulses while Van simply adapts to his environment; perhaps not.
Finally, Van seems to have a great deal in common with Des Esseintes of Au Rebours. Just I have suggested that McTeague is a creature of sensuous pleasures like Dorian Gray, just in a lower environment, Vandover too seems to be such a creature. Furthermore, we have a sequence straight from Au Rebours when Vandover chooses rooms, obsessed with their light and windows, and then gives us a lengthy list of the furnishings he intends to put in them, to make them suitable (169-172). Of all the American naturalists, Norris seems the one most in line with the European tradition which unites naturalism and aestheticism, and Vandover is clearly the novel that demonstrates that connection most fully.
The Rise of Silas Lapham
The Rise of Silas Lapham
The first thing to say about The Rise of Silas Lapham is so obvious that it’s mentioned on the back of my copy of the book, but it must be said. Silas Lapham’s rise is not a financial one. In fact, the first chapter of the book is in my mind the strongest, as it quite effectively confounds my notion of what “realism” is, especially as drawn from Dickens, the ultimate realist. Lapham is being interviewed by a local newspaper because of his wealth – his financial rise has already been effected. This is not a rags to riches story. Furthermore, he tells his interviewer, who suggests that he start with his birth, “I didn’t know whether you wanted me to go quite so far back as that” (4). In defiance of the most traditional understanding of realism, The Rise of Silas Lapham is not going to start with our protagonist’s birth, or even with him at a young age, and it’s not going to be about his financial rise. In fact, its’ about his financial failure, and the moral and social fallout that stems from it.
At its core, Rise is the sort of middle-brow novel of manners that James would have written were he less piercing in his insights or that Wharton would have written were her prose less witty and charming. It’s full of interminable drawing-room scenes, in which the old society Corey’s discuss the disgraceful behavior of the Laphams, the Laphams discuss the snootiness of the Corey’s, young Tom Corey attempts to woo bookish Penelope Lapham but everyone believes he wants beautiful Irene Lapham, etc. Silas’ ultimate rise is neither social (Pen marries Tom, but Silas has no hand in it) or financial (he loses his factory, and becomes a small-time businessman, not a mogul) but moral. “But one thing he could say: he had been no man’s enemy but his ow; every dollar, every cent had gone to pay his debts; he had come out with clean hands” (375). Silas’ rise is the fact that he could have passed his troubles on to someone else, but he didn’t – he took his troubles on himself, and retained moral fiber, even as he lost financially.
This is the first of many ways in which Rise seems diametrically opposed to naturalism. Silas goes bankrupt with clean hands; in The Financier, Cowperwood goes bankrupt playing a semi-dirty deal, and the governor of The Octopus has eternally shamed himself by bribing an official. More importantly, although Silas is “ruined,” no woman are ruined in this novel – realism seems unable to encompass prostitution or even adultery. Briefly Mrs. Lapham suspects Silas of adultery, but the pretty secretary at his office turns out to be the daughter of a man who died saving him in the Civil War (351). The novel seems also incapable of envisioning even true financial ruin; Vandover becomes a cleaning man for his betrayer, Hurstwood becomes homeless and commits suicide, Lapham just becomes a much less successful businessman living on the family property after losing both his Boston houses. In short, Rise is the perfect document of American realism, to be contrasted to any novel seeking entrance into the category of naturalism, for contrast.
A few interesting points do come up at the dinner the Lapham’s take at the Corey’s. First, the pastor, Mr. Sewell, blames romantic novels for all society’s current romantic ideas about love (204) – this pastor later makes it clear that Pen should marry Tom, rather than all three being unhappy because Irene loves him unrequitedly. This willingness for 3 to suffer instead of one is put down as romantic thinking. Secondly, Charles Bellingham suggests that no novelist could get the true feelings of the common people into a novel – this sounds like a challenge to naturalists (209). Finally, Bromfield Corey says “I suppose it isn’t well for us to see human nature at white heat habitually” because, when humanity is stretched to the extremes, it responds with valor and courage that could not be maintained in the rest of the world (209; this is from a discussion of the Civil War). This is the realist model of human excess: the ultimate heroism. Naturalism, of course, is the habitual showing of human nature at “white heat,” and it draws a very different conclusion.1
The first thing to say about The Rise of Silas Lapham is so obvious that it’s mentioned on the back of my copy of the book, but it must be said. Silas Lapham’s rise is not a financial one. In fact, the first chapter of the book is in my mind the strongest, as it quite effectively confounds my notion of what “realism” is, especially as drawn from Dickens, the ultimate realist. Lapham is being interviewed by a local newspaper because of his wealth – his financial rise has already been effected. This is not a rags to riches story. Furthermore, he tells his interviewer, who suggests that he start with his birth, “I didn’t know whether you wanted me to go quite so far back as that” (4). In defiance of the most traditional understanding of realism, The Rise of Silas Lapham is not going to start with our protagonist’s birth, or even with him at a young age, and it’s not going to be about his financial rise. In fact, its’ about his financial failure, and the moral and social fallout that stems from it.
At its core, Rise is the sort of middle-brow novel of manners that James would have written were he less piercing in his insights or that Wharton would have written were her prose less witty and charming. It’s full of interminable drawing-room scenes, in which the old society Corey’s discuss the disgraceful behavior of the Laphams, the Laphams discuss the snootiness of the Corey’s, young Tom Corey attempts to woo bookish Penelope Lapham but everyone believes he wants beautiful Irene Lapham, etc. Silas’ ultimate rise is neither social (Pen marries Tom, but Silas has no hand in it) or financial (he loses his factory, and becomes a small-time businessman, not a mogul) but moral. “But one thing he could say: he had been no man’s enemy but his ow; every dollar, every cent had gone to pay his debts; he had come out with clean hands” (375). Silas’ rise is the fact that he could have passed his troubles on to someone else, but he didn’t – he took his troubles on himself, and retained moral fiber, even as he lost financially.
This is the first of many ways in which Rise seems diametrically opposed to naturalism. Silas goes bankrupt with clean hands; in The Financier, Cowperwood goes bankrupt playing a semi-dirty deal, and the governor of The Octopus has eternally shamed himself by bribing an official. More importantly, although Silas is “ruined,” no woman are ruined in this novel – realism seems unable to encompass prostitution or even adultery. Briefly Mrs. Lapham suspects Silas of adultery, but the pretty secretary at his office turns out to be the daughter of a man who died saving him in the Civil War (351). The novel seems also incapable of envisioning even true financial ruin; Vandover becomes a cleaning man for his betrayer, Hurstwood becomes homeless and commits suicide, Lapham just becomes a much less successful businessman living on the family property after losing both his Boston houses. In short, Rise is the perfect document of American realism, to be contrasted to any novel seeking entrance into the category of naturalism, for contrast.
A few interesting points do come up at the dinner the Lapham’s take at the Corey’s. First, the pastor, Mr. Sewell, blames romantic novels for all society’s current romantic ideas about love (204) – this pastor later makes it clear that Pen should marry Tom, rather than all three being unhappy because Irene loves him unrequitedly. This willingness for 3 to suffer instead of one is put down as romantic thinking. Secondly, Charles Bellingham suggests that no novelist could get the true feelings of the common people into a novel – this sounds like a challenge to naturalists (209). Finally, Bromfield Corey says “I suppose it isn’t well for us to see human nature at white heat habitually” because, when humanity is stretched to the extremes, it responds with valor and courage that could not be maintained in the rest of the world (209; this is from a discussion of the Civil War). This is the realist model of human excess: the ultimate heroism. Naturalism, of course, is the habitual showing of human nature at “white heat,” and it draws a very different conclusion.1
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Octopus
The Octopus by Frank Norris.
There are a number of issues to deal with in the The Octopus, the first of which is briefly dealt with in my abstract on Pizer’s discussion of Frank Norris’s definition of naturalism. In short, is it naturalism? Many of the characters here seem to have free will, especially Annixter, who is transformed by love and is a classic “round” or “dynamic” characterin the tradition of realism (251). But Pizer skirts determinism in his discussion of Norris’s naturalism. But the vast majority of the characters here are also high class: they’re powerful and wealthy ranchers. Certainly, Norris would not have seen this figures as irrelevant in the way that he saw Hugo’s Renaissance power-brokers as irrelevant, but the fact remains that the milieu chosen here does not seem in any way to be lower-class, which Pizer suggests is one of the definitions of Norris’s naturalism. This is an avenue of inquiry which might be fruitful – but possibly not.
Strangely, The Octopus seems to suggest that some men have free will – all of the ranchers seem to make their own decisions – but that other men, caught up in the giant system that is the railroad, have no free will. First off, the railroad system is a deterministic, inhuman monster: “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” (36). Strangely, Norris uses “Cyclopean” earlier, along with Colossus, all of which make the railroad a powerful organic monster, in direct contrast to terms like “iron-hearted Power” and “soulless Force” which renders the railroads in terms of physical mechanics, not biological drives.
When we finally meet the person driving the railroad, Shelgrim, the railroad’s determinism is hammered home. Presley wants to meet the man in charge, but Shelgrim tells him “that railroads build themselves” (395). This might make the novel into the great battle of free will and determinism. On the railroad, the men have no power, on the ranch they do, but the railroad and the ranch become intertwined, and Shelgrim and all others are powerless to stop the railroad from ensnaring the ranchers into the deterministic larger force.
Several other points bear noticing, before my conclusion. First, the figure Vanamee and his psychic powers which allow him to call others from a distance and conjure up an image of his lost love are strange and unsettling in a naturalistic novel (95). Secondly, we do get the most obligatory naturalistic of all plot points, eventually; after the loss of her father, Minna Hooven goes to San Fransisco and becomes a prostitute (404) – no fallen women, no naturalism.
Finally, the figure of Presley, who is our Norris stand-in, an author who tries on several different philosophical responses to the Octopus. Presley starts off trying to write an Epic of the West, then finally writes “The Toilers,” the much better poem in solidarity with the working man. He writes this after leaving behind his books of poetics and picking up Mill, Malthus, Young, Pushkin, Henry George, and Schopenhauer (210). He later declares his solidarity with Communism, declaring “I’m a Red” (368) but later views the anarchist/communist Caraher as a mere parasite (426). Finally, he decides, after his meeting with Shelgrimm, that there is nothing but a soulless force, overpowering everything, but Vanamee tells him that he’s mistaken – that history is the story of a soulless force, but it’s also the story of the life-force that inevitably overcomes that soulless force (436,437). The novel ultimately affirms this view: S. Behrmann, the great manipulator, who can be killed by neither pistol (332) nor dynamite (385) is killed by the wheat he has shanghaied from the ranchers (443). Behrmann seemed inevitable, the but the wheat was more inevitable – Norris even uses that word. The novel closes with Presley sailing off to the Orient, realizing in the final 4 paragraphs that Vanamee was right – the force kills people and ideas, but ultimately the wheat and life will always overcome – a strange optimism that I can’t reconcile with the rest of the book.
There are a number of issues to deal with in the The Octopus, the first of which is briefly dealt with in my abstract on Pizer’s discussion of Frank Norris’s definition of naturalism. In short, is it naturalism? Many of the characters here seem to have free will, especially Annixter, who is transformed by love and is a classic “round” or “dynamic” characterin the tradition of realism (251). But Pizer skirts determinism in his discussion of Norris’s naturalism. But the vast majority of the characters here are also high class: they’re powerful and wealthy ranchers. Certainly, Norris would not have seen this figures as irrelevant in the way that he saw Hugo’s Renaissance power-brokers as irrelevant, but the fact remains that the milieu chosen here does not seem in any way to be lower-class, which Pizer suggests is one of the definitions of Norris’s naturalism. This is an avenue of inquiry which might be fruitful – but possibly not.
Strangely, The Octopus seems to suggest that some men have free will – all of the ranchers seem to make their own decisions – but that other men, caught up in the giant system that is the railroad, have no free will. First off, the railroad system is a deterministic, inhuman monster: “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” (36). Strangely, Norris uses “Cyclopean” earlier, along with Colossus, all of which make the railroad a powerful organic monster, in direct contrast to terms like “iron-hearted Power” and “soulless Force” which renders the railroads in terms of physical mechanics, not biological drives.
When we finally meet the person driving the railroad, Shelgrim, the railroad’s determinism is hammered home. Presley wants to meet the man in charge, but Shelgrim tells him “that railroads build themselves” (395). This might make the novel into the great battle of free will and determinism. On the railroad, the men have no power, on the ranch they do, but the railroad and the ranch become intertwined, and Shelgrim and all others are powerless to stop the railroad from ensnaring the ranchers into the deterministic larger force.
Several other points bear noticing, before my conclusion. First, the figure Vanamee and his psychic powers which allow him to call others from a distance and conjure up an image of his lost love are strange and unsettling in a naturalistic novel (95). Secondly, we do get the most obligatory naturalistic of all plot points, eventually; after the loss of her father, Minna Hooven goes to San Fransisco and becomes a prostitute (404) – no fallen women, no naturalism.
Finally, the figure of Presley, who is our Norris stand-in, an author who tries on several different philosophical responses to the Octopus. Presley starts off trying to write an Epic of the West, then finally writes “The Toilers,” the much better poem in solidarity with the working man. He writes this after leaving behind his books of poetics and picking up Mill, Malthus, Young, Pushkin, Henry George, and Schopenhauer (210). He later declares his solidarity with Communism, declaring “I’m a Red” (368) but later views the anarchist/communist Caraher as a mere parasite (426). Finally, he decides, after his meeting with Shelgrimm, that there is nothing but a soulless force, overpowering everything, but Vanamee tells him that he’s mistaken – that history is the story of a soulless force, but it’s also the story of the life-force that inevitably overcomes that soulless force (436,437). The novel ultimately affirms this view: S. Behrmann, the great manipulator, who can be killed by neither pistol (332) nor dynamite (385) is killed by the wheat he has shanghaied from the ranchers (443). Behrmann seemed inevitable, the but the wheat was more inevitable – Norris even uses that word. The novel closes with Presley sailing off to the Orient, realizing in the final 4 paragraphs that Vanamee was right – the force kills people and ideas, but ultimately the wheat and life will always overcome – a strange optimism that I can’t reconcile with the rest of the book.
Frank Norris’s Definition of Naturalism
“Frank Norris’s Definition of Naturalism” by Donald Pizer, from Realism and Naturalism, 33-36.
Pizer’s brief piece could not be more illuminating for me. He provides a definition of naturalism which differs greatly from both Zola’s and Garland’s, both of which have provided me most of my thoughts so far. Zola’s definition is primarily philosophical: naturalism is the study of human temperaments in certain environments, foreclosing any intervention of will or free choice but allowing for the intervention of circumstances. Garland’s definition of naturalism (which he calls Veritism) is progressive and drawn from Veron’s impressionism: first literature attempts to meet a literary ideal, then it attempts to represent real life (realism), and finally it attempts to represent real life, not as it is, but as it is perceived by the author (impressionism/veritism/naturalism).
Startlingly, Norris, Zola’s chief student in the American context, has much more in common with Garland. Norris has a “dialectic” theory of naturalism (33). First, literature was realistic, representing the small things as they happen in life, and bound by normativity. Howells is the chief figure here.. Romanticism, as a response, was both interested in pushing beneath the surface of things, and interested in excessive or abnormal states. Norris chooses Hugo as the representative figure here (34).
According to Pizer, the synthesis is naturalism. Norris describes realism as having “accuracy” while romanticism has the much more valuable philosophical depth of “truth” (34-35). It is the milieu of romanticism that is not “accurate” – Hugo’s figures are larger than life, on a larger than life, stage. But there is a corrective: “[Zola’s] great, terrible dramas no longer happen among the personnel of a feudal and Renaissance nobility […] but among the lower – almost lowest – classes; those who have been thrust or wrenched from the ranks” (Norris quoted in Pizer, 35). Here is naturalism: a romantic understanding of truth, set in the realistic milieu of realismt or, in fact, possibly a sub-realistic milieu. This makes Norris a clear student of Zola, but not of his deterministic philosophy – just of his willingness to mix a philosophy with a lower-class milieu. Hugo, in fact, had just as much philosophical truth as Zola (35)
Strangely, Pizer closes by mentioning that this is what makes Norris declare that The Octopus is straight naturalism in the “style” of McTeague: “Although the first novel is consciously deterministic […] and the the second dramatizes a complex intermingling of free will and determinism, this contradiction is nonexistent with the philosophical vacuum of Norris’s definition” (36). This, however, ignores my concern about The Octopus: the milieu here is upper-class, and the central figures are quite wealthy and powerful men. How does Pizer render this compatible with Norris’s statement that naturalism is the concern with the lower or lowest classes?
Pizer’s brief piece could not be more illuminating for me. He provides a definition of naturalism which differs greatly from both Zola’s and Garland’s, both of which have provided me most of my thoughts so far. Zola’s definition is primarily philosophical: naturalism is the study of human temperaments in certain environments, foreclosing any intervention of will or free choice but allowing for the intervention of circumstances. Garland’s definition of naturalism (which he calls Veritism) is progressive and drawn from Veron’s impressionism: first literature attempts to meet a literary ideal, then it attempts to represent real life (realism), and finally it attempts to represent real life, not as it is, but as it is perceived by the author (impressionism/veritism/naturalism).
Startlingly, Norris, Zola’s chief student in the American context, has much more in common with Garland. Norris has a “dialectic” theory of naturalism (33). First, literature was realistic, representing the small things as they happen in life, and bound by normativity. Howells is the chief figure here.. Romanticism, as a response, was both interested in pushing beneath the surface of things, and interested in excessive or abnormal states. Norris chooses Hugo as the representative figure here (34).
According to Pizer, the synthesis is naturalism. Norris describes realism as having “accuracy” while romanticism has the much more valuable philosophical depth of “truth” (34-35). It is the milieu of romanticism that is not “accurate” – Hugo’s figures are larger than life, on a larger than life, stage. But there is a corrective: “[Zola’s] great, terrible dramas no longer happen among the personnel of a feudal and Renaissance nobility […] but among the lower – almost lowest – classes; those who have been thrust or wrenched from the ranks” (Norris quoted in Pizer, 35). Here is naturalism: a romantic understanding of truth, set in the realistic milieu of realismt or, in fact, possibly a sub-realistic milieu. This makes Norris a clear student of Zola, but not of his deterministic philosophy – just of his willingness to mix a philosophy with a lower-class milieu. Hugo, in fact, had just as much philosophical truth as Zola (35)
Strangely, Pizer closes by mentioning that this is what makes Norris declare that The Octopus is straight naturalism in the “style” of McTeague: “Although the first novel is consciously deterministic […] and the the second dramatizes a complex intermingling of free will and determinism, this contradiction is nonexistent with the philosophical vacuum of Norris’s definition” (36). This, however, ignores my concern about The Octopus: the milieu here is upper-class, and the central figures are quite wealthy and powerful men. How does Pizer render this compatible with Norris’s statement that naturalism is the concern with the lower or lowest classes?
Friday, February 8, 2008
Maggie
Maggie
Stephen Crane’s Maggie is a pyrotechnic display of American naturalism, shot through with a few key strands that I found particularly interesting. First, though I want to discuss the contradiction that I’ve found in the first two pieces presented in the Maggie section of The Portable Stephen Crane. In the first, an inscription to Hamlin Garland, Crane writes: “[Maggie] tries to show that environment is a tremendous thing in the world and frequently shapes lives regardless” (1). This seems to be a clear endorsement of naturalism’s belief in the importance of environment on the human subject. But in a letter to Catherine Harris about the book, Crane says: “In a story of mine called ‘An Experiment in Misery’ I tried to make plain that the root of Bowery life is a sort of cowardice. Perhaps I mean lack of ambition or to willingly be knocked flat and accept the licking” (2). First, this sounds very different from depending on environment, second, it sounds nothing like the characters of Maggie, none of whom take a licking lying down, save perhaps Maggie. After reading the story in question, perhaps I’ll have further insight.
The first strand I want to discuss is the novella’s mock heroic take on life in the Bowery slums, particularly the battles that Maggie’s brother, Jimmie, continually engages in. As the editor of my volume noted, Crane uses the phrase “deeply engaged one” on page 5 – drawn from Homer, this mock-epic epithet seems to mark Crane’s strong condescension to his characters, a condescension which continues through the novel.
Another interesting and naturalistic device Crane uses is a tendency to avoid both proper names and pronouns in certain scenes, conveying a sense of pure documentary description and throwing the reader off-balance. An example: Chapter XV begins: “A forlorn woman went along a lighted avenue” (59). There are no indications who the woman is, and the next two paragraphs simply describe her walking around looking for someone. The logical guess is that this forlon woman is Maggie, but it turns out to be Hattie, looking for Jimmie. This is a continuation of Crane’s point that Jimmie is a hypocrite (other people’s sisters can be ruined, not his); more importantly, it seems to be both documentarian (just “a forlon woman” described with no further literary characterization) but also quite un-documentarian (were we truly experiencing this event, we would recognize the figure as not Maggie, but Crane has used a literary trick to fool the reader).
Death is treated in a brusque and highly naturalistic manner. “The babe, Tommie, died” (15) and “His father died” (17). Even Maggie’s death is treated brusquely, but, of further interest, is not even delivered to us by the narrator, but in Jimmie’s dialogue: “ ‘Well,’ said he, ‘Mag’s dead.’” That’s all we get about Maggie’s death
Finally, I would like to mention a very brief part of the novel concerning Maggie’s development. “The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl.
None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over it.”
Not only does this contain further mock-epic description (philosophers) it does something very strange in a naturalist works: it makes the appearance of Maggie seem to be a miraculous event, one outside nature/genetics/blood. This strange emergence of a flower in a mud puddle, with none of the blood of her people in her veins, bears further investigation.
“Stephen Cranes Maggie and American Naturalism” from The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism by Donald Pizer.
Pizer’s first point is that Maggie, despite standing as one of clearest examples of American naturalism, has certain characteristics that make it a strange fit with other naturalist texts, particularly as we understand them from Zola. First, as Pizer points out, it is a bleak and deterministic picture of slum life in which a young girl is ruined, cast out, and perishes after a bleak life of prostitution. These characteristics, combined with Crane’s insistence that the book demonstrated the effect of an environment on life, seem to make it the perfect naturalist text. But there remains a telling difference: Crane’s novel is full throughout of irony and mock-heroic imagery, and Maggie herself seems not to have been personally affected by her environment. Pizer writes: “There is nothing, of course, to prevent a naturalist from depending on irony and expressionistic symbolism, just as there is nothing to prevent him from introducing a deterministic theme into a Jamesian setting. But in practice the naturalist is usually direct” (124).
Pizer’s explanation of these two oddities is quite useful and telling. As he points out, the novel is constantly treating life as a moral performance. Pete doesn’t want Maggie to be in his bar so it won’t appear to be a low-class joint; Mr. Johnson doesn’t want Jimmie to beat Maggie on the street so they won’t appear to be a low-class family. If that isn’t clear enough, Crane gives us the theater scene, in which villains in the audience cheer for the heroes in the play. Crane, Pizer tells us, is introducing a strong disconnect. Bowery life is amoral, savage, and animalistic, full of violence, hatred, and death. But Bowery morality remains high-minded. This is what really kills Maggie; not that she sleeps with Pete, but because after sleeping with Pete she is considered “ruined” and then, for the public’s sake, thrown out of the Johnson apartment. Pizer concludes by suggesting that Crane, like Howells, is pointing out contemporary issues and showing their negative affect on us. But whereas Howells took aim at social issues, Crane is showing us how some simple changes in moral issues could have changed the course of Maggie’s life. Alterations in the Bowery’s amoral savagery would save lives, but so would a moral system that better reflects that savagery.
Stephen Crane’s Maggie is a pyrotechnic display of American naturalism, shot through with a few key strands that I found particularly interesting. First, though I want to discuss the contradiction that I’ve found in the first two pieces presented in the Maggie section of The Portable Stephen Crane. In the first, an inscription to Hamlin Garland, Crane writes: “[Maggie] tries to show that environment is a tremendous thing in the world and frequently shapes lives regardless” (1). This seems to be a clear endorsement of naturalism’s belief in the importance of environment on the human subject. But in a letter to Catherine Harris about the book, Crane says: “In a story of mine called ‘An Experiment in Misery’ I tried to make plain that the root of Bowery life is a sort of cowardice. Perhaps I mean lack of ambition or to willingly be knocked flat and accept the licking” (2). First, this sounds very different from depending on environment, second, it sounds nothing like the characters of Maggie, none of whom take a licking lying down, save perhaps Maggie. After reading the story in question, perhaps I’ll have further insight.
The first strand I want to discuss is the novella’s mock heroic take on life in the Bowery slums, particularly the battles that Maggie’s brother, Jimmie, continually engages in. As the editor of my volume noted, Crane uses the phrase “deeply engaged one” on page 5 – drawn from Homer, this mock-epic epithet seems to mark Crane’s strong condescension to his characters, a condescension which continues through the novel.
Another interesting and naturalistic device Crane uses is a tendency to avoid both proper names and pronouns in certain scenes, conveying a sense of pure documentary description and throwing the reader off-balance. An example: Chapter XV begins: “A forlorn woman went along a lighted avenue” (59). There are no indications who the woman is, and the next two paragraphs simply describe her walking around looking for someone. The logical guess is that this forlon woman is Maggie, but it turns out to be Hattie, looking for Jimmie. This is a continuation of Crane’s point that Jimmie is a hypocrite (other people’s sisters can be ruined, not his); more importantly, it seems to be both documentarian (just “a forlon woman” described with no further literary characterization) but also quite un-documentarian (were we truly experiencing this event, we would recognize the figure as not Maggie, but Crane has used a literary trick to fool the reader).
Death is treated in a brusque and highly naturalistic manner. “The babe, Tommie, died” (15) and “His father died” (17). Even Maggie’s death is treated brusquely, but, of further interest, is not even delivered to us by the narrator, but in Jimmie’s dialogue: “ ‘Well,’ said he, ‘Mag’s dead.’” That’s all we get about Maggie’s death
Finally, I would like to mention a very brief part of the novel concerning Maggie’s development. “The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl.
None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over it.”
Not only does this contain further mock-epic description (philosophers) it does something very strange in a naturalist works: it makes the appearance of Maggie seem to be a miraculous event, one outside nature/genetics/blood. This strange emergence of a flower in a mud puddle, with none of the blood of her people in her veins, bears further investigation.
“Stephen Cranes Maggie and American Naturalism” from The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism by Donald Pizer.
Pizer’s first point is that Maggie, despite standing as one of clearest examples of American naturalism, has certain characteristics that make it a strange fit with other naturalist texts, particularly as we understand them from Zola. First, as Pizer points out, it is a bleak and deterministic picture of slum life in which a young girl is ruined, cast out, and perishes after a bleak life of prostitution. These characteristics, combined with Crane’s insistence that the book demonstrated the effect of an environment on life, seem to make it the perfect naturalist text. But there remains a telling difference: Crane’s novel is full throughout of irony and mock-heroic imagery, and Maggie herself seems not to have been personally affected by her environment. Pizer writes: “There is nothing, of course, to prevent a naturalist from depending on irony and expressionistic symbolism, just as there is nothing to prevent him from introducing a deterministic theme into a Jamesian setting. But in practice the naturalist is usually direct” (124).
Pizer’s explanation of these two oddities is quite useful and telling. As he points out, the novel is constantly treating life as a moral performance. Pete doesn’t want Maggie to be in his bar so it won’t appear to be a low-class joint; Mr. Johnson doesn’t want Jimmie to beat Maggie on the street so they won’t appear to be a low-class family. If that isn’t clear enough, Crane gives us the theater scene, in which villains in the audience cheer for the heroes in the play. Crane, Pizer tells us, is introducing a strong disconnect. Bowery life is amoral, savage, and animalistic, full of violence, hatred, and death. But Bowery morality remains high-minded. This is what really kills Maggie; not that she sleeps with Pete, but because after sleeping with Pete she is considered “ruined” and then, for the public’s sake, thrown out of the Johnson apartment. Pizer concludes by suggesting that Crane, like Howells, is pointing out contemporary issues and showing their negative affect on us. But whereas Howells took aim at social issues, Crane is showing us how some simple changes in moral issues could have changed the course of Maggie’s life. Alterations in the Bowery’s amoral savagery would save lives, but so would a moral system that better reflects that savagery.
The Awakening
The Awakening
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is, as advertised, a strongly feminist novel. In that respect, it is clear that its most controversial feature is not its fairly standard narrative of “awakening.” After being awakened by Robert Lebrun, Edna Pontellier loves him, rather than her husband, but is ultimately disappointed that, despite being temperamentally more suited towards her, Robert still believes that she is a piece of property to be transferred from an earlier husband to a new husband. Nevertheless, she resolves to possess him (172) but is disappointed when he leaves her, perhaps because she has disregarded male proprietorship, and she commits suicide. The controversial aspect of this all is not her husband or Robert but, as in A Doll House and the considerably later The Hours, the leaving of her children. This is the novel’s feminist dilemma: can a woman leave her children to find happiness? It doesn’t succeed in resolving this issue, but simply stumbles toward an answer; Edna says: “I want to be let alone. No one has any right – except children, perhaps – and even then, it seems to me, or it did seem –“ She felt that her speech was voicing the incoherency of her thoughts, and stopped abruptly.’ (171). Neither Edna nor the novel can fully grapple with this problem, and the result seems to be a novel less progressive than A Doll House – Edna does not set off on her own.
In terms of naturalism, I’m most interested in Edna’s complete and utter servitude to her whims, especially as they seem so similar to Sister Carrie’s constant desire for fine things and directly in contrast to the strong-willed masculine single-mindedness embodied in Frank Cowperwood or any of London’s heroes. Throughout The Awakening, Edna never does anything that was not merely suggested to her by her most recent whim: “An indescribable oppression […] filled her whole being with vague anguish […] it was a mood” (49). These moods or whims are also often brought on by exactly what Cowperwood seems to be invulnerable to: music. Although she cannot hear solitude, hope, longing, or despair in Chopin, “the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her” (72). Acting on her at a subconscious level, the music of Chopin drives her, not because she can hear hope or despair in it, but because she can feel it. Strangely enough, it is also the music of Chopin which so strongly affects the Methodist preacher Theron Ware in The Damanation of Theron Ware – perhaps Frederic Chopin occupies a privileged place in naturalism.
In short, I have found two main areas of interest in The Awakening. First, its feminist nature is difficult and conflicted, firmly in line with Ibsen and Bovary but also possibly resistant to them. Secondly, it seems to offer up a portrait of a human with no will at all, which seems perfectly naturalist, but which is also perfectly opposed to the naturalist conception of the human who is nothing but will. Both of these extremes seem naturalism – in both cases, the human subject can offer no reasons for their actions. Edna is affected by multiple changing whims, Frank Cowperwood by a single overpowering desire, but in both cases rational thinking offers no control. This bears further investigation: the creature of complete whim and the creature of complete will standing as equally naturalist.
“The Rhythm Method: Unmothering the Race in Chopin, Grimke, and Stein” by Jennifer Fleissner, in Women, Compulsion, Modernity, excerpt on Chopin, 233-244
In keeping with her larger examination of the feminine within the moment of American naturalism, Fleissner here takes aim at Edna’s potential, and difficult, status as a naturalist heroine. She begins by acknowledging Edna’s status as a potential tragic heroine; her suicide, in this reading of Edna through the lens of romantic individualism, is re-rendered “into the transcendent rebirth-through-death of a latter-day Aphrodite” (234).
In order to push beyond this tempting but incomplete reading, Fleissner begins by noting The Awakening’s failures to meet its traditional reading: as a novel of sexual awakening. Fleissner accomplishes this by contrasting Edna to her friend Adele. Adele is, unlike Edna, a “mother-woman” but Adele’s actions make it clear that Edna’s rebellion cannot become a standard reaction against the Victorian society that demands women to repress their sexuality and their voice. Adele already confounds those demands by “speaking her mind, asserting her, sexuality, and otherwise breaking loose from the constraints of convention” (238). This makes Edna’s rebellion a tricky one; in the creole milieu in which Edna finds herself, chastity goes hand-in-hand with a free spirit and on open sexuality, not against it. Furthermore, Adele has a perfect manner of communication wither her husband – she has not only a voice, but the perfect manner to express it.
The result is that Edna’s awakening takes a strange path; she doesn’t learn to “find her voice” but, in opposition to Adele, “learns what cannot be expressed” (239). Nowhere is this inability to speak clearer than in her inability to communicate to the doctor why she is rebelling against the presence of her children (236-7).
So Edna’s awakening eventually is not a positive or freeing action. It is in fact an acknowledgement that the Utopian state of motherhood, freedom, and communication result in the invalidation of the self, and that nature itself seems to participate in this invalidation. “Her ‘awakening’ then, appears much less as an ideal self-realization than as the terrible question of how to understand selfhood at all in the face of its radical negation” (242). Edna’s awakening shows her that her project must be to “define being a person as the pitched confrontation with nature’s meaningless endlessness, a sea that we enter and against which we can only pit our own particular rhythms” (242). From there, Fleissner moves on to a discussion of the racial figures in The Awakening and how they fit into a larger schema, something I was unable to grasp without a stronger understanding of the rest of Fleissner’s book.
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is, as advertised, a strongly feminist novel. In that respect, it is clear that its most controversial feature is not its fairly standard narrative of “awakening.” After being awakened by Robert Lebrun, Edna Pontellier loves him, rather than her husband, but is ultimately disappointed that, despite being temperamentally more suited towards her, Robert still believes that she is a piece of property to be transferred from an earlier husband to a new husband. Nevertheless, she resolves to possess him (172) but is disappointed when he leaves her, perhaps because she has disregarded male proprietorship, and she commits suicide. The controversial aspect of this all is not her husband or Robert but, as in A Doll House and the considerably later The Hours, the leaving of her children. This is the novel’s feminist dilemma: can a woman leave her children to find happiness? It doesn’t succeed in resolving this issue, but simply stumbles toward an answer; Edna says: “I want to be let alone. No one has any right – except children, perhaps – and even then, it seems to me, or it did seem –“ She felt that her speech was voicing the incoherency of her thoughts, and stopped abruptly.’ (171). Neither Edna nor the novel can fully grapple with this problem, and the result seems to be a novel less progressive than A Doll House – Edna does not set off on her own.
In terms of naturalism, I’m most interested in Edna’s complete and utter servitude to her whims, especially as they seem so similar to Sister Carrie’s constant desire for fine things and directly in contrast to the strong-willed masculine single-mindedness embodied in Frank Cowperwood or any of London’s heroes. Throughout The Awakening, Edna never does anything that was not merely suggested to her by her most recent whim: “An indescribable oppression […] filled her whole being with vague anguish […] it was a mood” (49). These moods or whims are also often brought on by exactly what Cowperwood seems to be invulnerable to: music. Although she cannot hear solitude, hope, longing, or despair in Chopin, “the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her” (72). Acting on her at a subconscious level, the music of Chopin drives her, not because she can hear hope or despair in it, but because she can feel it. Strangely enough, it is also the music of Chopin which so strongly affects the Methodist preacher Theron Ware in The Damanation of Theron Ware – perhaps Frederic Chopin occupies a privileged place in naturalism.
In short, I have found two main areas of interest in The Awakening. First, its feminist nature is difficult and conflicted, firmly in line with Ibsen and Bovary but also possibly resistant to them. Secondly, it seems to offer up a portrait of a human with no will at all, which seems perfectly naturalist, but which is also perfectly opposed to the naturalist conception of the human who is nothing but will. Both of these extremes seem naturalism – in both cases, the human subject can offer no reasons for their actions. Edna is affected by multiple changing whims, Frank Cowperwood by a single overpowering desire, but in both cases rational thinking offers no control. This bears further investigation: the creature of complete whim and the creature of complete will standing as equally naturalist.
“The Rhythm Method: Unmothering the Race in Chopin, Grimke, and Stein” by Jennifer Fleissner, in Women, Compulsion, Modernity, excerpt on Chopin, 233-244
In keeping with her larger examination of the feminine within the moment of American naturalism, Fleissner here takes aim at Edna’s potential, and difficult, status as a naturalist heroine. She begins by acknowledging Edna’s status as a potential tragic heroine; her suicide, in this reading of Edna through the lens of romantic individualism, is re-rendered “into the transcendent rebirth-through-death of a latter-day Aphrodite” (234).
In order to push beyond this tempting but incomplete reading, Fleissner begins by noting The Awakening’s failures to meet its traditional reading: as a novel of sexual awakening. Fleissner accomplishes this by contrasting Edna to her friend Adele. Adele is, unlike Edna, a “mother-woman” but Adele’s actions make it clear that Edna’s rebellion cannot become a standard reaction against the Victorian society that demands women to repress their sexuality and their voice. Adele already confounds those demands by “speaking her mind, asserting her, sexuality, and otherwise breaking loose from the constraints of convention” (238). This makes Edna’s rebellion a tricky one; in the creole milieu in which Edna finds herself, chastity goes hand-in-hand with a free spirit and on open sexuality, not against it. Furthermore, Adele has a perfect manner of communication wither her husband – she has not only a voice, but the perfect manner to express it.
The result is that Edna’s awakening takes a strange path; she doesn’t learn to “find her voice” but, in opposition to Adele, “learns what cannot be expressed” (239). Nowhere is this inability to speak clearer than in her inability to communicate to the doctor why she is rebelling against the presence of her children (236-7).
So Edna’s awakening eventually is not a positive or freeing action. It is in fact an acknowledgement that the Utopian state of motherhood, freedom, and communication result in the invalidation of the self, and that nature itself seems to participate in this invalidation. “Her ‘awakening’ then, appears much less as an ideal self-realization than as the terrible question of how to understand selfhood at all in the face of its radical negation” (242). Edna’s awakening shows her that her project must be to “define being a person as the pitched confrontation with nature’s meaningless endlessness, a sea that we enter and against which we can only pit our own particular rhythms” (242). From there, Fleissner moves on to a discussion of the racial figures in The Awakening and how they fit into a larger schema, something I was unable to grasp without a stronger understanding of the rest of Fleissner’s book.
Damnation of Theron Ware
The Damnation of Theron Ware
The Damnation of Theron Ware is a stunning novel, perfectly suited for my treatment of American naturalism as both a literary movement and as the expression of the interaction of key philosophical movements at the end of the 19th century. The central figure is a naïve Methodist minister, Theron Ware, who is praised for his preaching but whose faith is shattered by the first intimations of the 19th century German research which dismantled the traditional claims to the veracity of the Bible. Once cut adrift from his Methodist fundamentalism, Ware is pulled in various directions by the figures around him, each of whom pull him in the direction of one established philosophical movement with important consequences for naturalism. Those figures are the Methodist debt-raiser Sister Soulsby, the Catholic Priest Father Forbes, the scientist Dr. Ledsamar, and the Irish artist Celia Madden.
The editor of my edition has provided an endnote which encapsulates these figures and their import quite briefly and usefully: “Father FOrbers here introduces Theron to what was called the “Higher Criticism” of the Bible, and attempt to establish authorship and historical credibility rather than simply to establish what the text said.
This passage is the first of four sections referring to late-nineteenth century intellectual movements that destroy Theron’s faith. The others are the scientific rationalism and evolutionary theories of Dr. Ledsmar, Celia Madden’s interpretation of of the Aesthetic movement in art and music, and Sister Soulsby’s American Pragmaticsm.” (332)
Personally, I found Sister Soulsby to be eminently pragmatic, but whether or not she is “Pragamatist” did not seem immediately apparent. Most interesting to be are Celia Madden and Dr. Ledsmar. Celia and Ledsmar represent what I often think of as two strands of naturalism, but in this book their views and personalities are presented as diametrically opposed. Celia demonstrates Aestheticism’s connection to naturalism when she declares that her life as a “Greek” requires her to follow her whims. Replace whims with impulses, and Celia is the perfect naturalist; furthermore, she makes a case for upper-class naturalism: it is her wealth that gives her impulses free rein.
Dr. Ledsmar, by contrast, is a naturalist in the more scientific vein: he is interested exclusively in rational explanations for things, and renames one of his lizards after Theron to demonstrate Theron’s animal nature (215-216). He sounds perfectly like Max Nordau when he diagnoses Celia’s Aestheticism as “egotism.”
Both Celia and Dr. Ledsmar agree on something, cementing the connection to Nordau: Theron, influenced by these new ideas has become “degenerate” (306, 315). But Frederic does not fall back on the simple conservatism I initially suspected him of (represented by Celia’s brother Michael (284)). Instead, he gives Theron a “happy” ending – he lights off for the territories, determined to succeed in business and, possibly, politics, where talking, his one skill, is all that matters. Truly an American rewriting of naturalism’s inevitable catastrophe – catastrophe is replaced with a blind and inevitable groping for success, out in the less settled land of Seattle.
Finally, a brief note on the naturalism of its text, in terms of temperament, environment, and circumstances. Alice, Theron’s wife, declares that his degenerate behavior was out of character, and brought about purely by the environment of Octavius. Sister Soulsby disagrees; Octavius did its work, but only could because there was “a screw loose somewhere” in Theron’s mind (323). Elsewhere, Frederic uses terms like mechanism and machinery to describe Theron’s mind – a truly naturalist portrait, where the simple machine that was Theron’s temperamental makeup responded to the new environment and ideas.
The Damnation of Theron Ware is a stunning novel, perfectly suited for my treatment of American naturalism as both a literary movement and as the expression of the interaction of key philosophical movements at the end of the 19th century. The central figure is a naïve Methodist minister, Theron Ware, who is praised for his preaching but whose faith is shattered by the first intimations of the 19th century German research which dismantled the traditional claims to the veracity of the Bible. Once cut adrift from his Methodist fundamentalism, Ware is pulled in various directions by the figures around him, each of whom pull him in the direction of one established philosophical movement with important consequences for naturalism. Those figures are the Methodist debt-raiser Sister Soulsby, the Catholic Priest Father Forbes, the scientist Dr. Ledsamar, and the Irish artist Celia Madden.
The editor of my edition has provided an endnote which encapsulates these figures and their import quite briefly and usefully: “Father FOrbers here introduces Theron to what was called the “Higher Criticism” of the Bible, and attempt to establish authorship and historical credibility rather than simply to establish what the text said.
This passage is the first of four sections referring to late-nineteenth century intellectual movements that destroy Theron’s faith. The others are the scientific rationalism and evolutionary theories of Dr. Ledsmar, Celia Madden’s interpretation of of the Aesthetic movement in art and music, and Sister Soulsby’s American Pragmaticsm.” (332)
Personally, I found Sister Soulsby to be eminently pragmatic, but whether or not she is “Pragamatist” did not seem immediately apparent. Most interesting to be are Celia Madden and Dr. Ledsmar. Celia and Ledsmar represent what I often think of as two strands of naturalism, but in this book their views and personalities are presented as diametrically opposed. Celia demonstrates Aestheticism’s connection to naturalism when she declares that her life as a “Greek” requires her to follow her whims. Replace whims with impulses, and Celia is the perfect naturalist; furthermore, she makes a case for upper-class naturalism: it is her wealth that gives her impulses free rein.
Dr. Ledsmar, by contrast, is a naturalist in the more scientific vein: he is interested exclusively in rational explanations for things, and renames one of his lizards after Theron to demonstrate Theron’s animal nature (215-216). He sounds perfectly like Max Nordau when he diagnoses Celia’s Aestheticism as “egotism.”
Both Celia and Dr. Ledsmar agree on something, cementing the connection to Nordau: Theron, influenced by these new ideas has become “degenerate” (306, 315). But Frederic does not fall back on the simple conservatism I initially suspected him of (represented by Celia’s brother Michael (284)). Instead, he gives Theron a “happy” ending – he lights off for the territories, determined to succeed in business and, possibly, politics, where talking, his one skill, is all that matters. Truly an American rewriting of naturalism’s inevitable catastrophe – catastrophe is replaced with a blind and inevitable groping for success, out in the less settled land of Seattle.
Finally, a brief note on the naturalism of its text, in terms of temperament, environment, and circumstances. Alice, Theron’s wife, declares that his degenerate behavior was out of character, and brought about purely by the environment of Octavius. Sister Soulsby disagrees; Octavius did its work, but only could because there was “a screw loose somewhere” in Theron’s mind (323). Elsewhere, Frederic uses terms like mechanism and machinery to describe Theron’s mind – a truly naturalist portrait, where the simple machine that was Theron’s temperamental makeup responded to the new environment and ideas.
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