I just finished Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs and, beyond being a truly excellent book, it seems to me, like The Rise of Silas Lapham, to have enormous usefulness as the standard bearer for an alternative to naturalism, in this case local color (although I need to read up on Donna Campbell's thoughts on this to make sense of it).
My primary observation - begun by a metaphor for people as trees in Cather's My Antonia - is that if in Realism people are people, and in naturalism people are animals - "human beasts" - in local color people are definitively plants. This idea is shaped not just by the fact that Jewett's narrator defines the country of her title in terms of "pointed firs" but in constant reference to plants and plant metaphors. The narrator's friend, Mrs. Todd, is an herbalist, constantly growing plants; Mrs. Todd's friend Sarah Tilley is referred to as a "plain flower" (124). In reference to Sant Bowden, a throwback to the Bowden's French military stock who was unfit for American military service, Mrs. Todd says "There's a great many such strayaway folks, just as there is plants" (103). This is an especially interesting observation - Mrs. Todd does have a theory of evolution, and what sounds even like degeneration, in the case of Sant Bowden, but it's put in terms of plants instead of animals.
In many more ways, the people of the country of the pointed firs seem like plants. Outside of the narrator, and a few others who are mentioned, they seem rooted to their spots; Mrs. Todd's mother still lives on Green Island, motionless, and a relative, Joanna Todd, lived, completely cutoff from all society, on Shell-Heap island for decades after her betrothed left her. This brings me to my next point: the men of the country of pointed firs fish and sail (as do a few of the women), but it may be that women are rooted to the ground, while the men are not - Joanna's betrothed, after all, fled to Boston, rooting her even more permanently in the back. This would set up for me (again, Campell needs to be consulted) a gender based binary, in which men are animals, women are plants in Jewett, but also in which naturalism might be the genre of men/animals, while local fiction is the literature of women/plants. Campbell, again, would complicate this in interesting ways.
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Monday, September 22, 2008
Quicksand by Nella Larsen
I doubt that Quicksand is often associated with naturalism. And yet, I found many of the hallmarks of naturalism in it. The protagonist, Helga Crane, is looking for happiness. And that happiness is, from the start, problematized by race. She's unhappy in the U.S. because she naturally gravitates to a class of black intellectuals. And while she enjoys their company, she can't handle the rigid, Booker T. Washington style of education of Naxos, where she briefly teaches. In NYC, she seems to have found a preferable mode of being, but all the intellectuals there are obsessed with "the race problem," and particularly obsessed with the horrors of miscegenation. As the child of a white mother and black man, Helga is frequently the brunt of unwitting insults.
In true naturalist fashion, Helga tries to escape her problems through a change in environment, and moves to Denmark to live with her mother's rich relatives. Here she begins what can only be considered a life of decadence: going to nice parties, wearing expensive clothes, and being painted and courted by Axel Olsen, a man who is both rich and an artist. But being exoticized in Denmark, and having no other black people around, eventually grows old, and Helga decides that she needs to have a partitioned life, splitting time between Europe and America. "This knowledge, this certainty of the division of her life into two parts in two lands, into physical freedom in Europe and spiritual freedom in America, was unfortunate, inconvenient, expensive."
But even this solution doesn't hold up; Helga's friend Anne has married her old superior at Naxos, Dr. James Anderson, who Helga holds an unbreakable yearning for. They kiss once, she imagines a future between them, but he makes it clear that the kiss was a mistake. Helga decides abruptly to marry a rural Southern preacher, and thrusts herself into the world that most subjects of naturalism work to escape; Quicksand is thus a version of reverse naturalism, in which the intellectual, who could live a rich life in Denmark or an intellectual one in Harlem, voluntarily descends into a life of hard work and poverty. At first she dislikes the life, but eventually accepts it by accepting faith in God: "Her religion was to her a kind of protective covering, shielding her from the cruel light of an unbearable reality" (117). But the horror of her third childbirth destroys this faith: "Because, she knew now, He wasn't there. Didn't exist. into that yawning gap of unspeakable brutality had gone, too, her belief in the miracle and wonder of life" (120). And in keeping with this naturalistic view of life, her infant perishes in less than a week, lacking the "vitality" to survive (121). But the novel ends with Helga still trapped in her miserable environment; although she's discovered that the Negroes are trapped by their belief in the "white man's God," she doesn't quite have the physical strength to leave the town yet (123). And the novel ends: "And hardly had she left her bed and become able to walk again without pain, hardly had the children returned from the homes of the neighbors, when she began to have her fifth child" (125).
To return to my original point: I wouldn't necessarily think of this as a naturalistic novel. And yet, it's depiction of a world without meaning, of people trapped in an unalterable environment, and it's obsession with the importance of race (something that Helga both discounts and accepts) it seems similar in many ways to naturalism. Which leads me to the question: is the question of race simultaneous a question of naturalism? Or, to put it in another way, could an African American novelist write a book in the first part of the 20th century that didn't share many of the concerns of naturalism? I think this is possibly an essay question; it's also something to think about in the highly naturalist work of Richard Wright (and his move from the naturalistic despair of Native Son to the mild optimism of Black Boy) and in the racial theories of Alain Locke.
In true naturalist fashion, Helga tries to escape her problems through a change in environment, and moves to Denmark to live with her mother's rich relatives. Here she begins what can only be considered a life of decadence: going to nice parties, wearing expensive clothes, and being painted and courted by Axel Olsen, a man who is both rich and an artist. But being exoticized in Denmark, and having no other black people around, eventually grows old, and Helga decides that she needs to have a partitioned life, splitting time between Europe and America. "This knowledge, this certainty of the division of her life into two parts in two lands, into physical freedom in Europe and spiritual freedom in America, was unfortunate, inconvenient, expensive."
But even this solution doesn't hold up; Helga's friend Anne has married her old superior at Naxos, Dr. James Anderson, who Helga holds an unbreakable yearning for. They kiss once, she imagines a future between them, but he makes it clear that the kiss was a mistake. Helga decides abruptly to marry a rural Southern preacher, and thrusts herself into the world that most subjects of naturalism work to escape; Quicksand is thus a version of reverse naturalism, in which the intellectual, who could live a rich life in Denmark or an intellectual one in Harlem, voluntarily descends into a life of hard work and poverty. At first she dislikes the life, but eventually accepts it by accepting faith in God: "Her religion was to her a kind of protective covering, shielding her from the cruel light of an unbearable reality" (117). But the horror of her third childbirth destroys this faith: "Because, she knew now, He wasn't there. Didn't exist. into that yawning gap of unspeakable brutality had gone, too, her belief in the miracle and wonder of life" (120). And in keeping with this naturalistic view of life, her infant perishes in less than a week, lacking the "vitality" to survive (121). But the novel ends with Helga still trapped in her miserable environment; although she's discovered that the Negroes are trapped by their belief in the "white man's God," she doesn't quite have the physical strength to leave the town yet (123). And the novel ends: "And hardly had she left her bed and become able to walk again without pain, hardly had the children returned from the homes of the neighbors, when she began to have her fifth child" (125).
To return to my original point: I wouldn't necessarily think of this as a naturalistic novel. And yet, it's depiction of a world without meaning, of people trapped in an unalterable environment, and it's obsession with the importance of race (something that Helga both discounts and accepts) it seems similar in many ways to naturalism. Which leads me to the question: is the question of race simultaneous a question of naturalism? Or, to put it in another way, could an African American novelist write a book in the first part of the 20th century that didn't share many of the concerns of naturalism? I think this is possibly an essay question; it's also something to think about in the highly naturalist work of Richard Wright (and his move from the naturalistic despair of Native Son to the mild optimism of Black Boy) and in the racial theories of Alain Locke.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Frost
I've never liked Frost, but he's certainly not unique among poets. This is the most extending reading I've ever done of him, which tells you something, since it was only like 15 pages of Frost. But here's what I think now:
He's certainly enjoyable to read, particularly as his style is so rural and thus readable. He's also not in the slightest bit naturalist, and also not terribly transcendentalist. (His lack of naturalism comes in spite of the fact that his poems are often very bleak and interested in "decay") He does seem to have been quite an individualist, and fascinated by nature. He was also very clearly swimming against the modernist tide, by producing such readable and mostly clear poems.
I was stunned to find the famous "The Road Not Taken" to be more complex than I realized. The famous declaration that taking the less traveled road made all the difference is actually undercut, first by the acknowledgement that, although that road does look less traveled, "Though as for that, the passing there/Had worn them really about the same." And the looking back doesn't actually take place, but is imagined "I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence:" I'm inclined to think that the "difference" the road made was actually trivial; the significance on this moment comes from the speaker's choice, not because the road actually made a difference or was even actually much less traveled.
A poem like "The Wood-Pile" is much more to my liking. In it, the speaker is wandering alone, far from home, and encounters a little bird which fearfully hides from him. The speaker forgets the bird and frightens him, and the bird hides behind a woodpile which someone has cut and carefully stacked, but has rested here for a long time, about to lose structural integrity, overgrown by the vine Clematis, and completely abandoned by its creator. "I thought that only/Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks/Could so forget his handiwork on which/He spent himself, the labor of his az,/And leave it there far from a useful fireplace/To warm the frozen swamp as best it could/With the slow smokeless burning of decay." A bleak image, but one that also strikes me as beautiful.
Two more poems, The Death of the Hired Man, about an inconstant hired man who has come "home" to die, and "Home Burial," about a couple torn apart by the death of their son and the wife's perception that the husband did not feel it deeply enough, seem like the best candidates for naturalist readings. They do seem to have the pall of rural death and despair hanging over them, and thus in many ways could fit into Main-Traveled roads or a like set of stories. But they also seem, to me, to be lacking the deterministic and scientific underpinnings of naturalism; the deaths haunting them are more Romantic than naturalistic.
He's certainly enjoyable to read, particularly as his style is so rural and thus readable. He's also not in the slightest bit naturalist, and also not terribly transcendentalist. (His lack of naturalism comes in spite of the fact that his poems are often very bleak and interested in "decay") He does seem to have been quite an individualist, and fascinated by nature. He was also very clearly swimming against the modernist tide, by producing such readable and mostly clear poems.
I was stunned to find the famous "The Road Not Taken" to be more complex than I realized. The famous declaration that taking the less traveled road made all the difference is actually undercut, first by the acknowledgement that, although that road does look less traveled, "Though as for that, the passing there/Had worn them really about the same." And the looking back doesn't actually take place, but is imagined "I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence:" I'm inclined to think that the "difference" the road made was actually trivial; the significance on this moment comes from the speaker's choice, not because the road actually made a difference or was even actually much less traveled.
A poem like "The Wood-Pile" is much more to my liking. In it, the speaker is wandering alone, far from home, and encounters a little bird which fearfully hides from him. The speaker forgets the bird and frightens him, and the bird hides behind a woodpile which someone has cut and carefully stacked, but has rested here for a long time, about to lose structural integrity, overgrown by the vine Clematis, and completely abandoned by its creator. "I thought that only/Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks/Could so forget his handiwork on which/He spent himself, the labor of his az,/And leave it there far from a useful fireplace/To warm the frozen swamp as best it could/With the slow smokeless burning of decay." A bleak image, but one that also strikes me as beautiful.
Two more poems, The Death of the Hired Man, about an inconstant hired man who has come "home" to die, and "Home Burial," about a couple torn apart by the death of their son and the wife's perception that the husband did not feel it deeply enough, seem like the best candidates for naturalist readings. They do seem to have the pall of rural death and despair hanging over them, and thus in many ways could fit into Main-Traveled roads or a like set of stories. But they also seem, to me, to be lacking the deterministic and scientific underpinnings of naturalism; the deaths haunting them are more Romantic than naturalistic.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger
Ragged Dick is the first book in Alger's Richard Hunter series, about the rise of of young Dick from penniless bootblack to, presumably, titan of finance. It is also Alger's first novel. As such, it is the perfect example of anti-naturalism: a book which has all the same basic elements of naturalism (impoverished people in an urban area) but which writes their story in a positive light.
As with naturalism, physical appearance plays a great part in determining how once can judge someone. Over and over, Alger points out that people trust Dick because he "had a frank, straight-forward manner that made him a favorite" (4). The face is the window to the soul; physiognomy is as strong here as in naturalism.
One way to think about Ragged Dick is to perceive it as the story of American Tragedy, if Clyde's cousin were the penniless up and comer. Over and over, Dreiser points out that, although Clyde is handsomer than his cousin, he's less driven and ambitious. He does not burn with a fire to succeed. Alger makes this same point about Dick by repeatedly comparing him to the fellow bootblack Johnny, who does not succeed because he's lazy. Johnny "was a good-natured boy, large of his age, with nothing particularly bad about him, but utterly lacking in that energy, ambition, and natural sharpness, for which Dick was distinguished" (125).
Dick also meets good fortune after good fortune; he's constantly thrown into situations that will lead to his success. The most outrageous of these is when his friend Fosdick applies for a job at a hat shop, which just happens to be the hat shop where the boys' sunday school teacher teaches, who just happens to walk in during the interview and recommend Fosdick( 95). This, and many other coincidences, are the counter to the negative coincidences that take place in naturalism and bring about the downfall of the naturalist subjects. And of course, sometimes in naturalism these chances (Trina winning the lottery, Clyde running into his uncle and obtaining employment) seem, like Dick's chances, to hold promise. They just never do.
I can see the appeal of these books. Dick is a charming character, and although Alger's style is repetitive, it's charming enough. I was personally revolted by the right wing platitudes all through the book; this is the ur-novel for those who believe that the poor need to just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But I can also understand it's appeal for the second half of the 19th century, as a document fully embracing and encouraging the American dream.
As with naturalism, physical appearance plays a great part in determining how once can judge someone. Over and over, Alger points out that people trust Dick because he "had a frank, straight-forward manner that made him a favorite" (4). The face is the window to the soul; physiognomy is as strong here as in naturalism.
One way to think about Ragged Dick is to perceive it as the story of American Tragedy, if Clyde's cousin were the penniless up and comer. Over and over, Dreiser points out that, although Clyde is handsomer than his cousin, he's less driven and ambitious. He does not burn with a fire to succeed. Alger makes this same point about Dick by repeatedly comparing him to the fellow bootblack Johnny, who does not succeed because he's lazy. Johnny "was a good-natured boy, large of his age, with nothing particularly bad about him, but utterly lacking in that energy, ambition, and natural sharpness, for which Dick was distinguished" (125).
Dick also meets good fortune after good fortune; he's constantly thrown into situations that will lead to his success. The most outrageous of these is when his friend Fosdick applies for a job at a hat shop, which just happens to be the hat shop where the boys' sunday school teacher teaches, who just happens to walk in during the interview and recommend Fosdick( 95). This, and many other coincidences, are the counter to the negative coincidences that take place in naturalism and bring about the downfall of the naturalist subjects. And of course, sometimes in naturalism these chances (Trina winning the lottery, Clyde running into his uncle and obtaining employment) seem, like Dick's chances, to hold promise. They just never do.
I can see the appeal of these books. Dick is a charming character, and although Alger's style is repetitive, it's charming enough. I was personally revolted by the right wing platitudes all through the book; this is the ur-novel for those who believe that the poor need to just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. But I can also understand it's appeal for the second half of the 19th century, as a document fully embracing and encouraging the American dream.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Portrait of a Lady
Portrait of a Lady is one of the most dreariest, boringest books I have ever read. I was barely able to get through it; I spent months reading it. It was atrocious.
Anyway, I have very little to say about it. Gregg thought it might be interesting to view Osmond as a seducer in the tradition of naturalism, but I didn't find Osmond's character that interesting. Frankly, I didn't find anyone very interesting, least of all Isabel Archer, who deflects rich and perfect suitors Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton so she can have her freedom, marries Osmond for no clear reason, and then stays with Osmond even when he is (perfectly, precisely) horrid and hateful to her.
The most important thing I thought about this book is that Lord Warburton is considered a "radical" but that ideas are never broached. Unlike McTeague style naturalism, which leaves ideas out of it, or London style naturalism, which uses ideas point blank, this book suggests that ideas exists but then makes it clear that James simply has no interest in them at all. On p. 67, Isabel and Warburton discuss ideas, and Warburton disabuses her of all of her current ideas, but the ideas themselves are never mentioned. Everyone says that Warburton is a hypocrite for being a radical and a large land-owner, but never does anyone say that being a radical involves communal living or anything like that. Like EVERYTHING ELSE in James, ideas are obscured behind a blank wall of language.
I do think that, although Isabel is a character caught up in circumstances beyond her control, James' methods are the opposite of naturalism's. In the preface, he writes, that his idea flows not from any plot but from an idea of a character (p.4). This is the opposite of naturalism, in which the plot always comes first - it is usually drawn from the newspaper. I don't know if James works better as a realist or a modernist, but he's not a naturalist: his only concern seems to be individual psychology, and the controversial ideas that are naturalism's stock in trade are nonexistent.
Anyway, I have very little to say about it. Gregg thought it might be interesting to view Osmond as a seducer in the tradition of naturalism, but I didn't find Osmond's character that interesting. Frankly, I didn't find anyone very interesting, least of all Isabel Archer, who deflects rich and perfect suitors Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton so she can have her freedom, marries Osmond for no clear reason, and then stays with Osmond even when he is (perfectly, precisely) horrid and hateful to her.
The most important thing I thought about this book is that Lord Warburton is considered a "radical" but that ideas are never broached. Unlike McTeague style naturalism, which leaves ideas out of it, or London style naturalism, which uses ideas point blank, this book suggests that ideas exists but then makes it clear that James simply has no interest in them at all. On p. 67, Isabel and Warburton discuss ideas, and Warburton disabuses her of all of her current ideas, but the ideas themselves are never mentioned. Everyone says that Warburton is a hypocrite for being a radical and a large land-owner, but never does anyone say that being a radical involves communal living or anything like that. Like EVERYTHING ELSE in James, ideas are obscured behind a blank wall of language.
I do think that, although Isabel is a character caught up in circumstances beyond her control, James' methods are the opposite of naturalism's. In the preface, he writes, that his idea flows not from any plot but from an idea of a character (p.4). This is the opposite of naturalism, in which the plot always comes first - it is usually drawn from the newspaper. I don't know if James works better as a realist or a modernist, but he's not a naturalist: his only concern seems to be individual psychology, and the controversial ideas that are naturalism's stock in trade are nonexistent.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
An American Tragedy
An American Tragedy, or Oh My God I Can't Believe I Read the Whole Damn Book
An American Tragedy is the longest slog I have every worked my way through. It is boring and poorly written, but is certainly worthy to stand as the most canonical text of American naturalism. It is a very pure form of naturalism - the essence of naturalism, which has not been reduced and strengthened in power but allowed to flow endlessly and thus blunted in its force.
It is essentially a novel of the American Dream, and how that Dream is thwarted by class. Perhaps moreso, it is a novel about how social strictures, particularly puritan methods of nobility, bring about tragedy.
The tragedy hear is no that Clyde Griffiths kills Roberta Alden. It's that society sets up a situation in which that could occur. Clyde doesn't love Roberta; he has a better life waiting for him. But she's pregnant. Society dictates that single mothers should be ostracized; society dictates that abortions are illegal (unless, as we hear about repeatedly, a wealthy woman of good stock is pregnant, in which case a physician can always be found). Society, then, brings about the tragedy by hypocritically insisting that Clyde must marry Roberta even though doing so would ruin both of their lives.
This determinstic viewpoint is pushed by Jepheson, one of Clyde's two lawyers (the other, Belknap, pushes the hypocrisy: he helps Clyde because he feels bad that, in the same situation, his wealth enabled him to get an abortion). Jephson says "You didn't make yourself" (710). He lays the blame for Clyde's problems outside of Clyde. That's the naturalistic way.
The introducer writes: "As a poor boy in his native Indiana, Dreiser avidly read the Horatio Alger stories and other self-help books about success. Unlike Chester Gillette (the historical precedent for Clyde), however, he had the talent, intellect, and drive to achieve it." (IX)
Drive, drive, drive. Here is Serres' thermodynamics - his engine. Over and over again, we're told that Clyde is handsomer than his cousin Gilbert, but lacks his drive and force. In other words, Gilberts was born with a more powerful reservoir than Clyde; he has a greater energy system to draw upon. This is what ultimately prevents Clyde from succeeding; although he could never be Gilbert, who was born to success, his lack of drive prevented him from rising on his own. Unlike Dreiser, or an Alger Hero, he simply doesn't have the motor for success. And lacking that motor, the classism and religious hypocrisy of his society dooms him.
An American Tragedy is the longest slog I have every worked my way through. It is boring and poorly written, but is certainly worthy to stand as the most canonical text of American naturalism. It is a very pure form of naturalism - the essence of naturalism, which has not been reduced and strengthened in power but allowed to flow endlessly and thus blunted in its force.
It is essentially a novel of the American Dream, and how that Dream is thwarted by class. Perhaps moreso, it is a novel about how social strictures, particularly puritan methods of nobility, bring about tragedy.
The tragedy hear is no that Clyde Griffiths kills Roberta Alden. It's that society sets up a situation in which that could occur. Clyde doesn't love Roberta; he has a better life waiting for him. But she's pregnant. Society dictates that single mothers should be ostracized; society dictates that abortions are illegal (unless, as we hear about repeatedly, a wealthy woman of good stock is pregnant, in which case a physician can always be found). Society, then, brings about the tragedy by hypocritically insisting that Clyde must marry Roberta even though doing so would ruin both of their lives.
This determinstic viewpoint is pushed by Jepheson, one of Clyde's two lawyers (the other, Belknap, pushes the hypocrisy: he helps Clyde because he feels bad that, in the same situation, his wealth enabled him to get an abortion). Jephson says "You didn't make yourself" (710). He lays the blame for Clyde's problems outside of Clyde. That's the naturalistic way.
The introducer writes: "As a poor boy in his native Indiana, Dreiser avidly read the Horatio Alger stories and other self-help books about success. Unlike Chester Gillette (the historical precedent for Clyde), however, he had the talent, intellect, and drive to achieve it." (IX)
Drive, drive, drive. Here is Serres' thermodynamics - his engine. Over and over again, we're told that Clyde is handsomer than his cousin Gilbert, but lacks his drive and force. In other words, Gilberts was born with a more powerful reservoir than Clyde; he has a greater energy system to draw upon. This is what ultimately prevents Clyde from succeeding; although he could never be Gilbert, who was born to success, his lack of drive prevented him from rising on his own. Unlike Dreiser, or an Alger Hero, he simply doesn't have the motor for success. And lacking that motor, the classism and religious hypocrisy of his society dooms him.
Ethan Frome
Ever since Madame Bovary, that first proto-naturalist work, naturalism has been the literature of adultery. Ethan Frome is no exception - although no sexual adultery takes place, it is the story of farmer who, saddled with a nearly invalid wife, loves her cousin, Mattie, who has come to stay with them.
It is without a doubt of story of degeneration. There is in fact a reference to technological advances as "degenerate," which I assume to be in the sense of decadence (5). But more prevalent is physical degeneration. When we meet Ethan, he has already degenerated. But this is no slow, gradual degeneration: he is permanently marred by a past accident, described as a "smash-up" (3). Eventually, we hear the whole story in flashback: how Ethan and Mattie grew close, how his wife Zeena kicked Mattie out of the house to make room for a hired girl who can do the work an invalid shouldn't, how Mattie and Ethan, unable to afford to run away, decide to commit suicide by running into a giant elm on a sled, and how they survive, Mattie paralyzed from the waist down, Ethan, with one side marred, to spend the rest of their lives together with Zeena.
This work seems to perfectly fit within Norris' definition of naturalism as a dialectic between the deep truths of romanticism and the surface accuracy of realism. In that way it recalls Garland's veritism as well - these are hardened people, beaten down by life, who long for escape, but they are not depraved murderers, incestuous, or adulterous.
But the mode of telling is romantic. The foreshadowing of the elm is repeated over and over again, and that particular method of suicide is deeply sentimental and romantic. Wharton has taken rural Massachusetts and made it into a snow-drenched land of mystery and secrets. And the final scene of the book, when we see the Frome's house in present day: broken down Ethan,
endlessly toiling Mattie (whose "complications" eased up when she had to work), and paralyzed, tortured Mattie. This is a romantic story with all the bleakness of real, hardbitten, hardworking people.
Two more notes: First, this is definitely a story of inertia. Our narrator is an engineer, and when he offers the scientifically minded Ethan a book about biochemistry "[Ethan] hesitated, and I had the impression he felt himself about to yield to a stealing tide of inertia; then "Thank you- I'll take it," he answered shortly" (9). But if Ethan overcomes the tide of inertia that comes with his degeneration to accept the book, it is only because inertia let him down. Death by sled is undoubtedly death by intertia; this is a story that sees its characters inevitably sliding down a slope to their doom, and even dramatizes it in their method of suicide.
Secondly, a note on value: I have noted before that, in Age of Innocence, the van der Ludyens are the most prestigious family in New York, but their influence seems mostly based on the fact that they don't entertain - their value grows as their presence is absent, and upon seeing them, Ellen, who has no interest in New York social politics, finds them uninteresting.
In the same way, Mattie gets down and uses a pickle bowl while Zeena is away, and the cat breaks it. Zeena is away - it is her most precious and beautiful posession, and yet she has not used it a single time - not "even when the minister come to dinner" (63). Wharton seems to view these situations with derision; her sympathy is with Mattie and Ellen, who want to use beautiful things even if there are risks, and not with Zeena and the van der Ludyens, who see the withholding of a thing as its most powerful use.
Update:
The introducer writes:
"Ethan Frome has elements of romance in it, but Wharton radically refuses the Romantic's romance with time. Timer here is not the swift devestator [...] it is rather the gradual, relentless poisoner" (i would add: the bringer of degeneration)
And also: "The end of Ethan Frome is, in fact, the triumph of the realistic mode over the romantic one." (both quotes xiii).
The introducer is spot on, except she seems to be missing Norris' insight: this triumph is what we call naturalism!
It is without a doubt of story of degeneration. There is in fact a reference to technological advances as "degenerate," which I assume to be in the sense of decadence (5). But more prevalent is physical degeneration. When we meet Ethan, he has already degenerated. But this is no slow, gradual degeneration: he is permanently marred by a past accident, described as a "smash-up" (3). Eventually, we hear the whole story in flashback: how Ethan and Mattie grew close, how his wife Zeena kicked Mattie out of the house to make room for a hired girl who can do the work an invalid shouldn't, how Mattie and Ethan, unable to afford to run away, decide to commit suicide by running into a giant elm on a sled, and how they survive, Mattie paralyzed from the waist down, Ethan, with one side marred, to spend the rest of their lives together with Zeena.
This work seems to perfectly fit within Norris' definition of naturalism as a dialectic between the deep truths of romanticism and the surface accuracy of realism. In that way it recalls Garland's veritism as well - these are hardened people, beaten down by life, who long for escape, but they are not depraved murderers, incestuous, or adulterous.
But the mode of telling is romantic. The foreshadowing of the elm is repeated over and over again, and that particular method of suicide is deeply sentimental and romantic. Wharton has taken rural Massachusetts and made it into a snow-drenched land of mystery and secrets. And the final scene of the book, when we see the Frome's house in present day: broken down Ethan,
endlessly toiling Mattie (whose "complications" eased up when she had to work), and paralyzed, tortured Mattie. This is a romantic story with all the bleakness of real, hardbitten, hardworking people.
Two more notes: First, this is definitely a story of inertia. Our narrator is an engineer, and when he offers the scientifically minded Ethan a book about biochemistry "[Ethan] hesitated, and I had the impression he felt himself about to yield to a stealing tide of inertia; then "Thank you- I'll take it," he answered shortly" (9). But if Ethan overcomes the tide of inertia that comes with his degeneration to accept the book, it is only because inertia let him down. Death by sled is undoubtedly death by intertia; this is a story that sees its characters inevitably sliding down a slope to their doom, and even dramatizes it in their method of suicide.
Secondly, a note on value: I have noted before that, in Age of Innocence, the van der Ludyens are the most prestigious family in New York, but their influence seems mostly based on the fact that they don't entertain - their value grows as their presence is absent, and upon seeing them, Ellen, who has no interest in New York social politics, finds them uninteresting.
In the same way, Mattie gets down and uses a pickle bowl while Zeena is away, and the cat breaks it. Zeena is away - it is her most precious and beautiful posession, and yet she has not used it a single time - not "even when the minister come to dinner" (63). Wharton seems to view these situations with derision; her sympathy is with Mattie and Ellen, who want to use beautiful things even if there are risks, and not with Zeena and the van der Ludyens, who see the withholding of a thing as its most powerful use.
Update:
The introducer writes:
"Ethan Frome has elements of romance in it, but Wharton radically refuses the Romantic's romance with time. Timer here is not the swift devestator [...] it is rather the gradual, relentless poisoner" (i would add: the bringer of degeneration)
And also: "The end of Ethan Frome is, in fact, the triumph of the realistic mode over the romantic one." (both quotes xiii).
The introducer is spot on, except she seems to be missing Norris' insight: this triumph is what we call naturalism!
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