LECTURE 17

THE GUILDED AGE AND AFTER (1876 – 1916)

17.1. Развитие американской культуры в конце XIX – начале XX века. Фольклорная традиция и разговорный язык в творчестве Марка Твена. Значение творчества писателя для литературы США и мировой литературы.

 

17.1.1.Two movements became increasingly important in American fiction after the Civil War: regionalism and realism. As the country expanded in area and population, regional differences became more apparent and of greater interest, especially to people in the established cultural centers of the East. Increasing urbanization and the expansion of the railroads had made more of the country accessible. Regional literature would do the same. Tales of the West also became a popular form of regional writing and created frontier outlaws and heroes. Foremost among writers who contributed to legends about the West was Bret Harte, especially in The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches, a collection of stories about California. The author Kate Chopin built her reputation on regionalist stories of Louisiana. She is, however, best remembered for writing one of the first important feminist novels, The Awakening (1899). The book realistically depicts Creole life in Louisiana as it tells the story of a young woman in a stultifying marriage who discovers a new sense of self when she takes a lover.

Realism emerged as a literary movement in Europe in the 1850s. In reaction to romanticism, it emphasized the everyday and through detailed description re-created specific locations, incidents, and social classes. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain, is sometimes called a regionalist for his vivid portrayals of Southern character and dialect. However, he also ranks among the great American realists, too.

Realism entered American literature after the Civil War, soon followed by naturalism, an extreme form of realism. Jack London is a naturalist. His writings depict the force—often violent—of nature and of human nature, combining realism with idealist views on human betterment. Naturalism had an outlook often bleaker than that of realism, and it added a dimension of predetermined fate that rendered human will ultimately powerless. Stephen Crane is a notable late-19th-century American writer in the realist/naturalist traditions. Despite an early death at the age of 29, Crane published several brilliant although grim stories. His best-known work, The Red Badge of Courage (1895), is an intense examination of the psychology of fear and the state of the human mind during war; it met with immediate success.

American writers also turned to the psychological and physical reality of the laboring classes, whose ranks continued to swell with high rates of immigration. Several American authors who are sometimes known as social realists – the Muckrackers – looked at working conditions, often for the purpose of social reform. They are Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis.Edward Bellamy wrote a utopian novel of importance.

17.1.2.. Mark Twain's best work is characterized by broad, often irreverent humor or biting social satire. Twain's writing is also known for realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of hypocrisy and oppression. In his youth he was apprenticed to a printer, and soon began setting type for and contributing sketches to his brother Orion's Hannibal Journal. Subsequently he worked as a printer. Later Clemens was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River until the American Civil War brought an end to travel on the river. Clemens served briefly as a volunteer soldier in the Confederate cavalry. Later that year he accompanied his brother to the newly created Nevada Territory, where he tried his hand at silver mining. In was there that he began signing his articles with the pseudonym Mark Twain, a Mississippi River phrase meaning “two fathoms deep.”

In 1865 Twain reworked a tale he had heard in the California gold fields, and within months the author and the story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” had become national sensations. Much of Twain's best work was written in the 1870s and 1880s. Roughing It recounts his early adventures as a miner and journalist; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) celebrates boyhood in a town on the Mississippi River; The Prince and the Pauper, a children's book, focuses on switched identities in Tudor England; Life on the Mississippi combines an autobiographical account of his experiences as a river pilot with a visit to the Mississippi nearly two decades after he left it; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court satirizes oppression in feudal England.

 

Next appeared a dark-complexioned, black-eyed, black-haired young lady, who paused an impressive moment, assumed a tragic expression, and began to read in a measured, solemn tone:

"A VISION. Dark and tempestuous was night. Around the throne on high not a single star quivered; but the deep intonations of the heavy thunder constantly vibrated upon the ear; whilst the terrific lightning revelled in angry mood through the cloudy chambers of heaven, seeming to scorn the power exerted over its terror by the illustrious Franklin! Even the boisterous winds unanimously came forth from their mystic homes, and blustered about as if to enhance by their aid the wildness of the scene.

"At such a time, so dark, so dreary, for human sympathy my very spirit sighed; but instead thereof, My dearest friend, my counsellor, my comforter and guide -- My joy in grief, my second bliss in joy,' came to my side. She moved like one of those bright beings pictured in the sunny walks of fancy's Eden by the romantic and young, a queen of beauty unadorned save by her own transcendent loveliness. So soft was her step, it failed to make even a sound, and but for the magical thrill imparted by her genial touch, as other unobtrusive beauties, she would have glided away un-perceived -- unsought. A strange sadness rested upon her features, like icy tears upon the robe of December, as she pointed to the contending elements without, and bade me contemplate the two beings presented."

This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening. (…)

Now the master, mellow almost to the verge of geniality, put his chair aside, turned his back to the audience, and began to draw a map of America on the blackboard, to exercise the geography class upon. But he made a sad business of it with his unsteady hand, and a smothered titter rippled over the house. He knew what the matter was, and set himself to right it. He sponged out lines and remade them; but he only distorted them more than ever, and the tittering was more pronounced. He threw his entire attention upon his work, now, as if determined not to be put down by the mirth. He felt that all eyes were fastened upon him; he imagined he was succeeding, and yet the tittering continued; it even manifestly increased. And well it might. There was a garret above, pierced with a scuttle over his head; and down through this scuttle came a cat, suspended around the haunches by a string; she had a rag tied about her head and jaws to keep her from mewing; as she slowly descended she curved upward and clawed at the string, she swung downward and clawed at the intangible air. The tittering rose higher and higher -- the cat was within six inches of the absorbed teacher's head -- down, down, a little lower, and she grabbed his wig with her desperate claws, clung to it, and was snatched up into the garret in an instant with her trophy still in her possession! And how the light did blaze abroad from the master's bald pate -- for the sign-painter's boy had gilded it!

That broke up the meeting. The boys were avenged. Vacation had come.

 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the sequel to Tom Sawyer, is considered Twain's masterpiece. The book is the story of the title character, known as Huck, a boy who flees his father by rafting down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave, Jim. The pair's adventures show Huck (and the reader) the cruelty of which men and women are capable. Another theme of the novel is the conflict between Huck's feelings of friendship with Jim, who is one of the few people he can trust, and his knowledge that he is breaking the laws of the time by helping Jim escape. Huckleberry Finn, which is almost entirely narrated from Huck's point of view, is noted for its authentic language and for its deep commitment to freedom. Huck's adventures also provide the reader with a panorama of American life along the Mississippi before the Civil War.

Twain's later work is marked by growing pessimism and bitterness. Twain's later writings include short stories, the best known of which are “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”. Twain's work was inspired by the unconventional West, and the popularity of his work marked the end of the domination of American Literature by New England writers and the end of American reverence for British and European culture. Successive generations of writers recognized the role that he played in creating a truly American literature. He portrayed uniquely American subjects in a humorous and colloquial, yet poetic, language.

17.2. Натуралистические и неоромантические тенденции в творчестве Джека Лондона. Рассказы городов и прерий: О. Генри.

17.2.1. Jack London (1876-1916) is an American writer, whose work combined powerful realism and humanitarian sentiment. He was deeply influenced by Darwin’s ideas of constant struggle in nature and “the survival of the fittest”. Not surprisingly, the main characters of some of London’s best stories are animals.

London was born John Griffith London in San Francisco. From age 10, London worked at various odd jobs, later trying such occupations as a seal hunter, an oyster pirate, an explorer, a war correspondent, a gold miner, and a rich farmer. He participated in the Alaska gold rush. Upon his return to the San Francisco area, he began to write about his experiences. A collection of his short stories, The Son of the Wolf, was published in 1900. London's colorful life, during which he wrote more than 50 books and which included enormous popular successes as an author, experience as a war correspondent, and two stormy marriages, ended at the age of 40.

Many of his stories, including his masterpiece The Call of the Wild, deal with the reversion of a civilized creature to the primitive state. London's style—brutal, vivid, and exciting—made him enormously popular outside the United States; his works were translated into many languages. London's important works include People of the Abyss and The Iron Heel, in which he showed himself as a Marxian socialist. Martin Eden (1909) is an autobiographical novel about a writer's life.

 

There was a brief pause in the conversation they were trying to get started. Then she asked tentatively about the scar on his cheek. Even as she asked, he realized that she was making an effort to talk his talk, and he resolved to get away from it and talk hers.

"It was just an accident," he said, putting his hand to his cheek. "One night, in a calm, with a heavy sea running, the main-boom-lift carried away, an' next the tackle. The lift was wire, an' it was threshin' around like a snake. The whole watch was tryin' to grab it, an' I rushed in an' got swatted."

"Oh," she said, this time with an accent of comprehension, though secretly his speech had been so much Greek to her and she was wondering what a lift was and what swatted meant.

"This man Swineburne," he began, attempting to put his plan into execution and pronouncing the I long.

"Who?"

"Swineburne," he repeated, with the same mispronunciation. "The poet."

"Swinburne," she corrected.

"Yes, that's the chap," he stammered, his cheeks hot again. "How long since he died?"

"Why, I haven't heard that he was dead." She looked at him curiously. "Where did you make his acquaintance?"

"I never clapped eyes on him," was the reply. "But I read some of his poetry out of that book there on the table just before you come in. How do you like his poetry?"

And thereat she began to talk quickly and easily upon the subject he had suggested. He felt better, and settled back slightly from the edge of the chair, holding tightly to its arms with his hands, as if it might get away from him and buck him to the floor. He had succeeded in making her talk her talk, and while she rattled on, he strove to follow her, marvelling at all the knowledge that was stowed away in that pretty head of hers, and drinking in the pale beauty of her face. Follow her he did, though bothered by unfamiliar words that fell glibly from her lips and by critical phrases and thought-processes that were foreign to his mind, but that nevertheless stimulated his mind and set it tingling. Here was intellectual life, he thought, and here was beauty, warm and wonderful as he had never dreamed it could be. He forgot himself and stared at her with hungry eyes. Here was something to live for, to win to, to fight for - ay, and die for. The books were true. There were such women in the world. She was one of them. (…)

 

17.2.2. O. Henryis thepseudonym of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910), American writer of short stories, best known for his ironic plot twists and surprise endings. Born and raised in North Carolina, O. Henry attended school only until age 15, when he dropped out to work in his uncle’s drugstore. During his 20s he moved to Texas, where he worked for more than ten years as a clerk and a bank teller. O. Henry did not write professionally until he reached his mid-30s, when he sold several pieces to the Detroit Free Press.

In 1896 O. Henry was charged with embezzling funds from the bank where he had worked previously. The amount of money was small and might have been an accounting error; however, he chose to flee to Honduras rather than stand trial. Learning that his wife was dying, he returned to Texas and, after her death, turned himself in to authorities. He served three years of a five-year sentence at the federal penitentiary where he first began to write short stories and use the pseudonym O. Henry. Released from prison, O. Henry moved to New York City in 1901 and began writing full time. In his stories he made substantial use of his knowledge of Texas, Central America, and life in prison. He also became fascinated by New York street life, which provided a setting for many of his later stories. During the last ten years of his life, O. Henry became one of the most popular writers in America, publishing over 500 short stories in dozens of widely read periodicals. O. Henry’s most famous stories, such as “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Furnished Room,” and “The Ransom of Red Chief,” make simple yet effective use of paradoxical coincidences to produce ironic endings.

Writing at the rate of more than one story per week, O. Henry published ten collections of stories during a career that barely spanned a decade. They are Cabbages and Kings, The Four Million, Heart of the West, The Trimmed Lamp, The Gentle Grafter, The Voice of the City, Options, Roads of Destiny, Whirligigs, and Strictly Business.

If you do not know Bogle's Chop House and Family Restaurant it is your loss. For if you are one of the fortunate ones who dine expensively you should be interested to know how the other half consumes provisions. And if you belong to the half to whom waiters' checks are things of moment, you should know Bogle's, for there you get your money's worth – in quantity, at least.

Bogle's is situated in that highway of bourgeoisie, that boulevard of Brown-Jones-and-Robinson, Eighth Avenue. There are two rows of tables in the room, six in each row. On each table is a caster-stand, containing cruets of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you may shake a cloud of something tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust. From the salt cruet you may expect nothing. Though a man should extract a sanguinary stream from the pallid turnip, yet with his prowess be balked when he comes to wrest salt from Bogle's cruets. Also upon each table stands the counterfeit of that benign sauce made "from the recipe of a nobleman in India."

At the cashier's desk sits Bogle, cold, sordid, slow, smouldering, and takes your money. Behind a mountain of toothpicks he makes your change, files your check, and ejects at you, like a toad, a word about the weather. Beyond a corroboration of his meteorological statement you would better not venture. You are not Bogle's friend; you are a fed, transient customer, and you and he may not meet again until the blowing of Gabriel's dinner horn. So take your change and go – to the devil if you like. There you have Bogle's sentiments.

The needs of Bogle's customers were supplied by two waitresses and a Voice. One of the waitresses was named Aileen. She was tall, beautiful, lively, gracious and learned in persiflage. Her other name? There was no more necessity for another name at Bogle's than there was for finger-bowls.

The name of the other waitress was Tildy. Why do you suggest Matilda? Please listen this time –Tildy – Tildy. Tildy was dumpy, plain-faced, and too anxious to please to please. Repeat the last clause to yourself once or twice, and make the acquaintance of the duplicate infinite.

The Voice at Bogle's was invisible. It came from the kitchen, and did not shine in the way of originality. It was a heathen Voice, and contented itself with vain repetitions of exclamations emitted by the waitresses concerning food.

Will it tire you to be told again that Aileen was beautiful? Had she donned a few hundred dollars' worth of clothes and joined the Easter parade, and had you seen her, you would have hastened to say so yourself.

The customers at Bogle's were her slaves. Six tables full she could wait upon at once. They who were in a hurry restrained their impatience for the joy of merely gazing upon her swiftly moving, graceful figure. They who had finished eating ate more that they might continue in the light of her smiles. Every man there – and they were mostly men – tried to make his impression upon her.

17.3. Эпоха “разгребателей грязи” в литературе США. Творчество Эптона Cинклера. Утопический роман: Эдвард Беллами.

 

17.3.1. Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)is an American writer and social and economic reformer. Sinclair is the most famous of the Muckrakers, a group of writers who were relentless critics of the nation’s political, social and economic evils early in the 20th century (1900 – 1914). The author of 90 books, Sinclair became well known after the publication of his novel The Jungle (1906), which exposed the unsanitary and miserable working conditions in the stockyards of Chicago, Illinois, and led to an investigation by the federal government and the subsequent passage of pure food laws. The novel tells a story of an immigrant family, the Redcuses, who come to America with dreams of a better life. But they only experience a series of horrors and tragedies. Jack London described the novel as “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of wage-slavery”. Sinclair wrote other social and political novels and studies advocating prohibition and criticizing the newspaper industry. His novels were always a form of propaganda. As works of literature, they seem to be lesser achievements.

17.3.2. Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) is an American essayist and journalist. In 1888 Bellamy published his most important work, Looking Backward, 2000-1887, a depiction of an ideal socialistic society in the year 2000. This best-selling novel inspired the formation of many socialistic clubs. The most famous American “utopian” novel, the book has a purpose of criticizing capitalist America of the 1880s. A man goes to sleep and wakes up in the year 2000. He finds an entirely new society which is much better than his own. Today, the book seems a little bit too optimistic. Bellamy was sure that society’s problems could be solved on by a higher level of industrialization. Today, many people are not so sure.

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

18.4. Творческий путь Теодора Драйзера. Натурализм и критический реализм в произведениях писателя.

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)is an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. Although some critics regarded his style as clumsy and plodding, Dreiser was generally recognized as an American literary pioneer.

As a young man Dreiser was a reporter, dramatic editor and traveling correspondent. His career as a novelist began in 1900 with Sister Carrie, which he wrote in the intervals between work for various magazines. The novel tells the story of a small-town girl who moves to Chicago and eventually becomes a Broadway star in New York City. It also traces the decline and eventual suicide of her lover. As a result of public outcry against the novel for its depiction of unrepentant and unpunished characters and for its frank treatment of sexual issues, the publisher withdrew the book from public sale.

By the time Dreiser's second novel, Jenny Gerhardt, was published in 1911, his work had found influential supporters, including the British novelist H. G. Wells, and he was able to devote himself entirely to literature. Dreiser's writings continued to excite controversy. In The Financier and The Titan, he drew harsh portraits of a type of ruthless businessman. Real fame, however, did not come to Dreiser until 1925, when his An American Tragedy had great popular success. The novel, based on an actual murder case and concerned with the efforts of a weak young man to rise from pious poverty into glamorous society, was dramatized and made into a motion picture.

Dreiser believed in representing life honestly in his fiction. He accomplished this through accurate detail, especially in his descriptions of the urban settings in which many of his stories take place. In his naturalistic portrayals Dreiser saw his characters as victims of social and economic forces, and of fate, all of which conspire against them. The American writer Sinclair Lewis hailed Sister Carrie as “the first book free of English literary influence.” Toward the end of his career, Dreiser, a member of the United States Communist Party, worked to promote his political views. Earlier he had visited the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and, in Dreiser Looks at Russia, had offered a sympathetic portrait of the country.