Individualism and Democracy in the American Culture and Literature
Individualism, as one of the major characteristics of the American culture, can be seen from two
different points of view: we can, first, talk about an individualism based on the affirmation of selfreliance of America as a nation, an individualist stance manifest in proclaiming the uniqueness and
distinctiveness of American experience, the superiority of the New World over the Old and
advocating its emancipation from the old model of Europe. On the other hand, we can refer to
individualism as seen from the standpoint of individuals, as a concept which defines the individual in
relation to social, political and economic institutions (antipathy to, respectively complementarity
with institutions), as a turn inward from the engaging problems of the society and the world to the
smaller universe of the individual and his relation to the group or community of which he is a
member, or his immediate physical and spiritual environment. It is an individualism which means
focus on individual experience, and acts as a motif running through many of the major literary texts.
The first point of view (the affirmation of uniqueness and distinctiveness of American
experience, proclaiming the superiority of the New World over the Old), is illustrated by writers like
Cooper: in A Letter to His Countrymen, he called for strong emphasis on distinctive national
qualities. Emerson, also, played a vital role in the emancipation of American culture, and particularly
literature, from its subservience to British models: in The American Scholar (1837) (―America’s
Intellectual Declaration of Independence‖), Emerson drew the attention of his countrymen to their
―timid, imitative, tame‖ spirit and urged them to strengthen their self-reliant nationhood. Emerson
insists that the physical and spiritual possession of the land can activate man’s self-reliance, help
America break with the past, live in the present and dare contemplate the future confidently. In the
age of Transcendentalism, democracy has an individualist discourse: it is not just one form of
government, consisting in the imposition of the superior force of the majority, but it implies
disavowal of the past and an invitation to self-made identity of the nation
The second view is related not to the American individualism as a nation, but to individuals. Certain
elements of American spirit begin with the Puritan age. We can say that individualism is among
them, if we think of the Puritan idea of individual work for salvation, and, perhaps, if we understand
Puritans as individualists for deciding to start a new life, rather than give up their beliefs. They had
the ideal of giving the world a lesson of democracy, and encouraged self-split, self-analysis, and
individualism through their doctrine of predestination of the elect ones. On the other hand, they
believed in justice, equality, liberty and the unique destiny of America. ―The American Dream‖ - a
phrase signifying the ideal of a nation - was constructed around notions of hard work, determination,
aspiration, equality, independence and freedom. It was individualist in thrust as it propounded an
ethos whereby any man could make it if they worked hard enough – reward and effort being linked
and pioneering individual effort being key to success. The American Revolution is an expression of
the Enlightenment conception of democracy, and an expression of individualism at the same time
(the Declaration of Independence). During the next years, the Founding Fathers were involved in
designing the mechanisms of democratic society (as shown by the Federalist Papers, articles signed
by Madison, Hamilton and others). Over the next 50 years, American individualism was expressed in
philosophical and literary works by Emerson (Self-Reliance) and Thoreau (Civil Disobedience,
Walden). In the age of Transcendentalism, for Emerson and Whitman, democratic society and
institutions are justified as the setting for individualism (Thoreau disagrees with this point of view;
later on, in the 20th century, different views will emerge; individuals are overtaken by institutions,
which impede rather than support the self-determination of the individual). For Emerson and
Whitman, democracy was meant to be a company of beautiful, expressive, self-affirming
individualists. Their Transcendentalist optimistic view articulated the trust in the individual, in
democracy, in the possibility of continuous change for the better. Transcendentalism urged people to
break free of the customs and traditions of the past (be it with regard to religion or society). There is
an economic individualism (capitalistic tenets of free enterprise, competition and private property), a
political individualism (liberal concepts of consensual government and natural rights of individuals),
and a possessive individualism (every man has property in himself, hence the right to manage
himself, his labor, and his property, as he wishes). In The Poet, Emerson argues that personal
freedom plays a major part in the distinctiveness of American culture; the relation between such a
civilization and democracy is implicit. Constructing his philosophic discourse on the idea of the
divine essence of the individual, Emerson shares in the vigorous tradition of individualism. ―Trust
thyself‖ is Emerson’s slogan. Individual freedom is a deliverance from the intellectual and spiritual
constraints; hence, a cultivation of individual, of his freedom. Emerson revised the understanding of
the term ―individualism‖; in Self-Reliance (1841), he wrote: ―Man is his own star; and the soul that
can/ Render an honest and a perfect man/ Commands all light, all influence, all fate‖, but also: ―the
institution is the lengthened shadow of one man‖, that is, society and its institutions reflect the
individuals who cast them. Emerson makes illusory the division between individual and institution.
In Europe, the individual person exists for the glory of the nation, while in America, the nation exists
for the glory of the individual person. With Emerson, we have an articulated American confidence,
optimism, non-conformism, determination to do things in a new way. However, always trying to
strike a balance between individualism and democracy, he fears the threat which the ―democratic
despotism‖ of the State might pose to the ―democratic liberty‖ of each individual in society. Emerson
protests against the ―tyranny of democracy‖ (The American Scholar, 1837).
A different view was expressed by A. de Tocqueville. For Alexis de Tocqueville,
(Democracy in America- 1820), individualism leads citizens to abandon civic consciousness and
responsibility; he located American individualism in the domestic circle (family and friends). He
describes democracy as a form of government in which the supreme power is invested in the people
and exercised by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system: government of, by, for
people. He saw in the idea of democracy the main difference between the Old and the New World.
Thoreau's Civil Disobedience (1849) espouses the need to prioritize one's conscience over
the dictates of laws. The theme of this work – ―that we should be men first and subjects afterward‖ –
made it a great influence on Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It criticizes American social
institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American war. Thoreau begins
his essay by arguing that government rarely proves itself useful and that it derives its power from the
majority because they are the strongest group, not because they hold the most legitimate viewpoint.
He contends that people's first obligation is to do what they believe is right and not to follow the law
dictated by the majority. When a government is unjust, people should refuse to follow the law and
distance themselves from the government in general. A person is not obligated to devote his life to
eliminating evils from the world, but he is obligated not to participate in such evils. This includes not
being a member of an unjust institution (like the government). He presents his own experiences as a
model for how to relate to an unjust government; he ideologically dissociated himself from the
government, "washing his hands" of it and refusing to participate in his institutions. Throughout his
life, Thoreau emphasized the importance of individuality and self-reliance. He practiced civil
disobedience in his own life. In Walden (1854), Thoreau depicts the intensity of his spiritual
experience, as he seeks the perfect autarchy of the hermit, asserting his personal independence. His
individualism is manifest in his belief that the individual possesses truth within himself; what is
moral and right must be found in the heart of each individual person. Individual freedom is sacred.
He highlights the contrast between man’s basic rights and a (democratic) society which has such
flaws as slavery of imperialist tendencies. Certainly self-reliance is economic and social in Walden
Pond: it is the principle that in matters of financial and interpersonal relations, independence is more
valuable than neediness. Thus Thoreau dwells on the contentment of his solitude, on his finding
entertainment in the laugh of the loon and the march of the ants rather than in balls, marketplaces, or
salons. He does not disdain human companionship; in fact he values it highly when it comes on his
own terms, as when his philosopher or poet friends come to call. He simply refuses to need human
society. Similarly, in economic affairs he is almost obsessed with the idea that he can support himself
through his own labor, producing more than he consumes, and working to produce a profit. Thoreau
does not simply report on the results of his accounting, but gives us a detailed list of expenditures
and income. How much money he spent on salt from 1845 to 1847 may seem trivial, but for him it is
not. Rather it is proof that, when everything is added up, he is a giver rather than a taker in the
economic game of life. Yet, as Emerson's essay details, self-reliance can be spiritual as well as
economic, and Thoreau follows Emerson in exploring the higher dimensions of individualism. In
Transcendentalist thought the self is the absolute center of reality; everything external, including the
entire universe, is an emanation of the self that gets its reality from our inner selves. Self-reliance
thus refers not just to paying one's own bills, but also more philosophically to the way that the entire
world of nature and humankind relies on the self to exist. This duality explains the connection
between Thoreau the accountant and Thoreau the poet, and shows why the man who is so interested
in pinching pennies is the same man who exults lyrically over a partridge or a winter sky. They are
both products of self-reliance, since the economizing that allows Thoreau to live on Walden Pond
also allows him to feel as one with nature, to feel as though it is part of his own soul.
Melville :In The Confidence-Man (1857), he attacks the foundations of Western values,
especially that of individualism and self-confidence; man finds himself alone in a world that is
playing games on him, eternally tormenting him with doubt and illusion. Mardi (1849) is an
allegorical sea voyage, where the hero visits imaginary islands representing various countries of the
world. The section of the island of ―Vivenza‖ is actually a criticism of the US; Vivenza rejects the
past too easily. The book is the result of Melville’s meditation on the frailty of American democracy.
An illustration of individualism is to be found in the character of Captain Ahab (Moby Dick, 1851);
equality and brotherhood are embodied in Ishmael, while Pequod is a microcosm of the American
society itself.
The trait of individualism with E. Dickinson (1830-1886): the stress is on herself, the
introspection in her inner world. Her poems are written from the perspective of a restricted self. She
stresses the personal dimension, the experience of God by each individual through his innerness.
She looked inward at her own experience, to perceive the truth of her inner life (carried out a deep
study of her inner life). She is the embodiment of 19th century individualism, what and how she says
is purely her own, the result of her self-reliance, of her independent personal and artistic judgement.
She follows neither traditions nor religions in finding her way in life. In solitude, she discovers the
grandeur of existence: to be herself and to articulate her experience in her poetry. Her poems express
a kind of mental, inner freedom which is an expression of individualism. Apart from the Bible, her
most important guide was the philosophy of Emerson; an idea that comes form Self-Reliance is that
to grow as human beings we must be brave, because we can ―cling to nothing‖; in one famous poem,
she seems to think even of faith as a temporary ―prop‖ for the soul; after it grows stronger, the soul
no longer needs this prop. (―The props assist the house/ Until the house is built/ And then the props
withdraw/ And.. The house supports itself‖).
Following the major traumatic event of the Civil War, a new expression of democracy
emerged: with the official abolishment of slavery, America finally became democratic (actually,
traces of the old social order could still be found much later, see Faulkner’s works). Walt Whitman
was the first American poet to strike the balance between individualism and democracy and respond
Emerson’s injunctions for a national culture: ―One’s self I sing, a simple separate person/ Yet utter
the word Democratic, the word En-masse‖. In One’s Self I Sing (1867), he fills his self-appointed
role as bard for democracy by expressing his sense of separateness from and absorption by the mass
society. Leaves of Grass makes of democracy the myth of America. Whitman wrote that he wanted
―to define America, her athletic democracy‖. He makes of democracy the myth of America. He
begins his poem Song of Myself (included in Leaves of Grass, - 1892) with himself: ―I celebrate
myself and sing myself‖. But this ―self‖ soon grows to include friends, the entire nation and, finally,
humanity. He then introduces himself as ―Walt Whitman, a cosmos‖; to him, the real ―self‖ includes
everything in the universe. ―Nothing, not God, is greater than the self is‖. This is a Transcendentalist
idea of ―self‖, an expansion of Emerson’s idea of the ―Over-Soul‖. Whitman wrote, in Leaves of
Grass: ―I am large, I contain multitudes‖ – a picture of both individual and the democratic society.
In 1890, William James emphasizes American commitment to liberal causes: ―We
intellectuals of America must all work to keep our precious birthright of individualism, and freedom
from these institutions (church, army, royalty)‖. Economic individualism is revitalized, at the same
period, by Sumner, professor of political economy at Yale, presenting the western industrial society
as the peak in the evolution of the fittest (social darwinism). William James developed his theory of
pragmatism. Pragmatism was a specifically American philosophy, built on the tradition of
democratic individualism, emphasizing equal opportunity, individual freedom and action, creativity,
rejection of absolutes and confidence in the future, in democratic social reform.
The historian who reconciled individualism with democracy was F.J. Turner, with The
Significance of the Frontier (1893): the existence of the frontier explains the American development;
the advance of the frontier meant a movement away from the influence of Europe, and by the same
process of Americanization the frontier produced individualism, ―anthipaty to control, and
particularly to any direct control‖. The tough frontier individualism shapes the American character
and is the source of American democracy ―born of free land… strong in selfishness, intolerant of
administrative experience and education, and pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds‖.
Turner’s thesis gives a new meaning to the doctrine of individualism, as a main controlling value and
driving force in American civilization; through its emphasis on pragmatism as well as economic and
geographic determinism, it gives new meaning to the doctrine of democracy based on individualism.
Turner so finds a ―usable past‖ to interpret American history and civilization. Individualism was
enhanced by the experience of transforming the wilderness into civilization, on the frontier. Turner
analysed on one hand, psychological features such as pragmatism and individualism, and on the
other, the development of the democratic mechanism and economy as a consequence of the frontier.
American individualism developed on the frontier is demonstrated by literary works such as
Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales (1820).
Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is an illustration of individualism as far as education, both
intellectual and moral, is concerned. By focusing on Huck's education, The Adventures of
Huckcleberry Finn (1884) fits into the tradition of the bildungsroman: a novel of maturation and
development. An outcast, Huck distrusts the morals and precepts of the society that labels him a
pariah and fails to protect him from abuse. This apprehension about society, and his growing
relationship with Jim, lead Huck to question many of the teachings that he has received on race.
Time and time again, the reader sees him choosing to "go to hell" rather than go along with what he's
been taught. Huck bases these decisions on his experiences, his own sense of logic, and what his
developing conscience tells him. On the raft, away from civilization, Huck represents a kind of
natural man. Through deep introspection, he comes to his own conclusions, unaffected by the
accepted, and often hypocritical, precepts of Southern culture. Early in this novel, Huck learns to
read books—a skill that later serves him well in a literal sense; by the novel's end, Huck has learned
to "read" the world around him, to distinguish good, bad, right, wrong, menace, friend, and so on.
Many see The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the great novel of American democracy, because it
shows the basic goodness and wisdom of ordinary people.
Henry James: The Portrait of a Lady (1881) explores the conflict between the individual and
society by examining the life of Isabel Archer, a young American woman who must choose between
her independent spirit and the demands of social convention. Self-reliance: Isabel's independence of
spirit is largely a result of her childhood, when she was generally neglected by her father and allowed
to read any book in her grandmother's library; in this way, she supervised her own haphazard
education and allowed her mind to develop without discipline or order. She appears as an optimistic,
innocent American. (For James, throughout Portrait of a Lady, America is a place of individualism
and naïveté, while Europe is a place of sophistication, convention, and decadence.) She also has a
tendency to think about herself obsessively and has a vast faith in her own moral strength—in fact,
recognizing that she has never faced hardship, Isabel actually wishes that she might be made to
suffer, so that she could prove her ability to overcome suffering without betraying her principles. Set
almost entirely among a group of American expatriates living in Europe in the 1860s and 70s, the
book relies on a kind of moral geography, in which America represents innocence, individualism,
and capability; Europe represents decadence, sophistication, and social convention; and England
represents the best mix of the two. Isabel moves from America to England, to continental Europe,
and at each stage she comes to mirror her surroundings, gradually losing a bit of independence with
each move. In the novel, James most often uses his elliptical technique (skipping over some of the
novel's main events in telling the story) in scenes when Isabel chooses to value social custom over
her independence—her acceptance of Gilbert's proposal, their wedding, her decision to return to
Rome after briefly leaving for Ralph's funeral at the end of the novel. James uses this method to
create the sense that, in these moments, Isabel is no longer accessible to the reader; in a sense, by
choosing to be with Gilbert Osmond, Isabel is lost. First written in the 1880s and extensively revised
in 1908, The Portrait of a Lady is often considered to be James's greatest achievement. In it, he
explored many of his most characteristic themes, including the conflict between American
individualism and European social custom.
From the perspective of individualism and democracy, the 20th century presents an extremely
complex image, where the most different trends co-exist, both in culture and in literature. America
waged its wars in the name of the democratic model, as shown by President Wilson who urged in
1917 to‖make the world safe for democracy‖. We have the individualism expressed by Fitzgerald in
The Great Gatsby (1925), the democratic (leftist- he perceived socialism as democratic) views
expressed by Hemingway, or the individualist or state-oriented approaches of presidents Hoover and
Roosevelt to economic issues (1930). Prof. R. Mihaila shows that in the 1950s, the growing interest
in sociology gave rise to a new sociological mode of thinking which was applied to humanistic
fields, including literature. The ―sociological imagination‖ dominated the period ever since the
publication in 1953 of The Lonely Crowd. A Study of the Changing American Character by
Riesman, Denney and Glazer. Riesman singled out three types of social character and behaviour:
tradition-directed, inner-directed and other-directed; the book is a revision of American
individualism as it has been expressed historically by the inner-directed character, the prevailing
American type, shaped in the early stages of capitalism by the Protestant work ethic; in a consumer
society, this type has been replaced by the other-directed character, the man who obeys from without
rather than from within, a conformist. C. Wright Mills made a critical re-appraisal of the American
concept of individualism and democracy in the ―white-collar world‖ of the ―little man‖ (the hired
employee) in White Collar: The American Middle Classes, describing America as ―the great
Salesroom‖ inhabited by a ―confused and vacillating‖ middle-class. Mill’s ―little man‖ leaves the
dangerous mark of his conformity and aimlessness upon American life. In the 1960s, America
experienced another major crisis, when the principles of the American society were debated: the
debate over American democracy was part of the agenda of former minorities (ethnic, sexual, racial,
class). The failure of the American Dream, the failure of individualism was illustrated by works such
as Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) – the capitalist system destroys people, Albee or Vonnegut
(Slaughterhouse Five, 1969 – individual destroyed by an inhuman society). Individuals are overtaken
by institutions, which impede rather than support the self-determination of the individual. The 1970s
mark the revival of individualism in the ‘Me’ decade, implying a turn inward from the engaging
problems of the society to the smaller universe of the individual. Bodily preoccupations, such as
reflected in the enthusiasm for exercise techinques (jogging, aerobics), natural foods, combined with
concerns for spiritual and psychic health (transcendental meditation, psychoanalysys, encounter
groups). The individual turns to self-knowledge and self-definition, to concerns with self and role,
and interhuman relations. The ―muted‖, narcissistic 70s were a time when America turned inward
and rediscovered her traditional values. The culture of narcissism paved the way for the new
conservatism and moralism of the 1980s. With president Reagan, the renaissance of individualism
turned into a restoration of confidence in the system. At the end of the 20th century, multiculturalism
brings to the fore the individualism of various groups, all joined in the American ―salad bowl‖.
According to R. Mihaila, American culture has developed ―on the corner stones of freedom and
individualism‖. The democratic model is the basis of American civilization.