Grade 11
Unit 8
LANGUAGE ARTS 1108
STUDIES IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL
CONTENTS
I.
II.
III.
THE AMERICAN NOVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2
Eighteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
Nineteenth Century
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5
Twentieth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14
THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19
The Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
19
The Novel
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20
THE CRITICAL ESSAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
32
Defining the Critical Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
33
Writing the Critical Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
35
GLOSSARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
40
Author:
Editor:
Illustrator:
Bernard J. Quint, M. Th., Ph.D.
Alan Christopherson, M.S.
Alpha Omega Graphics
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STUDIES IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL
The American novel began to develop at the same time as the English novel. The American novel, however, drew from the English developments as well as from the varied types of literature that led to a novel
form.
In this LIFEPAC® you will study briefly the history of the American novel and some of the American
novelists who contributed to this history. You will read an American novel, The Old Man and the Sea, by
Ernest Hemingway. This novel will be purchased by you or provided by your teacher. You will study figures of speech, imagery, symbolism, metaphor, and so forth and their application to the novel.
You will also write a critical essay on the novel in which you will display your understanding of the
novel, the principles of criticism, and the methods of evaluating literature according to God’s standards.
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OBJECTIVES
Read these objectives. The objectives tell you what you will be able to do when you have successfully completed this LIFEPAC.
When you have finished this LIFEPAC, you should be able to:
1.
Outline the history of the American novel.
2.
Name some of the major American novelists.
3.
Identify some types of novels written by American novelists.
4.
Identify images and figures of speech and their function in
The Old Man and the Sea.
5.
Define a critical essay.
6.
Explain interpretation as a critical approach.
7.
Evaluate a particular interpretation of The Old Man and the Sea
according to God’s Word.
Survey the LIFEPAC. Ask yourself some questions about this study. Write your questions here.
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I. THE AMERICAN NOVEL
The history of the American novel is not as clear cut as that of the English novel. No one novel holds
sole claim to being the first as did Richardson’s Pamela. As with the English novel, several types of novels were tried. The eighteenth and very early nineteenth centuries formed a period of development with
few memorable works among the many that were written.
The nineteenth century brought the first great American novelists and prepared the way for the twentieth-century novelists.
SECTION OBJECTIVES
Review these objectives. When you have completed this section, you should be able to:
1.
Outline the history of the American novel.
2.
Name some of the major American novelists.
3.
Identify some types of novels written by American novelists.
2
VOCABULARY
Study these words to increase your learning success in this section.
allusive
chicanery
picaresque
burlesqued
gothic
romancer
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The novel form was first used by American writers in the eighteenth century. Dispute
continues over which novel was the first. Several forms were tried at this time, many paralleling developments in English. The epistolary novel, historical novel, sentimental novel,
gothic novel, and others were written in this early period of development.
The first American novel. The argument still continues about which novel has the
honor of being the first American novel. Some award the honor to Gilbert Imlay’s The
Emigrants (1793) and reach that conclusion by simply denying the novelistic writing which
preceded it. A variety of novels have lost their claim to that title for one reason or another.
In 1751 Charlotte Lennox used American scenes and characters in The Life of Harriot
Stuart, but her literary training and home were in England. A book called The Female
American: or, The Adventures of Unca Eliza Winkfield was thought to have been written by
an American and published in London in 1767. In 1775 Adventures of Alonso, probably by
Thomas Atwood Digges, was claimed to be by a native of Maryland. The book, however, was
not published in America and deals with nothing American. An Indian story, The History of
Maria Kittle, was written in 1781 but did not appear as a book until 1793. Miss McRae by
Hilliard d’Auberteuil in 1784 lost its claim because it was written in French by a
Frenchman.
The History of the Kingdom of Basaruah, thought to be by Joseph Morgan, was written
in 1715. It was a chronicle-history of an imaginary kingdom used as an allegorical form to
explain Calvinist covenant theology, but the mood and method of the work simply did not
fit the understanding of the novel techniques.
A book, first attributed to Sarah Wentworth Morton and then to William Hill Brown,
was written in 1789 and titled The Power of Sympathy. It is generally conceded to be the
first American novel. All critics, and people of sense, agree that The Power of Sympathy is
a morbid and nasty book. Murder, suicide, and sin seemed to be the pattern in these early
novels. Although all of the wrongs were presented from a harsh moral point of view, such
treatment still did not prevent some of these novels from being banned.
Another aspect of these early works was that they claimed to be based on “fact.” In some
cases actual parallels were drawn with real families. The Power of Sympathy is written in
the epistolary style, that is, a series of letters, following the example of Samuel Richardson
in Pamela. This style gave immediacy to the reading of “real” parallels between the fictional characters and the persons of the real world.
Novels of sentiment. Many of the early American novels were sentimental and dealt
with domestic situations. Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rawson has gone through 160 editions. The work appeals to women and to critics. It asks that women stay virtuous and that
mercy be shown to the sinner.
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Hannah Foster wrote The Coquette late in the eighteenth century. As literature it surpasses The Power of Sympathy especially in its forceful and sudden presentation of the ruin
of the heroine Eliza Wharton.
Novels of the sentimental variety were not all novels of domestic life. Enos Hitchcock’s
Memoir’s of the Bloomergrove Family is a novel about “education.” Julia and the
Illuminated Baron (1800) by Sally Wood over uses the gothic elements of horror and terror.
Tabitha Tenney satirized and burlesqued the gothic tradition in a book called Female
Quixotism in 1801.
Alonzo and Melissa by Anne Radcliffe leans toward the melodramatic. In the story the
father imprisons the daughter to save her from marrying a poor man. The prison, of course,
is a gothic castle on Long Island built by ancestors for protection against Indians. The place
is a pile of rubble with the exception of the cemetery. The heroine is in a “state of distraction” from ugly sights and sounds that, as it is later discovered, were produced by a band
of smugglers. Mark Twain testifies to the popularity of Alonzo and Melissa when he mentions it in his Life on the Mississippi.
➤
Answer true or false.
1.1
_______________ Pamela was the first American novel.
1.2
_______________ Many early American novels dealt with sentimental domestic situations.
1.3
_______________ Critics cannot agree on the very first American novel.
1.4
_______________ The novel Charlotte Temple was not popular.
1.5
_______________ The Power of Sympathy was an epistolary novel form.
Historical novels. American history, brief though it was at the time, was used by eighteenth century American writers. The Female American used colonial Virginia as a setting;
The Foresters made an allegory out of the English adventure in the new world; Maria Kittle
used the French and Indian War and the Revolution; Constantius and Pulchera, The
Female Review, and Amelia were all set at the time of the Revolution; The Champions of
Freedom was set during the War of 1812. These efforts anticipated Brockden Brown and
James Fenimore Cooper.
Other early novels. The Algerine Captives by Royall Tyler was filled with social, educational, and political satire. The Emigrants by Gilbert Imlay compared English and
American civilizations by picturing an English family in the New World. America had the
decided advantage. Through this book readers first began to realize that much of America
lay west of the Allegheny Mountains. Imlay found Illinois remarkable. H.H. Brackenridge
finished Modern Chivalry in 1815 and its 800 pages comprised the closest American
approach to the picaresque novels of Europe. The book was full of common sense and
reflective passages, and the style was quite realistic. Captain Farrago and his rascal of a
servant, Teague O’Regan, fall into escapades that are not only personal scrapes but that
also cast light on political faults. The locale is backwoods and the frontier of America during the eighteenth century.
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The novel Weiland by Charles Brockden Brown has been critically acclaimed for its
intensity and its episodes. Somehow the work’s serious faults were treated kindly or overlooked. Brown could not write dialogue; his work lacked unity; he built narratives within
narratives that were nearly impossible to follow; the evil deeds of his characters had no
motives; and he put characters in situations where no sane person would put himself.
Although Brown did not consider himself a gothic novelist, he fell into the pattern because
he thought he needed sensation to get at the moral constitution of man and shake it awake.
Thus, strange characters, places, and events abound in his writing. Sometimes his narrative method is clumsy and awkward, but he was original because he had no models to copy.
➤
Write the letter of the correct answer on the line.
1.6
The Female Review and Maria Kittle are examples of the early American ______ novel.
a. picaresque
1.7
c. sentimental
b. gothic
c. historical
The Emigrants was written by ______.
a. Gilbert Imlay
1.10
b. historical
Charles Brockden Brown might be called a ______ novelist.
a. picaresque
1.9
c. sentimental
Modern Chivalry is an example of an early American ______ novel.
a. picaresque
1.8
b. historical
b. H.H. Brackenridge
c. Royall Tyler
The Algerine Captives was filled with social, educational, and political ______.
a. fiction
b. history
c. satire
NINETEENTH CENTURY
The novel began to take shape in the nineteenth century.
Writers such as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Herman Melville, and Mark Twain created memorable characters
and good stories. Some, such as Cooper, began to write simply
because the novels of the time were so bad. Others, such as Mark
Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne, considered themselves storytellers. These nineteenth-century novelists provided the base for
the twentieth-century novelists.
James Fenimore Cooper. When James Fenimore Cooper arrived on the scene, the
American novel became a novel that belonged to the world. Strangely enough, Cooper did
not start to write until he was thirty. In 1820 he wrote Precaution because he thought that
he could write a better novel than the one he was reading. With The Spy (1821), The Pioneers
(1823), and The Pilot (1824), Cooper brought to American fiction three great fictional worlds:
history, the forest, and the sea. Even at this time Cooper did not have a professional attitude
toward fiction. Although his main interest in life was not fiction, Cooper knew what things
made literature. Above all he brought American life into American fiction.
Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey in 1789. He went to grammar school, then
to Yale. He sailed in the navy and in 1811 married Susan De Lancey. After a five-year stay
in New York, he lived in Europe from 1827 to 1833. In the latter part of his life, Cooper produced eighteen novels over a period of eleven years and waged a constant battle against
evil influences in American life. He died September 14, 1851.
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The novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales are Cooper’s greatest achievement.
They celebrate the hero Natty Bumppo: The Deerslayer (1841) is Natty’s youth; The Last of
the Mohicans (1826) and The Pathfinders (1840) deal with Natty in his prime; The Pioneers
(1823) and The Prairie (1827) describe the latter part of his life and his death. The novels
are not all of the same quality. The Deerslayer and The Prairie are the best while The Last
of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer rank as the favorites. In any of the novels, the reader
finds the American scene, the woods, the virgin land, the inland sea, the native American,
the buffalo, or the prairie fire.
The Pilot, a novel of the sea, was about John Paul Jones. Other Cooper sea novels, The
Two Admirals (1842), The Red Rover (1827), The Water Witch (1830), and The Wing-andWing (1842), strive to be authentic about the sea, whatever other matter they treat. The sea
remained a love of Cooper through his life. A book of the sea that has been neglected is
Afloat and Ashore, a novel continued in a second book, Miles Wallingford (both 1844). Both
comprise a rather remarkable argument for a good life.
Cooper also wrote historical novels. Five of these novels can be classified as American.
The Spy, the first of Cooper’s American fiction, is little read. Wyandotteæ (1843) is about New
York during the Revolution. The Oak Openings (1848) concern Michigan in the War of 1812.
He wrote two novels about New England, Lionel Lincoln (1825) and The Wept of Wish-tonWish (1829). Lionel Lincoln is the better work and deals with New England and the
Revolutionary War.
Some of Cooper’s novels were on a theme dear to him, that is, social criticism. Two novels, Homeward Bound and Home as found (both 1838), are directed to Americans who cannot see American faults as well as to those Americans who find every century and country
better than their own.
The Littlepage trilogy is about New York life from about 1750-1850. Satanstoe (1845),
The Chainbearer (1845), and The Redskins (1846) form the trilogy of which Satanstoe, a
novel of manners, is the best. The novel still remains one of the most delightful in American
fiction. Novels such as The Monikins (1835), The Crater (1847), and The Ways of the Hour
are dedicated to Cooper’s social criticism.
Cooper as a novelist opened new territories for fiction, but he added nothing new to
technique. His descriptions often left out the one word that turns an ordinary description
into a good or even great one. Cooper excelled, however, in describing the chase.
He has done more than anyone else to define the Indian character in the minds of
Americans. Some of the things he said have been objected to, but by and large the objections have been cleared. His literary treatment of women was not too successful although
some characterizations, such as that of Judith Hutter of The Deerslayer, are well developed.
His best characterizations were of men, such as Natty Bumppo and Tom Coffin. The men,
where they live and breathe, constitute the genuine contribution of Cooper. Cooper, in his
attachment to his characters in nature, never made the mistake of substituting a mysticism about nature for religion. No writer makes greater use of Christian doctrine.
➤
Complete these activities.
1.11
List the Cooper novels included in the Leatherstocking Tales.
a. _______________________________________________________________________________________
b. _______________________________________________________________________________________
c. _______________________________________________________________________________________
d. _______________________________________________________________________________________
e. _______________________________________________________________________________________
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1.12
List three of Cooper’s sea novels.
a. ______________________________________________________________________________________
b. ______________________________________________________________________________________
c. ______________________________________________________________________________________
1.13
List the novels in Cooper’s Littlepage trilogy.
a. ____________________________________
b. ____________________________________
c. ____________________________________
➤
Answer this question.
1.14
Why was James Fenimore Cooper important to the development of the American novel?
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William Gilmore Simms. William Gilmore Simms, a prolific
American writer from the South, was born in 1806. He learned
Southern legends from his grandmother, pharmacy as apprentice to an
apothecary, law in school, and American history from constant reading.
Crime and the criminal, the offense and the motive interested him
deeply. He used these topics as subjects in Martin Faber (1833) and in
two domestic tragedies, Confession: or, The Blind Heart (1841) and
Beauchampe (1842). His most important stories, however, were about
the Revolution and the Mississippi frontier. Guy Rivers (1834), Richard Hurdis (1838), and
The Border Beagles (1840) were adventure stories set in Alabama and Mississippi.
Simms presented a good picture of the Revolution in seven novels set in South
Carolina. He viewed the revolution essentially as a civil war. Woodcraft (1852) contrasts the
end of the Revolution with the protagonist’s struggle to regain the life he once had on his
land.
Simms’ strength is found in the fact that he was a good storyteller. Telling a story as a
goal of fiction is not easily accomplished. In Simms’ case it resulted from careful thought
about the nature of fiction, about the use of history in fiction, about the difference between
the novel and the romance, and about the relationship of both forms to morals and life.
Nathaniel Hawthorne. The next important writer in the development of the
American novel was Nathaniel Hawthorne, a writer who considered himself a romancer
and not a novelist. The romancer, the storyteller, Hawthorne learned from—and was
greatly influenced by—reading the works of Sir Walter Scott. He got from Scott the idea of
idealizing one’s country. As he thought about Scott’s ideas, Hawthorne added the deeper
purposes and deeper morality that he found in Edmund Spenser and John Bunyan. The
Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables present those deeper purposes and morality
but in the way of the romancer, “render circumstances … of the writer’s own choosing or
creation.” The Marble Faun is a fanciful story that brings out a thoughtful moral.
7
Hawthorne would look for the significance of an incident as
he developed it or he would illustrate an idea in terms of fiction.
The center of the stage for Hawthorne was the question “What
does it mean?” For this reason Hawthorne did not begin with
characters as such; that is, he did not put a character in a book
in such a position that he would be compelled to write about him
as an individual for his own sake.
Hawthorne’s principal device was the symbol. The Marble
Faun found in nature one symbol after another of the guilt of the
protagonist. Because he always looked behind events, persons, or
things for what they mean, Hawthorne was tempted by the
supernatural. A classic example of such use of symbol and the
supernatural was the story “Young Goodman Brown.” Brown
thought he saw his fellow townsmen and his wife at a Devil’s Sabbath in the forest and the
sight destroyed him. The question is, however, whether they really were there.
Although he did not create characters for their own sake, Hawthorne did not hate people. He was, on the contrary, full of love for them but always in search of the meaning in
the events, the people, and things. Hawthorne never lost touch with life to become the
abstracted philosopher.
Hawthorne was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1804. His ancestors had been
in America from 1603. A curse pronounced by one of them provided the idea of Maule’s
curse in The House of Seven Gables. Hawthorne was incapacitated in early life. A long visit
to the forests of Maine reinforced the tendency he had to be alone, to think, to be secluded.
He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 and published a brief romance, Fanshawe
(1828), which he recalled and destroyed. He published sketches that were afterwards collected in Twice-Told Tales (1831, 1842), Moses from an Old Manse (1846), and The SnowImage and Other Twice-Told Tales (1852). He edited periodicals and served as customs officer at Custom House at Boston from 1839 to 1841 and at Salem from 1846 to 1849. In 1842
he was married to Sophia Peabody.
Three of Hawthorne’s major works appeared in successive years. The Scarlet Letter was
published in 1850; The House of Seven Gables, in 1851; and The Blithedale Romance, in 1852.
Most of the parts of The Scarlet Letter had appeared in sketches but the sustained
power of them in a long narrative prose fiction was a surprise. The sin of The Scarlet Letter
is over when the story opens. The interest of the book is the sense of guilt that is exposed
through the theme, the consequent sins of hypocrisy and revenge, and their effect on the
soul. The consequent sins are fierce: Dimmesdale lost courage; Chillingworth dedicated his
life to hideous revenge. All the characters are inconsistent in action. This characteristic preserves their human persuasiveness. The child, Pearl, is an allegorical figure who is considerably more realistic than she could be. The Scarlet Letter is not a subtle book. The work is
powerful enough to dispense with subtlety. The exposition is dramatic and obvious; the
characters and their relationships are completely clear.
Hawthorne preferred The House of Seven Gables because it was a more natural book to
write. He dealt with the present day at a time when he was closer to becoming a fulfilled
novelist. The devil was less in the inkpot, but the book’s present was brooded over by a past.
The book does not reach the depth of meaning that The Scarlet Letter did. The critical complaint from the beginning was that the story was not good enough for the setting: the plot
drags, melodrama is employed, and the happy ending arrives very suddenly.
The Blithedale Romance was not too successful. The mystery and the setting seem never
to get together. The Marble Faun, his last complete romance, was much more successful. The
theme of spiritual development through sin and suffering was carried by a story set in a rich
background where two Americans, Kenyon and Hilda, work through their lives. Hawthorne’s
material was better assimilated, his characters reacted admirably, but his understanding
was hampered by his lack of understanding of things Italian. The mystery has trouble
because the characters do not have complete knowledge and the reader is offered two or
more hypotheses. The procedure is legitimate, but Hawthorne carried it to extremes.
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Hawthorne was also preoccupied with the solitary person. He found pride to be the
unpardonable sin and moral solitude to be the worst fate of all. Man’s intellect, then, should
not overthrow his moral nature for then it would overcome “the sense of brotherhood with
man and reverence for God.” Nor can one take refuge in a dream of life, but one must
embrace life with all its disappointments. He also felt that living for a single cause could
warp a person. He avowed the only known means for regenerating the heart was the
Christian religion.
Hawthorne is often considered a profoundly Christian writer. He found pride the root
sin. Faith in nature was only easy optimism. What he did best was to translate the heavy
moral burden of life into the substance of his imagination. Although his range was not wide
nor was his production prolific, what he wrote was deep and important.
➤
Complete these statements.
1.15
William Gilmore Simms was a good ________________________________.
1.16
Nathaniel Hawthorne was influenced by the English novelist ________________________________.
1.17
Hawthorne thought of himself as a ________________________________, not a novelist.
1.18
Hawthorne’s principal device was the ________________________________.
1.19
The Scarlet Letter appeared as ________________________________ before it came out as a book.
1.20
Hawthorne preferred ________________________________ to The Scarlet Letter.
➤
Answer the questions.
1.21
Why was William Gilmore Simms a good storyteller? _________________________________________
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1.22
Who, besides Sir Walter Scott, influenced Hawthorne? ______________________________________.
➤
Complete this activity.
1.23
Look up Nathaniel Hawthorne in an encyclopedia or (preferably) find a biography of his life in the
library. Read about his life, his works, his philosophy, and his religious beliefs. Write a short paper
using what you have learned to either verify or refute the statement, “Hawthorne was a profoundly
Christian writer.”
Adult check
___________________
Initial
Date
9
Herman Melville. On August 1, 1819, Herman Melville was
born in New York. In his mid-forties he wrote Typee (1846) and
Omoo (1847) and became the literary discoverer of the South Seas.
The novels that Melville wrote draw upon his life in general and
his life at sea in particular. Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), Redburn
(1849), and White-Jacket (1850) are all fictions based on Melville’s
autobiography. Mardi (1849), Moby-Dick (1851), and Billy Budd
(published 1924) drew on Melville’s life at sea.
Typee was a revelation to readers because it was the first exposition of the South Seas. Melville was indignant that “white civilized man” had corrupted the islanders. He did not think the
white man should go “native.” He was Christian enough to realize
that in the whole situation you abhor the sin, but love the sinner.
White-Jacket: or, The World in a Man-of-War was Melville’s last book in his so-called
“first manner.” The novel is an account of life on a battleship. In it he attacks flogging and
war itself. In White-Jacket he stakes out a position based on Jesus’ doctrine of nonviolence.
Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre (1853) comprise a second group of novels that deal with
the serious metaphysical complexities and allegorical suggestions that Melville had opened
up in previous novels. The significance of the works rests on the reader’s general understanding rather than on any specific statements by Melville on his intent. Mardi has been
variously interpreted.
Moby-Dick is a coherent novel, but its meaning is as controverted as that of Mardi. The
story is that of Captain Ahab’s attempt to revenge himself on the great white whale that
had torn off his leg. The question of “What is Ahab?” and “What is the Whale?” are still
argued.
Melville did not practice fiction in the accepted sense, but he tried to create his own category. Thus, in Moby-Dick many things seem to be mixed up in the work. He used every
resource he could find and the plot is hardly enough for a good short story. The method is
episodic. The story has a climax, Ahab’s encounter with the whale.
Pierre, Israel Potter, His Fifty Years of Exile (1855), and The Confidence Man (1857)
were never as popular or as much attended to by the critics as Melville’s other novels.
Melville thought fiction could put more reality than life between the covers of a book
and in producing that reality he often let parts of the characters stand for the whole of
themselves. Melville supplemented experience with reading and imagination. He assimilated what he read to such an extent that it was almost his experience.
Melville was an intensely religious man who understood the dependence of democracy
on the Christian ideal. He had great reverence for life and integrity of personality. MobyDick convincingly shows these traits of Melville the writer.
Harriet Beecher Stowe. Harriet Beecher Stowe, a writer of
domestic novels and a sentimentalist, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(1852). The book had a large influence in the Civil War. The book
affected sales in shops and restaurants and raised the sale of the
Bible. Translated into thirty-seven languages, the novel sold in
the millions. Mrs. Stowe wrote ten long works of fiction but none
had the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She wrote two antislavery
works, four novels of old New England, and three “society novels.” She wrote one historical novel, Agnes of Sorrento.
Her second antislavery book was Dred: A Tale of the Great
Dismal Swamp (1856). Mrs. Stowe was not conciliatory and set
out to show the bad influence of slavery on slaves and masters alike. Her New England fiction, Oldtown Folks, Cranford, Poganuc People, The Minister’s Wooing, and The Pearl of
Orrs Island, set the type for many authors who followed her. Her “society novels” attempted to draw correct moral implications for contemporary life. Mrs. Stowe, as one critic puts
it, “represents the novel as Evangel.”
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➤
Complete these activities.
1.24
List Melville’s first two novels.
a. ______________________________________________________________________________________
b. ______________________________________________________________________________________
1.25
List three other Melville novels.
a. ______________________________________________________________________________________
b. ______________________________________________________________________________________
c. ______________________________________________________________________________________
1.26
Name Harriet Beecher Stowe’s most famous novel. ___________________________________________
1.27
List the three Melville novels that drew on his life at sea.
a. ______________________________________________________________________________________
b. ______________________________________________________________________________________
c. ______________________________________________________________________________________
➤
Match these items.
1.28
_______ White-Jacket
1.29
_______ Moby-Dick
1.30
_______ Dred
d. The World in a Man-of-War
1.31
_______ Agnes of Sorrento
e. His Fifty Years of Exile
1.32
_______ Uncle Tom’s Cabin
f. an antislavery novel
a. Captain Ahab
b. historical novel
c. translated into thirty-seven languages
Samuel Langhorn Clemens. Samuel Langhorn
Clemens—Mark Twain—was born in Florida, Missouri on
November 30, 1835. The experience of his life prepared him as
a writer, an American writer. He worked as a printer, then
apprenticed himself as a river pilot on the Mississippi and
eventually became one of the best. He worked at mining activities in Nevada. In 1862 he took a position on the Virginia City
Enterprise where he first used the name Mark Twain.
He went to the West Coast and worked for a while on the
San Francisco Morning Call. After leaving there, he went to
Calaveras County to try his hand at mining. In 1865 he was
asked by Artemus Ward to write a humorous sketch. He signed
it “Mark Twain,” and his reputation began on the eastern
seaboard. In 1866 he was sent by the Sacramento Union to
Hawaii. Unexpectedly, in 1867 he sailed abroad and wrote letters that were to become the
book, The Innocents Abroad. With that book he became the most famous humorist of his
time. In July, 1869, The Innocents Abroad was published. On February 2,1870, he married
Olivia Langdon.
In 1876 he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. A Tramp Abroad (1880) was inspired
by a trip to Europe. The Prince and the Pauper was published in 1881. Life on the
Mississippi followed in 1883; and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in 1884. His extended satire, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, followed in 1889.
11
Twain is a dominant, if not the dominant, personality in American literature. Mark
Twain fulfilled the oral tradition of the Southwest. Because of the high art of the storyteller,
in which so much of the man comes through, it is no wonder one thinks of Mark Twain
before one thinks of his works.
Twain’s first long fiction, The Gilded Age, was made out of Tennessee material; and it
was important as social and political criticism, although it was not a good novel. Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, his masterpieces, are out of his youth. Tom Sawyer, some
have remarked, preserved in literature an American ideal, a land that has since lost its
loveliness.
The Prince and the Pauper is historical fiction. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s
Court is as historically accurate as The Prince and the Pauper. The hero of A Connecticut
Yankee becomes the mouthpiece for democratic ideals against a romantic and historic past.
Joan of Arc (1896) was a notable contribution to the romantic revival of the 1890s. As
a historical novel, it was quite an original book in its day. The Mysterious Stranger, published in 1916, is a philosophical romance containing Twain’s severest denunciation of war
together with a description of how a nation can be dragged into war.
Twain saw erosion of what he considered good things in America; and he portrayed this
problem with exaggeration, irony, and satire. He pointed out federal “bonuses,” packing the
Supreme Court, and erosion of the Constitution. For Twain conditions seemed so bad that
he thought the republic dead. What he hoped for was that moral development be brought
alongside technological advancement so that true progress could be achieved.
William Dean Howells. William Dean Howells (born in 1837) wrote over one hundred
books in his lifetime. He wrote travel novels, international novels, problem novels, historical novels, and one epistolary novel. Howells thought that fiction must face the facts of
human nature. He was dedicated to the commonplace and the feelings of commonplace people. He did not try to reduce all these feelings to the lowest level but saw them as full of
meaning–that is, life is full of meaning in all people at all times.
Howells’ novels are filled with a strong ethical element because he conceived of the
fight for realism as a fight for truth. The soundness of the novel as a work of art depended
on sound moral values. Annie Kilburn (1889) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) exemplify this precept. He was the champion of realism. His attempts in the problem novel are
the groundwork for Henry James.
Henry James. Henry James was born in 1843, the son of Henry
James the philosopher, theologian, and independent spirit and brother
to William James, the future pragmatic philosopher. Daisy Miller
(1879) was his first important novel and his only popular success.
Especially in his most difficult novels, James kept a keen sense of the
sacred. James saw evil as dangerous because it goes in such dress that
it is not often recognized. He considered it immoral to take no trouble
to understand another human being.
➤
Answer true or false.
1.33
_______________ Mark Twain was the pen name for Samuel Langhorn Clemens.
1.34
_______________ Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were drawn from Mark Twain’s youth.
1.35
_______________ Twain’s novel Joan of Arc contributed to the romantic revival.
1.36
_______________ Daisy Miller was written by William Dean Howells.
1.37
_______________ Howells laid the groundwork for the novels of Henry James.
12
➤
Answer this question.
1.38
Why was Mark Twain important in the development of the American novel?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Other nineteenth-century novelists. In the last half of the nineteenth century, a
large number of women novelists appeared. Most of them wrote domestic novels, novels
about hearth and home, with an unbelievable cast of characters. These writers were called
domestic sentimentalists. Other novelists dealt with causes such as the temperance movement. The Civil War influenced still other writers.
Mary J. Holmes wrote novels strictly about domestic scenes with a dash of decorous
romance. Two other writers, Elizabeth Wetherell (pseudonym Susan Warner) and Maria
Cummins, leaned toward the religious elements. Elizabeth Wetherell’s The Wide, Wide
World (1850) is almost a religious tract. The same author’s novel, Queechy (1852), presents
some authentic pictures of rural customs and was in its own time thought to be the great
American novel. The Lamplighter (1854) by Maria Cummins is set in the city and views
alternate scenes of society and of the slum.
Fanny Fern was a journalist. In Ruth Hall (1855) she let her anger out against her
brother who, with her husband’s family, had abandoned her when she was widowed. Mrs.
E.D.E.N. Southworth at one time had ninety-one titles in print. The Hidden Hand (1859)
was the most popular, but she preferred Ishmael (1863) and its sequel Self-Raised (1864).
Augusta J. Evans (Wilson) was the author of Beulah (1859). A confederate prison camp
took its name from this novel. Another novel, Macaria; or, Altars of Sacrifice (1864) was
burned by the government because it might have caused morale problems among the
troops. Her positive triumph was St. Elmo (1866). Augusta J. Evans (Wilson) is also credited with being the most allusive novelist ever. She accounted for fifteen to twenty allusions
per page which she drew from everywhere and used without taste.
Timothy Arthur Shay championed the cause of temperance in Ten Nights in a Bar-Room
(1854) and Three Years in a Mantrap (1872). In 1874 he celebrated the beginning of the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union by publishing Women to the Rescue.
Martha Farquharson (pseudonym Martha F. Finley) wrote a popular pious novel, Elsie
Dinsmore (1867), and continued the heroine’s career for twenty novels. Little Women (1868)
by Louisa May Alcott is the closest novel America has to David Copperfield. She was probably the best trained of the group of novelists.
Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909) was one of the many novelists of the 1880s. He
wrote about the contemporary scene although he was best known for the historical novels,
Via Crucis (1898) and In the Palace of the King (1902).
Sarah Orme Jewett (1849-1909) wrote a tragic novel of divided loyalties in The Tory Lover
(1901), a novel describing that tragedy within one family. She also wrote important sketches
of Maine life in Deephaven (1877) and The Country of Pointed Firs (1877). Constance
Woolson’s (1840-1894) For the Major (1883) is much admired, but her reputation rests on her
short stories. John Hay (1838-1906) and Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1855) contributed little to
the advance of the novel, but they did show the use of the novel as propaganda.
13
In the 1890s James Lane Allen moved toward realism in The Reign of the Law (1900)
and The Mettle of the Pasture (1903). Thomas Nelson Page, F. Hopinkson Smith, and James
Fox, Jr. looked back to the spirit of the Old South. All three were romancers. Page covered
picturesquely the Reconstruction years after the Civil War in The Red Riders (1924).
Smith’s reputation was made by Colonel Carter of Cartersville (1891), a novel about an
eccentric gentleman of the Old South. John Fox used the Cumberland as the setting for his
two best novels, The Little Shepherd of the Kingdom (1903) and The Trail of the Lonesome
Pine (1908).
Mary Johnston’s interest was in contemporary problems. She was interested in pioneer
times and families because she believed that the past controls the future through the link
of the present. Prisoners of Hope, To Have and to Hold (1900), and Audrey (1902) are examples of her use of the past.
Hamlin Garland, in such works as Boy-Life on the Prairie (1899), demonstrated his
leaning toward naturalism. Stephen Crane, a reporter then novelist, wrote a naturalistrealist work The Red Badge of Courage (1894), that has remained classic and popular.
Frank Norris probably summed up the literary movement of the times in McTeague (1899).
➤
Complete these activities.
1.39
List some of the concerns that became topics of novels in this period.
a. ______________________________________________
b. ______________________________________________
c.
______________________________________________
d. ______________________________________________
e. ______________________________________________
1.40
Name the author of each of the following works.
a. The Red Badge of Courage by
_______________________________________________
b. Queechy by
_______________________________________________
c. Little Women by
_______________________________________________
d. Boy-Life on the Prairie by
_______________________________________________
e. McTeaugue by
_______________________________________________
TWENTIETH CENTURY
Twentieth-century novelists further developed the realistic novel. They also developed
the naturalistic novel and experimented with combined modes. The American novel has
reached a higher stage of development in the twentieth century. The novel to be studied in
Section Two is a twentieth-century American novel. The greatness of the twentieth-century novels, especially those of the last fifty years, will be better judged by the critics of the
next century.
Robert Herrick, the idealist novelist of the early 1900s, thought that an author who confined himself to a realistic method could only touch the surface. He dealt with spiritual
themes and his characters and action are generally symbolic types. The novels that Herrick
himself claimed as his best were The Real World (1901), A Life for a Life (1910), The Healer
(1911), and Clark’s Field (1914). Critics have objected, however, that he never solves the
problems he presents.
14
Booth Tarkington achieved a romantic treatment of realistic material that made him
successful. Most boys have at sometime read the Penrod books (1914-1916, 1929). He
caught the American rhythm particularly in a trilogy, Growth composed of three novels The
Turmoil (1915), The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), and The Midlander (1923).
Edith Wharton began writing fiction in 1889. Ethan Frome (1911) was often referred to
as her masterpiece. The story is a tragedy of a sensitive New England farmer married to a
shrewish, hypochondriac woman. Wharton’s first interest was a realistic dramatic fiction of
the soul. In that she follows the French masters who provided the density that fiction
needs. She surveyed a world that she found growing progressively worse and that needs
again to obey the command of reasons.
Ellen Glasgow, who published between 1902 and 1941, brought social history into fiction. She wrote of Virginia, the South, the Civil War, the rise of the middle class, and so
forth. She pictured the world as cruel and stunted in development. The most popular of her
books was They Stooped to Folly (1924), which studies woman in three stages of life. In her
last novel, In This Our Life (1939), she studied the decaying standards of civilization and
the ever present need of a basis for living. She saw cruelty as the great sin, the real sin.
Theodore Dreiser was the finest of the writers of the naturalist school of novelists. His
best example is The American Tragedy (1925). Realism returned again with Dorothy
Canfield in such works as The Brimming Cup (1921) and The Deepening Stream (1930).
Willa Cather approached life as the artist. She felt that she could not write if she were
detached from the roots of her experience, and for her the roots were in Nebraska. She
found herself as a novelist in O Pioneers! (1913). The works in which she returns to the past
are her best. Death Comes to the Archbishop (1927) was such a work.
Sinclair Lewis resembled both Edith Wharton and Booth Tarkington. In 1920 he wrote
Main Street. In that work he began to recognize things that were not right in society.
Babbitt (1922) studied frustration. Arrowsmith (1925) was his closest use of the realistic
method to sort out all the medical chicanery in existence.
John Dos Passos’ most important work was U.S.A. (1937), which contained The 42nd
Parallel, Nineteen-Nineteen, and The Big Money. He wrote what is termed a collectivist
novel, a use of disconnected fragments to describe the lives of rather aimless characters. In
such works as He Sent forth a Raven (1935), Elizabeth Madox Roberts used her poetic
insight and method of presenting the inner lives of her characters. The works of Elinor
Wylie, Robert Nathan, and Thornton Wilder have resurrected romance and fantasy.
Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey (C 1927) attempts to plumb the mystery of evil much
as Job did with his contemporaries.
Thomas Wolfe was the giant of the 1930s. He wrote four huge novels and two lesser
ones. They were greatly edited down from the original manuscripts. He wanted to record
everything, but Wolfe never learned to control his gifts. His most famous novel is Of Time
and the River (1935).
William Faulkner was a most imaginative novelist. He created a world that may give
something of the Deep South. His famous Yoknapatawpha County and Snopes family have
the character of legend and myth. The historical novel made a return with Harvey Allen’s
Anthony Adverse (1933) and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (1936).
John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California in 1902.
Critics are still wondering whether to take much of Steinbeck’s
fiction literally or allegorically. Works such as The Grapes of
Wrath and The Wayward Bus are the most puzzling of his output. The Grapes of Wrath is so full of rhythmical and repetitive
elements that classification of the novel is impossible. The
novel also makes use of symbolism, folklore, oral tradition, popular stories, and songs. Steinbeck was never a popular author.
He was capable of writing a deep, religious work by retelling in
prose of clarity and beauty a medieval Mexican folktale of
great religious devotion entitled The Pearl (1947).
15
Robert Penn Warren, who reached fame as a novelist with All the King’s Men (1946), is
a political novelist. Warren is only a sample of the manner in which the novel has taken
upon itself to speak out on any subject. Each has to be considered on merit of subject,
theme, method, and technique. To do a creditable job of talking about a novel, one must read
it first.
Other notable authors of this time period were Norman Mailer, Irwin Shaw, Gore Vidal,
and Truman Capote.
➤ Match these items.
1.41
_______ Robert Herrick
a. Ethan Frome
1.42
_______ Booth Tarkington
b. Babbitt
1.43
_______ Edith Wharton
c. The American Tragedy
1.44
_______ Ellen Glasgow
1.45
_______ Theodore Dreiser
1.46
_______ Willa Cather
1.47
_______ Sinclair Lewis
1.48
_______ Thornton Wilder
i. All the King’s Men
1.49
_______ Thomas Wolfe
j. They Stooped to Folly
1.50
_______ John Steinbeck
k. The Real World
➤
Write a report.
1.51
Look up one of the twentieth-century novelists in the following list. Write a three-page report on
the life, works, and the contribution to the American novel made by that novelist.
d. The Pearl
e. The Bridge of San Luis Rey
f. Growth
g. Of Time and the River
h. Death Comes to the Archbishop
Booth Tarkington
Willa Cather
Edith Wharton
Adult check
___________________
Initial
Date
Review the material in this section in preparation for the Self Test. The Self Test will check
your mastery of this particular section. The items missed on this Self Test will indicate specific
areas where restudy is needed for mastery.
16
SELF TEST 1
Answer true or false (each answer, 1 point).
1.01
____________ Uncle Tom’s Cabin was translated into thirty-seven languages.
1.02
____________ The American novel began to develop in the eighteenth century.
1.03
____________ Cooper began writing novels because he thought he could do a better job
than the novelists that he was reading.
1.04
____________ The first American novel was Pamela.
1.05
____________ Cooper’s Littlepage trilogy is about life in New York.
1.06
____________ William Gilmore Simms was a good storyteller.
1.07
____________ Nathaniel Hawthorne thought of himself as a romancer, rather than a novelist.
1.08
____________ American history had no influence on the novel.
1.09
____________ Thomas Wolfe wrote very short novels.
1.010 ____________ Social issues were a subject of novelists in the late nineteenth century.
Match these items (each answer, 2 points).
1.011 _______ Moby-Dick
a. John Steinbeck
1.012 _______ The Scarlet Letter
b. Sinclair Lewis
1.013 _______ Uncle Tom’s Cabin
c. Harriet Beecher Stowe
d. Herman Melville
1.014 _______ Last of the Mohicans
e. Thornton Wilder
1.015 _______ Adventures of Tom Sawyer
f. Willa Cather
1.016 _______ O Pioneers!
g. Nathaniel Hawthorne
1.017 _______ Main Street
h. James Fenimore Cooper
1.018 _______ All the King’s Men
i. Robert Penn Warren
1.019 _______ The Bridge of San Luis Rey
j. William Faulkner
1.020 _______ The Pearl
k. Mark Twain
Write the letter of the correct answer on the line (each answer, 2 points).
1.021 Herman Melville’s novel about Captain Ahab and the large whale was _______.
a. Billy Budd
b. Mardi
c. Moby-Dick
1.022 Cooper’s novels about Natty Bumppo are called the_______.
a. Leatherstocking Tales
b. Littlepage trilogy
c. Growth
1.023 Mark Twain was the pen name of _______.
a. William Dean Howells
b. Henry James
c. Samuel Langhorn Clemens
1.024 The Mark Twain novel that contributed to the romantic revival in literature was _______.
a. The Mysterious Stranger
b. Joan of Arc
c. The Prince and the Pauper
1.025 Stephen Crane was both a novelist and a _______.
a. riverboat captain
b. painter
17
c. reporter
1.026 Willa Cather’s roots were in _______.
a. Nebraska
b. Kansas
c. New York
1.027 Theodore Dreiser was a fine writer of the _______ school.
a. romantic
b. naturalist
c. gothic
1.028 John Steinbeck’s novel that was based on a medieval Mexican folktale is _______.
a. The Grapes of Wrath
b. A Connecticut Yankee
c. The Pearl
in King Arthur’s Court
1.029 Nathaniel Hawthorne used many _______ in his novels.
a. symbols
b. comics
c. naturalists
1.030 The book generally conceded to be the first American novel is _______.
a. The History of Maria Kettle
b. The Emigrants
c. The Power of Sympathy
Complete these statements (each answer, 3 points).
1.031 Mark Twain’s two famous historical novels are a. _____________________________________________
and b. ___________________________________________________________________________________.
1.032 Frank Norris summed up the literary movement of the late nineteenth century in his novel ______
_________________________________________________________________________________________.
1.033 Charles Brockden Brown might be called a ____________________________ novelist.
1.034 Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales include the novels, The Prairie, The Pioneers, a. _________________
___________, b. __________________________________, and c. __________________________________.
1.035 Sinclair Lewis’s novel ________________________ was his closest use of the realistic method.
1.036 Robert Herrick was an ________________________ novelist.
1.037 Hawthorne explored the effects of guilt in his novel ________________________.
1.038 Ellen Glasgow brought ________________________ into fiction.
1.039 Thornton Wilder’s novel that studies the mystery of evil much as Job did is _____________________.
Answer these questions (each answer, 5 points).
1.040 What did Mark Twain contribute to the history of the novel? _________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________.
1.041 What were the concerns of the domestic novel? _______________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________.
1.042 What did Nathaniel Hawthorne contribute to the novel? ______________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________.
81
Score
101
Teacher Check
_______________
___________________
Initial
18
Date