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SPATIAL FORM IN WINESBURG, OHIO
A Thesis
Submitted to
The College of English Language and Literature of
Shanghai International Studies University
In Partial Fulfillment of
The Requirements for
The Degree of Master of Arts
By Shi Yingying
Under the Supervision of Prof. Zhang Dingquan
September 28, 2007
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Acknowledgements
The author is deeply grateful to all those who did help me during the process of
writing the thesis.
For the study in the past two and a half years and the crystallization of this thesis, I
wish to acknowledge all these teachers who have given me their kind instruction. Special
thanks are due to Prof. Zhang Dingquan, my supervisor, whose instruction and
encouragement accompany me through the writing of the thesis.
I would like to thank my classmates, Gan Min, Xu Yuanxue, Li Hongxia, and Huang
Xin. All of you had encouraged me through the difficult writing. My thanks also go to my
family who supported me all the way through all these years. I can do nothing without all
of you standing behind me and always agreeing to all my decisions.
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Abstract
Winesburg, Ohio, one of the most important works of Sherwood Anderson,
established his reputation in literature history. It received wide attention and was
researched by critics. However, the form of the book is always beyond the attention of
critics.
For a long time Winesburg, Ohio has been regarded as a collection of short stories,
which is not accurate. The treatise analyzes the features and reasons of spatial form in the
book and its influence on writers following Anderson, especially on Faulkner. We hold that
the book has foretold the employment of spatial form. And Winesburg, Ohio is a spatial
fiction rather than a collection of short stories.
In the second chapter, the observation is concentrated on the features of spatial form
in Winesburg, Ohio. Both juxtaposition and reflexive reference are conspicuous features in
spatial form. And the disagreement of narrator, moments of being and the tendency of
inward turn all work in constructing a spatial form.
The third chapter focuses on the reasons of spatial form. To the grotesques, their blind
belief in language leads to their being trapped in time. Realizing this, Anderson has to turn
to spatial form to get him out of the dilemma of time. Still, the historical background plays
a role. After the Civil War, the economic development and industrialization changed the
sense of time. To express the resistance to the overdeveloping industrial civilization,
Anderson naturally turns to spatial form to show the frozen moment in his works.
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中文摘要
《小镇畸人》是舍伍德·安德森最重要的一部作品。作为一部奠定了安德森在文
学史上的地位的作品，
《小镇畸人》受到了广泛关注。批评家从各个角度研究考察这
部作品，但小说的形式始终没有受到重视。
一直以来人们都认为《小镇畸人》是本短篇小说集。事实上这个说法并不准确。
本文从空间形式理论的角度分析了《小镇畸人》中空间形式的特征及其成因，以及它
对后世作家尤其是福克纳的影响，认为《小镇畸人》中已经预示了空间形式在小说中
的大量运用。而《小镇畸人》也是一部具有空间形式特征的小说，并非人们一直认为
的短篇小说集。
论文的第二章集中分析了《小镇畸人》中的空间形式特征。如并置和反应参照就
是最为明显的空间形式特征。其他如叙述者的不一致性，对重要瞬间的表现，以及“向
内转”的趋势等等，无一不和空间形式相应和。
论文的第三章分析了空间形式的成因。就畸人而言，他们对语言的执着和迷信导
致了他们被困于时间之中。安德森认识到了畸人的成因，明白要从时间的困境中摆脱
出来，只有诉诸于空间形式。同时，《小镇畸人》的形成年代也对空间形式的出现有
影响。内战结束，经济飞速发展，工业化进程推进，使得人们的时间观发生改变。安
德森为了表现这种对过速发展的工业文明的抗拒，自然而然地转向了空间形式，在作
品中表现出凝固的瞬间。
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Table of Contents
Introduction ………………………..………………………………………………....1
Chapter 1. Literature Review……………………………………… ………………...3
1.1 Spatial Form in Modern Novel............................................................................. .3
1.2 Literary Review of Winesburg, Ohio……………………………………………..5
Chapter2.Devices in Spatial Form in Winesburg, Ohio …………………………........8
2.1. Juxtaposition …………………………………………………………………….8
2.2. Reflexive Reference …………………………………………………………….12
2.3 Disagreement of Narrators ……………………………………………………....17
2.4 Unique Way of Storytelling ……………………………………………………...21
2.5 Moments of Being ……………………………………………………………….24
2.6 The Tendency of Inward Turn …………………………………………………...26
Chapter 3. Reasons for Spatial Form in Winesburg, Ohio………………………........29
.1. Trapped in Time……………………………………………………………………29
3.2. A Time of Turmoil ………………………………………………………………31
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………34
Works cited …………………………………………………………………………..37
1
Introduction
Sherwood Anderson enjoyed a controversial reputation in American literature. Among
the great writers such as William Faulkner, Earnest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Sinclair
Lewis, etc, Anderson was praised as “a writer’s writer”, “the only story teller of his
generation who left his mark on the style and vision of the generation that followed”, “a
pioneer” (Cowley 49) .But a quite embarrassing fact is that those who had been influenced
by Anderson left him and went on in a different way; some of them even disputed with him
and carried on their writers’ career on a contrary way.
Among Anderson’s works are novels Windy McPherson’s Son, Marching Men, Poor
White, Dark Laughter, Winesburg, Ohio1, collections of short stories Horse and Man, and
The Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories. Commonly his novels do not receive high
compliments while his short stories are regarded as his best works. Winesburg, Ohio is the
book that established his reputation as an influential writer.
Spatial form was raised in 1945 by Joseph Frank in his article “Spatial Form in
Modern Literature”, which is originated in his understanding of Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood.
To put it simply, spatial form designates the techniques by which novelists subvert the
chronological sequences. Frank’s essay hints at the complicated interrelationship of three
fundamental aspects of narrative: language, structure and reader perception. In the essay
Frank first discusses modern poetry as his paradigm for narrative, concluding that much
modern poetry such as that of Eliot and Pound undermines the inherent consecutiveness of
language, forcing the reader to perceive the poems in a new, unconventional way. Then his
research extends from poetry to modern fiction. Frank introduces means to disrupt
traditional narrative sequences and achieve spatial form in fictions, which includes cutting
back and forth between simultaneous actions, using distributed exposition, presenting
events or characters discontinuously, etc. The theory of spatial form has influenced writers
and theorists. Spatial fictions are written and theorists give examinations from different
points of view.
The features of spatial form in Winesburg, Ohio catch my attention and attract me to
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Usually Winesburg, Olio is regarded as a collection of short stories, while in the thesis it is taken as a novel which has
demonstrated the features of spatial form. In the following discussion this point will be further clarified.
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peruse the book with the instruction of the theory. A surprising discovery is that long
before the theory appears Anderson has shown the sign of spatial form in his book, proving
that spatial form is a necessary production of the age.
The thesis will be organized in this way: the first chapter is the literature review,
giving a brief review of the theory of spatial form and the research of Winesburg, Ohio. In
the second chapter, some features and devices in spatial form are introduced and discussed
such as juxtaposition, reflexive reference, arrangement of narrators, weakening plots,
moments of being, and inward turn tendency, etc. All these features can be found in the
novel and achieve the effect of spatial form. Then we will analyze the reasons of spatial
form appearing in Anderson’s works. The characters in Anderson’s works have been
trapped in language and time, which may be one reason for the spatial form. Another
reason is the historical background. Just as Frank says, “if there is one theme that
dominates the history of modern culture since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it
is precisely that of insecurity, instability, the feeling of loss of control over the meaning and
purpose of life amidst the continuing triumphs of science and techniques” (Frank 58) .The
time of turmoil inevitably left a brand on people’s mind and changed their thinking modes.
Writers, who are more sensitive to social changes, show them in the works. Then it is not
strange at all that spatial form will show its sign in Anderson’s works.
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Chapter One
Literature Review
1. Spatial Form in Modern Novel
In as early as 1776, Lessing had discussed the differences between painting and
poetry in his masterpiece Laocoon, declaring that “…… succession of time is the province
of the poet just as space is that of the painter”(Lessing 115) . Through hundreds of years,
the conclusion has been commended by theorists for its insight.
The differences are related to the media the two forms resort to. As Lessing says,
“Painting and poetry in their imitations make use of entirely different means of symbols
----the first, namely, of form and color in space, the second of articulated sounds in time”
（qtd，in Frank 7）.Words, the media of literature, can not display all elements of an object
at an instant of time as painting does, and thus readers have to experience a process to get a
complete picture of the literary works.
However, with the appearance of the relativity theory in the beginning of the
twentieth century and research of philosophers such as Sartre and Heidegger, people got a
new idea of time and a stronger perception of space. Time lost its dominant position in
modern literature. Spatial form emerged and attracted more and more attention.
Joseph Frank raises the theory of spatial form in 1945. In his thesis “Spatial Form in
Modern Literature” he does not give an exact definition to spatial form, though these lines
are very often referred to as its definition: “spatial form is the development that Hulme was
looking for but did not know how to find. In both artistic mediums, one naturally spatial
and the other naturally temporal, the evolution of aesthetic form in the twentieth century
has been absolutely identical……both contemporary art and literature have, each in its
own way, attempted to overcome the time elements involved in their structure ” (Frank
61) .
How did contemporary literature make its efforts to overcome the time elements?
Joseph Frank explicates it in two aspects: first, in the aspect of authors. Writers in
twentieth century unanimously display dissolution of time sequence and preference to
space and structure in their novels. They spread actions and plots in different layers at the
same time. Here Frank advances an important critical conception: juxtaposition. Other
means to attain spatial form are repetitive motif, interweaved plots, multiple story and
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irony (Mickelsen 68). Second, in the aspect of readers. To understand spatial form, readers
should perceive spatial fiction as a whole. A novel of spatial form is an artistic whole
constructed with diffused but related meaningful units. The meaning of each unit lies not
only in itself but in its relationship with others. So, readers must understand each unit in its
relationship with the whole. Here, Frank offers another important conception: reflexive
reference. The prerequisite to realize reflexive reference is reflexive reading or repetitive
reading. Thus, Frank draws the famous conclusion: Joyce cannot be read----he can only be
reread (Frank 21). As readers read the novel repeatedly, they connected allusions and
references to reconstruct the background so as to attain a complete understanding of each
image, allusion or reference.
After the publication of the theory, spatial form in the novel had been developed both
practically and theoretically. Some writers tried this new form in their writing, them such
as Ronald Sukenick, Gilbert Sorrentino, Clarence Major, Steve Katz and Walter Abish.
Some novels of spatial form were also popular, for instance, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969),
Snow White (1967), and Steps (1968). Such a style of work gradually dominated the
literary quarterlies, academic journals and experimental magazines. Some of critics also
discussed and developed the theory in different ways. For example, Jerome Klinkowitz
observed the modern novels after the publication of Frank’s thesis. James M. Curtis
analyzed the development of spatial form in the context of the discussions of space and
time in modern thought, especially in science and philosophy, evaluated Frank’s position in
modern aesthetic background and gave a deep and appropriate comparison of the
similarities of his theory and structuralist linguistics. Eric S. Rabkin and David Michelson
engaged themselves in a deep research of plot and structure, the central question of the
spatial form theory and deepened the theory. All these expositions widened the theory of
spatial form and perfected the theoretical prototype.
Frank is doubtful to the complete realization of spatial form. In his discussion, he
always assumes that no novel is perfectly temporal or spatial, for they rarely ignore time
completely. The theory of spatial form is just to call attention to the departures from pure
temporality. Jerome Klinkowitz agrees with him that “the perfection of such form in fiction
is more of an ideal than a practical reality” (Klinkowitz 50). This is understandable for
language is naturally sequential and temporal, which is against the tendencies of spatial
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form. However, spatial form is an ideal state which can never be completely realized. And
it may be for this reason that it has a long-lasting attraction to modern writers.
Thirty years after the publishing of the thesis, Joseph Frank gives an answer to critics
in spatial form: “Spatial Form: An Answer to Critics”. He claimed at the very beginning
that his aim “was to work out descriptive categories for a new literary phenomenon, not to
establish the rules of a modernist critical canon” (Frank 71) .Although the theory is first
applied in the analysis of modern novels, he and his followers are never confined to it.
It may be safe to say that spatiality in novel has always been there but only in modern
literature has it come into critics’ sight and has become conspicuous. Here we will try to
identity spatial form in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and justify the argument.
2. Literary Review of Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson enjoys a special prestige in modern American literary history. He
has not won any significant literary prizes such as Nobel or Pulitzer and among his works,
only Winesburg, Ohio and several short stories can be regarded as classics. Though he is
not a significant writer, writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner admits that they have been
influenced by his style and sight of writing. “To the generation of writers who flourished in
the 1920s, Sherwood Anderson was a force and a pioneer” (George Perkins and Barbara
Perkins 1416).
His short stories are commonly considered his best works, among which are “Deaths
in the Woods”, “The Egg”, “I Want to Know Why”, “I’m a Fool”, etc. Since 1926 “A Man
of Ideas”, “Queer”, and “Drink” were included in Doubleday’s American literature
anthologies, he steadily appeared in literature anthologies. However, as Robert Dunne said,
those anthologies “are faced with the challenge of expanding their inclusion of authors
while at the same time keeping the number of pages within realistic bounds” (Dunne
xiii).The length of the anthology is a problem the editors must take into consideration. That
may explain why Winesburg, Ohio is not to editors’ favor while they chose from
Anderson’s stories though they admit that it is Winesburg, Ohio that helps establish his
reputation as one of the pioneers of modern American literature. Although some
anthologies include stories from Winesburg, Ohio, readers can only get a complete and
accurate understanding of the book after they read the whole book.
Short stories are Sherwood Anderson’s favor. Winesburg, Ohio is loose in its
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organization. These are well-justified reasons for critics to take the book as a collection of
short stores and to neglect the fact that the book is a whole.
There are valuable critical studies of the book Winesburg, Ohio conducted from
biographical, New Critical or psychoanalytical approaches. William L. Phillips observes
the writing and publishing of the book in “How Sherwood Anderson Wrote Winesburg,
Ohio”. Through a careful study of the manuscripts he checks the order of the short stories
and the versions before and after Anderson’s revisions. His work helps us get a better
understanding of the book. Malcolm Cowley’s “Introduction to Winesburg, Ohio” tells
more about the writer than the book: his personality, writing, influence to other writers. His
judgment of Anderson---“a writer’s writer, the only story teller of his generation who left
his mark on the style and vision of the generation that followed”--- had been cited over and
over. Edwin Fussell analyzes Anderson’s ambivalent and complex attitude toward the
relation of art and isolation. He focuses on the image of George Willard and his relation
with the town people. For one thing, George was warmly accepted in Winesburg, Ohio.
Everyone trusted him, liked him and was eager to share with him their experiences. They
gave him advice and hoped him not to make the same mistakes as they had. But on the
other hand, George was isolated from everyone and was alone to accept the fact of human
isolation and to live with it. “His willingness to do so is at once the sign of his maturity and
the pledge of his incipient artistic ability.” He reached the conclusion that the artist, either
George Willard in the book or the writer himself, who seemed to be isolated from others
and enjoyed a special situation in a society, actually shared the same thing with everyone:
“the mixture of participation and detachment, love and respect, passion and criticism”
(Fussell 47-8).
Criticisms of Winesburg, Ohio involve different theories and thus different points of
views: sex in the book, the theme of Bildungsroman, images of grotesques, the
biographical character of George Willard. Generally speaking, these criticisms are
fragmental and some are seen in the studying of Sherwood Anderson and his other works.
In China, before Prof. Zhang Qiang’s research, only some articles have been published
and the research of Sherwood Anderson is not systemic, especially that of Anderson’s
writing ideology and the development of his writing skills. Prof. Zhang holds that
Anderson, as a writer living in a turning point from handicraft industry to mechanic
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civilization, is of high value in both literature research and cultural research. His Pouring a
Lifetime in a Moment: Sherwood Anderson and His Art of Short Fiction focuses on
Anderson’s short fiction in an attempt to excavate the essential elements of his
craftsmanship and to explore the reason of his success. Quite interestingly we find that he
takes Winesburg, Ohio into his consideration in the book. Obviously to him Winesburg,
Ohio is more a collection of short stories than a novel.
Since most of critics had focused on the text, new approaches are applied to the study
of the book. A New Book of the Grotesque, a critical work on Anderson by Robert Dunne
studying Winesburg, Ohio from a postmodern theoretical perspective was published in
2005. In the book the author applies Foucault’s ideas to analyze the reason of grotesques
and we can also see how contemporary ideas of the indeterminacy of language can help us
understand something fundamental to Anderson’s book.
The thesis is to make a specific study of the book from the angle of form. Frank found
the specialization of modern novel and put out his theory in 1945. Though Winesburg,
Ohio was published in 1919, we can see the sign of special form and Anderson’s influence
on his followers, especially his influence on William Faulkner, whose treatment of time
and space in his novel attracted wide attention from critics.
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Chapter Two Devices in Spatial Form
2.1. Juxtaposition
Juxtaposition is an important conception of spatial form. Traditionally novelists
arranged and organized plots in accordance with temporal orders or logic relations. The
narration spread linearly along the dimension of time and the story would develop in a
linear structure. Modern novelists break traditional limits by intentionally weakening the
function of temporal order so as to emphasize a spatial effect that can hardly be achieved
by continuing temporality. The new narrative way emphasizes on juxtaposing events
spatially without cause-effect relations and makes them seem to happen at the same time.
Juxtaposition refers to images, implications and symbols dissociating from the
narration juxtaposed in the text. In Winesburg, Ohio, juxtaposed images, implications and
symbols are quite common.
One dominant image in the book is “grotesque”. A conspicuous similarity among the
characters in Winesburg, Ohio is that they are all grotesques. Living in the world invaded
by modern mechanic civilization, they resist but still change and are influenced by it. In the
dual function of modern civilization and the old principles they adhere to, they are
transformed into grotesques. The preface, also the first story in the book, is named “The
Book of Grotesque”, setting the tone of the whole book.
When the reader is reading the stories, the images and actions of the characters will
inevitably bring the word “grotesque” into his mind. At the end of “Hands”, Wing
Biddlebaum kneeled before the bed, picking up the crumbs by the light of the lamp. It may
be an ordinary daily scene but reading the description of the writer, the reader will find the
scene rather weird:
In the dense blotch of light beneath the table, the kneeling figure looked like a priest engaged in
some service of his church. The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light, might
well have been mistaken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly through decade after decade of
his rosary. (Anderson 13)
In “Paper Pills” the words describing the love of Doctor Reefy and his wife can also be
taken as an image to describe the grotesques in the book:
It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg. In the fall one
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walks in the orchards and the ground is hard with frost underfoot. The apples have been taken from
the trees by the pickers. They have been put in barrels and shipped to the cities where they will be
eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people. On the trees are
only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor
Reefy’s hands. One nibbles them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the
apple has been gathered all of its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground
picked the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the
sweetness of the twisted apples. (Anderson 15)
Here readers cannot help relating the apples with people in Winesburg. One important
theme in Anderson’s works is the invasion and influence of modern industry civilization to
American pastoral life. If we take those who got used to modern civilization and quite
enjoyed the life in big cities as apples “put in barrels and shipped to the cities where they
will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people”,
those who stayed in the town, adhered to the old lifestyle and became grotesques in the
modern world are twist little apples. They looked strange and abnormal. However, if you
really understand them, you will find the loveliness and value of them. The topic word
“grotesque” was accentuated to string the stories into a whole.
Besides repetition of images, symbols also reappeared in different stories,
demonstrating their relations and illustrating the theme of the book. One of such symbols is
“hand”, which appeared again and again: hands of Wing Biddlebaum(“Hands”), hands of
Joe Welling(“A Man of Ideas”), hands of Wash Williams(“Respectability”), hands of
Enoch Robinson(“Loneliness”), hands of Ray Pearson and Hal Winters（“An Untold
Lie”）…. Among those hands, some of them are huge, some fat, some strong, some thin
and nervous, but most of them are skillful, sensitive and expressive. “The tragic
ambivalence of hands is the fate of all the characters of Winesburg (qtd，in Zhang Qiang
67)”. To Anderson hands had been the tools of creativity and the origin of human
civilization. In the book it very often suggests the potential or actual communication
among people.
The meaning of single image, implication or symbol lies not only in itself, but also in
its relation with other images, implications or symbols, thus constituting a meaning unit
which contains more information than the totality of its components. When a same image
or symbol appears repetitively, the image or symbol is reinforced until at last it becomes
overwhelming and the only impression in the mind of the reader.
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Joseph Frank begins from juxtaposition of various levels of action in his dissertation
of spatial fiction. To illustrate his theory of spatial form, he cites the scene of county fair
scene in Madame Bovary, in which three levels of actions proceed at the same time. Frank
explains “he (Flaubert) dissolves sequence by cutting back and forth between the various
levels of action in a slowly rising crescendo until----at the climax of the scene
----Rudolph’s Chateaubriandesque phrases are read at almost the same moment as the
names of prize winners for raising the best pigs” (Frank 17) . He believes on a small scale
the scene illustrates what he means by the spatialization of form in a novel: the time-flow
is halted; attention is fixed on the interplay of relationships within the immobilized
time-area. The words “on a small scale” in the sentence are significant. After all, such a
scene is not common in traditional novels. It is an exception rather than normality.
As Frank says, the meaning unit in the part is not a word-group or a fragment of an
anecdote as in modern poetry but the totality of each level of action taken as an integer.
And also because the unit of meaning is larger, novels can preserve coherent sequence
within the unit of meaning and break up only the time-flow of narrative.
In Frank’s essay juxtaposition is confined to juxtaposition of words and images
without further discussion. Modern critics accept the conception and widen it to
juxtaposition of events and stories. Chinese scholar Wu Xiaodong holds that juxtaposition
should also include juxtaposition, for example, of different narrators’ narration and of
multiple stories when he talks about Faulkner’s Sound and Fury, which tells respectively
from four narrators’ points of view. According to him, this is a juxtaposition of structure
and an ideal model of spatial form (Wu Xiaodong 184-5).
As we know, Faulkner has been inspired by Sherwood Anderson’s style of language
and selection of materials. We may add he is also influenced by Sherwood Anderson’s
structure, for the structure of Winesburg, Ohio is kind of juxtaposition. In this book, both
juxtaposition of multiple stories and juxtaposition of different narrators’ narrations have
been used and the skills are quite mature.
In his works or even in all American literary works, Winesburg, Ohio, which won
Sherwood Anderson international attention “with its intense psychological studies of
trapped and warped personalities and its pity and tenderness” (George Perkins and Barbara
Perkins 1417), is unique in its organization. It consists of twenty-four independent but
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interrelated short stories. Separately each story told about one or several residents in the
town. United, they told about the life of Winesburg, Ohio and the growth of George
Willard. Different from traditional novels, it brought a brand new creative form into
modern American novels, “a new looseness” suitable to American according to Anderson’s
view (Carey 10).
Each of the twenty-five stories in the book tells about one or two characters in the
town, with characters repeatedly appearing in the other stories and their plots relating to
each other. In the stories, the town, as a background, reappears and presents everything in
it to readers: shops, houses, streets, mountains, trees, and the people. Then after reading the
whole book, the reader conceived a vivid picture of the town in his mind. Actually, the
image of the town is so detailed that researchers even succeed in drawing a map of
Winesburg, Ohio (Zhang Qiang 42).
The author’s intention is to present readers a picture of Winesburg, Ohio as a whole,
to make the town known, and to convey the atmosphere in the town to readers, much as
Flaubert did in the scene. However, within a single scene, to cut back and forth between
the various levels of action is easy. The task of Anderson is to adopt juxtaposition in his
book of hundreds of pages while still keeping a clear narrative line. The answer is what we
see today: take the form of a collection of interweaved short stories.
Stories in the form of a collection can be read from anyone interruptedly. Readers are
completely free to go from one story to any other one, thus realizing spatial form to the
largest extent. The story “Godliness” may be a good example for juxtaposition.
“Godliness” is a story in four parts, that is, “Godliness I”, “Godliness II”, “Surrender”
and “Terror”, telling the story of Jesse Bentley, his daughter Louise Bentley, and his
grandson David Hardy.
The Bentley family had been in Northern Ohio for several generations before Jesse’s
time. Jesse Bentley’s father and brothers worked hard in the farm they bought and lived a
life exactly as all the farmers at that time did. Then in the civil war Jesse’s brothers died
and he came back home from school. He took the farm and did it pretty well. His daughter
Louise Bentley was silent, moody since she was a child. When she went to the Winesburg
High School, she lived in the Hardy’s. She did not get along with girls in her schools, even
not with the daughters of the Hardy’s. She was so lonely that she turned to John Hardy for