Lecture 6 harriet beecher stowe

1811-1896

H. B. Stowe was born in Lichfield Connecticut to the family of a pastor. In 1832, the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Harriet became interested in the abolitionist case. There she met and married in 1836 Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor of theology. They lived for some time in the South where Mrs. Stowe carefully studied the life of Negro slaves and white plantators. Her best and most popular novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", was the reflection of southern life. Her literary contemporaries spoke of the book as of the high-water mark, to which her genius never rose again. The novel made a great stir all over the world by its realistic descriptions of Negro slavery in the USA. Harriet Beecher Stowe was not an abolitionist herself but her book helped the abolitionist agitator to promote the antislavery movement.

To prove the truth of her descriptions in the novel H. B. Stowe published in 1853 a collection of documents on which her story in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was based. It was the book called "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin". Another antislavery novel "Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp", appeared in 1865, the last year of the Civil War. The other novels written during the 60's and 70's dealt with everyday life of the "average" New Englanders. "The Minister's Wooling" (1859) or "My Wife and I" (1871) were not of great social importance, but one can easily notice their artistic merits-their quiet humor and pure style. Marked with sentimental, even melodramatic, touch, full of religious moralization, the novels of H. B. Stowe demonstrated, however, the mixture of romantic and realistic features, the transition from romanticism to realism and. thus, the beginning of social novel in American fiction. [68]

The process mentioned was closely connected with the "'local colour movement", a term, which simply meant writing about life in particular, usually provincial, locality. An "old town" of England was such "locality" for H. B. Stowe, and her "Old-Town Folks", a truthful, sympathetic and skilful record of a small-town life, may serve as an example of such literature.

Check yourself

1. When was H. B. Stowe born?

2. Where did Harriet become interested in the abolitionist case?

3. Where did H. B. Stowe study the life of Negro slaves and white plan­tators?

4. What reflected her best novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin"?

5. Why did H. B. Stowe publish a collection of documents?

6. What did the novels of H. B. Stowe demonstrate? [69]

Lecture 7 herman melville

1819-1891

Herman Melville was born in New York city. In 1839 the family moved to Albany, where Herman went to the local academy. After his father's death in 1832, the family was left in poverty. Melville worked as a clerk in Albany, sailed to Liverpool, and worked as a schoolteacher. In 1841 he shipped on a whaling vessel bound for the South Pacific, but in 1842 he deserted and spent about a month among the cannibals of the Marquesses Islands. This experience became the substance of his first novel "Typee" (1846). Another whaling vessel carried him to the Hawaiian Islands, which provided the material for his second novel "Omoo"( 1847).

The two novels were highly successful and made Melville a favourite of the New York literary circle. The novels that followed, however, apart from "Redburn" and "White Jacket", had comparatively few readers, and were received with mixed feelings. Yet it is the writings of this period, the 50's, that survive as great literature. They are "Moby Dick", the supreme work of Melville's life, "Israel Potter", one of his best books, "The Piazza Tales", which contains such masterpieces as "Benito Cereno and Bartleby the Scrivener".

Melville's first volume of poetry, "Battle Pieces and Aspects of War", was published in 1866. Ten years later he published his long poem "Clarel", based on a trip to Palestine. Melville continued to work and publish through all the eighties. He was still working on "Billy Budd", preparing it for the press, when he died, on September 28, 1891. In "Moby Dick" Melville managed to combine an exciting narrative about the whaling industry with the eternal questions of human being. His novel is not merely a story about the men who went down to sea for whale hunting, but about the men viewed under the aspect of the universe and eternity, for Melville was deeply concerned with problems of man's life and soul. [70]

Symbolical figures, details and atmosphere seemed suitable to transfer the ideas to make them grand. The White Whale represents all the world's evil. The strange crew of the "Pequod", being made up of different races, might symbolize the humanity itself. Through Captain Ahab, a Prometheus- figure or anti Christ, Melville tried to get to the heart of the life force. Was there a benign God, or was there merely a blind and inscrutable force.

For most of his life Melville quarrelled with God. The seeds of his quarrel with religion as well as with civilization may be found in his first novels "Typee" and "Omoo", in which he notes the contrast between the happiness of the benighted heathen and the corruption he found among his shipfriends, the Christians.

In a narrative heavily weighted with symbolism as well as with factual and mythological details, in a style at times overdramatized, Melville dares to ask what was the unaskable, for the mid-nineteenth century America at least. And all the asking personages are destroyed. Of all the crew of the "Pequod", only one is saved-but on a coffin.

An undercurrent of urgency, even of anguish, distinguishes Melville's writing for no positive answers to the eternal questions could he found in his self, in his experience and life, no positive means to change that "civilized world".

Herman Melville is a symbolical figure of the artist, the isolated man, the potential spiritual leader who sees and feels greatly but whose voice, while carrying across a hundred years is not heard by his own generation.

Check yourself

1. When and where was Melville born?

2. Why was his family left in poverty? Where did he have to work?

3. What became the substance of his first novel "Typee" in 1846?

4. What novels appeared in the 50's?

5. When was Melville's first volume of poetry published?

6. What is Melville's supreme work "Moby Dick" about?

7. What represents all the world's evil in this novel?

8. What might the crew of the "Pequod" symbolize?

9. Whom did Melville quarrel for most of his life with?

10. Why are all the asking personages in Melville's novels destroyed? [71]