British and American Literature. Учебно-методическое пособие

Chapter II

AMERICAN HUMOUR

A well-known American novelist William Howells (1837–1920) wrote about the appearance of the new “Western” or “frontier” humour: “The West, when it began to put itself into literature, could do it without the sense … of any older or politer world outside of it; whereas the East was always looking fearfully over its shoulder at Europe, and anxious to account for itself as well as represent itself”. It is not quite true, because the wide use of hyperbola was typical for all American writers of that time. Both Eastern and Western writers based their stories on American folklore about boastful adventurers (Crocket or Fink) or simpletons who were cleverer than recognized wise men. The solemn form of a story was usually opposed to senseless contents. Artemus Ward was the first to do it. It is interesting to note that American humorists laid the foundations of realism.

Realism in American literature started its development from humorous stories and sketches of Mark Twain and O. Henry. Grotesque and irony were their main devices.

Mark Twain (1835–1910) is the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Though the overwhelming majority of critics consider him a humourist, many of his stories and novels present bitter social satire. It can be said about his first story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, written on the basis of an old folk tale about Jim Smiley and his jumping frog, or about The Man That Corrupted Hadleyberg. The latter story is about a small town, renowned for its honesty, but the town soon looses its lofty name, as its citizens are in fact greedy people, who easily fall into temptations concerning money. The novel Innocents Abroad is a satirical account of a cruise on the Quaker City to the Mediterranian with references to the Bible. Mark Twain wrote that a humorist should teach and preach, not only to make fun of. The novel is a kind of a travel book, and its heroes are picaresque.

The Guilded Age became the first American social novel. It is a novel satirizing the get-rich-quick years after the Civil War. The central character, Colonel Beriah Sellers, is a visionary Micawber, forever dreaming up infallible projects of making himself and his friends millionaires. Though Sellers is no more honest than the Senators and lobbyists in Washington, there is a certain insane charm about him. But, apart from giving us Sellers, The Gilded Age is a confused book: its villains and its heroes are too easily interchangeable.

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A Connecticut Yankee is similarly uneven, though for farcical invention it would be hard to beat the episodes in which the young man from contemporary Connecticut, equipped with such modern appliances as the bicycle, the telegraph, and the Colt revolver, comes to grips with a feudal fancy land. Twain intended to draw a contrast between Americanism (democracy, open-mindedness, energy) and the cruelty, stupidity, and superstition of the Old World. He meant to ridicule the England of his own day. He meant to show the liberating magic of industrial technology. And of course he meant to be funny. Twain's countrymen thought he had succeeded in each of these aims. British critics were less enthusiastic; their national pride was hurt, but they could more easily discern the inconsistencies in Twain. The burlesque element weakens the serious portions of the book. Like so many of his contemporaries, Twain was not wholehearted in his praise of industrialism. At moments, instead of indicting King Arthur's England, he speaks of it nostalgically in much the same terms as when he recalls the Missouri of his boyhood. They are simple and fragrant, green vivid worlds, lost paradises. Twain's hero Hank Morgan is heartbroken at the end because he cannot get back to his Arthurian sweetheart. At other times, perhaps unwittingly, he implies that the industrial order is crude, greedy, and destructive. Moreover, Morgan's growing contempt for mankind in the mass undermines the notion that there is any such thing as progress in world history. One of the themes of this book is the class division of the society. One can draw a parallel between the slavery at Arthur’s time and Negro slavery. We can also regard this book as a parody on medieval romances. The fantastic form and satirical essence, irony and grotesque manifest Swift’s influence.

Twain’s books about lively, adventurous Tom Sawyer and his friend, irrepressible Huckleberry Finn are of a different kind. On the one hand they reproduce the wonderful world of childhood, on the other – they are social novels, exposing such evils as slavery, cruelty and corruption. Tom Sowyer is full of lyricism that is rare in Mark Twain’s books, his humour is much gentler, than one generally finds in his works. The writer turns to childhood because his own time after the Civil war was very grim. In fact Twain makes it an encyclopedia of children’s life. At the same time he parodies sentimental literature, Sunday schools, humbug of the adult world, the way he did it in his stories, for example The Story of the Bad Little Boy.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was immediately barred from some libraries, because the authorities thought that the exposure of the evils of slavery was frightfully dangerous for moral education. An Ameri-

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can critic, Philip Foner, wrote about the book: “Huck begins by regarding Jim very much as the white Southerner regarded a slave. Gradually, he discovers that Jim, despite the efforts of society to brutalize him, is a noble human being who deserves his protection, friendship and love. This change takes place slowly in Huck, always accompanied by an inner struggle between the ideology … of a slave society and the humanity of the boy.” Twain raises the theme of the victory of humanity over false principles: Huck wants to betray Jim because he is a runaway slave, tries to justify this intention, but then saves Jim. In this scene we can hear the echo of Swift’s intonation.

Huck Finn is not only a sequel. The author writes about slavery, poverty of the Missisipi villages, moral degradation of their inhabitants who do not like to work and are indifferent to unhappiness of others. Firstperson narration caused the author to use everyday speech (but not with dialectisms).

Landscape descriptions play an important part in these two novels: all events take place in sunny summer in Tom Sowyer, later in Huck Finn there will be winter and wind to show the change of the atmosphere. The books are the combination of the romantic world of children and the reality of the town life.

In 1919 the New York Society of Arts and Sciences founded the O. Henry Memorial Award for the best American short story. Among many writers who received the O. Henry Award was William Faulkner. O. Henry (1862–1910) was a pseudonym of William Sydney Porter who is one of the best American short-story writers. The works of O. Henry reflect a specific period in American literature –the turn of the century. О. Неnry occupies an intermediate position between the critical tendency in literature and that of the "genteel tradition" in the neo-romantic trend. His credo was: art should be true, democratic, it should address contemporary life and should embrace all aspects of life. He planned every detail of his stories and the titles of them are always meaningful. His narration is always ironic or playful. He uses metaphors only for the purpose of amazing his readers with the unexpectedness of his comparison to make a surprise of a literary nature.

O. Henry was an outstanding humorist. He worked out and enriched all the various types of the short story: the anecdote, the monologue, the dialogue, the grotesque, satirical and paradoxical; the adventure story, the psychological story, the parody; poems in prose, tales, sketches.

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Everything that O.Henry experienced and witnessed around him filtered into his stories, but he was most famous for his stories of city life. O. Henry wrote about 150 stories with a New York background. He can be called one of New York's biographers. This collection of short stories The Four Million is about grief, adventure and romance in the big city. The population of New York at that time was four million, but there were only 400 rich people among them. The amazing keenness of his observation provided for his stories backgrounds taken straight from life like in The Gift of the Magi (1905), A Service of Love (1905), The Last Leaf. The other cycle of his stories is about the South and Wild West (Heart of the West, Roads of Destiny). Cabbages and Kings is a separate collection.

The American critic Lloyd Morris, speaking of O. Henry's penetration of the American scene, said: "He turned away from the prosperous levels of society, so popular at the time as a subject for fiction. He ignored the four hundred to deal with the four million. This choice was more the result of his previous misfortunes than of any interest in social reform... His stories mainly turned on the fortunes of humble folk, shop-girls and clerks and mechanics; a group that, on the whole, had been anonymous and inarticulate in American life, and absent from American fiction. They formed the group that a later generation was to describe as ”the little people”, and that politicians would aggregate as “the forgotten man” and “common man”. In the rapid urbanization and industrialization of American life, their numbers were constantly increasing. They were the vast, hardworking lower middle class of the great cities, to whom the present was usually precarious and the future equivocal.”

The years between 1905–1910 were the most productive in the writer's creative work. Elements of parody and irony were introduced as well as the surprise finale.

The Gift of the Magi, for example, is based on O. Henry's use of coincidence, but the tender spirit of mutual sacrifice, which dominates in the story, imparts a special glow.

The Last Leaf is about an old painter who "was a failure in art... He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it”. He was a man with a kind heart, and he saved a young girl’s life at the price of his own by creating his only masterpiece – the last leaf – on an icy night.

The characteristic features of all Henry’s stories are a keen eye for detail, a sympathy for the underdog; humor (either comic situations or the language of characters, authorial remarks, hyperbolas at the degree of absurd); dynamic composition: the logic of the narration is distorted, many

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events and the end are unexpected. The main themes are human loneliness, the role of an accident, a “little man”, American society as a whole. His characters are rooted in picaresque tradition.

Harry Hansen in his preface to the complete works of O. Henry wrote: "Like Edgar Allan Рое, О. Henry is now one of the legendary characters of New York. He was a kindly, considerate man, who liked to walk about the city at night, studying faces and inventing stories about them.”

On the other hand such great American writers as Theodore Dreiser or Sherwood Anderson considered him to be a purely entertaining author. It is not quite fair. Despite his contrived endings, sentimentality and repetition, his best stories demonstrate a keen eye for detail, a sympathy for a “little man”.

Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908) is known all over the world with his Uncle Remus’ stories. The fables are not humorous but funny and touching. Uncle Remus, the old Negro, explains the world to the white boy. In his stories the local becomes universal. Uncle Remus, Brer Rabbit, the malign and frustrated Brer Fox and other creatures of his bestiary have become immortal characters of world literature. Harris uses African folklore, his stories are based on Negro fairy-tales and their craft of code. He wrote: “…it needs no scientific investigation to show why the Negro selects as his hero the weakest and most harmless of all animals, and brings him out victorious in contests with the bear, the wolf, and the fox. It is not virtue that triumphs, but helplessness; it is not malice but mischievousness”. Harris widely uses dialect to characterize his heroes.

Tasks

1. Here is an extract from Brother Rabbit Takes Some Exercise by Harris. Analyze the style and language.

One night while the little boy was sitting in Uncle Remus cabin, waiting for the old man to finish his hoecake, and refresh his memory as to the further adventures of Brother Rabbit, his friends and his enemies, something dropped upon the top of the house with a noise like the crack of a pistol. The little boy jumped, but Uncle Remus looked up and exclaimed: “Ah-yi!” in a tone of triumph.

“What was that, Uncle Remus? – the child asked, after waiting a moment to see what else would happen.

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“New fum Jack Frost, honey. W’en dat hick’y-nut tree cut dar year ‘im comin’ she ‘gins ter drap w’at she got.” “I mighty glad, – he continued, scraping the burnt crust from his hoecake with an old case-knife.

2.What was new in Mark Twain’s style of writing? Enlarge on it.

3.Here is an extract from The Story of the Bad Little Boy by M. Twain. Do you think it is a parody or a satire? Find the proof for your opinion.

Once this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry and slipped in there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel with tar, so that his mother would never know the difference; but all at once a terrible feeling didn't come over him, and something didn't seem to whisper to him, “ Is it right to disobey my mother? Isn't it sinful to do this? Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother's jam?“ and then he didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell his mother all about it, and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes. No; that is the way with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened otherwise with this Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and said it was bully, in his sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully also, and laughed, and observed “that the old woman would get up and snort” when she found it out; and when she did find it out, he denied knowing anything about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying himself. Everything about this boy was curious – everything turned out differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the books.

4.Why do we sometimes call O. Henry a pathetic writer?

Chapter III

AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE 1980–1920

American literature of the years under discussion kept pace with the development of European literature. In Europe critical realism, the method of truthful presentation of objective reality, reached its height in the XIX century literature. In the USA the peak of its development is connected with the names of Jack London, Sherwood Anderson and Theodore Dreiser. The works of all these writers are characterized by fidelity to life and exposure of social contradictions.

The principles of naturalism were professed by E. Zola. It is a trend in art and literature tending to portray a limited range of observed facts, of-

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ten non-typical ones, but very realistic. The adherents of this movement depicted morbid, pathological facts, their works are often pessimistic. The features of naturalism are observed in the works of the above-mentioned writers, as well as in the novels of the 1930-s, especially those of Steinbeck. The working-class theme appeared in the US literature in the end of the XIX-the beginning of the XX centuries.

Besides these literary trends Modernism also paved its way in American literature, especially in poetry.

Many American writers traveled to Europe, were introduced to various literary circles, knew the leading men-of-letters of that time, so they were well acquainted with literary development of that time.

Henry James (1843–1916), a novelist, author of short stories, plays and essays was preoccupied with the theme of collision between Europe and America. He lived in Europe for a long time and some critics write about him as of an English author. His works were influenced by the realism of Balzac, Dickens, Hawthorne and George Eliot. His first long novel, Roderick Hudson, appeared in 1875. It deals with passionate love of a young American sculptor in Rome for an Italian girl. The novel The Portrait of a Lady (1881) is considered to be his first masterpiece, written in the style of psychological realism. Here James analyzes the American character in European milieu. The Sacred Fount is a novelette, which is difficult to define as a realistic one. It examines the difference between appearance and reality. The narrator of the story attends a party and there he is struck by the change of the people he has known for a long time. Grace who had married Guy, a man much younger than herself, has become young and cheerful, while her husband has grown older. The other guests have become new personalities too. When the narrator tells his observations to the hostess, she calls him crazy. The novelette remains unclear as to whether it is the narrator’s fanciful imagination or the reality.

Though the greater part of Henry James’ works was written in the XIX century, his best achievements were in the XX century: the novels The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl (1902–1904). In

The Ambassadors the writer returns to his favorite theme of American integration into European life, the cultural differences between Europe and the New World.

Henry James’ prose is highly sophisticated, he has a keen eye for detail, though his style is sometimes rather difficult.

Bret Harte (1836–1902) is a writer of the gold-rush period and in his stories he recreates the “picturesque New South-West”. In realistic man-

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ner he describes what was typical for the West of those days, where the law of life was “wolf eats wolf”, and men distrusted each other. Harte’s realism is rather limited: he does not try to solve any social problems; he merely colourfully describes what he saw and recognizes only those moral standards, which were normal in the given situation. The writer saw the tragedy of life in the gold-fields, but he also saw how ridiculous it was when violent conflicts rose over petty trifles, and he treats these conflicts with humour. He also shows that the rude “outcasts” can be kind and unselfish. In The Luck of Roaring Camp he writes about an Indian baby whose mother died in childbirth and the miners adopt the child, feed him with donkey milk and name him Luck. When a terrible flood carries away the cabin, one of the miners, who had tried to save him, is found dying with the baby, cold and lifeless, clasped in his arms. On the other hand in Who Was My Quiet Friend the writer shows “respectable” persons as being cruel and criminal.

Jack London (1876–1916), a well-known American novelist, grew up in poverty and tried to make a living in various legal and illegal ways. He took part in the Klondike gold rush of 1897. His life experience made him a socialist. All his life London was an ardent student of “history, evolution, ethics, and the thousand and one branches of knowledge”, as one critic put it. He was also influenced by Darwin’s ideas about the “survival of the fittest” and that found its reflection in the collections of his short stories The Son of the Wolf (1900) and The Call of the Wild (1903). The Sea-Wolf reflects the tension between collectivism and Social Darwinism. Wolf Larsen – a superman, represents a struggle between civilized morality and ruthless, amoral primitivism; he criticizes bourgeoisie, but is a product of it. Already the first books brought Jack London immediate recognition.

The years 1905–1910 marked the peak of his literary activity. During those years he wrote his best revolutionary articles and sociological novels. After 1910, however, he drifted away from the socialist movement.

Jack London's socialist works include The War of the Classes (1905),

What Life Means to Me (1906), Something Rotten in Idaho (1906), The Iron Heel (1907), Revolution and Other Essays (1910) and some others. A well-known American writer Upton Sinclair said, that Jack London's social writings made him one of the great revolutionary figures in American history. The Iron Heel, for example, is a futuristic work predicting a fascist dictatorship; a dystopic narration full of bleak pessimism; a horrific representation of the future written in the form of a diary kept by the wife

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of a proletarian leader Ernest Everhard and discovered several centuries later. It portrays the ruthless dehumanization and enslavement of the working class, predicts the emergence of Fascist dictatorship.

Jack London was dissatisfied with the books that were popular in his days. The literary market in the United States was filled with superficial books that glorified the so-called “American way of life”. London had a choice: to follow the popular writers and be a success, or to write of true life with its contradictions, and risk the displeasure of the powers. He chose the second way. He spent much health and energy to overcome the hostility of editors and publishers. He made them respect him, he won public recognition as a writer. He wrote a number of articles expressing his views on art and literature. He expressed his aesthetic views on literature in the article on Gorky's novel Foma Gordeyeff (1901). London wrote: “Foma Gordeyeff is a big book – not only is the breath of Russia in it, but the expanse of life”. He emphasized the importance of the protest, which filled the book: “And like all his brother Russians, ardent, passionate protest impregnates his work. There is a purpose to it. He writes because he had something to say which the world should hear”. He contrasted Gorky's novel with the superficial literature of the day, saying that Gorky raised the cry of the miserable and the despised, and in a masterly arraignment of commercialism, protested against social conditions, against the grinding of the faces of the poor and weak, and the selfpollution of the rich and strong, in this mad lust for place and power. London wrote: “The art of Gorky is the art of realism”. He pointed out that “it is good to prick sleeping human consciences awake and drive them into the battle for humanity”.

In his novel Martin Eden London showed his realistic views on literature and arts expressing them through Martin Eden. In fact, Eden’s journey of self-education through the apparently high-thinking life of the bourgeoisie has distinct biographical parallels with London’s own endeavours. Eden believed that a writer should depict life. “His work was realism, though he had endeavored to fuse with it the fancies and beauties of imagination. What he sought was an impassioned realism, shot through with human aspiration and faith. What he wanted was life as it was, with all its spirit groping and soul reaching left in”. Eden expressed his views on art to Ruth. Listening to one of his stories she said: "Oh! it is degrading! It is not nice! It is nasty...” “It is life”, he said, “and life is not always beautiful”.

Jack London said that Martin Eden was the most misunderstood of all his books: “This is a book that missed fire with the majority of critics. Written as an indictment of individualism, it was accepted as an indict-

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ment of socialism, written to show that man cannot live for himself alone, it was accepted that individualism made for death. Had Martin Eden been a socialist he would not have died.”

London was a master of the dynamic plot. His stories are full of action and conflict. The episodes are depicted in the line of ascent, and the reader is involved in the action from the very beginning of the narration. The author combines romantic and realistic elements of narration. The action is usually laid far away from bourgeois civilization; the writer depicts unusual adventures and his personages are of the adventurous type, such as hunters, hobos, and gold-miners who have left the corrupt civilization in the hope of being able to live freely and independently. Their life is full of dangers and adventures.

All this is vividly seen in London’s above-mentioned stories about the North or South Sea Tales. His own life experience gave rich material for romantic interpretation. The heroes of the stories are judged by their courage and their code of friendship and love; by their deeds and not their words, or the colour of their skin, or their social position. London's heroes value freedom, they strive to be individuals in the best meaning of the word.

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (1871–1945) is one of the most prominent American men-of-letters. One can say that Dreiser launched the XX century American literature. He was a profound realist and in his books raised important problems of his time. The complex and contradictory philosophical thought of his fiction has been taken for naturalism, but Dreiser believed in the power of society to shape individuals and vice versa. Already in the first novel Sister Carry (1900) he gives a powerful account of a working girl’s rise to worldly success. The book came out in England in 1901, America had to wait another seven years to see it – the critics were against Dreiser’s frank treatment of Carrie’s ambition and sexuality. The novel was followed by the novel Jenny Gerhardt (1911), which was not just a story of another “fallen woman”, but about moral superiority of a common American woman. The theme determined the style of narration and its structure: the author introduces many characters, describes their morals and evaluates them. The language of the characters is flexible: Jennie’s speech is smooth, aristocratic Louise Kane’s – vulgar. Dreiser widely uses free indirect discourse – a special blend of thirdand first-person narrative to render the thoughts, speech or decisions of characters.

Then the author wrote The Trilogy of Desire about an unscrupulous business magnate, Frank Cowperwood, The Financier (1912), The Titan

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