On Howells: The Best from American Literature
288
On Howells: The Best from American Literature
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Overview
Presented in order of their first appearance, the articles in each volume constitute a revealing record of developing insights and important shifts of critical emphasis. Each article has opened a fresh line of inquiry, established a fresh perspective on a familiar topic, or settled a question that engaged the interest of experts.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822379928 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2012 |
| Series: | The Best from American literature |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 500 KB |
About the Author
Edwin H. Cady is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, at Duke University.
Louis J. Budd in James B. Duke Professor, Emeritus, at Duke University. Both scholars have served as Managing Editor and Chair of the Board of Editors of American Literature.
Read an Excerpt
On Howells
The Best from American Literature
By Edwin H. Cady, Louis J. Budd
Duke University Press
Copyright © 1993 Duke University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-7992-8
CHAPTER 1
The Literary Background of Howells's Social Criticism
George Arms
THAT BETWEEN the years 1889 and 1894—from Annie Kilburn to A Traveler from Altruria—the major novels of William Dean Howells were markedly economic and even socialistic in their criticism of American life is an interpretation commonly conceded by literary historians. Until 1930 those historians who inquired into the factors responsible for the marked change in Howells that occurred during the period of his "economic novels" were content to give Tolstoy sole credit as an influence, basing their view upon Howells's own words: "What I feel sure is that I can never look at life in the mean and sordid way that I did before I read Tolstoy." The first study to deal with the factors which were responsible for the "economic novels" of Howells was made by Professor Taylor, who without discrediting the influence of Tolstoy has added some four other influences: the Haymarket trial, other industrial disputes, Henry George, and Edward Bellamy. Professor Taylor's essay is remarkably fine, but on its own admission does not attempt a systematic study of influences on Howells. In 1938 an article by Mr. Getzels suggested that a Marxist origin could alone account for the "economic novels" ; and while it did not locate any single factor, it questioned several of the influences advanced by Professor Taylor. Mr. Wright first brought to public notice Laurence Gronlund as the Marxist factor which Mr. Getzels had not discovered, but (through an analysis of the novels) had indicated must somewhere exist. A note following upon the articles of Messrs. Getzels and Wright presented additional evidence for the importance of Gronlund in influencing the social views of Howells, and also indicated more exactly the extent to which Howells presented a Marxian philosophy in his "economic novels."
A recently discovered interview reaffirms the evidence of Howells's debt to Gronlund cited in the Science and Society articles— the "Editor's Study" of April, 1888, and a manuscript letter of November 23, 1888. At the same time it corrects the impression that it was through reading alone that Howells came to know his foremost mentor in socialism:
"It was ten years ago," said Mr. Howells the other day, "that I first became interested in the creed of Socialism. I was in Buffalo when Laurence Gronlund lectured there before the Fortnightly Club. Through this address I was led to read his book, 'The Co-operative Commonwealth,' and Kirkup's article in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Afterward I read the 'Fabian Essays'; I was greatly influenced also by a number of William Morris's tracts. The greatest influence, however, came to me through reading Tolstoi. Both as an artist and as a moralist I must acknowledge my deep indebtedness to him."
Howells's story of his first contact with Gronlund has a very important implication in that he did not merely read him as an independent author of a book but heard him as a leading member of the Socialist Labor party, a fact which suggests a much greater awareness by Howells of real socialistic activity than has usually been granted. In describing his other reading of the time—Kirkup, the Fabian tracts, and Morris—Howells also has indicated a more thorough study of socialistic doctrine than has been generally realized. At the same time one should observe that he still did not go directly to Marx, although Das Kapital was available, but was content to have Marxianism in its modified Gronlundian interpretation.
Even in view of Howells's testimony, not too much weight should be given to Morris and the Fabians as factors in the development of Howells's doctrine. His writings indicate no important influence from them that does not have its more convincing parallel in Gronlund. In what one might term their spiritual influence, they are certainly to be acknowledged. Though not so important as Tolstoy, along with such men as E. E. Hale, T. W. Higginson, and R. T. Ely they nevertheless form that general background of what Howells later called "a real renascence" (the industrial consciousness of the 1880's and 1890's). In the same category, though in positions of importance somewhere between Tolstoy and these others, Henry George and Edward Bellamy are also to be placed, with the doctrines of both of whom Howells found some fault.
Indeed, although here and there influence from persons other than Gronlund occurs, the almost exclusive basis of Howells's social philosophy in the period of his "economic novels" is Gronlund's Cooperative Commonwealth. The numerous parallels between the two men can be briefly and convincingly illustrated by the parallels (at times verbal, in spite of a six-year lapse) between this book and A Traveler from Altruria. In the analysis of American society both Howells and Gronlund noted public education as a surface tendency toward socialism. Both men noted the interdependence of the poor and the essentially socialistic core of labor unions. Both felt that the militia, made up of petty bourgeoisie, was the foe of the workman; both saw the possibility of a gradual absorption of private farm lands through railroad monopoly. It was the belief of both that the American worker, though then perhaps not without prosperity, would soon be as poor as his fellow in Europe; that slavery remained in the wage system.
In their attitude towards socialistic revolution, both men gave an economic interpretation of history with the use of similar terminology. Both conceived of previous periods as the necessary basis of future socialism. Again, both men saw the revolution as beginning with the nationalization of the greater enterprises; both saw the revolution as beginning in the cities; and both felt that the isolation of America would make revolution there peculiarly practicable. In the achieved commonwealth the two men prophesied the disappearance of crime, the end of prostitution, and a rapid decentralization of population.
II
Yet the significance of Gronlund is that he influenced Howells's philosophy, and not his literary form. Except for Bellamy, whose popularization of the Utopian novel must have been responsible for Howells's Utopian ventures, Howells was not influenced esthetically by the other figures of the industrial renascence who have been mentioned. Furthermore, their influence was spiritual (that is, generating the condition rather than fixing the condition) and not doctrinal. Although Howells came to know Tolstoy in a literary way, through reading his novels, Tolstoy's influence was also primarily philosophical. It is true that Howells regarded Tolstoy as the perfector of Turgenev's realism, and some refinements in Howells's later realism can be attributed to his idol. But in one of his earliest papers on Tolstoy he wrote that he could not regard his novels esthetically, but only ethically. Toward the end of his career he observed to Van Wyck Brooks that his own work as a writer showed no trace of Tolstoy's influence.
The fact that in the past all the attention has been focused upon factors that were primarily philosophical in their influence upon Howells has resulted in the neglect of the literary side of his work. Nevertheless, it is the expression of his philosophy in his creative work that lends Howells much of his significance today, and it would be superficial to suppose that the acceptance of a socialistic philosophy would be automatically transferred into literary production without some literary precedent to impel such a transfer. The two main sources of literary influence which this paper treats are the Atlantic and its coterie and the work of Björnstjerne Björnson. These factors are not to be absolutely divided from philosophical ones; they are distinct in that they did not change Howells's social thinking but gave him precedent and impetus to express his social thinking in his creative work. For the most part they were operative before the philosophical factors. Since Howells's interests during his early career were primarily esthetic, it was natural that the germinative process should have its inception on the literary rather than on the philosophic side.
Howells's association with the Atlantic and with the literary men of Boston is commonly thought to have considerably retarded his social development. In the case of his relationship with literary men the evidence points to an absolutely contrary conclusion, and even in the case of his association with the Atlantic the evidence suggests a strong qualification. While with another magazine Howells's social thinking might have developed more rapidly and while his genteel estheticism may have been unquestioned during his association with the Atlantic, actually Howells did not repress his utterances on social matters in order to maintain the tradition of the magazine.
Although conservative, the Atlantic of Howells's time was not aloof from contemporary social issues, and under Howells it became more and more concerned with them. As editor Howells inaugurated a department entitled "Politics," and he himself contributed to it twice. Typical of a number of contributions are several distinguished by names still commonly recognized today: Robert Dale Owen on his father's Utopia, Charles Francis Adams on railroad monopoly, a pro-and-con review of George's Progress and Poverty, R. T. Ely on credit unions, and H. D. Lloyd on the relation of the oil companies to the railroads (with a sympathetic digression on the 1877 strikes). As editor and assistant editor Howells both decided on the publication of such articles and must have been stimulated by them.
More relevant to problems of his own fiction are two articles by Howells dealing with writings which had been serialized in the magazine. Jonathan B. Harrison's Certain Dangerous Tendencies of American Life (1880) in a conservative fashion recognized the change wrought by the hard times of 1878, sympathized with yet feared the workers, and felt they might be pacified by clever propaganda. Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Stillwater Tragedy (1880) was a bitter antilabor novel which gave over a good portion of its final pages to a strike by marble workers. In the case of Harrison's work, with its rather detailed description of individual workers, Howells felt that the material presented was susceptible to treatment in fiction. In the case of Aldrich's novel he singled out for particular praise the reactionary treatment of the strike—"a contribution to our knowledge of such matters." That Aldrich, the disciple of romanticism and unyielding capitalism, followed him in the editorship may indicate that socially Howells grew more rapidly than the magazine; but his recommendation of The Stillwater Tragedy as a guide to labor problems does not indicate a tremendous cleavage between the two men's social ideals at the time. Yet the interest shown in the strike, coupled with the literary approach to Harrison, reveals a Howells concerned with the impact of social problems on literature.
Beginning with A Modern Instance Howells ceased publishing his novels in the Atlantic Monthly and began serializing them in the Century Magazine. A Modern Instance, however, can hardly be considered merely as a release from the restrictions of the Atlantic; Howells was interested in earning a livelihood, and as he went from one magazine to another he was accustomed to receive more money. The Atlantic review of A Modern Instance cited it as his "greatest achievement," and the review of The Rise of Silas Lapham called it "a real piece of literature, which surely will not lose its charm when the distinctions of Nankeen Square and Beacon Street have become merely antiquarian nonsense." These reviews were as appreciative as those of his nonsocial Indian Summer, and of Dr. Breen's Practice, the last novel by Howells to be serialized in the Atlantic. Thus one may conclude that, had Howells remained with the Atlantic, his progress in social realism would have been as advanced as it otherwise was.
As for the literary set in which Howells moved during his Boston period, the advice from his two closest friends in it, Lowell of the older generation and James of the younger, was that Howells should follow those social directions in his novels which he finally did. In the case of the older man there was less advice than approval of the accomplished fact. Howells later realized the limitations of Lowell's political doctrines as well as his innate inclination to romanticism. But in an earlier stage of Howells's development he recognized that Lowell had gone beyond him socially in condemning pseudo-democratic America as the "Land of Broken Promise" and in looking tolerantly upon the Irish immigrants. By advising Howells against accepting the Johns Hopkins professorship in 1882 and by advising him earlier to return to the West Lowell had tried to keep him free for novel writing and clear of Eastern effeteness.
Although acknowledging his individual preference for romanticism, Lowell showed enthusiasm for The Rise of Silas Lapham in a letter to Howells in 1885; a year later he declared The Minister's Charge to be the best yet. He expressed such a liking for James's most social novel, The Princess Casamassima, that he noted to James his intention of reading it again; and the praise was sincere, for he told Howells substantially the same thing.
This enthusiasm for the new direction that Howells had taken continued to Lowell's death. "Anyhow, I am glad to have lived long enough to have read your book," was his comment on A Hazard of New Fortunes. Of a story without social implications—The Shadow of a Dream—he wrote that it was "daintily subtle," but that it had not "pushed the Hazard of New Fortunes from its stool," and that Howells "must try again, and the sooner the better." Nor were such opinions mere flattery, for to Thomas Hughes, Lowell, although noting an aversion to socialism, wrote of the novel: "A noble sentiment pervades it.... I felt in reading some parts of it as I used when the slave would not let me sleep." But Lowell did not praise Howells merely because he was a friend. Of the Chicago anarchists he wrote that he felt the "ruffians well hanged." In view of Howells's efforts to secure their retrial, such a statement must have cut Howells to the quick.
The exhortations from James that Howells broaden his field and the approval of his social direction are of particular interest since the larger aspect of society is seldom reflected in James's novels and since it is generally believed that James restrained Howells. In 1884 James wrote confidentially to Howells: "... I regard you as the great American naturalist. I don't think you go far enough, and you are haunted with romantic phantoms and a tendency to factitious glosses...." In Harper's Weekly two years later James congratulated Howells upon forsaking the Italian for the American scene and upon manifesting his new interest in plebeian life:
This production [The Rise of Silas Lapham] had struck me as the author's high water mark until I opened the monthly sheets of Lemuel Barker [The Minister's Charge], in which the art of imparting a palpitating interest to common things and unheroic lives is pursued (or is destined, apparently, to be pursued) to an even higher point.
Even here the implication is that Howells could broaden his study of the social scene more; nor did this advice by James mark only a brief emotion coincident with his own writing of The Princess Casamassima. For the advice continued into the 1890's. James reported to Howells in that year that A Hazard of New Fortunes had filled him with "communicable rapture," that it was a "much bigger feat" than The Minister's Charge; but he would note at the same time that Howells still turned his back on much. Later in the same year he minimized an apparent misgiving on Howells's part by telling him that he was absolutely on the right track in his recent writing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from On Howells by Edwin H. Cady, Louis J. Budd. Copyright © 1993 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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Table of Contents
Series Introduction viiThe Literary Background of Howells's Social Criticism (1942) / George Arms 1
A Note on Howells and "The Smiling Aspects of Life" (1945) / Edwin H. Cady 18
Materials and Form in Howells's First Novels (1947) / William M. Gibson 21
The Equalitarian Principle in the Fiction of William Dean Howells (1952) / William F. Ekstrom 30
Howells, The Atlantic Monthly, and Republicanism (1952) / Louis J. Budd 41
William Dean Howells, Ed Howe, and The Story of a Country Town (1958) / James B. Stronks 59
The Ethical Unity of The Rise of Silas Lapham (1960) / Donald Pizer 65
Point of View in Howells's The Landlord at Lion's Head (1962) / William McMurray 71
Marcia Gaylord's Electra Complex: A Footnote to Sex in Howells (1962) / Kermit Vanderbilt 79
The Function of Setting in Howells's The Landlord at Lion's Head (1963) / Mary S. Sulivan 89
The Architecture of The Rise of Silas Lapham (1966) / G. Thomas Tanselle 104
Howells and Ade (1966) / Jack Brenner 132
The Dark Side of Their Wedding Journey (1969) / Marion W. Cumpiano 142
William Dean Howells. George William Curtis, and the "Haymarker Affair" (1969) / Clara and Rudolf Kirk 157
Savagery and Civilization: The Moral Dimensions of Howells's A Boy's Town (1969) / Tom H. Towers 169
Transformations: The Blithedale Romance to Howells and James (1976) / Robert Emmet Long 180
The Wilderness Within: Howells's A Boy's Town (1976) / Thomas Cooley 200
Invalids and Actresses: Howells's Duplex Imagery for American Women (1976) / Sidney H. Bremer 216
William Dean Howells and Charles W. Chestnut: Criticism and Race Fiction in the Age of Booker T. Washington (1976) / William L. Andrews 232
Howells's Oresteia: The Union of Theme and Structure in The Shadow of a Dream (1977) / Barbara L. Parker 245
An Interoceanic Episode: THe Lady of thte Aroostook (1977) / John W. Crowley 258
Index 270