5 The Period of Realism

I. Fill in the blanks

1. By 1875, American writers were moving toward___ in literature. We can see this in the true-to=life descriptions of Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, Hamlin Garland.

2. The most straightforward definition of realism is probably the one given by the American realist___: that is, “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material.”

3. Realism first appeared in the United States in the literature of___, an amalgam of romantic plots and realistic descriptions of things immediately observable: the dialects, customs, sights and sounds of regional.

4. The theme of ___, one of William Dean Howell’s earlier novels, shocked the public. It was about divorce, a subject which was not talked or written about openly.

5. Edward Bellamy wrote the most famous American “____” novel, Looking Backward, 2002-1887. In this novel, a man goes to sleep and wakes up in the year 2000 and finds an entirely new society which is better than his own.

6. As one of America’s first and foremost realists and humorists, _____, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, usually wrote about his own personal experiences and thongs he knew about from firsthand experiences.

7. At the heart of Mark Twain’s achievement is his creation of two characters: _____ and _____.

8. Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835, in the village of Florida, Missouri, and grew up in the larger river town of Hannibal. The steamboats which passed daily were the fascination of the town and became the subject matter of Twain’s_____.

9. Ernest Hemingway, whose own style is based on Twain’s, once said, “All modern American literature comes from_____.”

10. _____, the first American naturalist, was not much influenced by the scientific approach. He was a genius with amazing sympathy and imagination.

11. All of Stephen Crane’s characters are controlled by _____. This is what makes Crane a “naturalist”.

12. In ____, Stephen Crane’s greatest novel, the accident of war makes a young man seem to be a hero. War changes men into animals. In the view of author, good and bad, hero and coward are merely matters of chance, of fate.

13. Hamlin Garland developed a writing method which he called “____” (meaning truth). He described people, places and events in a careful and factual manner.

14. _____ was a realist, but not a naturalist. He was an observer of the mind rather than a recorder of time. His realism was a special kind of psychological realism.

15. Henry James first achieved recognition as a writer of the “_____”novel—-a story which brings together persona of various nationalities who represent certain characteristics.

16._____ is the best novel of Henry James’ “middle period”. It is a story about a young, bright American girl goes to Europe to explore life.

17. Henry James’s most mature, and perhaps his best, novels are considered to be his last three: The Golden Bowl, _____, and The Wings of the Dove.

18. Dreiser’s greatest novel, _____, reveals a last stage in his thinking; social consciousness.

19. _______ had an evident influence on naturalism. It seemed to stress the animality of man, to suggest that man was dominated by the forces of evolution.

20.______ was Henry James’ most famous and influential critical essay written in response to a lecture on fiction delivered by the English novelist Sir Walter Besant at the Royal Institution on April 25, 1884.

II. Matching.

1. Match the following literary figures with their correspondent literary stage.

(1) Theodore Dreiser a. imagism

(2) Henry David Thoreau b. Romanticism

(3) Henry James c. the Jazz Age

(4) Edgar Allen Poe d. Transcendentalism

(5) Fitzgerald e. the Lost Generation

(6) Ezra Pound f. Naturalism

(7) Ernest Hemingway g. Realism

2. Match the following literary figures with the right information.

(1) William Dean Howells a. Darwinian naturalist

(2) Mark Twain b. His style has been called realistic, naturalistic, and impressionistic

(3) Henry James c. he was once be called “the world’s worst great writer”

(4)Stephen Crane d. “… a boy and an old man, but never was he a man”

(5) Jack London e. psychological realist

(6) Theodore Dreiser f. the arbiter of American realism

3. Match the following literary figures with their works:

(1) William Dean Howells a. Trilogy of Desire

(2) Stephen Crane b. A Passionate Pilgrim

(3) Hamlin Garland c. The Prince and the Pauper

(4) Henry James d. The Blue Hotel

(5) Jack London e. A Traveller from Altruria

(6) Theodore Dreiser f. Main-Travelled Roads

(7) Mark Twain g. Martin Eden

III. Multiple Choice.

1. _______, who became the editor of Harper’s Monthly in 1891, created the first theory for American realism.

A. Emile Zola B. Hamlin Garland

C. Stephen Crane D. William Dean Howells

2. _______’s stories still had many unrealistic qualities: “tall tales” and unlikely coincidences. He is never a pure realist.

A. Henry James B. Mark Twain

C. Nathaniel Hawthorne D. Henry David Thoreau

3. _________ in the 1860s was the first American writer of local color to achieve wide popularity.

A. Mark Twain B. William Dean Howells

C. Bret Harte D. Henry David Thoreau

4. In ______, a character, Mr. Sewell, expresses William Dean Howell’s own opinions by saying: “The novelists might be the greatest possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and relation.”

A. A Modern Instance B. The Rise of Silas Lapham

C. A Hazard of New Fortunes D. Through the Eye of Needle

5. “____” was a term created by the French novelist, Emile Zola.

A. realism B. transcendentalism

C. social status D. psychological causes

7. Stephen Crane’s novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Street, is the story of a girl_______.

A. who is brought up in a poor area of Chicago

B. who is loved by her family but betrayed by her friends

C. who experiences the violence and cruelty of the society almost every day

D. who is evil by nature

8. In his short story, ______, Stephen Crane shows how even life and death are determined by fate.

A. The Open Boat B. The Open Window

C. War Is Kind D. War is Slaughterhouse

9. The naturalism of _______ was filled with deep sympathy for the common people. His literature was a form of protests against the conditions which made the lives of Mid-western farmers so painful and happy.

A. Harold Frederic B. Ambrose Bierce

C. Henry James D. Hamlin Garland

10. The changing consciousness of the character is the real story._______ gave this kind of literature a name. He called it “stream-of-consciousness”.

A. Henry James B. James Joyce C. John Conrad D. William James

11. We usually divide Henry James’ career as a writer into three stages: early, middle and mature. Which of the following work belongs to James’ early stage?

A. The portrait of a Lady B. The American

C. The Tragic Muse D. The Golden Bowl

12. The novel which was described by an American critic as “an outage to American girlhood” is Henry James’_______.

A. Daisy Miller B. The Portrait of a Lady

C. Woman in Love D. Awakening

13. Mark Twain’s first novel, _______ was an artistic failure, but it gave its name to the America of the postbellum period which it attempts to satirize.

A. The Gilded Age B. Life on the Mississippi

C. The Innocents Abroad D. The Mysterious Stranger

14. Among the following writers, who has been entitled at one time “Kipling of the Klondike”?

A. Mark Twain B. Frank Norris C. Jack London D. Henry James

15. Jack London was at his height of his powers when he wrote_______, which is deeply influenced by Darwinism

A. The Sea Wolf B. To Build a Fire

C. The Call of the Wild D. Martin Eden

16. With the publication of ______ in 1900, Theodore Dreiser committed his literary force to opening the new ground of American naturalism.

A. An American Tragedy B. Sister Carrie C. The Bulwark D. The Stoic

17. In his works, Theodore Dreiser’s tone is always_________.

A. sad B. satirical C. comic D. serious

18. Which is not one of the characteristics of Stephen Crane’s works?

A. Poetic symbolism.

B. Probing of psychological depths.

C. The use of vivid color and imagery.

D. The theme of social effects on a person.

19. The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn was Mark Twain’s masterwork from which, as ______noted, “all modern American literature comes.”

A. Henry James B. William Dean Howells

C. Ernest Hemingway D. Theodore Dreiser

20. In his later novels, Mark Twain seems less hopeful about democracy, which is reflected in his work, _________.

A. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

B. The Mysterious Stranger

C. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras Country

D. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

IV. Literary Terms

1. Realism 2.Naturalism 3.Local colorism 4. Psychological realism

2. Symbolism

V. Identification.

Passage 1

When a girl leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which allure with all the soulfulness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as effective as the persuasive light in a wooding and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is accomplished by forces wholly superhuman.

Questions:

1. From which novel is this paragraph taken?

2. Who is the author of this novel?

3. Give an interpretation of the underlined sentence.

Passage 2

Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I know the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out the majestic river!

Questions:

4. From which novel is this paragraph taken?

5. Who is the author of this novel?

6. What did the author lose when he got to know the river as an experienced pilot should?

Passage 3

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. That general responsibility rests upon it, but it is the only one I can think of. The ways in which it is at liberty to accomplish this result (of interesting us) strike me as innumerable, and such as can only suffer from being marked out or fenced in by prescription. They are as various as the temperament of man, and they are successful in proportion as they reveal a particular mind, different from others. A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impressions. But there will be no intensity at all and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say. The tracing of a line to be followed, of a tone to be taken, of a form to be filled out, is a limitation of that freedom and a suppression of the very thing that we are most curious about.

Questions:

7. Where is this paragraph from?

8. Who is the author of this article?

9. What is your opinion about the definition of a novel given by the author?

Passage 4

The advance of the enemy had seemed to the youth like a ruthless hunting. He began to fume with rage and exasperation. He beat his foot upon the ground, and scowled with hate at the swirling smoke that was approaching like a phantom flood. There was a maddening quality in this seeming resolution of the foe to give him no rest, to give him no time to sit down and think. Yesterday he had fought and had earned opportunities for contemplative repose. He could have enjoyed portraying to uninitiated listeners various scenes at which he had been a witness or ably discussing the processes of war with other proved men. Too it was important that he should have time for physical recuperation. He was sore and stiff from his experiences. He had received his fill of all exertions, and he wished to rest.

Questions:

10. From which novel is this paragraph taken?

11. Who is the author of this novel?

12. How does the author succeed in giving the reader the feeling of war?

Passage 5

Buck’s first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for thee dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang.

He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish creatures fought, and his first experience taught him an unforgettable lesson. It is true, it was a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it. Curly was the victim. They were camped near the log store, where she, in her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and Curly’s face was ripped open from eye to jaw.

Questions:

13. From which novel is this paragraph taken?

14. Who is the author of this novel?

15. What lesson did Buck learned?

Passage 6

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do—the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expresses that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure.

Questions:

16. From which novel is this paragraph taken from?

17. Who is the author of this novel?

18. What is conveyed in this opening paragraph about English convention?

Passage 7

YOU don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, she is –and Mary, and the Window Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Questions:

19. From which novel is this paragraph taken from?

20. Who is the author of this novel?

VI. Questions and Answers.

1. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn is a thirteen-year-old boy. Why does Mark Twain use a child as the center of consciousness in this book?

2. Describe the elliptical technique James often uses in his narration. What is a narrative ellipsis? How does James employ the technique? What effect does his frequent skipping forward have on the novel as a whole?

3. Discuss the influence of Charles Darwin’s theories on The Call of the Wild.

4. According to Henry James’s viewpoint, what is the conflict between the American personalities and European personalities?

5. What is special about Mark Twain’s realism?

VII. Essay Questions.

1. What is the most famous theme in Henry James’s fiction? What is his favorite approach in characterization, which makes him different from Mark Twain and W. D. Howells as realists? Please take The Portrait of a Lady as an example to give sound ground for your points.

2. Summarize the story of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 100 words, and comment on the theme of the novel.

Keys

I. Fill in the blanks.

1. realism 2. William Dean Howell

2. local color 4. A Modern Instance

3. Utopian 6. International

4. Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn 8. Life on the Mississippi

5. An American Tragedy 10. Stephen Crane

6. the environment 12. The Red Badge of Courage

7. veritism 14. Henry James

8. International 16. The Portrait of a lady

9. The Ambassadors 18. An American Tragedy

10. Darwinism 20. The Art of Fiction

II. Matching.

1. (1)—f; (2)—d; (3)—g; (4)—b; (5)—c; (6)—a; (7)—e;

2. (1)—f; (2)—d; (3)—e; (4)—b; (5)—a; (6)—c

3. (1)—e; (2)—d; (3)—f; (4)—b; (5)—g; (6)—a; (7)—c

III. Multiple Choice.

1. D 2. B 3. C 4. B 5. C

2. D 7. C 8. A 9.D 10.D

3. B 12. A 13. A 14. C 15. C

4. B 17. D 18. D 19. C 20. D

IV. Literary terms

1. Realism: a mode of writing that gives the impression of recording or reflecting faithfully an actual way of life.

2. Naturalism: a more deliberate kind of realism in novels, stories and plays, usually involving a view of human beings as passive victims of natural forces and social environment.

3. Local colorism: Local color may be defined as the careful attention to details of the physical scene and to those mannerisms in speech, dress, or behavior peculiar to a geographical locality.

4. Psychological realism: It is the realistic writing that probes deeply into the complexities of characters’ thoughts and motivation. Henry James’ novel The Ambassadors is considered to be a masterpiece of psychological realism.

5. Symbolism: Symbolism is the writing technique of using symbols. A symbol is something that conveys two kinds of meaning: it is simply itself, and it stands for something other than itself. In other words, a symbol is both literal and figurative. People, places, things and even events can be used symbolically. A symbol is a way of telling a story and a way of conveying meaning. The best symbols are those that are believable in the lives of the characters and also convincing as they convey a meaning beyond the literal level of the story. Hawthorne and Melville were the two masters of symbolism. For example, the scarlet letter “A” on Hester’s breast can give you symbolic meanings. If the symbol is obscure or ambiguous, then the very obscurity and the ambiguity may also be apt of the meaning of the story.

V. Identification.

1. Sister Carrie

2. Theodore Dreiser

3. “The cosmopolitan standard of virtue” is closely related to “materialism” and “hedonism”. The rule in the city is the survival of the strongest. In this materialized city, money and power become essential for survival. The pursuit of wealth and power leads to degeneration of people. The voracious city forces men and women to be greedy, self-serving and materially practical. Thus, “the cosmopolitan standard of virtue” is a sort of force to make one “worse” in personality.

4. Life on Mississippi

5. Mark Twain

6. When the author has grasped the language of water, he begins to view it in a scientific way. Knowledge instead of his senses plays a key role in his interpretation of the river. Therefore, in his eyes, river has lost its beauty, mystery and charm.

7. The American Fiction

8. Henry James

9. In the author’s opinion, the novel should reflect life really is. It should give a writer freedom to feel and say. This is the essence of realism.

10. The Red Badge of Courage

11. Stephen Crane

12. The author compares war to a hunting process. The ruthlessness of war has turned men into animals. They have to flee or to hunt others or to be hunted. The hero’s psychological anger and restlessness reflected in the passage is a reflection of war’s cruelty.

13. The Call of the Wild

14. Jack London

15. The rule of animal life is harsh competition and survival of the strongest.

16. The Portrait of a Lady

17. Henry James

18. In English Society, it seems that everything goes according to convention. Afternoon tea is almost a routine ritual in English society and English men’s seriousness about this process is a reflection of their conservative character.

19. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

20. Mark Twain

VI. Questions and Answers.

1. In using a child protagonist, Twain is able to imply a comparison between the powerlessness and vulnerability of a child and the powerlessness and vulnerability of a black man in pre Civil War America. Huck and Jim frequently find themselves in the same predicaments: each faces the threat of losing his freedom, and each is constantly at the mercy of adult white men. As we see in Huck’s moral dilemmas, however, Jim is also vulnerable to Huck, who, although he occupies the lowest rung of the white social ladder, is white nonetheless. Twain also uses his child protagonist to dramatize the conflict between societal or received morality on the one hand and a different kind of morality based on intuition and experience on the other. As a boy, Huck is a character who can develop morally, whose mind ids still open and being formed, who does not take his principles and values for granted. By tracing the education and experiences of a boy, Twain shows that conclusions about right and wrong that are based on logic and experience often stand at odds with the society’s rules and morals ,which are often hypocritical rather than logical.

2. For many of the novel’s most important scenes, James utilizes an elliptical technique, which means literally that he simply does not narrate them. Instead, many of the most crucial moments of the novel are skipped over, and the reader is left to infer that they have occurred based on later evidence and their mention in peripheral conversation. Moments which are eluded from the novel include Osmond’s proposal to Isabel, their wedding, and Isabel’ decision to return to Rome after travelling to England for Ralph’s funeral. In this way, James tends to skip over the moments in which Isabel chooses to sacrifice her freedom for Gilbert Osmond; this helps to create the sense that Osmond is a sinister figure, as though, in choosing to be with him, Isabel is placing herself beyond the reach of the reader.

3. In writing his novel, Jack London was profoundly influenced by the writings of Charles Darwin. Darwin, the founding father of evolution theory, thought that life in the natural world consisted of a constant struggle for survival, in which only the strong could thrive and produce offspring. This “survival of the fittest,” as Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher, termed it, was the engine that drove evolution. The world that London creates in The Call of the Wild operates strictly according to Darwinist principles in its brutality and amorality—-only the fit survive in the cruel landscape of the Klondike

4. He saw that Europeans were often regarded as over-refined, degenerate, and artificial by Americans, and that Americans were considered native, vulgar, and ignorant by many Europeans. The misunderstanding caused personality conflicts, and even where the two races found each other agreeable and the national difference provided an opportunity for contrast of character. The typical American in a James’ novel is fresh, enthusiastic and perhaps as cultured as he might be, but eager to learn and basically “good” in spite of his disregard of the outworn conventions and social graces of Europe. The European, on the other hand, is highly cultivated, urban, sometimes boring, but always correct.

5. Mark Twain’s contribution to the development of realism and to American literature as a whole was partly through his theories of Local Colorism in American fiction, and partly through his colloquial style. Mark Twain drew heavily from hid=s own rich fund of knowledge of people and places. He confined himself to the life with which he was familiar. By quoting from his own experience, Mark Twain managed to transform into art the freedom and humor, in short, the finest elements of western culture.

VII. Essay Questions.

1. His main theme is the innocence of the New World (American) in conflict with corruption and wisdom of the Old (Britain). His favorite approach in characterization is psychological approach, and unlike W.D Howells and other realists, his realism is called psychological realism. The Portrait of a Lady explores the conflict between the individual independence and the British society’s convention. Isabel Archer is a young American woman who must choose between her independent spirit and the demands of social convention. After professing and longing to be an independent woman, autonomous and answerable only to herself, Isabel falls in love with and marries the sinister Gilbert Osmond, who wants her only for her money and who treats her as an object, almost as part of his art collection. Isabel must then decide whether to honor her marriage vows and preserve social propriety or to leave her miserable marriage and escape to a happier, more independent life, possibly with her American suitor Caspar Goodwood. The most important part of the book is where she realizes her mistake. She site all alone, late at night, in her “house of darkness”. James shows her inner consciousness in this quiet moment. There is great drama in his description of her “motionlessly seeing” the mistake she has made. The drama is not created by her actions but by the thoughts in her mind. James is one of American’s great psychological realists, and he uses all his creative powers to ensure that Isabel’s conflict is the natural product of a believable mind, and not merely an abstract philosophical consideration.

2. The story takes place along the Mississippi River. Along this river floats a small raft, with two people on it: one is an ignorant, uneducated Black slave named Jim and the other is a little uneducated out cast white boy of about the age of 13, called Huckleberry Finn. The book relates the story of the escape of Jim from slavery and, more important, how Huck Finn, floating along with Jim and helping him as best as he could, changed his mind, his prejudice, about Black people, and came to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend as well. The story mainly involves two themes. The first is slavery and racism. In Huckleberry Finn, Twain, by exposing the hypocrisy of slavery and racism distorts the oppressors as much as it does those who are oppressed. The result is a world of moral confusion, in which seemingly “good” white people such as Miss Watson and Sally Phelps express no concern about the injustice of slavery or the cruelty of separating Jim from his family. The second theme is the hypocrisy of “civilized” society. When Huck plans to head west at the end of the novel in order to escape further “civilizing”, he is trying to avoid more than regular baths and mandatory school attendance. Throughout the novel, Twain depicts the society that surrounds Huck as little more than a collection of degraded rules and precepts that defy logic