Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
of the theme, as the hot Cuban night in Cobra with its naked primitive
passions. A dabbler in psychology that develops into a crude
Freudianism, particularly in _Cytherea_. Always a hint of artistic
insincerity; something of a poseur yet a sensuous artist nature. His
gorgeous prose style spotty and streaked by amazing crudeness.
_The Three Black Pennys_ (1917). A study in the breaking out of
willfulness in successive generations, set against a background of
the history of iron-making in Pennsylvania. An elaboration of _Tubal
Cain_. An anticlimax arranged for dramatic significance, suggesting the
decay of romance in a hundred and fifty years of American industrial
development. The first episode is Hergesheimer at his best. Howat
Penny a study in moods that make him “angry at life”; but swept on by
the will to possess. Ludowica Winscomb embodies a favorite theme--the
suggestion of an older culture contrasted with the crude American
reality. So compare Taou Yuen.
_Linda Condon_ (1919). A study in the decay of surface beauty--an
empty form caught in the web of a shallow mother and the demands of
stronger natures, but preserved by lack of emotional concern. Handled
skillfully, with a somewhat forced unity symbolized by Linda’s straight
black bang; but the story leaves one with a sense of unconcern for
Linda and her fate. The ending melodramatic. Note Van Doren’s curious
comment--“nearly the most beautiful American novel since Hawthorne and
Henry James.”
_Java Head_ (1919). The story of an exotic that languishes in an
uncongenial habitat. A contrast in backgrounds: the romance of old
Salem in the days of the clipper ship; the romance of a far older
East that makes Salem seem raw and crude. Taou Yuen a decorative lay
figure, with aristocratic suggestions beyond anything the West knows.
The dramatic significance of opium, that hangs like a pall over the
East and brings degeneration and death to Puritan Salem. The end
with its cheap love adventure, a conscious satire on western life.
Hergesheimer’s best work. A romantic atmosphere got without archaic
trappings of speech and manners; nevertheless makes much of costume.
_Balisand_ (1924). A romance of a Virginia Federalist in the days of
the Revolution and after. A rich background of plantation life, with a
touch of somewhat cheap mysticism. Of the school of Washington rather
than Jefferson. A better work than _The Bright Shawl_ or _Cytherea_.
His other titles signify little. Yet see the _Saturday Evening Post_
for a series of furniture stories. Characteristic of his concern for
the “stuffs of life.” See in particular, “Mahogany” (Vol. 195, no. 53,
January, 1923); “Pewter” (Vol. 196, no. 23, January, 1924); “Oak” (Vol.
196, no. 3, July, 1923).[841]
IV • Certain Other Writers
Edith Wharton--The Genteel Tradition and the New Plutocracy
A temperamental aristocrat, endowed with keen intelligence and ripe
culture. Observes the ways of a wealthy society without culture and
unconcerned with standards. A protest against the domination of
the middle class. Mrs. Wharton isolated in America by her native
aristocratic tastes. The older New York society without real
distinction, bound by convention and with middle-class concern for
respectability; the new society a vulgar plutocracy; outside both a
pushing _nouveau-riche_ class eager to climb. Hence she turns to the
authentic aristocracy of Europe for satisfaction of her genteel tastes.
In spirit she belongs to the _ancien régime_. The highest law of
society is convention, but it must be noble, not vulgar.
_The House of Mirth_ (1905). A story of New York’s gilded society,
and how it served one of its daughters. Lily Bart, trained for social
leadership in a plutocracy, a finished and costly parasite, seeking
a market for her beauty, yet restrained by instinctive refinement
from seeing the game through. Lacking money she is caught in a web of
convention and destroyed. In her world convention is the social law,
and the tragedy flows from her inability to rise above it or to keep it
wholly. The contrast between Selden and Trenor--the aristocrat and the
plutocrat--characteristic of Mrs. Wharton.
_Ethan Frome_ (1911). A dramatization of the “narrow house” theme--life
held relentlessly in the grip of poverty and duty. A bleak and joyless
existence that seeks escape and suffers lingering tragedy. Thereafter a
stern isolation and iron repression. Mrs. Wharton’s finest work.
_The Custom of the Country_ (1915). A study of the social climber. The
best of a series of novels satirizing the encroachments on New York
exclusiveness by the rising plutocracy and its daughters. The western
plutocracy of pork presumably more vulgar than the eastern plutocracy
of Wall Street, yet between them the older gentry crushed. So compare
Boyesen, _Social Strugglers_ (1893); Robert Grant, _Unleavened Bread_
(1900). Undine Spragg, like Selma White, pushing, heartless, vulgar,
showy, is set over against Ralph Marvell, a refined “dabbler with
life”; Peter Van Degen, the “plunger”; and Elmer Moffatt, the self-made
man. She embodies all that Mrs. Wharton most hates; all climbers are
vulgar, she believes, both men and women.
_The Age of Innocence_ (1920). A study of the older world of the
eighteen-seventies. A loving yet satirical picture of a Pharisaic
society, “wholly absorbed in barricading self against the unpleasant”;
that lives secluded, protected by its taboos, and fears reality.
A sterile world of clan conventions and negations; a decadent
Victorianism. The Van der Luydens of Skuytercliff are of the same stuff
as the Dagonets in _The Custom of the Country_; and the dilettante
Newland Archer is another Ralph Marvell. Into this dead world enters
Ellen Olenska with her vivid old-world experiences, who threatens to
rebel, yet finally yields to the clan taboos. The book fades out like
the lives of the Van der Luydens. An admirable work.
_Old New York_ (1924). Four carefully done tales that sketch New York
in the forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies. A return to her best
manner, with the finish of _The Age of Innocence_.
Her other later work not important. _Glimpses of the Moon_ (1922)
inconsequential; and _A Son at the Front_ (1923)--an attempt to
document the reactions of an artist with a son in the army--only half
successful.
Mrs. Wharton a finished artist who grasps her material firmly; an
intellectual attitude, delighting in irony. Unaffected by the problem
novel, and schools of naturalism or romanticism. Not a thinker like
Cabell, whose irony springs from an imagination that contemplates man
in his relation to cosmic forces, but an observer whose irony springs
from noting the clash between men and social convention. The last
of our literary aristocrats of the genteel tradition. Her attitude
expressed in the words, “_Je suis venue trop tard dans un monde trop
vulgaire._”
Willa Cather: Epics of Women
The Middle Border of Hamlin Garland seen through different eyes. She
looks back lovingly to a pioneer West, as the cradle of heroic lives.
An epic breadth of prairie spaces and industrious years, with a note
of regret--_Optima dies prima fugit._ Against this background she sets
her immigrant women, with their vigor and wealth of life, and considers
how the West has dealt with them. Peasant heroines, with their strong
natures hidden under queer speech and garb, set in a waste of wild
red grass, bitter winters, burning summers, virgin soil and great
loneliness. A long-ignored theme--the lot of the immigrant who has come
on a desperate adventure--the struggle of their children with the soil.
Compare _The Jungle_, for the industrial exploitation of the immigrant.
Has matured slowly. _The Troll Garden_ (1905), and _Alexander’s Bridge_
(1910), are inconsequential. Her real work done late. Belongs to no
school. Is neither naturalistic nor romantic. Is unconcerned with
problems. Except for a single attack on the ugliness of the small
western town--“The Sculptor’s Funeral” in _The Troll Garden_--she
ignores middle-class America and its Main Streets. An individual
artist, sincere, capable; an excellent craftsman.
_O Pioneers_ (1913). The story of Alexandra Bergson, a daughter of the
Middle Border; calm, tenacious, capable; loving the soil and bringing
it to abundant productiveness. The new world had brought out diverse
qualities in the Swedish peasant family; the older brothers common,
dull, vulgarized by Americanization; the younger brother suggestive
of the better side of American opportunity. Alexandra the directing
mind and controlling will. Over against her is set the Bohemian Marie
Tovesky, childlike in her spontaneous enthusiasm. The tragic ending
handled with great skill. Thrown about the whole, a harsh Nebraska
countryside through changing periods. One who had not lived through
similar experiences and loved the memory could not write so.
_The Song of the Lark_ (1915). The story of Thea Kronberg, who by
virtue of fierce energy and iron strength rises to triumph as an
artist. There are no romantic stage-effects, only the passionate
struggle of a tenacious will. Thea a peasant nature of vast solidity.
The most convincing story of artist life written by an American. A
changing background: the mean little Colorado town, the loneliness of
Chicago, Europe, the great spaces of the Southwest.
_My Ántonia_ (1918). The story of Ántonia Shimerda: an opulent peasant
nature with strong mother instinct, thwarted by meager opportunities
and vulgar environment. Her life runs a narrow round: the early
pioneer experience with its loneliness and black tragedy; the town
experience of the hired girl, who lives eagerly; the later life of a
hard-working mother on a lonely farm. Ántonia “a rich mine of life like
the founder of early races,” loving, generous, eager, yet belonging
to the soil. To vulgarize such natures by cramming them into a
conventional mold, passes for Americanization--this the implied thesis.
_One of Ours_ (1922). The story of Claude Wheeler, with strength
imprisoned by a society that opens its opportunities to Main Street
natures like Bayliss Wheeler. A suggestion of naturalism in the
handling of the theme: Claude caught by the negative character Enid
Royse because he fails to appreciate the complementary strength of
Gladys Farmer--a true Cather woman, enmeshed in Gopher Prairie. A
futile, ironical ending: better to die in battle than be destroyed by
the pettiness of Gopher Prairie. The war atmosphere seems curiously
old-fashioned.
_The Lost Lady_ (1923). A change of theme. The story of Mrs. Forester,
an embodiment of traditional feminine charm, quite superior to such
incidents as age or loyalty--a type of woman outside Miss Cather’s
experience and understanding.[842]
V • Some War Books
The late war the first in our history that has produced an aftermath
of searching criticism in fiction or drama. The romantic note dominant
in all earlier accounts, particularly of the Revolution and the
Rebellion. Such stories written by men who took no part in them. The
Civil War produced only one book of realistic criticism, that was
mutilated by the publisher to temper its cynicism, and that enjoyed no
popularity--_The Recollections of a Private_, by Warren Goss. The late
war is producing a considerable group, all realistic and critical; the
romantic note has not yet appeared.
John Dos Passos
_Three Soldiers_ (1921). A naturalistic handling of war that serves
as a commentary on _One of Ours_. The most notable American work on
the theme since Stephen Crane’s _The Red Badge of Courage_. Similar
in temper to Henri Barbusse, _Under Fire_, but dealing with the
barracks and the drill field. Compare with Andreas Latzko, _Men in
War_--impressionistic in handling. Dos Passos a young artist from the