520 Chapter 19 Intellectual and Cultural Trends in the Late Nineteenth Century
the sentimentality and prudery of his generation
entirely, for these qualities were part of his nature. He
never dealt effectively with sexual love, for example,
and often—even in Huckleberry Finn—contrived to
end his tales on absurdly optimistic notes that ring
false after so many brilliant pages portraying life as it
is. On balance Twain’s achievement was magnificent.
Rough and uneven like the man himself, his works
catch more of the spirit of the age he named than
those of any other writer.
Mark Twain, from The Gilded Ageat
http://www.myhistorylab.com
William Dean Howells
Twain’s realism was far less self-conscious than that
of his longtime friend William Dean Howells. Like
Twain, Howells, who was born in Ohio in 1837, had
little formal education. He learned the printer’s trade
from his father and became a reporter for the Ohio
State Journal.After the Civil War he worked briefly
for The Nationin New York and then moved to
Boston, where he became editor of the Atlantic
Monthly. In 1886 he returned to New York as editor
ofHarper’s.
A long series of novels and much literary criticism
poured from Howells’s pen over the next thirty years.
While he insisted on treating his material honestly, he
was not at first a critic of society, being content to
write about what he called “the smiling aspects” of life.
Realism to Howells meant concern for the complexi-
ties of individual personalities and faithful description
of the genteel, middle-class world he knew best.
Besides a sharp eye and an open mind, Howells
had a real social conscience. Gradually he became
aware of the problems that industrialization had cre-
ated. In 1885, in The Rise of Silas Lapham, he dealt
with some of the ethical conflicts faced by business-
men in a competitive society. The harsh public reac-
tion to the Haymarket bombing in 1886 stirred him,
and he threw himself into a futile campaign to prevent
the execution of the anarchist suspects. Thereafter he
moved rapidly toward the left. In A Hazard of New
Fortunes(1890), he attempted to portray the whole
range of metropolitan life, weaving the destinies of a
dozen interesting personalities from diverse sections
and social classes. The book represents a triumph of
realism in its careful descriptions of various sections of
New York and the ways of life of rich and poor, in the
intricacy of its characters, and in its rejection of senti-
mentality and romantic love.
His own works were widely read, and Howells was
also the most influential critic of his time. He helped
bring the best contemporary foreign writers, including
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, and Zola, to the attention
ReadtheDocumentof readers in the United States, and he encouraged
many important young American novelists, among
them Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris,
and Hamlin Garland.
Some of these writers went far beyond Howells’s
realism to what they called naturalism. Many, like
Twain and Howells, began as newspaper reporters.
Working for a big-city daily in the 1890s was sure to
teach anyone a great deal about the dark side of life.
Naturalist writers believed that the human being was
essentially an animal, a helpless creature whose fate was
determined by environment. Their world was Darwin’s
world—mindless, without mercy or justice. They wrote
chiefly about the most primitive emotions—lust, hate,
and greed. In Maggie, A Girl of the Streets(1893),
Stephen Crane described the seduction, degradation,
and eventual suicide of a young woman, all set against
the background of a sordid slum; in The Red Badge of
Courage(1895), he captured the pain and humor of
war. In McTeague(1899), Frank Norris told the story
of a brutal, dull-witted dentist who murdered his
greed-crazed wife with his bare fists.
Such stuff was too strong for Howells, yet he
recognized its importance and befriended the
younger writers in many ways. He found a publisher
forMaggieafter it had been rejected several times,
and he wrote appreciative reviews of the work of
Garland and Norris. Even Theodore Dreiser, whoIn 1891 William Dean Howells championed the poetry of Emily
Dickinson: “This poetry is as characteristic of our life as our business
enterprise, our political turmoil, our demagogism, or our millionaires.”
Yet few of her poems appeared during her lifetime; arguably the most
important poet of her age was unknown to that age.