Harriet Jacobs (1818-1896)
extending back to Olaudah Equiano
Born a slave in North Carolina,
in colonial times.
Harriet Jacobs was taught to read
and write by her mistress. On her
Harriet Wilson (1807-1870)
mistress’s death, Jacobs was sold
Harriet Wilson was the first
to a white master who tried to
African-American to publish a novel
force her to have sexual relations.
in the United States — Our Nig: or,
She resisted him, finding another
Sketches from the life of a Free
white lover by whom she had two
Black, in a two-storey white house,
children, who went to live with her
North. Showing that Slavery’s
grandmother. “It seems less de- FREDERICK DOUGLASS Shadows Fall Even There (1859).
grading to give one’s self than to
The novel realistically dramatizes
submit to compulsion,” she can-
the marriage between a white wo-
didly wrote. She escaped from her
man and a black man, and also de-
owner and started a rumor that she
picts the difficult life of a black ser-
had fled North.
vant in a wealthy Christian house-
Terrified of being caught and
hold. Formerly thought to be autobi-
sent back to slavery and punish-
ographical, it is now understood to
ment, she spent almost seven
be a work of fiction.
years hidden in her master’s town,
Like Jacobs, Wilson did not pub-
in the tiny dark attic of her grand-
Photo-ambrotype courtesy
lish under her own name ( Our Nig
National Portrait Gallery,
mother’s house. She was sustained
Smithsonian Institution
was ironic), and her work was over-
45
looked until recently. The same can be said of
and used as propaganda, these slave narratives
the work of most of the women writers of the era.
were well-known in the years just before the Civil Noted African-American scholar Henry Louis
War. Douglass’s narrative is vivid and highly liter-Gates, Jr. — in his role of spearheading the black ate, and it gives unique insights into the mentali-fiction project — reissued Our Nig in 1983.
ty of slavery and the agony that institution caused among blacks.
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
The slave narrative was the first black literary
The most famous black American anti-slavery
prose genre in the United States. It helped blacks leader and orator of the era, Frederick Douglass
in the difficult task of establishing an African-
was born a slave on a Maryland plantation. It was
American identity in white America, and it has
his good fortune to be sent to relatively liberal
continued to exert an important influence on
Baltimore as a young man, where he learned to
black fictional techniques and themes through-
read and write. Escaping to Massachusetts in
out the 20th century. The search for identity, an-
1838, at age 21, Douglass was helped by abolition-
ger against discrimination, and sense of living an ist editor William Lloyd Garrison and began to
invisible, hunted, underground life unacknowl-
lecture for anti-slavery societies.
edged by the white majority, have recurred in the
In 1845, he published his Narrative of the Life works of such 20th-century black American au-of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (sec-thors as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ralph
ond version 1855, revised in 1892), the best and
Ellison, and Toni Morrison.
■
most popular of many “slave narratives.” Often
dictated by illiterate blacks to white abolitionists 46
thereafter — flowed into the United States
between 1860 and 1910. Chinese, Japanese, and
CHAPTER Filipino contract laborers were imported by Hawaiian plantation owners, railroad companies,
and other American business interests on the
West Coast.
THE
5
In 1860, most Americans lived on farms or in
small villages, but by 1919 half of the population RISE OF REALISM:
was concentrated in about 12 cities. Problems
1860-1914
of urbanization and industrialization appeared:
poor and overcrowded housing, unsanitary con-
he U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) between the
ditions, low pay (called “wage slavery”), difficult industrial North and the agricultural,
working conditions, and inadequate restraints on
Tslave-owning South was a watershed in business. Labor unions grew, and strikes brought American history. The innocent optimism of the
the plight of working people to national aware-
young democratic nation gave way, after the war,
ness. Farmers, too, saw themselves struggling
to a period of exhaustion. American idealism
against the “money interests” of the East, the
remained but was rechanneled. Before the war,
so-called robber barons like J.P. Morgan and John
idealists championed human rights, especially
D. Rockefeller. Their eastern banks tightly con-
the abolition of slavery; after the war, Americans trolled mortgages and credit so vital to western
increasingly idealized progress and the self-
development and agriculture, while railroad
made man. This was the era of the million-
companies charged high prices to transport farm
aire manufacturer and the speculator, when
products to the cities. The farmer gradually
Darwinian evolution and the “survival of the
became an object of ridicule, lampooned as an
fittest” seemed to sanction the sometimes
unsophisticated “hick” or “rube.” The ideal
unethical methods of the successful business
American of the post-Civil War period became
tycoon.
the millionaire. In 1860, there were fewer than
Business boomed after the war. War produc-
100 millionaires; by 1875, there were more than
tion had boosted industry in the North and given
1,000.
it prestige and political clout. It also gave indus-From 1860 to 1914, the United States was trans-
trial leaders valuable experience in the manage-
formed from a small, young, agricultural ex-
ment of men and machines. The enormous nat-
colony to a huge, modern, industrial nation. A
ural resources — iron, coal, oil, gold, and silver debtor nation in 1860, by 1914 it had become the
— of the American land benefitted business.
world’s wealthiest state, with a population that
The new intercontinental rail system, inaugurat-
had more than doubled, rising from 31 million in
ed in 1869, and the transcontinental telegraph,
1860 to 76 million in 1900. By World War I, the
which began operating in 1861, gave industry
United States had become a major world power.
access to materials, markets, and communica-
As industrialization grew, so did alienation.
tions. The constant influx of immigrants provided
Characteristic American novels of the period —
a seemingly endless supply of inexpensive labor
Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, as well. Over 23 million foreigners — German,
Jack London’s Martin Eden, and later Theodore Scandinavian, and Irish in the early years, and
Dreiser’s An American Tragedy — depict the increasingly Central and Southern Europeans
damage of economic forces and alienation on
47
the weak or vulnerable individual.
with society. The most well-known
Survivors, like Twain’s Huck Finn,
example is Huck Finn, a poor boy
Humphrey Vanderveyden in Lon-
who decides to follow the voice of
don’s The Sea-Wolf, and Dreiser’s
his conscience and help a Negro
opportunistic Sister Carrie, endure
slave escape to freedom, even
through inner strength involving
though Huck thinks this means that
kindness, flexibility, and, above all,
he will be damned to hell for break-
individuality.
ing the law.
Twain’s masterpiece, which ap-
SAMUEL CLEMENS
peared in 1884, is set in the Mis-
(MARK TWAIN) (1835-1910)
sissippi River village of St. Peters-
amuel Clemens, better known
burg. The son of an alcoholic bum,
by his pen name of Mark
Huck has just been adopted by a
STwain, grew up in the
respectable family when his father,
Mississippi River frontier town of
in a drunken stupor, threatens to
Hannibal, Missouri.
Ernest
kill him. Fearing for his life, Huck
Hemingway’s famous statement
escapes, feigning his own death. He
that all of American literature
is joined in his escape by another
comes from one great book,
outcast, the slave Jim, whose
Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry
owner, Miss Watson, is thinking of
Finn, indicates this author’s tower-
selling him down the river to the
ing place in the tradition. Ear-
harsher slavery of the deep South.
ly 19th-century American writers
Huck and Jim float on a raft down
tended to be too flowery, senti-
the majestic Mississippi, but are
mental, or ostentatious — partially
sunk by a steamboat, separated,
because they were still trying to
and later reunited. They go through
prove that they could write as ele-
many comical and dangerous shore
gantly as the English. Twain’s style,
adventures that show the variety,
based on vigorous, realistic, col-
generosity, and sometimes cruel ir-
loquial American speech, gave
rationality of society. In the end, it
American writers a new apprecia-
is discovered that Miss Watson had
tion of their national voice. Twain
already freed Jim, and a respec-
was the first major author to come
table family is taking care of the
from the interior of the country,
wild boy Huck. But Huck grows
and he captured its distinctive,
impatient with civilized society and
humorous slang and iconoclasm.
plans to escape to “the territories”
For Twain and other American
— Indian lands. The ending gives
SAMUEL CLEMENS
writers of the late 19th century,
(MARK TWAIN)
the reader the counter-version of
realism was not merely a literary
the classic American success myth:
technique: It was a way of speaking
the open road leading to the pris-
truth and exploding worn-out con-
tine wilderness, away from the
ventions. Thus it was profoundly
morally corrupting influences of
Illustration by
liberating and potentially at odds
Thaddeus A. Miksinski, Jr.
“civilization.” James Fenimore
48
Cooper’s novels, Walt Whitman’s hymns to the
FRONTIER HUMOR AND REALISM
open road, William Faulkner’s The Bear, and wo major literary currents in 19th-century
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road are other literary America merged in Mark Twain: popular
T
examples.
frontier humor and local color, or “region-
Huckleberry Finn has inspired countless literalism.” These related literary approaches began
ary interpretations. Clearly, the novel is a story of in the 1830s — and had even earlier roots in
death, rebirth, and initiation. The escaped slave, local oral traditions. In ragged frontier villages, Jim, becomes a father figure for Huck; in decid-on riverboats, in mining camps, and around cow-
ing to save Jim, Huck grows morally beyond the
boy campfires far from city amusements, story-
bounds of his slave-owning society. It is Jim’s
telling flourished. Exaggeration, tall tales, in-
adventures that initiate Huck into the com-
credible boasts, and comic workingmen heroes
plexities of human nature and give him moral
enlivened frontier literature. These humorous
courage.
forms were found in many frontier regions — in
The novel also dramatizes Twain’s ideal of the
the “old Southwest” (the present-day inland
harmonious community: “What you want, above
South and the lower Midwest), the mining fron-
all things, on a raft is for everybody to be satistier, and the Pacific Coast. Each region had its
fied and feel right and kind toward the others.”
colorful characters around whom stories collect-
Like Melville’s ship the Pequod, the raft sinks, ed: Mike Fink, the Mississippi riverboat brawler;
and with it that special community. The pure,
Casey Jones, the brave railroad engineer; John
simple world of the raft is ultimately over-
Henry, the steel-driving African-American; Paul
whelmed by progress — the steamboat — but
Bunyan, the giant logger whose fame was helped
the mythic image of the river remains, as vast and along by advertising; westerners Kit Carson, the
changing as life itself.
Indian fighter, and Davy Crockett, the scout.
The unstable relationship between reality and
Their exploits were exaggerated and enhanced in
illusion is Twain’s characteristic theme, the basis ballads, newspapers, and magazines. Sometimes,
of much of his humor. The magnificent yet
as with Kit Carson and Davy Crockett, these sto-
deceptive, constantly changing river is also the
ries were strung together into book form.
main feature of his imaginative landscape. In Life Twain, Faulkner, and many other writers, par-on the Mississippi, Twain recalls his training as a ticularly southerners, are indebted to frontier
young steamboat pilot when he writes: “I went to
pre-Civil War humorists such as Johnson Hooper,
work now to learn the shape of the river; and George Washington Harris, Augustus Longstreet, of all the eluding and ungraspable objects that
Thomas Bangs Thorpe, and Joseph Baldwin.
ever I tried to get mind or hands on, that was From them and the American frontier folk came the chief.”
the wild proliferation of comical new American
Twain’s moral sense as a writer echoes his
words: “absquatulate” (leave), “flabbergasted”
pilot’s responsibility to steer the ship to safety.
(amazed), “rampagious” (unruly, rampaging).
Samuel Clemens’s pen name, “Mark Twain,” is
Local boasters, or “ring-tailed roarers,” who
the phrase Mississippi boatmen used to signify
asserted they were half horse, half alligator, also two fathoms (3.6 meters) of water, the depth
underscored the boundless energy of the fron-
needed for a boat’s safe passage. Twain’s tier. They drew strength from natural hazards serious purpose combined with a rare genius for
that would terrify lesser men. “I’m a regular tor-humor and style keep Twain’s writing fresh and
nado,” one swelled, “tough as hickory and long-
appealing.
winded as a nor’wester. I can strike a blow like a 49
falling tree, and every lick makes a
of New England: Mary Wilkins
gap in the crowd that lets in an acre
Freeman (1852-1930), Harriet
of sunshine.”
Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), and
especially Sarah Orne Jewett
LOCAL COLORISTS
(1849-1909). Jewett’s originality,
ike frontier humor, local color
exact observation of her Maine
writing has old roots but pro-
characters and setting, and sensi-
Lduced its best works long
tive style are best seen in her fine
after the Civil War. Obviously, many
story “The White Heron” in Country
pre-war writers, from Henry David
of the Pointed Firs (1896). Harriet
Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne
Beecher Stowe’s local color works,
to James Greenleaf Whittier and
especially The Pearl of Orr’s Island
James Russell Lowell, paint strik-
(1862), depicting humble Maine
ing portraits of specific American
fishing communities, greatly influ-
regions. What sets the colorists
enced Jewett. Nineteenth-century