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The Victorian
Age in American Literature(from "Fields of Vision" by D.Delaney)
Historical and Social Background
North American History 1823-1900
North and South
Having put the struggle for
independence behind it, the new nation could now concentrate on developing its
political infrastructures and the economy. While the economy did thrive in the
nineteenth century, it proved much more difficult to bring about national
political unity.
Rivalry between the north and
south emerged as a burning issue which eventually led to a war that threatened
to split the United States
in two.
People and society (Immigration)
Whether in the north or south,
there was no let up in the dynamic growth of American society. Immigrants
continued to flow in from Europe in search of
a new life. Up until the last decade of the century, when new arrivals started
to come from southern Europe, immigrants came mainly from Britain, Ireland
and northern Europe. A large influx of Chinese
alarmed the authorities so much that in 1882 a law was passed banning all immigration
from China.
Despite the fact that cities began to grow thanks to industrial development,
and that New York,
with half a million inhabitants in 1850, was becoming the country’s main
metropolis, by 1900 only for percent of the population lived in towns.
The economy (Industrial
Revolution)
The dramatic success story that
was the American economy continued. The North-east underwent an industrial
revolution based on iron and steel production, while the South exported cotton
to the world. People rushed west to California,
Oregon and Alaska
in search of gold, while Texas
became home to huge cattle ranches.
To aid trade, the transport
network was developed with the building of roasts and railroads. An ingenious
feature of the transport revolution was the use of steamboats. These
picturesque craft shuttled up and down the big rivers carrying people and goods
from south to north and back again. Technological innovations like the mass production
of motorcars, pioneered by Henry Ford, and inventions like that of the
telephone in 1876 by Alexander Bell, gave further impetus to an economy that
was becoming a key player on the world market.
International Division (North and South)
A dynamic society and a buoyant
economy could not, however, hide the growing rift between the north and south
of the country. The two areas were different in various ways. Firstly, the
climates were very different and consequently people’s lifestyles differed.
Secondly, the north was more industrialized and, thanks to greater access to
public schools, had a higher level of education. Thirdly, and most importantly,
slavery was practised in the south but had been abolished in the north.
The issue of slavery was to
provide the spark that ignited the Civil War. Northerners were becoming
increasingly intolerant of a system they regarded as being out-of-date, while
southerners argued that cheap black labor was essential to maintain profitable
cotton production.
Civil War
With no compromise in sight, on
December 20th 1860, South Carolina
seceded from the Union. Other states followed
until open war was declared in April 1861. A fierce and bloody conflict dragged on
for four years until the South surrendered. The hero of the hour was the leader
of the northern states, Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated just as the war ended.
Main Events: North America 1823-1900
1860 South Carolina
secedes from the Union
1861–1865 The presidency
of Abraham Lincoln
1861 Civil War starts
1865 Civil War ends
Abraham
Lincoln assassinated
1865-1869 The presidency of Andrew
Johnson
1865 The Fourteenth Amendment
outlaws all forms of discrimination
1866 Alaska bought from Russia
1869-1877
The presidency of Ulysses S.
Grant
1870
The Fifteenth Amendment
gives the vote to blacks as well as whites
1876 Alexander Bell invents the
telephone
1882 Immigration from China stopped
External Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_America
North American Literature
Introduction
The mid-nineteenth century was a period of
astonishing literary creativity in American literature. In the short space of
six years, four monumental literary works were published: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter (1850), Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851)., Henry David
Thoreau’s Walden (1854) and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855). This period
witnessed the highest literary expression of the Puritan tradition and the
emergence of a new cultural and philosophical movement, Transcendentalism. External Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism
Prose
Although the American frontier was being pushed
westward, Massachusetts and Virginia, the Puritan strongholds in the
east, remained the center of cultural activity.
The Puritan heritage is clearly evident in the
work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote about the conflict between good
and evil set in the dark, Puritan, New England
past. In his masterpieces The Scarlet
Letter (1850) he uses a mixture of fantasy and realism, symbols and
allegories to explore one of his constant themes: the relationship between the
individual and society.
Herman Melville dedicated his greatest work,
Moby Dick (1851), to Hawthorne,
in recognition of his friendship and the contribution he had made in revising
the first draft of the novel. When it first appeared, Moby Dick was described
as a ‘wild and mad novel’, but it was quickly recognized as an important
development in the novel genre. The metaphysical and symbolic style, the juxtaposition
of tones and the innovative narrative technique make it a rich and complex work
which encompasses many themes, including the battle between man and nature, the
conflict between good and evil and man’s quest to live in a largely hostile
world. External Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Melville
The emergence of the Transcendentalist movement
in New England in the middle years of the
century marked a significant break from the Puritan tradition. Influenced by
English Romanticism and German and Eastern philosophies, the Transcendentalists exalted feeling and
intuition over reason. They rebelled against the materialism of contemporary
society and rejected the established Church. Unlike the Puritans, they believed
that man was fundamentally good and should be allowed to develop free from
rules and restrictions. The most influential figures in the Transcendentalist
school were the poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and the novelist
Henry
David Thoreau.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was the spokesman for
the movement, wrote several influential essays including Self-Reliance and The Over-Soul
(1841-1844). He visited England
and met Coleridge, Wordsworth and Carlyle. His work was widely read in the United States and Britain and he was among the first
writers to urge his fellow countrymen to abandon European models and create a
distinctly American literature with its own themes and style.
External Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson
Henry David Thoreau applied the
Transcendentalist philosophy to his life and to his writing. In 1845 he
effectively left civilization and went to live in a small hut on the edge of
Walden Pond, a small lake in the Massachusetts
countryside. Thoreau spent two years there, working the land, walking,
observing nature, reflecting on life and keeping a detailed journal which he
later developed into Walden (1854),
his most celebrated work. External Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
East coast dominance of the American literary scene was
broken by Mark Twain, the pen-name of Samuel Longhorne Clemens. Twain, who
grew up in Missouri along the banks of the Mississippi, wrote about
cowboys, stagecoach drivers and low-life criminals – people living in the West.
In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876),
he paints a realistic picture of the
life of two young boys growing up in the Mississippi river
area. The themes of childhood and nature recur in Twain’s masterpiece The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). In both these works Mark Twain shows his
deep distrust of ‘respectable’ society and his sympathy for social outcasts and
the common man. He uses humor to criticize the practice of slavery and the
hypocrisy and prejudices of his time. In his characterization he displays a
penetrating insight into human psychology.
Mark Twain’s use of language is
also strikingly original. The stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are
told from the point of view of the young protagonists and contain slang,
regional dialect and illogical sentence constructions that make the dialogue
come to life. As a writer Twain did not emulate European models; he created a
distinctly American literary style. Many critics agree with Ernest Hemingway’s claim
that "all modern American fiction comes from Huckleberry Finn”.
Poetry
Transcendentalism was represented in poetry by the work of Walt
Whitman. The first of nine editions of his collection of poems Leaves of Grass appeared in 1855 to little
public recognition, although it did win the admiration of Whitman’s mentor
Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his poems Whitman celebrates America, its natural beaty, its
people and its spirit of democracy. He also explores himself, his feelings,
perceptions and intuitions. Many contemporary readers were shocked by his
celebration of the body and the theme of love between man and man which led to
rumors about his homosexuality. Whitman was a highly experimental poet who
believed that poetry should not be bound by rules and restrictions. He tended
to avoid the use of metaphors or similes and his poetry is often strongly
declarative and non-figurative.
External Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_whitman
The poetry of Whitman’s
contemporary, Emily Dickinson, was even more strikingly original. Born in New
England, Dickinson
spent most of her life in quiet isolation detached from the events of her time.
Her poems are extremely personal and intimate. Recurring themes include nature
and death and, although she had rejected orthodox religion, much of her work
contains a strong sense of spirituality. Many of her poems, however, are ironic
and witty suggesting that their creator was a woman of great humor. Dickinson’s style was
completely unconventional and showed a total disregard for standard poetic
forms. Her technique is so innovative that her work was considered unacceptable
for publication. Apart from a few poems, most of her work was published
posthumously.
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