DOCSLIB.ORG

Universidade Federal De Santa Catarina Class

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Universidade Federal De Santa Catarina Class UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA CLASS CONFLICT IN WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS’S THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM AND A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES: ARISTOCRATIC NOSTALGIA KARINA AMORIM KNABBEN JUNHO 1999 UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS/INGLÊS E LITERATURA CORRESPONDENTE CLASS CONFLICT IN WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS’S THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM AND A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES: ARISTOCRATIC NOSTALGIA por KARINA AMORIM KNABBEN Dissertação submetida à Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina em cumprimento parcial dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de MESTRE EM LETRAS FLORIANÓPOLIS Junho 1999 Esta Dissertação de Karina Amorim Knabben, intitulada Class Conflict in William Dean Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Hazard of New Fortunes: Aristocratic Nostalgia, foi julgada adequada e aprovada em sua fòrma final, pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, para fins de obtenção do grau de MESTRE EM LETRAS Área de concentração: Inglês eLileratura Correspondente Opção: Literaturas d^Lingua-Inglesa j t u c Á <K ' /. /-n 0^6-tt / Anelise CorseuiL Coordenadora BANCA EXAMINADORA: Maria Lúcia Milléo Martins Examinadorar } \ Florianópolis, 29 de Junho de 1999. ABSTRACT CLASS CONFLICT IN WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS’S THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM AND A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES: ARISTOCRATIC NOSTALGIA KARINA AMORIM KNABBEN UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA 1999 Supervising Professor: Dilvo Ilvo Ristoff In the second half of the nineteenth-century, the United States shared the world view that they were a democratic and egalitarian society, liberated from aristocratic exclusiveness, snobbery and separation of people in castes or social classes. Likewise, in his criticism, William Dean Howells identified Realism with democracy and defended that literature should promote national unity and the egalitarian aims of American people. In The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Hazard of New Fortunes, however, there is an aristocratic pull that seems to undermine those egalitarian principles. Howells’s ideological preferences in relation to the conflict between America’s democratic and aristocratic classes is perceived in these novels’ treatment of the anxiety about social mobility involving the families of nouveaux-riches businessmen and “aristocratic” Bostonians and New Yorkers. Class markers such as attitude towards money, social manners, linguistic refinement, and conversational ease, knowledge of painting, architecture, literature, housing and dressing function as class barriers and determine the possibility or impossibility of climbing socially, emphasizing the gulf between social classes. Hazard is greatly concerned with the distribution of political power, with the economic disparity between classes, and with the political ideologies defended by its characters, pointing to democratic and aristocratic responses. I propose an investigation of the class markers found in The Rise of Silas Lapham and A Hazard of New Fortunes and of the political ideologies discussed in Hazard with the purpose of (1) showing that the class structure portrayed in them is based both on a tradition of aristocracy and democracy and (2) seeking the novels’ ideology by verifying the narrative voice position with relation to those markers and the two classes in question. n.o de páginas: 116 n.o de palavras: 33.141 RESUMO CLASS CONFLICT IN WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS’S THE RISE OF SILAS LAPHAM AND A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES: ARISTOCRATIC NOSTALGIA KARINA AMORIM KNABBEN UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA 1999 Professor Orientador: Dilvo Ilvo Ristoff Na segunda metade do século dezenove, os Estados Unidos compartilhavam da visão de mundo de serem uma sociedade democrática e igualitária, livre da exclusividade e esnobismo aristocráticos e da separação das pessoas em castas ou classes sociais. Do mesmo modo, em sua crítica literária, William Dean Howells identificava Realismo com democracia e defendia que a literatura deveria promover a unidade nacional e os princípios de igualdade do povo americano. Entretanto, em The Rise of Silas Lapham e A Hazard of New Fortunes. verifica-se uma tendência aristocrática que parece enfraquecer esses princípios. As preferências ideológicas de Howells em relação ao conflito entre as classes democráticas e aristocráticas americanas é percebida no tratamento da ansiedade vivida por famílias de novos-ricos comerciantes e por membros da aristocracia de Boston e Nova Iorque no que se refere à mobilidade social. Marcadores de classe como as atitudes perante o dinheiro, as formas de comportamento, o refinamento lingüístico, o domínio da conversação, o conhecimento sobre questões como moradia, vestimenta, pintura, arquitetura e literatura, funcionam como barreiras entre classes, enfatizam a distância entre elas, e determinam a possibilidade ou impossibilidade de subir socialmente. Em Hazard há também uma preocupação significativa com a distribuição de poder político, com a disparidade econômica entre classes e com as ideologias políticas defendidas por seus personagens, o que aponta para respostas democráticas e aristocráticas. Investigando os marcadores de classe encontrados nos referidos romances bem como as ideologias políticas discutidas em Hazard. proponho (1) mostrar que a estrutura de classe neles apresentada baseia-se tanto em uma tradição aristocrática como democrática, e (2) identificar a ideologia dos romances através da verificação do posicionamento da voz narrativa em relação aos marcadores e às duas classes em questão. n.o de páginas: 116 n.o de palavras: 33.141 Table of Contents Chapter I- Introduction -- William Dean Howells: An Ideological Paradox....................... 7 Chapter II- Laughing at the Nouveaux-riches: Class Markers in The Rise of Silas Lapham.............................................................................................................. 22 Attitudes Toward Money and Money-Making............................................................... 22 Painting.......................................................................................................................... 26 Architecture....................................................................................................................28 Literature........................................................................................................................ 28 Manners.........................................................................................................................32 Conversation............................ ..................................................................................... 43 Housing.......................................................................................................................... 55 Dressing................................................................................... .....................................57 Final Remarks................................................................................................................58 Chapter HI- New Social Antagonisms: Class Conflict In A Hazard of New Fortunes..... 61 Final Remarks.......... ....................................................................................................74 Analysis of the Class Markers........................................... ................................................76 Attitudes towards Money and Money-Making............................................................ 82 Painting.........................................................................................................................86 Literature.......................................................................................................................87 Manners........................................................................................................................ 90 Conversation.................................................................................................................91 Dressing.........................................................................................................................97 Housing.........................................................................................................................97 Final Remarks...............................................................................................................99 Chapter Four- Conclusion — Democratic Sympathies and Aristocratic Nostalgia........... 101 Works Cited.......................................................................................................................110 CHAPTER I Introduction William Dean Howells: An Ideological Paradox Statement of the Problem In the second half of the nineteenth century, American people shared the widespread view that the United States were a democratic and egalitarian society, and took for granted Alexis de Tocqueville’s assertion that equality of conditions was responsible for the social development and for the economic drive of American emergent capitalism. In 1871, Walt Whitman saw the words “America” and “democracy” as exchangeable and defined America as an egalitarian society “presently given over to material progress and well being, and a polity fastened on electoral politics alone” (qtd. in Trachtenberg 176). Likewise, Leo Marx and Gerald Graff (1986) discuss the progressive world view of nineteenth-century America as embodying the idea that upward social mobility was available for any industrious white man as well as the idea of liberation
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Manhattan Transference: Reader Itineraries in Modernist New York
    Oberlin Digital Commons at Oberlin Honors Papers Student Work 2013 Manhattan Transference: Reader Itineraries in Modernist New York Sophia Bamert Oberlin College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/honors Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Repository Citation Bamert, Sophia, "Manhattan Transference: Reader Itineraries in Modernist New York" (2013). Honors Papers. 308. https://digitalcommons.oberlin.edu/honors/308 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Digital Commons at Oberlin. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Papers by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons at Oberlin. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 Sophia Bamert April 19, 2013 Oberlin College English Honors Paper Advisor: T.S. McMillin Manhattan Transference: Reader Itineraries in Modernist New York The development of transportation technologies played a vital role in New York City’s transformation into a modern metropolis. Between 1884 and 1893, travel by rapid transit in New York increased by 250 percent,1 and “by 1920 there were 2,365,000,000 riders annually on all city transit lines . twice as many as all the steam railroads in the country carried” (Michael W. Brooks 90). The Elevated trains, which were completed by 1880,2 and the subways, opened in 1904, fueled construction and crowding in the booming city,3 and they fundamentally altered the everyday experience of living in New York. These modern transit technologies were novel in and of themselves, but, moreover, they offered passengers previously unaccessible views of the urban landscape through which they moved: from above the streets on an Elevated track, from underground in a subway tunnel, and so on.
    [Show full text]
  • Realist Magic in the Fiction of William Dean Howells STEPHANIE C
    Realist Magic in the Fiction of William Dean Howells STEPHANIE C. PALMER 14LHEN the character Bartley Hubbard in William Dean Howells's A Modern In­ stance (1882) brags that the ideal newspaper would solicit "an account of suicide, or an elopement, or a murder, or an acci­ dent" from "every fellow that could spell, in any part of the country," he voices Howells's own misgivings about the sensa­ tional aspect of communication through mass culture.1 Rather than fostering cognitive and emotional connections between diverse social groups for the purpose of preventing further suf­ fering, newspaper accounts of personal calamities or large- scale industrial accidents in the late nineteenth century tried to thrill readers solely for the purposes of prestige and circula­ tion. Howells was not committed to determining how to pre­ vent suicide, murder, or industrial accidents, but he had a deep interest in determining what—if not sensational tales of for­ tune and disaster—would inspire people from different eco­ nomic, political, and religious backgrounds to see each other as respected members of a human community. Howells's key Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 210-236. ISSN: 0891-9356. © 2002 by The Regents of the University of California/Society. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center Street, Suite 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. 1 William Dean Howells, A Modern Instance, ed. George N. Bennett, David J. Nord- loh, and David Kleinman, vol. 10 of A Selected Edition of W. D.
    [Show full text]
  • Howellsian Realism in "The Landlord at Lion's Head"
    Giving a character: Howellsian realism in "The landlord at Lion's Head" The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Crowley, John W. 1994. Giving a character: Howellsian realism in "The landlord at Lion's Head". Harvard Library Bulletin 5 (1), Spring 1994: 53-66. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42663824 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA 53 Giving a Character: Howellsian Realism in The Landlord at Lion's Head John W. Crowley find this young man worthy," attested Hawthorne to Emerson, thus giving I Howells one of the best characters in American literary history. Decades after his New England pilgrimage of 1860, W. D. Howells still cherished the memory of Hawthorne as "without alloy one of the finest pleasures of my life." The postu- lant from Ohio, over dinner with James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James T. Fields, had already been ordained by them into the apostolic succes- sion of the New England clerisy. But the laying on of hands by these idols of Howells's youth was less signal an honor than his acceptance by Hawthorne, of whom the Bostonians had all spoken "with the same affection, but the same sense of something mystical and remote in him." Thinking perhaps of Lowell and the other Bostonians, Howells reflected that many great men "wittingly or unwittingly ..
    [Show full text]
  • Fall 2005) Page 1
    The Howellsian, Volume 8, Number 2 (Fall 2005) Page 1 New Series Volume 8, Number 2 The Howellsian Fall 2005 A Message from the Editor Inside this issue: We hope that all our readers have had a pleas- Speech and Howells,” revised from his ant and perhaps even a productive summer. presentation at the ALA conference last From our perspective, it passed too quickly, From the Editor 1 spring; 3) a Call for Papers, with the topics but autumn, too, is a beautiful season, not selected and the deadline for submission of only in the Midwest where W. D. Howells proposals, for the 2006 ALA conference to Howells Society Activities 1 lived before setting out for Italy, but also be held in San Francisco next May; 4) a along the eastern seaboard, where he resided review by Sarah B. Daugherty of the new after his return. This fall, however, leads us biography by Susan Goodman and Carl Howells Abstracts from ALA 2005 3 to think westward, toward San Francisco, Dawson: William Dean Howells: A where the William Dean Howells Society will Writer’s Life , pub- next meet again to present a program now in lished earlier this Jerome Loving, “Twain’s Whittier 5 its initial stage of preparation. We look for- Birthday Speech and Howells” year; and 5) a dues ward to seeing you all there. notice for 2006 Following our editorial message, this Book Review: William Dean 10 with a membership Howells: A Writer’s Life by Susan expanded issue of The Howellsian in- form. Goodman and Carl Dawson.
    [Show full text]
  • Stae
    GEORGE C. CARRINGTON, JR. STAe <ffnwnetibe The World and Art of the Howells Novel Ohio State University Press $6.25 THE IMMENSE COMPLEX DRAMA The World and Art of the Howells Novel GEORGE C. CARRINGTON, JR. One of the most productive and complex of the major American writers, William Dean Howells presents many aspects to his biogra­ phers and critics — novelist, playwright, liter­ ary critic, editor, literary businessman, and Christian Socialist. Mr. Carrington chooses Howells the novelist as the subject of this penetrating examination of the complex relationships of theme, subject, technique, and form in the world of Howells fiction. He attempts to answer such questions as, What happens if we look at the novels of Howells with the irreducible minimum of exter­ nal reference and examine them for meaning? What do their structures tell us? What are their characteristic elements? Is there significance in the use of these elements? In the frequency of their use? In the patterns of their use? Avoiding the scholar-critic's preoccupation with programmatic realism, cultural concerns, historical phenomena, and parallels and influ­ ences, Mr. Carrington moves from the world of technical criticism into Howells' fiction and beyond, into the modern world of anxious, struggling, middle-class man. As a result, a new Howells emerges — a Howells who interests us not just because he was a novelist, but because of the novels he wrote: a Howells who lives as an artist or not at all. George C. Carrington, Jr., is assistant pro­ fessor of English at the Case Institute of Tech­ nology in Cleveland, Ohio.
    [Show full text]
  • William Dean Howells and the Antiurban Tradition 55
    william dean howells and the antiurban tradition a reconsideration gregory I. crider The debate about William Dean Howells' attitudes toward the late nineteenth-century American city involve the much broader question of the place of antiurbanism in American thought. Responding to the charges of H. L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis and other post-World War I critics who had condemned the author as a complacent symbol of the nineteenth-century literary establishment, scholars in the fifties and early sixties portrayed him as a Middle Western rural democrat who spent much of his adult life criticizing urban-industrial America.1 Unfortu­ nately, in attempting to revive Howells' reputation, these critics exag­ gerated his occasional nostalgia for the Ohio village of his youth, leaving the impression that he was an alienated critic of the city, if not genuinely antiurban. Although recent scholars have partly revised this view, critics have generally continued to accept the argument that the author's well- known affinity for socialism, together with his nostalgia for a vanishing countryside, left him an unswerving critic of the city.2 During the years in which scholars were discovering these antiurban sentiments, urban historians and sociologists began challenging the depth and cohesiveness of what had long been accepted as a monolithic, anti- urban tradition, dating back to Jefferson and Crevecoeur, and persisting through the transcendentalists, the pragmatists and literary naturalists, and the Chicago school of urban sociology, to the present. R.
    [Show full text]
  • William Dean Howells and the Seductress- from 'Femme Fatale'
    William Dean Howells and the seductress: From "femme fatale to femme vitale" The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Prioleau, Elizabeth S. 1992. William Dean Howells and the seductress: From "femme fatale to femme vitale". Harvard Library Bulletin 3 (1), Spring 1992: 53-72. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42662022 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA 53 William Dean Howells and the Seductress: From Femme Fatale to Femme Vitale Elizabeth S. Prioleau illiam Dean Howells and the seductress seem an unlikely pair. By tradition, W sirens inhabit the wilder shores of romanticism, not the level plain of real- ism with its "mixed characters," 1 "usual" 2 situations, and complex moral dilemmas. At one point Howells equated coquettes who try to arouse "vivid and violent emotions" 3 with "effectism." Howells coined "effectism" to refer to the cheap, emotional appeals of romanticistic fiction. Nonetheless, coquettes and temptresses 4 pervade his work and comprise some of his most memorable characters. A con- temporary critic, Thomas Perry, said of them: "[Howells's] accomplished experts in the gay science ... are not simply arch or mischievous or appealing but much more ... his coquettes [are] admirable because here as everywhere, Mr. Howells describes what he sees and his eyes are exceed- ingly sharp." 5 ELIZABETH PRIOLEAU is an His portraits of seductresses are acutely observed, vivid, and drawn with finesse.
    [Show full text]
  • Table of Contents
    Volume 21, Number 1 (Fall 2018) The Howellsian The Biannual Newsleter of the William Dean Howells Society “Redtop.” Howells Residence in Belmont, Massachusetts, 1878-1881. McClure’s Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, June 1893. TABLE OF CONTENTS Howells Essay Prize Winner 2017: 2 Lindsey Grubbs “The slow martyrdom of her sickness malady”: William Dean Howells’ “Sketch of Winnie’s Life” Call for Entrants: 2018 Howells Essay Prize Contest 6 Minutes of the Howells Society Business Meeting, May 2018 6 Essay Abstracts: Howells Papers Delivered at ALA 2018, San Francisco 7 Call for Papers: Howells Panels at ALA 2019, Boston 10 Special Event: Visit the Howells Archive at Harvard’s Houghton Library 11 WDH Society Information 12 Volume 22, Number 1 (Fall 2018) HOWELLS ESSAY PRIZE WINNER 2017 “The slow martyrdom of her sickness malady”: William Dean Howells’ “Sketch of Winnie’s Life” Lindsey Grubbs (Emory University) Winifred Howells, the first-born child of realist author Wil- photographs and fourteen of her original poems. Often more liam Dean Howells, was born in Venice, Italy on December 17, hagiography than biography, he presents a saintly figure, likely 1863. Growing up in the company of family friends like Henry spurred in part by guilt over his earlier criticisms. He writes, James and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, she dreamed of be- “every impulse in her was wise and good… She had the will to coming a famous poet. Her father recorded her rhymes before yield, not to withstand; she could not comprehend unkindness, it she could write herself, and at the age of nine or ten was devas- puzzled and dismayed her.
    [Show full text]
  • Representations of Italian Americans in the Early Gilded Age
    Differentia: Review of Italian Thought Number 6 Combined Issue 6-7 Spring/Autumn Article 7 1994 From Italophilia to Italophobia: Representations of Italian Americans in the Early Gilded Age John Paul Russo Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/differentia Recommended Citation Russo, John Paul (1994) "From Italophilia to Italophobia: Representations of Italian Americans in the Early Gilded Age," Differentia: Review of Italian Thought: Vol. 6 , Article 7. Available at: https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/differentia/vol6/iss1/7 This document is brought to you for free and open access by Academic Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Differentia: Review of Italian Thought by an authorized editor of Academic Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. From ltalophilia to ltalophobia: Representations of Italian Americans in the Early Gilded Age John Paul Russo "Never before or since has American writing been so absorbed with the Italian as it is during the Gilded Age," writes Richard Brodhead. 1 The larger part of this American fascination expressed the desire for high culture and gentility, or what Brodhead calls the "aesthetic-touristic" attitude towards Italy; it resulted in a flood of travelogues, guidebooks, antiquarian stud­ ies, historical novels and poems, peaking at the turn of the centu­ ry and declining sharply after World War I. America's golden age of travel writing lasted from 1880 to 1914, and for many Americans the richest treasure of all was Italy. This essay, however, focuses upon Brodhead's other catego­ ry, the Italian immigrant as "alien-intruder": travel writing's gold­ en age corresponded exactly with the period of greatest Italian immigration to the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • When You Come to Cambridge, You Will Find
    Front Hall, 1917 "The house is square, The house was built Getting Around. with Longfellow's study in 1759 for Maj. John Cambridge is a historic where he read and Vassall, a wealthy Tory city with buildings both old and new but with Front Hall, ca. 1870 wrote on the right of who fled Cambridge the door, and a statelier very limited parking. "When you come to on the eve of the Rev­ library behind it; on The easiest way to see Cambridge, you will the left is the drawing- olution. Neither of the some of Cambridge's find George Wash­ room, with the dining- next two owners lived sights including the ington brought down room in its rear. ." in the house for very Longfellow House is to long. Andrew Craigie park in Boston, under from his station on —William Dean the Common, and take Howells, Literary bought the property in the stairs, and stand­ Friends and 1791, and shortly the red line subway to Acquaintance. Harvard Square, the ing in the hall below, thereafter added the end of the line. where he can be bet­ piazzas and rear ell. Drawing Room, ca. 1870 To pay his debts, his From the square walk ter seen. In his place widow was forced to down Brattle Street you will see an Old Dutch clock, whose take in lodgers, one of about 1 kilometer (0.6 silver chimes will lull you to sleep at whom was Longfellow. mile) to Longfellow In 1843, Nathan Apple- House. On your way night. At the half-hours it strikes the you will pass two colo­ ton bought the house coming hour, to give timely warning.
    [Show full text]
  • 718 the NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY the New Education Is
    718 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY the New Education is won.” While MIT continued to experience fi- nancial problems, its reputation as the nation’s leading science and engineering school flourished. Although there is little to fault in this fine biography, some careless errors do creep into the work, such as when Angulo notes that the fall of Fort Sumter marked “the end” rather than the beginning of the Civil War (p. 102). Such slips, however, are few in number. At the same time, readers will surely want to compile “wish lists” of topics they would like to have seen treated in greater detail, such as student life at MIT, of which little is said. After reading Angulo’s discussion of William Rogers’s positive but extremely cautious position on the admission of women (with reference to the case of Ellen Swallow, MIT’s first woman graduate), this reader wanted to know more about how many women actually graduated from MIT in the late nineteenth century, but the author is silent on this matter—as he is on whether African Americans were admitted to the Institute during these years. These omissions result in an incomplete picture of MIT during the Rogers, Runkle, and Walker presidencies. That said, Angulo adds a great deal to our understanding (and ap- preciation) of William Rogers and his role in shaping MIT during its foundational years. Rogers emerges as a major figure in the history of American higher education, a reformer who played a key role in breaking the hold of the classical tradition while pointing college edu- cators in a new and innovative “scientific” direction.
    [Show full text]
  • Orientalist Decoration in Realist Aesthetics from William Dean Howells to Sui Sin Far
    Studies in American Fiction is a journal of articles and reviews on the prose fiction of the United States. Founded by James Nagel and later edited by Mary Loeffelholz, SAF was published by the Department of English, Northeastern University, from 1973 through 2008. Studies in American Fiction is indexed in the MLA Bibliography and the American Humanities Index. Studies in American Fiction Volume 36 Spring 2008 Number 1 June Hee Chung, Asian Object Lessons: Orientalist Decoration in Realist Aesthetics from William Dean Howells to Sui Sin Far Copyright © 2008 Northeastern University ISSN 0091-8083 ASIAN OBJECT LESSONS: ORIENTALIST DECORATION IN REALIST AESTHETICS FROM WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS TO SUI SIN FAR June Hee Chung DePaul University It has been well established that despite differences in American realists’ and naturalists’ political philosophies, these writers nonethe- less shared aesthetic principles that were informed by their interest in representing the nation’s democratic masses. In particular, both move- ments aspired to a simplicity in style and a transparent treatment of their subject matter. Thus William Dean Howells, champion of the United States’ middle class, was also one of the few writers of his day to defend striking immigrant laborers in Chicago’s 1886 Haymarket tragedy. In his December 1887 “Editor’s Study” col- umn for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Howells joined his sym- pathies for America’s working and middle classes to his aesthetic values when he asserts that “hitherto the mass of common men have been afraid to apply their own simplicity, naturalness, and honesty to the appreciation of the beautiful.”1 Elitist Frank Norris also advocated a straightforward style, but he did so to apply Social Darwinism’s scientific principles of objectivity to the working and lower-middle classes.
    [Show full text]