Studies in American Literature

STUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE Volume XXX SETTING IN THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY OF LOCAL COLOR i86j-igoo by ROBERT D. RHODE Texas A & I University 1975 MOUTON THE HAGUE . PARIS © Copyright 1975 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers ISBN 90 279 3281 6 Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., The Hague TO MY WIFE Dorothy Rhode Sine qua non PREFACE Literary historians of the American local color movement (1865- 1900), both contemporary and more recent, have offered various explanations for the rise of this peculiar phenomenon and various judgments regarding its literary significance. Although the movement was first identified nearly a century ago, there has not been, until recently, much sifting and analyzing of its literary content by serious scholars, with the single exception of Fred Lewis Pattee, whose American Literature Since 1870 appeared in 1916. Among the authors commonly associated with the movement, one stands apart from the rest - Mark Twain, whose clear genius seemed destined to overflow the local color mold and to establish him as a center of critical acclaim for work done without, as well as within, the local color tradition. By 1900, when the American reading public had become bored with most of the lush output of local magazine fiction, the term "local color" had acquired a pejorative meaning. Thus it is not surprising that much of the literature to which the term applied remained, at least for the first several decades of the Twentieth Century, well beneath the level of scholarly attention. At the present time a revival of interest on the part of scholars as well as readers seems to be in the making. New editions and collections of local color stories are being published, as well as numer- ous biographical and critical studies of individual authors. Wheth- er this interest springs from neo-Romanticism, neo-Primitivism, anti-urbanism, ecological idealism, or some other form of spiritual yearning, one hesitates to say. Yet it is evident that a practically "lost" generation of American authors is being recovered for the present-day reader. 6 PREFACE This book, based upon a review of the short fiction of represen- tative figures of the movement, and of many of the contemporary and recent pronouncements applied to them, is not intended to be comprehensive; it merely suggests the possibility of a different way of viewing the whole body of local color literature, of a different way of assessing its significance in American literary history. Gratitude is expressed to Professor Theodore Hornberger for having directed, at the University of Texas, my doctoral research upon which this work is based; to Texas A&I University for a research grant to defray expenses incurred in the preparation of the manuscript; to the publishers of College English and Colby Library Quarterly for permission to reprint, in Chapters I and IV respective- ly, brief portions of articles previously published in their pages; and to Mrs. Ruth Word for her patient work as typist and proof- reader. Robert D. Rhode Texas A&I University CONTENTS Preface 5 1. Introduction: Approach, Definitions, and the Regional Factor 9 2. Setting as Background and Ornament 38 3. Setting in Close Relation to Character 82 4. Setting Personified 136 5. Conclusion 166 Bibliography 174 Index 185 TO MY WIFE Sine qua non 1 INTRODUCTION: APPROACH, DEFINITIONS, AND THE REGIONAL FACTOR APPROACH This study will deal with the literature of one important phase of the history of American fiction during the latter part of the Nine- teenth Century. That phase, commonly referred to as "the local color movement", found its expression mainly in a new fictional form, the modern American short story with an emphasis on setting. Whitman's glorious prophecy that all of the regions of America would voice the essences of their localities in a cooperative nationalism did achieve a degree of fulfillment in the local color fiction from 1865-1900. The abundance of land and the variety of topographical and climatic conditions in this country have perhaps made American authors as a whole more conscious of their outdoor physical surroundings than European writers.1 This interest was clearly evident in the work of the American frontier humorists in the decades before the Civil War. And, as might be expected, the War itself brought on an increasing awareness of landscape and scenery as a result of a number of large-scale shifts in population, exposing new regions to closer observation. We must not assume, however, that the popular interest in land- scapes was a wholly autochthonous element in Amercian literature. That this interest had important European antecedents is beyond question; yet it drew much of its inspiration from the unique social and topographical conditions prevailing in rural America just after the Civil War. Conditions were then so favorable in American 1 Cf. Louis Wann, The Rise of Realism: American Literaturefrom 1860 to 1888 (New York, 1937), 2. 10 INTRODUCTION soil that minor transplants from European fiction produced in America a massive florescence that dominated our literary destiny for a full generation. The American genre of local color possessed a confident, patriotic, national spirit, as historican A. H. Quinn observes: After the war, which preserved the Union, it seemed as though fiction had a mission to portray all sections of the reunited country to each other and by interpreting the racial strains which made up the United States provide that understanding which would make possible the "more perfect union" of which the founders of the Republic had dreamed. It seems at first glance a paradox that the emphasis upon local color should tend toward a solidarity of feeling, but to those who realize that the strength of the Union depends upon the freedom of each section to govern its own local affairs, there is no paradox.2 The scope of this study of setting in the story of local color will not include all of the post-Civil-War fiction of America. "It would obviously be impossible," Quinn tells us, "even to chronicle all the fiction, especially the short stories, which from 1870 on capital- ized on this interest"3 in local areas. Since some restriction, even though arbitrary, must be made, it has been thought best to con- centrate upon one literary type - the short story - clearly the fore- most vehicle in both quality and quantity. Carl Van Doren goes so far as to say of Harte and his followers that when they attempted longer patterns, they "did little more than expand short stories or string them together on a casual thread; and that the history of local color must be left primarily to the historian of the short story".4 Occasionally it will be desirable to make use of some of the more important novels and novelettes, though the short story alone exhibits most of the significant aspects of the American local color movement. One other restriction has been found necessary: only the ten chief figures in the localized story, representing four great geo- graphical areas in America, have been given individual treatment. Harte and Twain represent the Far West; Cable, Murfree, Page and Allen represent the South; Jewett and Freeman represent New England; and Eggleston and Garland represent the Middle 2 American Fiction, An Historical and Critical Survey (New York, 1936), 373. 3 Idem. 4 The American Novel, revised and enlarged (New York, 1940), 203. INTRODUCTION 11 West. Almost every conceivable use of the American scene appears in the works of these prime artists. During the period 1865-1900 the short story was not only the most popular narrative vehicle, but was also the principal focus of experimentation in widely scattered parts of America. The local color movement in an intellectual sense can be viewed either as an effect, or, and perhaps more wisely, as an aspect of various philo- sophical, scientific, and cultural developments in the intellectual activity of the nation. For the purpose of definition and clarifica- tion, some of these broader matters must be briefly touched upon in this introductory chapter before the analysis of the techniques of individual authors can begin. Before proceeding to definitions, however, a word needs to be said in justification of the unusual approach in this study. A good deal of competent writing about the local colorists has been done by biographers, historians, critics, and anthologists. Various aspects of the fiction of the period have been treated. But curiously, very meager attention has been given to the analysis of setting functions in local color fiction, clearly the chief and the most distinctive element in local color fiction. The chief historian of the fiction of this period, Fred Lewis Pattee,5 has made enlightening comments upon the treatment of setting by various individual writers, but his estimates have been more broadly critical than analytical and comprehensive. V. L. Parrington's6 work in this period remains incomplete, unfortun- ately, and the completed sections deal with the literary use of back- grounds only in a very general way. The history of American fiction by A. H. Quinn gives relatively little attention to this phase of the local color movement, usually merely identifying the particular authors with the regions to which they belong and commenting upon the general point of view from which they worked. Other historians and anthologists of the period, such as Granville Hicks,7 5 The Development of the American Short Story, An Historical Survey (New York and London, 1923), and A History of American Literature Since 1870 (New York, 1916).

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