сourse: A Romance with the American Dream How to Become “Healthy, Wealthy and Wise” -- A Discussion of Dreams and Success in 19th-century American Literature Author: I.V.Morozova

Just think of all the self-help and personal growth programs that have appeared in the past couple of years! There are spiritual development trainings, trainings on how to grow stronger and develop self-confidence, how to take control of your life, or simply personal development. There are a lot of names, but the essence is the same, and few stop to think that all these programs are just modern versions of the idea of self-help and self-development that arose in the 19th century, not without some help from America. The concept of self-help was explained by Scotsman Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) in his book Self- Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct (1859). In his work, Smiles talks about the necessity of developing and maintaining moral purity in oneself, which must be combined with an active life, hard physical labor, a thirst for knowledge, and perseverance in accomplishing one’s goals.

Samuel Smiles Sir George Reid © National Portrait Gallery

The book contained biographies of well-known European industrialists and inventors, whose entire lives were a testament to this postulate. Smiles showed that “Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth — the result of free individual action, energy, and independence… It may be of comparatively little consequence how a man is governed from without, whilst everything depends upon how he governs himself from within.” The book became a bestseller in America: the author’s thoughts accorded well with the American view of life, where everyone relied solely on himself. Even though most of the outstanding individuals described in Smiles’ work were British, the author did, in fact, neatly sum up the process of spiritual development taking place in America in the first half of the 19th century, in that to a great extent he shared American views on transcendentalism, the first national American philosophy. Transcendentalism, from the Latin transcendens, which means “to move beyond,” can rightly be considered the philosophy of American individualism. This philosophy, formed by intellectuals (clerics, teachers, writers), incorporated many elements of German idealism, as well as Eastern philosophy, adapting them to the needs of American spiritual development. The head of the Transcendentalists was Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who presented this philosophical movement as an internal form of spirituality, which could be expressed in the language of poetry and the imagination. This is why there were so many writers among the Transcendentalists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), author of The Scarlet Letter, and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1863), renowned for Walden; or, Life in the Woods, his book about his two-year stay in the woods. The great poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) also shared his ideas on transcendentalism.

Ralph Waldo Nathaniel Hawthorne Henry David Walt Whitman Emerson Mathew Brady Thoreau Mathew Brady © Beinecke Rare Book and © Library of Congress Prints B. D. Maxham © The U.S. National Archives Manuscript Library and Photographs Division © National Portrait Gallery Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

According to the Transcendentalists, the physical world of Nature is a reflection of the Divine. This means that man and his intellect are divine in their very essence; therefore it is imperative to concentrate on understanding one’s own thoughts, feelings and emotions as a reflection of the divine plan and predestination. Transcendentalism promoted a new understanding of the individual, his connection to nature, society and the universe, and the importance of self-knowledge in the life of each person. This understanding of personality led to a new formula for American individualism within Transcendentalism – the doctrine of self-reliance. The basis for this doctrine is the idea that only man himself knows what he is capable of, but he cannot realize this until he tests himself. “Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string,” wrote Emerson. “Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.” The philosophy of self-reliance, which was fully expounded in Emerson’s essay of the same name (“Self-Reliance,” 1841), means not only the transformation of the personality itself, but also political adherence to the ideals of democracy. Emerson was convinced that democracy provided the best environment for the active development of each individual. “The Self” became a central category in the life and activity of Americans. Important social movements and ideas developed within Transcendentalism, glorifying the total freedom of the individual. First and foremost was abolitionism – the movement for the freedom of the slaves. Emerson tried in an eloquent and accessible form to explain the terrible essence and consequences of slavery: “I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom,” he wrote. “If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.” The Transcendentalists also campaigned to give women more rights and freedoms. In his lectures, Emerson called on women to fight for their rights in education, property, political participation, and the life of the nation. He maintained that if women did not have the right to vote, they should not be taxed. It is no accident that the editor of The Dial, the journal of the Transcendentalists, was a woman – the talented journalist and literary critic Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, known as Margaret Fuller, (1810-1850), renowned for her feminist work Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1843).

Margaret Fuller Josiah Johnson Hawes © National Portrait Gallery

The Transcendentalists rejected any form of violence, and their favorite means of standing against the authorities was civil disobedience. The citizen’s right to peaceful protest was defended by Henry David Thoreau: in demonstrating the right of citizens to express their disagreement with the politics of the state, he himself refused to pay the poll tax. In this manner, he demonstrated his disagreement with the government’s policies regarding the War with Mexico (1846-1848), for which he was put in jail. On the basis of his own experience he developed the principle of civil disobedience in his tract “Civil Disobedience” (1849), in which Thoreau emphasized that citizens are obliged to peacefully oppose the force of the government so that this force would not become all- encompassing. It is Thoreau who promoted the idea of vegetarianism, which became popular in the 20th century. In his main work Walden; or Life in the Woods, (1854), he writes: “No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.” For Thoreau, the decision not to eat meat is the beginning of spiritual transformation. Later, the ideas of Transcendentalism would find a hold not only in America, but all over the world. Transcendentalism inspired such different individuals as L.N. Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi. In the first half of the 19th century, social and philosophical concepts were developed affirming the American national character as that of the self-made man, relying only on himself, on his “I.” It is especially important to note that this reliance on oneself and on individualism did not mean promoting an egoistic attitude towards life. On the contrary, it was an attempt to affirm the creative nature of man, capable of changing his own world for the better, thereby making the whole world a better place. Walden; or Life in the Woods

This was during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, whose name is given to an entire decade in the country’s history, and who is considered the hero of his time. His administration, which lasted from 1829-1837, was a period of socio-economic and political reform in the U.S. He was born into a humble family, but, thanks to his own determination, received a good legal education and pursued a successful career as a lawyer, then as an entrepreneur and later as a plantation owner. During the Anglo-American , Jackson gained a reputation as a talented general, and finally turned to politics. Jackson grew and became famous in the American West, spending a good part of his life among people who were building their futures with blood and sweat. He knew the life of the common man first-hand. To a large extent, this determined his future political creed. One of the main principles that guided Jackson was individual liberty and the sovereignty of peoples. He was convinced that no one had the right to interfere in the life of an individual or a community of individuals if their activities were not against the law. The first half of the 19th century in the U.S. were the years of the Industrial Revolution and rapid westward expansion, with more and more Americans on the move in search of new lands to settle. The purchase of the Louisiana territory from France in 1803 almost doubled the size of the country. In the Northeast, factories were springing up and farming was developing at a lively pace. Immigration from Europe also increased, with 2.45 million new Americans arriving in the U.S. between 1820 and 1850. From 1800 through 1860, the country’s population increased by more than one-third every ten years. Cheap land, and the chance to start one’s own enterprise with few competitors, prompted people to move to the new territories, which led to the construction and rapid development of new cities. New names appeared on the map: Chicago (1803), Astoria (1811), Montgomery (1819), Indianapolis (1821), Tallahassee (1824), Milwaukee (1833), and many others. The American city is a special organism, characterized by scale, diversity, fluidity, volatility, and movement. The cities did not present clear class barriers that could get in the way of young entrepreneurs. As (1843-1916) wrote in his novella Daisy Miller (1876), Europeans were shocked by the fact that the courier employed by Daisy’s family had dinner with them. This atmosphere fostered initiative and an entrepreneurial spirit; the concept of the “self-made man,” which stemmed from Enlightenment ideas of respectable labor, gained a whole new shade of meaning in the Age of Jackson. It was in these new cities that the first American businessmen appeared. The term “businessman” itself existed in the 17th century, but did not enjoy wide use until the first decade of the 19th century, in America. The first American businessmen were fundamentally different from the European men of commerce, such as those in the works of Charles Dickens. U.S. businessmen were not just working to line their pockets, they were working for the common good. The money they made from their enterprises went into construction and the development of cities. The early American businessman was an enthusiast who believed in combining social interests with his personal prosperity. Newspapers and magazines in the first half of the 19th century are full of tales of successful people; the image of the businessman became popular, embodying the qualities important to America at the time: individualism, boldness, a keen mind, and an entrepreneurial spirit. Stories of men like William B. Ogden (1805-1877), who became a railroad magnate and the first mayor of Chicago, or Daniel Drake (1785-1852), a talented doctor who helped to establish the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati, served as examples to others. The turning point in the formation of the American character and its relationship to the country came during the Civil War (1861-1865). America had long tried to maintain a balance between two different socio-economic systems: the free, industrializing North, and the slave-owning, agrarian South. This clash of interests was obvious very early on, from the signing of the Constitution in the 18th century, but as a result of a whole series of events in the first half of the 19th century (the spread of abolitionism; Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in 1831; the expansion of slavery into the new territories after the annexation of Texas in 1845; the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required that all escaped slaves be returned to their masters, and which mandated harsh punishment not only for the runaways, but for those who assisted them; etc.), the conflict grew into armed confrontation. The South was defeated, slavery was abolished, and the U.S. entered the final phase of its national formation. This stage was characterized by unprecedented economic growth, on the one hand, with President ’s economic program providing the basis. Lincoln paid attention to the development of the banking business, telegraph, and railroads, and after the war, major national projects began, such as the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Wages rose sharply, and a new wealthy class was formed by those favored by fortune during this stage of intense entrepreneurial activity. On the other hand, the country was mired in corruption scandals, when enormous fortunes were accumulated through less than ethical means. The American cultural elite was divided in its attitude towards these changes in society, but more often than not they were pessimistic about the modern era. Take, for example, the view of Ulysses S. Grant (1822 – 1885) expressed by Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918), grandson of one American president and great-grandson of another. In Adams’ opinion, Grant’s presidency (1869-877) was an argument against evolution: “The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant, was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin,” he wrote in his autobiography. Walt Whitman, the bard of American democracy, was also disappointed in the way things were going, as he made clear in his essay “Democratic Vistas:” “The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official services of America…, in all their branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; …The great cities reek with respectable as much as non- respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain. … money-making is our magician’s serpent, remaining to-day sole master of the field.” Writer and literary critic William Dean Howells (1837-1920) lent his voice to the negative chorus on business and businessmen in his novel The Rise of Silas Lapham, (1885). The book tells a rags- to-riches story in which a simple family is transformed into nouveaux riches. Their aristocratic airs are comical, and their unbridled vanity leads to the loss of their fortune and a return to their humble status. It is no accident that the final third of the 19th century was crowned with the surprisingly accurate term “The ” – an ironic take on the traditional image of a Golden Age. The name was invented by (born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910), in his novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), the great writer’s first major work, written in conjunction with Charles Dudley Warner, (1829-1900). The character of Senator Dillworthy personifies a new type of politician, for whom the ends justify the means, no matter what moral detours he must take to get there. This cynic has a good grasp of business, and knows the rules of the entrepreneurial world: “The business prosperity of the world, is only a bubble of credit and speculation,” he said. For Mark Twain, Congress is just a group of unprincipled swindlers plundering the government treasury, like the delegate from a distant territory, who “was recognized as the first man of his commonwealth and its fittest representative.” As Twain puts it: “The Hon. Higgins had not come to serve his country in Washington for nothing. The appropriation which he had engineered through Congress for the maintenance of the Indians in his Territory, would have made all those savages rich if it had ever got to them.”

Марк Твен Чарльз Дадли Уорнер A. F. Bradley © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

This same novel creates the prototype of the man of fortune, striving for the American Dream. This was the character Colonel Beriah Sellers, a good-natured bumbler, endlessly inventing schemes to make mountains of gold, but not harsh or cynical enough to make them happen. Beriah Sellers was one of Mark Twain’s first heroes; much later, in 1905, he remembered his creation with irony: “Sixty years ago optimist and fool were not synonymous terms. This is a greater change than that wrought by science and invention. It is the mightiest change that was ever wrought in the world in any sixty years since creation.” The Gilded Age was an important turning point in the view of the American Dream and the Self- Made Man. The polarity of views was expressed most sharply in a literary clash between Mark Twain and (1832-1899), conducted both long-distance and face-to-face. Alger was one of the foremost embodiments of the American Dream and the self-made man, the author of several rags-to-riches novels whose titles speak for themselves: Fame and Fortune (1868), Mark the Match Boy (1869), Ben the Luggage Boy (1870), From Canal Boy to President (1881), From Farm Boy to Senator (1882), Abraham Lincoln, the Backwoods Boy (1883), etc.

Horatio Alger © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

His books boiled down to an extended, detailed recipe for success, of the type suggested by Benjamin Franklin. Alger attained fame in 1867 with his first major novel, Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks. The novel takes place entirely on the streets of New York City, where the novel’s hero, Dick, who taught himself reading, writing and arithmetic, gradually transforms from a vagabond into a respected member of society. New York is portrayed from the main hero’s point of view: it is a city divided between the rich and successful and those who live in dire poverty. Dick is not simply poor: he is a beggar, as we understand from the very beginning of the novel. “His bedchamber had been a wooden box half full of straw, on which the young bootblack had reposed his weary limbs, and slept as soundly as if it had been a bed of down. “ Dick is not resigned to his fate, however; he studies people who had been poor, but who had achieved success. They are now ready to help boys like they themselves had been. For example, the owner of a bookstore had once been a newspaper delivery boy, but due to honest, hard work, became a wealthy gentleman. Dick is poor, but he is surrounded by successful people, which gives him faith that all he has to do is try and he will make it, becoming a respectable member of society. Alger devotes special attention to the hero’s moment of awakening, when he reexamines his life and realizes that he has been wasting his time. Alger wants to emphasize that the main thing is to want change, to take that first step, and never stop listening to your inner voice. Alger’s main task is to inspire children who read the book to make changes in their own lives; he wants to show them how easy it is to create one’s own life, to be more responsible. This is why Alger does not show us Dick’s entire destiny, but concentrates on one day, on one act that serves as the impetus for all of the positive changes in Dick’s life. Right from the start, Alger points out Dick’s superiority over the other boys, giving him many positive traits. Like Charles Dickens, Alger does not explain how Dick managed to stay kind and honest in the company of street urchins. He paints him as a model child, generous and full of optimism, friendly, honest, and brave. He is an exemplary hero, the embodiment of Franklin’s famous virtues, as expressed in his immortal aphorisms: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise!” or “It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.” The obvious moral of Horatio Alger’s novels is: listen to your conscience and you will be happy. For Alger, material prosperity and success are inextricably linked to moral upbringing. The main goal of his texts is to set a good example, to inspire, to make young people believe in their own strength and to give them hope that their lives can follow the path of his heroes. Alger’s novels were hugely successful, and gave rise to the “Horatio Alger myth,” in which the main themes were optimism, success, possibility and hope. This myth is a reflection of the American Dream, and the faith in the possibilities that America offers. However, Alger’s novels, which have little literary merit, prompted sharp criticism from major wordsmiths, who dismissed the tradition of moralistic novels in American literature. (1836-1907), for example, first established the tradition of mocking the “good boys” from Alger’s novels and Sunday school books in his semiautobiographical novel with the provocative title The Story of a Bad Boy (1870). His Tom Bailey is not exactly a model of good behavior: he dreams of travel and adventure, and even prepares for life on an island, but when his father dies, he grows up fast and gets to work.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Story of a Bad Boy © Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Fields, Osgood, & Company Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Mark Twain continued and refined this initiative. In the mid-1870s Twain created a parody of Alger’s novels, turning their preachy theme on its head: The Story of the Bad Little Boy (1875) and The Story of the Good Little Boy (1875). With immense irony, in a style approaching black humor, Twain shows that real life has little to do with Ben Franklin’s ideal. The “bad little boy,” who disdains decency and morals, has great success in all his illegal endeavors. When Jim, the “bad little boy,” goes to steal an apple, “the limb didn’t break, and he didn’t fall and break his arm, and get torn by the farmer’s great dog, and then languish on a sick bed for weeks, and repent and become good. Oh! no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and came down all right; and he was all ready for the dog too, and knocked him endways with a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange… Nothing like it in any of the Sunday-school books… And he grew up, and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all with an axe one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the Legislature.”

The Story of the Good Little Boy The Story of the Bad Little Boy True Williams True Williams © University of California Libraries © University of California Libraries

The story of “the good little boy,” by contrast, is a pompous depiction of good deeds and the expectation of reward, but our hero keeps getting into nasty situations that the original genre never included: “He always obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at Sabbath-school. He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment told him it was the most profitable thing he could do… But somehow nothing ever went right with this good little boy; nothing ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere; and it all happened just the other way. When he found Jim Blake stealing apples, and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little boy who fell out of a neighbor’s apple-tree and broke his arm, Jim fell out of the tree too, but he fell on him, and broke his arm, and Jim wasn’t hurt at all.” It is important to note that Mark Twain was not just making fun of novels like Alger’s, he was making fun of the very basis for those books – Ben Franklin’s virtuous ideal. Back in 1870, he had written a humorous pamphlet “The Late Benjamin Franklin,” in which he ridiculed the great enlightener’s most famous aphorisms, as well as those who tried to follow his teachings blindly, and to bring up their children by them: “With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work all day and then sit up nights and let on to be studying algebra by the light of a smouldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do that also or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them. Not satisfied with these proceedings, he had a fashion of living wholly on bread and water, and studying astronomy at meal time--a thing which has brought affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin’s pernicious biography. His maxims were full of animosity toward boys. Nowadays a boy cannot follow out a single natural instinct without tumbling over some of those everlasting aphorisms and hearing from Franklin on the spot… If he wants to spin his top when he is done work, his father quotes, ‘Procrastination is the thief of time.’ If he does a virtuous action, he never gets anything for it, because ‘Virtue is its own reward.’ And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his natural rest, because Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity-- Early to bed and early to rise Make a man healthy and wealthy and wise. As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.” This pamphlet, along with the stories of the good and bad little boys, full of wit and irony, were, in a sense, the prologue to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), the very opposite of sickly sweet stories about virtuous little boys who attain success in life through their good conduct. Tom is a naughty boy, who hates pompous, virtuous people and exemplary boys. He is able to turn his gray, monotonous life into an interesting world full of mystery and adventure. He embodies the freedom of America, where all roads are open, and all dreams attainable. In Tom Sawyer, Twain shows us that Franklin’s dogmatic rules of diligence and piety are against human nature. His Tom Sawyer is a real American, who relies only on the rules of Nature, and displays genuine knowledge gained through experience. In Tom, life itself triumphs, free and bright. It is not virtuous people who help Tom force his friends to paint the fence in his place, and even get paid for it in marbles and firecrackers: it is his natural abilities. There is, of course, brilliant irony on the teachings of the great enlightener: “(Aunt Polly) was so overcome by the splendor of his achievement that she took him into the closet and selected a choice apple and delivered it to him, along with an improving lecture upon the added value and flavor a treat took to itself when it came without sin through virtuous effort.” But in reality it was exactly the opposite: it was not Tom’s labor, but his wits that put him on the path to success. Mark Twain uses irony in his works to belittle and refute the idea that only good, honest work can bring success. He parodies the themes and characters in Alger’s novels to show that the widespread doctrine of success is groundless. He shows that the ideals of the Enlightenment do not fit the spirit of a different age, but his faith in Americans as uniquely energetic, who rely only on themselves, is unparalleled. This disconnect between ethics and reality signaled a new stage in the history of the American Dream and the possibilities of the self-made man. This discussion of the capabilities of Americans, of their character, distinguished by individual responsibility, ran through the entire 19th century. Self-reliance is the main thesis of this discussion, but at different stages of development the tone changed significantly, from unconditional faith in success as a reward for honest hard work and moral purity, to ironic doubt in the reliability of such assertions. Basic and additional literature:

Boorstin, D., The Americans: The National Experience, translated from the English by Y. Zakharovish, V. Nesterov. M. Progress, 1993

Zverev, A.M., The World of Mark Twain, Moscow, Detskaya Literatura, 1985

Y. N. Zasursky, M. Korneva, E. Stetsenko, editors, History of American Literature in 6 Volumes, Editors’ Separate Edition, M, IMLI Russian Academy of Sciences, 2000, vol. 5, p. 573

Lerner, M., The Development of American Civilization, Moscow, 1992

Osipova, E.F., Henry Thoreau. A Sketch of his Works, Leningrad, 1985

Osipova, E.F., Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Writer and his Time, Leningrad, 1991

Osipova, E.F., Ralph Emerson and American Romanticism, St. Petersburg, 2001

Harpster J., The Railroad Tycoon Who Built Chicago: A Biography of William B. Ogden. Carbondale, 2009

Making America. The Society and Culture in the USA. Washing ton DC, 1992

Tebbel, J., From Rags to Riches. Horatio Alger Jr. and the American Dream / Designer R. A. Kaseler. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963