Mark Twain's Desperate Naturalism

This dissertation has been 64-8370 microfilmed exactly as received COLEMAN, Philip Yates, 1931- MARK TWAIN'S DESPERATE NATURALISM. University of Illinois, Ph.D., 1964 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by PHILIP YATES COLEMAN 1964 MARK TWAIN'S DESPERATE NATURALISM BY PHILIP YATES COLEMAN B.S., Southern Illinois University, 1952 M.A., University of Illinois, 1957 THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois, 1964 Urbana, Illinois UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS THE GRADUATE COLLEGE -JANUARY 3, 1964 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION RV PHILIP YATES COLEMAN FMTTTT FD MARK TWAIN'S DESPERATE NATURALISM BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ^•g•" f s>^\ iIn" cnargCharge 0of1 xttsii s 0\a&3[ It)« [Kr4ju>i^ tyead of DepartmenDeparti t Recommendation concurred inf Committee Jk«JUl£: on Final Examination! t Required for doctor's degree but not for master's D517 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page I. THE MORAL DETERMINISM OF WHAT IS MAN'., 1 II. PRESBYTERIANISM ON THE FRONTIER ....... * , , , 46 III. INNOCENTS ABROAD- THE PERPLEXED EYE 74 IV. A WRITER OF BOOKS ................... 110 V, ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN: IRONY, HOAX AND DELUSION 149 VI. A CONNECTICUT YANKEE JN KING ARTHUR'S COURT: DEFEAT OF THE DEMOCRAT .............. 173 VII. LATER YEARS: THE JAUNDICED EYE .......... 204 VIII. OVERSET .0.OO0......0O.OOO0.O0... 255 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 ui CHAPTER I THE MORAL DETERMINISM OF WHAT IS MAN? Present-day apologLSts for Mark Twain have been forced into the posi tion of saying that although he was inconsistent, shallow, materialistic, and afraid to attack the problems of his day, he wrote a great novel: Huckleberry Finn is a glorious accident. In other words, most Twain cntics from Van Wyck Brooks on have argued or assumed that in terms of ideas he was inadequately prepared for novel writing. I believe that he was adequately prepared with ideas and that his world view, while not profound by a trained philosopher's standards, was both carefully thought out and in harmony with the philosophies of many of his better educated contemporaries. I further believe that his world view informed his early work as well as the late and gave the novels their strength. The weaknesses of his novels are evidence of his artistic rather than his philosophic shortcomings. Twain's philosophy is most fully explicated in a work he referred to in his later years as his "gospel" -- What Is Man? This "gospel" has been ignored by some critics and variously interpreted by others, but in very few cases has it been carefully related to Twain's fiction. Three doctoral dissertations have given it more than passing treatment. Frank Flowers, in "Mark Twain's Theories of Morality, nl makes an extensive study of What Is Man? in order to - derive its moral precepts. He emphasizes (over-emphasizes, it seems to me) Twain's function as a moralist. In so doing he establishes one important pomt, which should be more fully recognized, namely, that What Is Man? is 1 2 neither an immoral or an amoral document. Even when Twain uses the term "moral sense" as the characteristic which ranks man as the lowest of animals, he does so for a moral purpose and from a moral perspective. Flowers tends to deny and ignore Twain's deterministic statements rather than deal with the apparent inconsistency; however, in his study of the relationship of What Is_ Man' to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he shows rather effectively that Twain's "gospel" was central to his world view very early in his career. Paul Carter, in "Mark Twain's Political and Social Ideas, " summarizes What Is Man? concisely, pointing out the apparent inconsistency of moralism and determinism as he goes, and studies the social ramifications of such a the ory by excerpting statements from many of Twain's later works. However, he doea not discuss it as an element which shaped Twain's fiction. Since he quotes liberally from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (accepting the Yan kee's statements as Twain's), he tends to overstate Twain's faith in training. o Thomas Bond Burnham, in "Mark Twain and the Machine, " deals with the mechanistic terms of Twain's philosophy as one aspect of his interest in machines. He visualizes Twain's interest in the Paige typesetter and Szczepanik's Telelectroscope as an interest that led Tvain to view the machine as an ideal and man as an inferior (because not ideal) creator of the machine. HLS account of Twain's connections with the typesetter and telelectroscope is good biography and his study of Twain's "rational-mystical dualities" is an interesting attempt to explain Twain's mind. Of these three dissertations, only Flowers* attempts to study Twain's writing in terms of his philosophy, to apply the thought to the work rather 3 than derive the thought from it. As I have said, Flowers' restricted interest in morality puts severe limits on the scope of his study. More recently, a brief study by Alexander E. Jones, "Mark Twain and the Determinism of What Is Man*?, n has summarized previous investigations, pointing out that What Is Man? antedates his period of despair and that Twain's determinism is not fatalism but is instead a "doctrine of hope.... An examina tion of this sweet and gentle 'gospel' is not without its rewards. For What Is Man? provides a key to Twain's philosophy during the years of his greatest literary achievement. "5 Unfortunately, Jones does not proceed to relate the philosophy to the works. In his discussion of Mark Twain's "Religious-Ethical Ideas" in Eight American Authors, Harry H. Clark cites Gladys Bellamy's Mark Twain as a Literary Artist (1950) as "one of the best over-all analyses" of Twain's think ing and calls attention to the four "bases" of Twain's mind -- moralism, de terminism, pessimism, and "patheticism. " Clark pomts out that Mrs. Bellamy "emphasizes the logical inconsistency of moralism and determmism" and con cludes, after a survey of less successful studies, that "a full-length, carefully balanced book on Mark Twain's religLous-ethical ideas.. is much needed. " I cannot supply the work that Clark asks for in the scope of this paper, but I do propose a study which leads in that direction. Mrs. Bellamy's work is remarkably broad, but, disappointingly, it is not deep. For instance, in spite of her several references to What Is Man' there is no discussion of it which amounts to more than a summarizing sen tence or epitomizing excerpt. Early in her book she says, "On the one hand, 4 he was the rabid reformer, eager to uplift, instruct, and purify mankind. On the other, he was the dogmatic determinist, preaching as the text of his 'Gospel' that the inborn disposition of mankind is 'a thing which Is as permanent as rock, and never undergoes any actual or genuine change between cradle and grave' -- a doctrine which in effect renders useless all attempts to uplift, instruct, or purify mankind. She repeats the same excerpt in the middle of her book, as "the text of his 'Gospel, '"7 but towards the end of her book, she says "The philosophic nihilism of What Is Man? (In which the chief idea is that man cannot be blamed for his worthlessness, since the malevolent intelligence which created the universe controls his actions) contrasts sharply with Twain's rage at mankind* ° Her summarizing excerpts from What Is Man? are contradictory; fur thermore, neither of them gets at the central point of What Is Man? -- a point that is not easily epitomized in one neat phrase. There were apparent inconsist encies in Twain's personality -- just as there are in any man. However, the inconsistency Mrs. Bellamy has chosen to emphasize is (1) much more apparent than real; (2) an inconsistency held in common by all determinists who write about it since their very effort to write shows that their determinism has not made them stop striving; and (3) is also an inconsistency of Calvinists who be lieve in predestination and of scientists whose every experiment has as its premise that the world is determined, but who hope to improve the lot of man kind by the results of their experiments. Mrs. Bellamy's method has been to look for inconsistencies, which she has found; I propose to look beyond the in consistencies for the unifying basis which permitted Mrs. Bellamy's "bases" to exist in one man. 5 I intend to analyse What Is Man? in order to define and describe Twain's philosophical position. Following this analysis, I shall investigate his major works in chronological order, looking at each one first for evidence of Twain's philosophy as I have found it in What Is Man?, especially the notions of training, temperament, free will, master passion, and moral sense, and, second, apply ing Twain's philosophy to an explication of the novels. By so doing I hope to demonstrate that Twam held these views throughout most of his writing career -- that he was not unsympathetic to them as early as 1869 (when he published Inno cents Abroad) and that he had clearly formulated them by the mid-1870's. Fur ther, I hope to demonstrate that reading the novels in the light of hus world view makes them more meaningful and helps to explain some of the artistic problems in them.

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