Regional novels in Iowa and Nebraska during the last half century

Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic)

Authors Godsell, Mary Alma

Publisher The University of Arizona.

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Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/553560 REGIONAL NOVELS IN IOWA AND NEBRASKA DURING THE LAST Ha LF CENTURY

alary A i m Gods ell

A Thesis

submitted to the faculty of the

Department of English

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

in the Graduate College

University of Arisons

1941

A Approved* Director of Thesis Date

/ 9 v / *=P 4? TABLE OF COM TENTS

Page

Introduction. •••• ...... 1

Chapter I, Bess Streeter Aldrich...... 13

Chapter II, Herbert Quick ...... 28

Chapter III, Clyde Brion Davis• ...... 42

Chapter IV, Paul Engle...... 46

Chapter V, Dorothy Thomas ••«• ...... • 54

Chapter VI, Phil Stong...... 58

Chapter VII, Paul Corey ...... 74

Chapter VIII, W i H a Sibert Gather ...... 85

Chapter IX, Ruth.Suckov...... 95

Conclusions. ••••• ...... lx.6

Bibliography ...... 133

1 4 3 9 0 3 SBESMSiB

Literary regionallsn as a movenent received powerful impetus in tee South by a certain group called agrarians* It was in the nature of a revolt against tho cultural stamp the North placed upon the nation.

Had tho South won tho Civil War doubtless the conditions would have

traditions resented northern leadership. The exponents of the move­ ment claimed that tho regions should have their own way of life, cultural and economic, and that each region should be unified, and aware of its unity. . . ’ 1 A critic,of the movement, Paul Robert Death , pointed out that regionalism

1. Was based upon an inferiority complex.

2* Denied the great tradition— that is the beat that has been thought and known in the world.

3. Was almost exclusively occupied with local mediocrity.

4. Exploited rural folk at the expense of urban folk. 2 In reply to the criticism of regionalism Joseph E. Baker said

1 Paul Robert Beath, "Regionalism* Pro and Con, Four Fallacies •f Regionalism," Saturday Review of Literature. XV (November 28, 1936), 3, 4, 14, 16.

2 Joseph E. Baker, "Regionalism* Pro and Con, Four Arguments for Regionalism,n Saturday Roview of Literature. XV (November 28, 1936), 3s 4, 14* 2m

that reglomlisn at its best would be very different from the folklore- and-nediocrity cult upon which the critic fixes his attention. Re­ gionalism would save the people of the various regions from the vices of & culture centralized in New York, As long so it was so centered

there were not likely to bo any worthy interpreters of the regions.

From the standpoint of hietoiy he argues that the country breaks up naturally into divisions marked by differences in climate and ways of life of the people living in them. Ho said it would be silly for any of

the various unite. Hew England, for example, to abandon their own literary paste. From the standpoint of art ho argued that the best con­ ditions for the artist are those that enable him to study the world he portray*, "Ihe regionalist who ignores the universal is at fault, of

courseI the life of the region is his medium of expression not his message, and ho should not mako his thinking a mere search for the

curious, the old, and the picturesque,*^

In advancing his arguments concerning “regional rights* Hr, Baker pointed out that while the South was only one region, other regions have eager defenders such as Vachel Lindsay and Edgar Lee Masters, He was afraid that regionalism would grow bitter unless there could be developed a sort of human federation in literature. Lest;.;" in defending regionalism he argued that our great cities are not centers of culture at all and never can he) that the vital culture# of the world have always grown up in the smaller cities and countrysides, Mr, Baker

3 m a . , p. 14. 3.

quoted Th o m s Jefferson, **1 view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man,” in order to elaborate upon the case.

In the earlier days of our country when transportation and com­ munication were both slow and difficult there was great curiosity about all parts of America. After tho Civil War much of the literature con­ cerned itself with tho frontier. The growing taste demanded actuality and stimulated the extensive writing of regional fiction. The minute details of dialect, manners, and scenery came to be closely observed by

tiie writers of the time— Harto, Cable, Jewett— all of whom wrote about

the more picturesque localities. That American literature had its roots

in the soil was voiced by James Gould Fletchers

It is quite clear that the longer one ponders such ex­ amples tho more rooted in regionalism the present-day development of American letters appears; however cosmo­ politan on the surface, the primary soil and folk sources remain, at least as a pervasive influence, though not perhaps as a deliberate intention.^

Another writer showed this close correspondence between literature

and environment*

Regionalism in literary production consists in present­ ing tho human spirit in every aspect in correlation with its immediate environment. Elan, language, landeoape and the cultural riches of a particular, region, considered as the result of the reactions of tho individual heir of certain peculiarities of race and tradition; these should be the topics of interest for literary regionalism.*

^ John Gould Fletcher, "Regionalism and Folk Art,” Southwest Eeview, XIX (July, 1934), 429-434.

^ Adapted from "Communicatiems,” The Sociological Review. XXIV, 197-196, by Howard H. Odum and Harry Estill Moore, American Regionalism (New York: H e m y Holt and Company, 1936), p. 172. 4*

These quotations reveal a serious attitude toward literature and a belief that it can find excellent expression through regional writings.

But such excellence has not always been attained.

The work of those writers who made much of setting for its own sake without any fundamental approach to character caused Walter Fuller faylor to suspect regionalism on the following grounds. He says.

But local color itself...has proved too thin as a texture for the building of great fiction. "Atmosphere* is at beat an accessory to the great novel— the flavor not the substance....Regionalism has been at its best only when used as a background for some theme of deeply human and universal import; only when the atmosphere of a particular place and tine has been used merely as a setting for human experience whoso values approach the timeless.°

But the Southern Agrarians regarded regionalism much more seriously

than a matter of mere local color. They wished to develop a regional culture j a good literary program was an important approach to the whole problem.

That there was no unanimity of opinion concerning regionalism was

set forth by A. B. Botkin, who remarked.

The regionaliots radically disagree as to the sources, . methods, and aims of regional literature, and each region tends to interpret regionalism in terms of its own historical shibboleths and local gods.6 7

Those who disapprove of regionalism objeet to it because they find

in it merely a superficial treatment of regional qualities; those who

are seriously concerned with regionalism as a cultural program naturally

6 Walter Fuller Taylor, A History of American Letters (Hew forks American Book Company, 1936), p. 261.

7 A. B. Botkin, "Regionalism: Cult or Culture." The English XXV (March, 1936), 181. 5s

expect regional literature to play a part in their larger program of strengthening and defending the cultural individuality and independence . of their regions, There are others, however, who while taking regional fiction very seriously^ think that it must spring naturally from a writer* s knowledge of bis region rather than from a self-conscious effort

to interpret it for the outer world. But Donald Davidson is-one.of those favoring a conscious regionalisn. He says, “A regional literature so- called, nay thus very well be, among other things, a self-conscious ox- ‘ VV> g > • pression of the life of a region.” At another time ho says,

Begionalista are those who wish to see cultural dif­ ferences respected, not thwarted or obliterated. Ho matter from what field they draw their data...the regionalists agree that America, far from being perfectly homogeneous and standardized,is amazingly heterogeneous . and diverse.9 .

Though ho says that regional literature, being self-conscious and

intimate, may exploit the local aspects of the scene in order to recover

a usable past, it does not narrow itself to mere picturesqueness and

antiqearlanism except as n reaction to an overdose of metropolitan.

natlonnlisa."*-0

He...have learned to tolerate a mixture of religions and races and not even the leveling power of an in­ dustrial system has been able to efface .those resulting diversions. . . ' f _ - **»*#«**»#*###**#**#*##+*****#*»##**#**#»#*»+**+*****+ For some time to cone our literature will not repre­ sent a uniform culture but will be conditioned by the _ regional cultures upon which it depends for its 89*

8 Donald Davidson, "Regionalism and nationalism in America* Literature,11 T&e A B W A a B ESXiew, V (April, 1935), pp. 48, 53, 54*

9 Xt22,» SMf M Donald Davidson, jnie Attack on the LeviathaR (Chapal Mill, The University of Horth Carolina Press, 1938), p. 232.

H i m - , P. 233. 6,

The function of the region is to endow the American artist with character and purpose. He is bora of a region. He will deny its parenthood to his own hurt. Without its background he is a homeless exile in the wilderness of modern life....What he creates...will be both the expression of the region and himself no natter what the subject or what the style.12

A slightly different angle of the conscious approach to literary regionalism is put rather negatively by Robert P. Warrenj

1. It is not mere quaintness, local color,or folklore,

2. Literary exploitation of a race or society that has no cul­ tural continuity with our own tends to bo false and precious.

3. It does not laply an emphasis on the primitive or under­ privileged.

.4* It does not mean that the writer should relinquish any resource of speculation or expression that be has managed to achieve.

5* It does not mean that literature is tied to its region for appreciation. When so tied it is so much the less literature.

6. Literary regionalism is more than a literary natter. Only in so far as literature springs from some reality in experience is it profitable to us.

Carey McWilliams emphasises the searching of the personal experience of the writer and the race.

The regionalist of today, like the local-colorist of yesterday and the ardent nationalist of the day before, believes that one of these relationships, that of the artist to his immediate environment is ouch closer and sore intimate than the artist will generally admit} that the development of a culture is influenced to the extent to which this relationship is understood} and that the artist if he wishes to give depth to his work and endow it with more than passing significance, will look closely into his own experience and that of him peopLe***

12 JE W . , P. 239.

, "gome DonHe for Literary Rsglonalists,* VIII (December 1936), 142-150. Still another viewpoint of those who defend conscious regionalism is that of Allen Tato. He would have the literary production be an expression of the region.

How literary regionalism...’.I think most people will agree, is loss self-conscious, less abstract and philo­ sophical}, it is often a conscious program, but it is turned in upon itself; a cultivation of the local color, the local characters, the local euetOBS of the community for their own race.^5

A. B. Botkin is another exponent of the conscious expression of a region through literature when he sets forth his ideas*

In this development tho regional movement has served to fix attention on tho fact that, as individual char­ acter and action are inseparable from the social structure, so geographical relationships tend to modify both. Re­ gional coherences exist, to be cultivated by the artist, not for peculiar glamor of picturesqueness or qualntnoss or for the false security of "limited solidarities,” but as a means to an end of social portraiture and the ex­ pression of a personality with roots.1®

In direct contrast to the attitude that regionalism is a conscious

program there are those who think it can only spring unconsciously from

a writer who knows his region and writes about the people in it natur­

ally. Such a stand is taken by Marjorie Rinnan Rawlings. She believes

that the approach of a sincere creative writer who has something to say

and uses a specialized locale— a region— as a logical or fitting back­

ground for the thoughts, and emotions that cry out for articulation

will produce writing that is honest. Such writing will be incidentally

or accidentally regional. In such writing the author is not a reporter *16

^ Allen Tate, "Regionalism and Sectionalism,” The Hew Republic. ▼ol. (December 23, 1931), pp. 158-461. 16 Botkin, o&.cit., p. 1&4. or pointed effect as the artistry of the writer can coomnd. Such an author attempts to resolve the confusion of life into an ordered pat­ tern, a meaningful design colored with the creator*s personality and keyed to his own philosophy.1^

That the physical aspect of the region is very important in the molding of a people is set forth in an editorial in The Saturday Review sL M S & W m a .

It is much more than color which a region imposes on a race, indeed the “color” of regional writing is too often no more than quaint details of speech and dress which the incapable author describes because he cannot grasp the real characteristics beneath, which are s o ; . different from his own....The influence which mold temperament and therefore social relationships, religion and art and especially the art of literature are still chiefly natural. Kind, rain, cun, plain, valley, moun­ tain in their combinations and permutations are assuredly the sculptors of habit, now as in the past, oven in the

. One need only think of the sternness of Mew England character molded by a forbidding soil, tho easy-going life ih the South where nature gives forth abundantly, the persistence of the Hiddlo-Keatsro farmers who take the varying climatic conditions hopefully, to realise h$w much the region molds charaetar.

^ yarjorie Kinnan Rawlings, “Regional Literature of the South," M l s m j M l i i l , I# (i®b. 194.0) , 381-386.

^ "The Pulse of the Machine,” Editorial in Saturday Review of jydiSSaSffie# XV, (January 16, 1937), 8. %

Since the problem of this thesis is the study of the regional novels in a limited portion of the Middle West, the following defini­ tion of a good regional novel will be used as a measuring stick.

Charles Child Walcott asserts;

The best regional novel will deal with regional per­ sonalities and a regional problem without any effort to limit either the people or the problem to the region or to assert that the life of the region is bettor than that in other part# of the country. It will be,-as far as the region is concerned, absolutely natural and wmeonseiou#.*?

Granville Hicks comments on the production of the regional novelist as follows!

Much of contemporary regionalism is merely antiquarian} much of it is the sentimental expression of sectional pride* But there have been writers who have written of life in a particular region simply because it was the . material experience gave then.2®

Mr* Hicks seems to think that regional literature written for its own sake is not vory aigniflearnt* He realizes the importance of am author* s "roots" in a region but also points out that the region should

. / - bo viewed objectively as well as subjectively:

The novelist begins, of course, with what he knows, - and if he knows the customs and speech of a particular region all well and good. But he cannot stop there# any honest attempt to understand the region quickly takes him outside its borders.* 2021

^ Charles Child Yialcutt, "The Study of Regional Fiction," Unpublished article. University of Oklahoma, Mores®, Oklahoma.

20 OraBvill# ginks. The Great Tradition (New York: The Macmillan, Company, 1935), p* 278.

21 Ibid., p. 283. William A U e n White recognises the importance of regionalism in the literary interpretation of America when he says, * *In the very nature of things The Great American Novel must be a composite of regional novels. Always, since fiction began to appear in the United States, it has been regional fletian.*22

But the South had no monopoly on" regional writing. In discussing newer trends in the novel Carl Van Doren2^ says that after 1929 local and regional patriotisms eager to make neglected sections of the country known to the nation at large were to find fresh literary re­ sources and profitably exploit them. A flood of historical and regional novels poured from the pens of the writers. Hfho favorite state of

Middle-Western local fiction ceased to be Indiana and became Iowa.*2*

toil Stong2^ in The Hawkeyos says that about the year 1900 the

Midwest began to realise that it had a life entitled to its own chronicles. The earliest writers were Hamlin Garland and Herbert Quick.

While many people began to write, a "regional” literature was a long time In coming. Many Iowa authors chose fields other than their native state about which to write. Ross Santee, Floyd Dell, Janos Ho m a n

Kail, Carl Van Veehtaa, Susan Glaspell, Wytter Bynner and NacKinley

Kan tor were only a few of those who sought elsewhere for their

22 William Allen White, "Racy of the Soil,” Saturday Review of X (April 7, 1934), 607.

*3 Carl VariDoren, The American Novel.(New Xorkx Tho Macmillan Company, 1940V p. 35?.

p. 361.

(Sew Yorks Dodd, Mead and Company, 1 9 4 % pp. 47-51. 11.

■afcerJUuU About 1930 soao of those writers who had been “making" local magazines such as The Midland now began to be noticed nationally.

In this study three levels of regional fiction will be discussed.

1. The sentimental type which is produced largely by those writers who look back to the good old days for their materials. They love the region and present its physical aspects with a wealth of pains­ taking detail. Upon analysis of the novels it nay be found that stock plots and characters were employed and that the region has no real

Influence upon the characters. Most of the "westerns" and many of the novels about pioneer life are on this level.

2. Another type is that in which the novels are deeply rooted in the life of the region. The characters will be presented as products of the region or strongly influenced by regional forces, tho action will grow out of the region, and tho external setting m y be given consider­ ably loss attention than it receives in novels of the sentimental type.

3. The third type will contain those novels relating the region and the nation. Tho close relationship of the people and the region will bo embedded in the structure of the novel, but tho scope of the novel will be widened. The fortunes of a group as members move from ono section of the country to another or the fortunes of a family through several generations will bo the medium of showing the relation of the region to the nation. The Folks by Ruth Suckow is an example

of this type.

According to lists compiled by the Publisher* s Weakly, more than

two hundred novels can be found which deal with Iowa and Hebraaka

during the last fifty years. Obviously it would be impossible to study

then all in detail. It has been the purpose of the writer to study 12*

a selected group of representative novelists and to show by analysis of the novels how deeply the region has been inbedded in them. It is with the combined viewpoints of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Charles

Child fialcutt that this study has been made* That is that a good regional novel has the same qualities of universality, literary style.

will not be consciously regional, and the writer will make no attempt to limit the novel to the region*

In order to study what the region is doing in the novel certain key questions will be asked: Are the regional qualities of setting,

time, and customs merely decorative and therefore superficial? Do the

characters show the effects of having lived in the region? Do they reflect regional outlooks? Is there conflict botween the persons and

the region or between persons? Do the characters reflect racial char­

acteristics rather than those qualities which are a distinct result

of having lived in the region? Is the problem peculiar to the region?

What is the author*# attitude toward the region? Does the plot grow out

of regional elements? Does the exciting force of the action arise in

the region? Is the problem resolved by the action of regional forces

or by some purely fictitious device?

The answers to such questions as these will reveal what part the

region is playing in the novels studied in this thesis. Bees Streeter Aldrich in 4 Lantern in Her Hand has caught the feeling &£ the prairie, the vastaesc of the long rolling, swells. To

Abbie Deal in the prairie schooner in July, 1868, the prairie seamed &

"hot, dry inland sea," She was fascinated with the grass. "There were four rhythmic beats like music, but music which irritated rather than soothed ones Blow,,.wave.,,ripple...dip,"1 2. 3 At night there was silence except for the faint sound of the shivering grass. And that first • . • • ’ " - "■ •' ' • . ' ' . , ' " ' spring %nd countless other springs came over the prairie "not softly, shyly, but in great magic strides,”2

Into tills novel Mrs. Aldrich has put a prairie fire in all its wild, mad flight, the fury of a dirt storm which was like a "black blizzard," deep snows, the Easter blizzard of 1873, floods, the grass­ hopper plague with all the succeeding despair and desolation, and then the "hot wind that blew over the ruins with Mephistophelean laughter."^

Over and over she pointed out the realities in a farmer* s life. The farmers wore mere puppets at the mercy of the elements. A nan* 8 free will is exercised only in tho planning; Nature controls the outcome.

1 Bess Str##ter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand (Hew York; D, Appleton and Company, 1928), p. 6%.

2 Ibid*, p. 82.

3 IMd., p. 104. 14.

Tho elements were not always hostile, Abbie knew the prairie in all it# changing nooda, from the first fierce reluctancy of the grass maiden to leave the breast of her prairie lovor^ to the sleepy beauty of

winter, ■ 1 - - ■■ - - - •

It was a struggle to keep alive that something in ideals and decent living— the "fight to keep civilised.*** Fences kept the wild out and tho domesticated within, and a fenced yard spelled order, attainment, and dreams coming true.

On her wedding day Abbie had boon given pearls by her mother. As a little girl she had seen them painted on the throat of Isabelle

Anders Mackenzie, a "lovely lady" ancestor. She carried the pearls with her in the prairie schooner to the "soddie* and never gave up her ideal of becoming a lovely lady; But primitive conditions do not make possible painting, writing, or cultivating the voice for members of the first generation pioneers. Without too much regret about her own lack of accomplishment in the fields of her ambitions, Abbie needs must instill

the desire for good things in her children* Musical talent developed in one daughter; painting, in another; and writing, in a grandchild.

Very simply Abbie told Laura, her grandchild, that though education and travel were good for a writer one must also have a seeing eye, an understanding heart, and the knack of expressing what one sees and

4 %bl&., P. 84.

5 Ibid., p. 114. 15*

foela* Her granddaughter Katherine, who wore the pearls of tho lovely lady, was tho composite picture of four nationalities with tho beat qualities of each; Irish wit, Scotch canniness, Gernan self-interest, 6 and Yankee determination. In other words, she. was an American.

Most of those early pioneers had s o m such heirloom (as the pearls) — some symbol of refinement and culture— which they cherished and treasured. Those relics of tho past shaped their dreams for the future when a new world opened through their holding fast to civilisation.

The plot of A Lantern in Her Hand is that of the traditional mid- western novel, very close to the pattern of too many others. Tho heroine refused a loveless marriage to a man who could and would further her personal ambitions and all for true love became a pioneer. She raised a fine family, none of whoa gave her any great heartaches or presented problems. All of her children went to the city and, incredible as it may seem, all became wealthy. Their success as well as their devotion to their mother was evidenced when, in two hours after her death, a banker, an attorney and state legislator, an artist, a writer, and a State University teacher were back at the home place regretting that not one of her kin had been with her when she died.

Though Mrs. Aldrich has command of simple pathos, on the whole she is superficial in the treatment of her characters. She is too tender­ hearted to let any principal characters or even secondary characters get hurt in the three wars she mentioned.

6 H M ; P. 255. forces at work in, the region are touched ti£>on, however faithful the picture of the external eleaeata of the region*

Tho getting alone does not mka it a regional novel, for it has a sorely decorative use. Mrs. Aldrich lores Nebraska, its contour and its history, and has presented then for her reader* s enjoyment* Houever, by her use of stock situations and characters she has failed in producing s regional novel wherein the characters nove before a regional backdrop to produce a significant conaentary on life.

In S-oring On Eorovmr Matthias Meier and Analia Stols net in tho salesroom of an iron foundry in Illinois where Asalia* a father had gone to boy a huge iron kettle. It was a case of love at first sight* but Asalia had been "promised" by her father to Herman Holnsdorfer for

bvo years. H o m a n was now out in Nebraska selecting for these G o m a n

QWtlVttyjLCU. WlVjr WVitirU g w W &wLit y VU*J €U church relation. Matthias caco to see Azxalia a few Sundays, but would not let him meet her father and announce his love ant

Then one week a flood kept bin away, and by the next Sunday the Go m a n

Lutherans had already started to Nebraska. Although by the time

Matthias learned what had happened the wagon train had a twelve-day

start, ho knew that he could reach Nebraska City before the travellers by taking the river route. On his journey to St. Louis and then up

the Missouri the boat delayed him a week by sticking on sandbars. When its way.

work, and. another world

aquattora on tiioir

for in time their

"The wilderness was a giant with which to wrestle....More, it nust be overcome or it in turn would conquer then."? when Matthias

Meier found his romance frustrated, he sought a panacea in work. He made his way to Lincoln, the site chosen for the new capitol, and grew up with the growing town. ; From blackaalthing to merchandising to banking he turned in succession and cade a success of each. He married

Ida Carter and their one child was named Carter.

blizzard of 1873. She had now only her brother Fritz and her eon

Emil, who she dreamed would become a pastor. But the love of the land which he inherited from his father was much stronger than the dreams of his mother and ho also farmed. The fortunes of Amalia* s son and grandson were chronicled as they related chiefly to Amalia. At

7 peas Streeter Aldrieh, lark* B. Appleton Century, 1935), p. While Heal was attending the law school of tho State University, ho not and fell in love with Hazel Holer, the granddaughter of old

Matthias, and later carried her. Thus the romance begun generations before found fulfillment in these young people. " •

In this novel is the story of two midwestem families in which the physical aspect of tho setting plays a rather large part. That the course of true love doesn«t always run smoothly is an accepted fact.

Host often the opposition comes from human beings, as in this instance,

Amalia*s father. But the young people could have overcome the human opposition had not the boat on which Matthias was hastening to meet

Sand that held you back like, the tight grip of two iron hands. So that a other sand could run through the hourglass and make you too late.*

Even during the last week of his life, Matthias, awakening from a sleep, called out, «The sucking sands! They hold you back and will not let youEo."9

When the advance scouts for tho German colony wore seeking a

placo, they had put such thought and consideration into the selection.

They had chosen wide, open prairie land near a river with its native

timber. Wood was cut for fuel but new trees were planted to replace

such inroads. Cottonwood slips were planted in long rows for wind

* JBSU.» P. 66.

» Ibid., p. 306. breaks? fruit and shade trees were set out near the cabins.

There was eternal warfare with the elements,— great snows isolated the cabins so that roads oust be broken in order to get through. Cold brought disaster to do­ mestic animals and fowl, so that sheds and barns must be packed tightly with timbers and sod. Heat brought death to priceless horses and spring rains brought floods to the low lands. It took great physical strength and & knack for careful planning to conquer this Nebraska into which these eleven families of settlers had come.... Always the prairie loomed there before them, lonely with silence,— a sullen giant waiting to trap then with blizzards or windstorm, drouth or flood, redskins or red ftr®*w • ' - . ' . ■ . . ..

The settlers fought prairie fires by plowing strips, and the women were ready with wot gunny sacks to beat out any brands that might leap the plowing. Sometimes they used a back fire so that the advanc­ ing fire would find nothing to consume. They made a determined fight for very existence in that time of terror when "the low-running black smoke showed its scarlet flame now like a great M a c k dog, mad and frothing at the mouth, snapping and licking the ground with its slaver-

.■ .. . ing scarlet tongue.*

Farm work went on and success cane in varying degrees, depending largely on the eternal vigilance of those natural-born farmers. Always there was one eye on the weather. The various combinations spelled good crops or poor ones. There was pleasure in high prices, discouragement over low ones, but still they labored on.

, By the time the third generation was growing up people seldom used the word prairie any more, so Subdued and tamed it had become. *11

Ibid., pp. 101-2.

11 Ibid., p. 106. These people were in the central and eastern part of the state; still farther west new land was being broken and planted to feed a fighting

Europe.

And then case a new nenace., The soil was finely pulverized and much of it under cultivation. When there was a dry season,

the powdered top soil was lifted into the air with every high prairie wind. It was as though Mother Nature in disturbed m o d was beginning to clean her house, to set to right her disarranged plans. With a giant broom she whisked the dirt from those rooms in which she had

their profits of former years, but harder hit. Itil f

vitals,— too many times had the edge of the plow into the lands which were meant for grazing. There were sections...where schools were closed, traffic paralysed, business suspended, street lights shining all day through the murky atmosphere.-1'* *3

It was a time of great discouragement. There was talk of regi­ mentation and legislation. One farmer put it, "Legislate the hot winds and regimentato the clouds and we farmers* 11 get along all right by ourselves."^ Old Amalia, who had lived so many years with Nature

Ibid., p» 26B.

13 Ibid.. P. m *

“ •Jbisi., p. 271. 2a.

that was changeable, insisted that everything would cose right again.

%a tine the weather becaso core favorable. Snows fell and rains cane.

It was raining wheat for bread. It was raining forage, — Sudan grass and rye and sweet clover. It was raining pasturage and wild hay and alfalfa,— next year* s apple- buds and cherry-buds and vegetables in gardens. It was raining hope and courage and a renewed morale.^

After a Gunner of good growing weather and good crops> came a wot fall— much too wet, and the valley of the Republican liver flooded.

People went up to the roofs of their houses and barns. Many buildings

' : ■ ' ‘ . ’ ...... • . broke from their moorings and floated away, leaving death and destruction behind. Airplanes flow over to spot isolated survivors in trees and on housetops. Boats were sent to rescue the stranded.

■ • - - One learned of hundreds of incidents...of reactions " of various types of hunan beings under pressure, of the resourcefulness of the rescued and tbo rescuers, of evidences everywhere of the Nebraska pioneer spirit which had not died out in the third and fourth genera­ tions....Shewas to see the shambles of town homos and farms, the washed-out paved highway and the twisted railroad tracks...lator to see the valley peaceful again and new farm hones go up, villages rebuilt, and nature begin to cover her ugly scars with verdure

The Great Plains region thus plays an important part in the lives of the people. That the prairie was conquered and brought under con­ trol was largely duo to those early pioneers who would never admit defeat. Human nature being what it is,

there never ceased to be a concealed rivalry la the

15 IM A . , p. 271.

16 i m ; PP. 308-9. 22.

surreyo to nany-cylindered cars, there lay always m d e r the jovial neighborlineas of each family a desire to get ahead of the other* J*

Mrs. Aldrich has drawn her characters clearly and distinctly from

the time she first introduced the domineering old Gorman Wilhelm Stols and his obedient and submissive Amalia, whose ideals and vision, quiet patience and industry were like a largo for all her associates through­ out her long life. Matthias typifies the successful business nan and one of the 8 fa there" of the state so to speak. It is through his eyes

that the growth of Lincoln from a few rude huts to a lovely city of

eighty thousand is pictured. The capital beUding,even incoaploted,

satisfied bis very soul. American, that*a what it was,— the broad sweeping base was the fertile prairie,— the tower to rise from this great white spread of stone was to symbolise all the aspirations and dreams and. ; ideals the old builders of the state had held in their hearts tout could m t express.-” . . ,

The grasping, possessive, self-satisfied Herman Holnsdorfer who married

Amalia and whose far-sighted planning had much to do with the lasting

success of the colony cannot possibly be called the villain of the

piece, although the reader is. never in sympathy with him.

Charlie Briggs whom Matthias had met on the boat when he was going

to Nebraska, was am out-doors man, hunter, surveyor, stage-driver, and homesteader, always in the wide open spaces. Of himself he says that he wasn’t 8town-broke.* .

One’s sympathies are all with Fritz Stole, whom the "absolute

18 IM d . , pp. 246-7. 23.

dictator," his old father Wilhelm, retained in a strangle-hold all his life. Fritz, reared to absolute obedience just like Amalia and other

German children, promised on the Bitile never to marry as long as Amalia remained a widow. Fritz remained a bachelor all his days and sought

surcease from pain in driving work and finally in building a beautiful home for Amalia* • son when he married the daughter of the young widow whom Fritz himself had so longed to marry but could not because of the oath given his father. Ida Carter, who became Matthias* wife was an efficient, practical helpmate during the years when Matthias was build-

end the gracious mistress of his

Sometimes when a person so finds groat strength— not always for Such a WyrMa, the wife of Amalia* s grs ish ways or oven by tears and tantrums, first to make a show-place of the farm, then it all to

•retire" at thirty-eight. Such people a#

financial wreck to their

cendants of the old

family fortunes, there is pictured the newest order of farmers— hard-

headed, clear thinking, vigorous and resourceful people. But what a

difference in their lives— all the wonderful modern conveniences la

contrast to the primitive implements of pioneer days. 24.

Old Matthias once voiced his sentiments about Nebraska:

It«s a great old state. Founded hy substantial folks. Given the world sonothing, too, besides grain and hogs.. Given it artists and writers, singers and actors, big nen in educational and business lines, dean of the Harvard law school, a general of all the arnica. Something of the strength of the prairie m y have been built into her children. And Charlie Briggs replied, * She was1 a kind of a harsh old mother, Katt,— the prairie,— but sufferin* snakes I liked her.*19

Somewhat later Matthias was thinking of his life in retrospect—

his youthful hot-headed race to Nebraska City and how much differently

the situation could be handled now. Cars, motor-boats, planes. A endbar wouldn11 necessarily change the course of a whole life.

Some of the things in life wc may decide for bur- eelves. In others it is Providence, Luck, or the Spin- ■ ttlng Pate#.#...«*»*.#.*. Except for our higher order of minds we are like the little moles under the earth carrying out blindly the work of digging, thinking our own dark passage-ways con­ stitute all there is to the world...20 '

gJEtoS Sms. 0& £greggr. presents a cycle from shirt sleeves to

wealth and back again to shirt sleeves. The fourth generation had to

The setting as a background for action is overdone at the

says. Mrs. Aldrich tells an honest, sincere, straightforward story

particularly satisfying to many a feminine reader who reads only for

relaxation and does not want to be bothered with calamities of the

M IM d . , pp. 247-8.

20 I W . , PP- 250-51. 25*

mind or econonie problems. Rugged determination and persistence

eventually via out against the adverse physical elements in the region.

The characters present universal qualities rather than growing out of

the region as such. . . ■ .. . . .

Like A Mm&sm m I§E Seriss Cams Qn RffigMS **

regional. The setting is used,as decoration for a stock plot and

characters...... : ■ .

' The SoiUT of years, also ty Mrs. Aldrich, spans the years 1854 to

1865. Iowa was already a state and these later pioneers fought with

plow, pen, and ballot. Wayne Lockwood went on foot one hundred miles

to beat Cady Bedson to the government land office in order to file on

a homestead of his choice. . Wayne* s nearest neighbors were .the Bar,tins,

who had settled there two years before. The seven daughters of the

family were completely capable farm girls, fun loving and opinionated,

with a deep sense of family loyalty. Of the two sons one was a •close

to the soil" farmer; the other want off to the war. Old Jeremiah

Martin was decidedly civic-minded, interested first in the affairs of

the rival towns of Cedar Falls and Waterloo and then in state affairs.

Later ho became a legislator and then participated in national

politics* Much practical, homely philosophy was expounded through

Jeremiah’s lips, the keynote being "pull on through.” Ho neglected

his farming and was no money-maker, to the disgust of his wife, who

wanted "stairs" and "shelves." She was the manager and directed home

affairs. Hone questioned or hesitated when she said, "Scoot now.*

All of the daughters except one married and independently struggled

through with their own problems. The youngest, Susanna, married 26.

Wayne Lockwood when he returned fron the war on the eve of her aarrioge to Gady Bedson.

The hook is a study of * locale and a period. .It is a troaanis world, but the women learned conothing of politics from Jcrcaiah. They led busy lives and enjoyed occasional Impromptu social events. Beyond

the domestic scene lie business, politics, and war. , The war is largely m natter of 'report.

the action is slow and panoramic. Many chapters read like

catalogues, long lists of the flora and fauna of Iowa, of, historical

events, of major and minor inventions, of the detailed steps in the

cooing of railroads, and of all other things that spelled progress.

Entirely too nany recountings of the items of good Iowa farm meals are

set down. An enormous amount of attention is given to the fashions of

the day. ' ■ . ■ .- -

The characters are simple people, fho men are industrious and

have an eye to the future of America; the women are good helpmates,—

self-sacrificing, tender, and sympathetic. There ie nothing complex

about their emotions or their ideas. Nothing particularly new and

nothing troublesome. It is an intimate social history of the period.

Local patriotism and pride in her state give a regional flavor to

Song of Years and cause it to be placed in the first or sentimental

type of regional fiction. The setting is unimportant to either the

conventional plot or the stereotyped characters.

Mrs. Aldrich uses the region only as a superficial setting in

her novels. The details of prairie conditions and pioneer hardships

are sincerely and accurately pictured. She writes of the cold and mud as sell as the prairie flowers and beautiful skies. The conflicts are

cooeemed chiefly with the subduing of the prairie and calking it give

the pioneers a living. Her characters have no inner conflicts, no

soul-rending problems, no violent clashes with each other. The elements

frustrating the attempts of the farmers to get decent crops and improve

their conditions aro always the real villains and the farmers triumph

eventually.

Certain charaoterlstle* are present in all pioneers. There nust be a vision of better things in the future, a holding fast to ideals, a rugged determinism and endurance, and an utter disregard for, physical

comfort and convenience. These qualities are universal in those ad­ venturous souls who wish to experience life in & new. untried world.

Mrs. Aldrich was not picturing her characters as distinct products of a

particular environment, since the first generation came from other

places and the second and third generations usually escaped to the city.

She was inclined to use stock situations. The incidents arc the

well-worn episodes of frontier life. The.heroine usually has a .dream

world, the good always triumphs, and somehow the characters livo

happily ©ver aftor. Mrs. Aldrich grew up and still lives in Nebraska;

yet she perhaps docs not see or else ignores the economic problems

about her, so intent Is she upon the social history of the period. She

presents enough emotion to make her work sentimental and thus appeals

to her large following of women readers who would rather not have

problems presented and who like to feel that all is well with the world.

Probably she will have no permanent place as a writer of regional

fiction. HERBERT QUICK

Vandomark* s Folly by Herbert Quick is written in the first per­ son in such a realistic way that one m y readily mistake it for a genuine autobiography. The first quarter of the book deals with Jacob

Vandenark* a desperately hard youth on the Erie Canal* His stepfather, who had put him to long hard hours of factory work, beat him cruelly.

After ho was rescued by a canal boat captain and kindly cared for, ho was hired as driver of the tow team. He lost track of his mother for some years. His diligent search was rewarded with the sight of her newly-made grave in Wisconsin. Jake received a very small part of his patrimony from his stepfather. It included a section of land in Iowa, a team of mares, covered wagon and supplies for the trip from Wisconsin to Iowa. As a growing boy he had watched the ever-increasing stream of migration westward along the Erie Canal. He “could see, feel, taste, ; smell, and hear the West everywhereHow, since he had no ties and had the means and opportunity he joined that,

stream of people swarming westward....The road was rutted, poached deep where wet and beaten hard where dry, or pulverized into dust by the stream of emigra­ tion. Here we went, oxen, cows, mules, horse#; coaches, carriages, blue jeans, corduroys, rags, tatters, silks, satins, caps, tall hats, poverty, riches; speculators,

°3cap-

' - 1 Herbert Quick, Vandcnark»g Folly (Indianapolis t Bobbs-tierrill Company, 1921), p. 32. 29.

faialliea seeking hoaes; tiie wrecks of hoaes seeking secrecy} gold-seekers bearing southwest to the Overland Trail; politicians looking for places in which to win fame and fortune; editors hunting opportunities for founding newspapers; adventurers on their way to every­ where} lawyers with a few books; Abolitionists going to , the Border Bar; innocent-looking outfits carrying fugitive slaves; officers hunting escaped negroes; and most numerous of all, homeseekers “hunting country”— a nation on wheels, an empire in the commotion and pangs of birth.”*

His first sight of the prairie which made him think of a * great green sea” brought tears of •happiness in finding the newest, strangest, most delightful, sternest, most wonderful thing in the world— the Iowa prairie.”^ There was drama galore in his journey west# At an Under­ ground Railway Station he received first hand acquaintance with one phase of the slave problem. Because his team was coveted for its swift­ ness by those helping the fugitives escape, he traded it for four cows and drove them. Later be traded two of these good cows for four lame • ones and thus kept increasing his herd. When the herd became too largo and impeded his progress, ho left them in pasture at Dubuque and went on to seek his section of land. Enroute many exciting events occurred, (toe of then was that of his harboring a sixteen-year-old girl,

Virginia Royall of Kentucky, for several days in his wagon so that she might escape from her villainous brother-in-law Buck.>Gowdy* She was all alone in the world after her sister's death. After she was befriended by the Thoradykes at Monterey Center, Jake rode on alone. With the help of a "land locator" ho found that most of the section deeded-him

z Ibid., p. 105.

3 i b y , p. m . by his stepfather was in Hell Slew, Only forty acres were high and dry. Being after all only an eighteen-year-old boy alone in the world he lay down and cried, Magnus Thorkelson, a Swedish bachelor neighbor, offered to exchange help with Jake, and together they built their

dwellings and broke prairie first for one and then for the other. In

June when the sod became too dry and hard for the plow, Jake went to

Ihabuque to bring back supplies and his cows#

County polities was pictured in the struggle for the county seat.

A feud grew up between the Wades and the Stones over county funds

stolen on the night of a big party. Later Jake was arrested for pre­

venting the tarring and feathering of the Fewkes, some shiftless claim

jumpers he had met on the westward trail. Buck dowdy hired the Fewkes

family to work on his huge farm. Some months after, Rowena Fewkes

tried to drown herself in Hell Slew on the night of a prairie fire.

Jake saved her from both drowning and the fire and took her to his

house. Her child was born that night and Magnus Thorkelson married her

next day. Though’he had long loved her, he had boen too backward to ask

her to marry him. Now he felt like a champion for the wronged. When

Rawena*3 baby was baptized, she gave the name Owen Gowdy and cleared

Jake of the unfriendly cloud of suspicion.

All this time everyone was telling Jake what a good wife Virginia

Royall would bo. All hints fell on deaf ears. He apparently worshipped

her so much that it never dawned on him to ask her to carry him. When

Buck Gowdy and others paid her marked attention, Jake agonised in >1*

men did all their drilling with oticks. They were issued guns when they arrived in the South and ammunition only a few hours before battle.

Jake saw three hours of fighting and was so seriously wounded that he was months in hospitals. After tie returned he rescued Virginia, bliazard-bound in the school where she was teaching. The pair lost their way and found shelter in a straw stack. Since they became well acquainted in the two nights and Intervening day they were imprisoned, they wore married.

It would be impossible to review all tho stirring drama of the settlement of the West encompassed in V&ndemark* a Folly within the scope of this paper. The Dutch words that creep in to the slow-thinking, plodding Jake1 a speech are explained in footnotes. The characteriza­ tions are well done except that of Jake. It is asking too much to

expect us to believe that he didn't know he loved Virginia Royal! and wanted to marry her for as long as he did. Too many people, including

Virginia herself at first, were constantly coming out with broad, signi­ ficant statements. Jake rescued Virginia from the villain Gowdy on

the trip West. They were alone for several days. Even if he was but

eighteen they should have reached an understanding then or at least as soon as the Thorndykea took her from him. There are- the sentimental

overtones of a happy ending. The fsadeearke became rich and their

descendants very Influential.

The history is so firmly embedded in the novel that one is not

conscious of it. Yandenark* 8 Folly is the product of firsthand ex­

perience and rings as genuinely true as Hamlin Garland* s accounts of the settling of the West* It Is a sympathetic study of the region, the people, the social history, and a hit of the political scene of the settling of Monterey County, Iowa* Quick speaks realistically of the life of the pioneers. Ho does not cake it better or worse than it was* He shows us what the work of settling the new West was and how it was performed*

Iowa lived in the future in those days* It was a land of poverty and privations and small things, but a land of dr earns. We shivered in the winter stores, and dreamed} we plowed and sowed and garnered in; but tho great things, the happy things, were our dreams and visions. Wo felt that we were plowing the field of destiny and sowing for the harvest of history; but we scarcely thought it, The power that went out of uo as we scored that wonderful prairie sod and built those puny towns was the same power that nerved the heart of those who planted Massachusetts and Rhode Island and Virginia, the power that has thrilled the world when­ ever tiie white nan has gone forth to put a realm under bis feet**

Mr* Quick*e regionalism is very obvious and self-conscious* He is ever attempting to picture tho Iowa he loved to tho reader* The plot is that stock situation in which the heroine is rescued by the hero and they are married and live happily ever after. Hia hero had his early troubles, a villainous stepfather and later a shyster lawyer to contend with* He does not fuse plot and character and set them against a regional background. Ur. Quick* s attitude is clearly that of nostalgic backward-looking at the good old days.

Wo went through some hardships, we suffered some ills to bo pioneers in Iowa; but I would rather have cy grandsons see what I saw and foel what I felt in the

* Ibid., p. 296. 33*

conquest of those prairies, than to get up by their radiators, step into their baths, whirl thecselves away, in their cars, and go to universities* I as glad I had my share in those old, sweet, grand, beautiful things— the things which never can be again....If I have a pride in it, if I look back to those days as worthy of record, remember that I have some excuse* There will be no other generation of human beings with a life so rich in change and growth* And there never was such a thing in all the history of the world before*5

It is the sane type of writing as Bess Streeter Aldrich* a Lantern, in Her Hand, but more lusty and robust with stirring adventure. It is a stirring pageant of the westward movement of migration and the fictionalised people who worked, loved, hated, and sinned and made Iowa the good old state she is* :

In The HawkeyesMr. Quick carried forward the story of Monterey

County during the •seventies and • eighties. While some of the same

characters appeared before in Vandemark* s Folly, they serve chiefly as

background. This novel dealt with the life of Fremont McConkey. It was presumably written by him in middle age in order to set down the history of Monterey County* Fremont was b o m of lowly parents just

before they were forced to sign a quit-claim deed to their property for

fifteen dollars. Jason Holbrook demanded twenty-four per cent interest

on the mortgage on their land. Because they couldn* t pay that ruinous

rate of interest, they lost their farm, Mrs. McConkey wanted to move

to the university town so that her children would have a chance to got

an education. Her stubborn husband of old American stock refused to

settle in town and moved his family still farther out into the country.

5 JM d . , P. 362. 34.

As Fremont grow up, ho was considered a "genius." He read every­ thing he could get his bands on and longed to write. In all the stir­ ring events around hia, ho saw germs of stories to be written.

The Graves gang did not fit into literature at all.. .If this were only mountain country, or a coast he might make a story of it. The idea of writing about Iowa and her people flitted through his mind— but who would read about Iowa? He would have to travel to far climes to find anything to write about— and how could he travel?”

While he was considering how much he did not want to teach, some of the politicians decided to use Fremont to influence the Buahyager pmg# childhood friends and neighbors of his, in the matter of voting.

Fremont readily agreed to this plan because he thought it would please

Winifred Ashe, whose favor he wished to gain. Her father, who desired the county clerkship was one of those in "the ring" who hoped to win nomination in'the caucus. At the time of local meetings to elect delegates for the caucus, upon prearranged signal, the voters whom

Fremont had influenced cane trooping into the meeting and turned the majority of votes away from Raws Upright, the former loader of county polities. ‘ ■ . '■ : ^

When Captain Ashe had Fremont stay at bis home during the

Teachers* Institute, he saw much more of Winifred. One night when

Mr. Ashe came home late and discovered the young people busy about their courting instead of studying, he ordered Fremont from the house.

Catherine, the older sister, who kept house for the motherless family.

Herbert Quick, ZMfiStiSSZsKHew Xorkt 1923), p. 111. 35.

sided with the young people. Frenont and Winifred eloped and were married. He couldn»b teach now because he had not taken the county examinations. The townspeople who knew that Captain Ashe was elected only because of Fremont*# activities in politics were disgusted with the Captain* a attitude. Pressed by public opinion, be made Fremont hi# deputy clerk.

Fremont lived in the Ashe home. He wanted to go on with his serious reading, writing, and preparation for bar examinations, but the spoiled and petted Winifred demanded all his time. At her insistence he read silly love stories aloud to her evenings until their child was bom. All the work and the care of the baby fell to the willing,. ■ motherly Catherine.

Graft was suspected by members of the political party not in power. A Citisens* Committee under Paul Holbrook was investigating the disbursements of all county funds, taxes, and fees. It was a reign of terror for those in power. Captain Ashe, who had used fees for his own purposes and for those of bis friends, drank more heavily to still his fears. One day he withdrew his money from the bank, went hunting, and was found shot. It was decided that he was killed by an accidental discharge of the gun as ho was going through a fence. A note signed by

Raws Upright for the money Ashe had withdrawn was found in his wallet.

iihilo all this was going on, Winifred died during the premature birth of their little boy. Fremont was beside himself with grief and worry. After the death of Captain Ashe, Fremont was promoted from

deputy to clerk. "Destiny has kicked Fremont McConkey upstairs!

7 IM d . , p. 351. 36.

said the president of the Monterey State Bank.

; May, the younger Ashe sister, succeeded Fremont as deputy. Every

effort of the whole family was put forth to pay off Captain Ashe* a de­

ficiency. Paul Holbrook was courting Hay Aeho while he was busy hunting

out all the graft. T?hen Paul and May married, friends pointed out to

Catherine that she and Fremont couldn* t go on living together after Hay

was married and gone. As long as there had been two sisters the

arrangement of Fremont* s living at tho Ashe home had been socially

acceptable* His mother told Fremont the same thing. She offered to

take his babies. But since Catherine was utterly devoted to Winifred**

two babies, Fremont and Catherine solved their problems ty marrying,

oven while Fremont was protesting he could never love again* All his

affection had been buried with Winifred, he said.

A mass of rottenness and all manner of graft was uncovered in the

county when Paul Holbrook

fired his torpedo— which was to blow the County Ring out of water, tie up all the bales of county warrants in the Monterey State Bank, and by its repercussions in other cases, remove from office not only every member of the Board of Supervisors,' A but also the sheriff, the auditor and the treasurer.8

fhough nothing touched Fremont, he knew he wouldn* t be elected

again. As part payment on the note he had given Captain Ashe on the

day of the Captainfs death. Raws Upright offered Fremont bis newspaper,

the Lithopolis Sun, for an endorsement of $1000 on tho note.

When Fremont and Catherine moved to Lithopolis, Fremont planned

8 Ib|d., P. 409. 37.

to sell Insurance and practice law, if he could get clients, in ad­ dition to running the newspaper. After Catherine insisted on learning to set type, she became a very efficient manager of the odd jobbing.

She found a Calllgraph and encouraged Fremont to write feature stories about neighborhood happenings to sell to city papers.

Because of the entertaining wfakes,” as these features were called, Fremont had an offer from a big daily in Chicago. But when

Paul Holbrook asked him to come back to Monterey and edit the paper there, ho did. Along with that work went this writing of The Hawkoyo.

Such is the plot element reduced to simplest terns. The book is crowded with crop expectations; land speculations; politics, corruption, graft, •rings,” and "gangs;* mobs and mob violence, as well as an analysis of the conditions that made so much political trickery and

corruption possible*

It was all a mass of rottenness!.*.They were tho victims . of a system or a lack of it. When the country was new, most of the lands had been owned by non-resident speculators, to whom nobody felt that anything was due by way of fidelity or duty. The settlers be­ lieved that they were working to build up the country for the benefit of these outsiders, these capitalists. The taxes paid by the non-residents seamed to possess nothing in the way of sacrednesa. Counties were organised for the express purpose of producing taxes for the benefit of their organisers.

these county rings through whoso operations were laid the foundations of the fortunes of many of our old respectable families.9 9

9 Ibid,, p. 413. Finally, aa Frmaont grew older, be realized that the American county goveranent, even after the com­ munities became settled, ia a natural bed for the growth of the mushroom of inefficiency and crooked­ ness, It has no bead, no center of responsibility, no executive**®

Mr* Quick* a purpose in writing The Hawkeye was to give the readers a substantial picture of politics in Monterey County,- Iowa* But really he has reconstructed a special period in the whole American scene, that

era in which political corruption was taken aa a matter of course if

the grafter# did not go too far* The whole book is flavored with the

under cultivation.

The hero la The Hawkeye ia aa poorly drawn as the hero ia

Vandanark* s Folly* Fremont HcConkey is too innocent unsuspecting*

When he attended his first political meeting, he was a lamb in a lions*

den. When he attended the hearing on the county graft cases, he looked

about him a# if he were learning something every minute. Doubtless he

was, still he might have observed a few things and thought about then

as he did his work as deputy clerk, Though his conversation on

ordinary occasions was natural enough, in his love-making scenes it

was stilted and patterned after the style of old-fashioned sentimental

novels. It was a relief near the close of the book when he discovered

that be and Catherine loved each other* She had mothered his wife,

up to her death, his children, and him too long to go totally

m im., P. 4U. 39.

unregarded by his love, the author remained truer to life uhen he

left Fremont an editor of a county newspaper than he would have been had he elevated him to high position and wealth.

Mr. Quick paints Fremont as a true product of the soil, the

•ring* consisted of the five officers on the ground floor of

they were already expressing surprise at his progress

knew what took place in his soul... .Hhile he learned

callouses softened on his hands and peeled off, leav­ ing then soft and pink— the callouses on his soul, which had been made ty his long life on the farm, still remained.

I wonder if I can tell how this manifested itself. Well, for one thing, he was always conscious of & little feeling of guilt, as if he were shirking a duty. When he rose long after sunrise, he had this sensation o f : guilt. He should have been in the field long since! It was not so pronounced in winter...H

The whirr of a thrashing-machine, the smell of now-turned furrows.

the sight of ripening wheat or growing c o m seemed to call him to

duties. '■

I wonder if that ominous desertion of the soil which our world has seen in its steady and, I sometimes sus­ pect, fundamentally wicked industrialism, the human race has not suffered a shock to its collective con- science of which Fremont HcConkeyts queer little - trouble is typical?12

ruption about him. He

»• » 3 .

12 ISM., f. 29*. 40*

. He was tied to the side of TTinifred by those

fine him.*.*For the first tine in his life, •twading the call of the soil in times past, he found ‘ .to. read. Poor Winifred was the cause of the Tantalus phase ef the banquet; for she in her condition-had lost the sympathy she had formerly shown for Fremont in his intellectual strivings. - She had gone back to the things her mother used to love., .novels of Mary J. Holmes...*He read them dutifully, tut he was now disgusted with them.13

One wonders why the author had made hie hero such & poor spirited fellow. Perhaps it was to show the real reason why he later rose no higher than editor ef a country newspaper. He was made a tool of the poU ticians, dragged down or at least held tack by his first wife, in­ fluenced to read law and grow by a friend, encouraged to write feature stories by his second wife. Altogether he did not seen to have an inner driving power that kept him working toward a goal. Instead he was presented as a product or victim of his environment.

Fremont's mother is perhaps the best drawn character. She was a brave-hearted, understanding, far-seeing woman who believed in her son, helped him, and comforted him intelligently timough his emotional

The beautiful, spoilt, olinging-vine Winifred would, have ruined

Fremont, their love and possibly their children, had she lived. The maternal, unselfish devotion of Catherine would have been unable to save the entire family once the children had begun growing up. None of them would have had any lives or personalities of their ora but

23 Ibid., P. 305. would havo been totally absorbed in feeding the vanity of Winifred.

Many of the minor characters were especially well drawn. The

Buahyager clan of outlaws were explained as being unable to adjust themselves to the rapid pace of the development of Iowa life.

Many of the politicians were really weak men succumbing to

.... . , r , . . Irresistible temptations when there was clear opportunity for graft and crookedness. The Buahyagera and politicians were not necessarily regional characters but rather universal American characters.

The plot pattern of the novel is merely biographical. It follows the life of Fremont with long digressions in county politics and the attendant corruption. In The Hawkeye Mr. Quick presents too much of the history of county government. The exposition of the main theme overshadows the development of character and prevents the book from being a good regional novel, with setting, plot, and character properly Clyde B r i m D&vi# in writing Nebraaka Coast seeaa to have been, intent upon setting down the reminiscences and anecdotes of his father and giving the world & readable story of the history of trans­ portation in the early days. The great problem of the I860* s in the early West was that of procuring a quick, cheap means of getting products to market. Since railroad building was very slow, expensive, and fraught with dangers, many sought other schemes and made con­ traptions to solve the problem. The steam wagon was one of these.

Nebraska Coast began in the State of New fork when Jack liacdougall purchased a canal boat to escape faming the rocky hill sides. He bought at the wrong tine, a time when there were already more canal boats than were needed and when the railroads were begin­ ning to present serious competition to the canal. He made money nevertheless. But when the Civil War came on he expressed himself too often and too forcibly and found himself out of favor. Once he

Listen, slavery aim* t what* s causing this not by a jugful. But, by grab, the Southern Demo­ crats have been holding the upper hand in Washington and they don't want to lose it. They try to get. new slave states out west and the Freo-Soilers try to get more free states out west so*s they can have more senators and put over their high tariff. The Froe- Soilers have been winning out and that's the big thing that* s causing this war. This slavery talk is all hogwash to get good American boys up north wrought up 8o*s they* 11 go down south and shoot other good American boys and the whole thing is a damn crime and disgrace.!

When his unpopularity was reaching enormous proportions and even one of his own sons enlisted with the Worth, a letter came from Cousin

Dave out in •Hehrasky.* He told of the exciting future in the West and how untouched the West was by war. Jack sold his canal boat end moved his family speedily to Nebraska by railroad, boat, and wagon. On the

journey a chance acquaintance interested Jack in a steam wagon that was

to revolutionize transportation in the new West. The steam engine was planned to have a speed of twenty miles an hour with wheels ten to twelve feet in diameter and two feet across the tire. It would use the ordinary wagon road and pull a long caravan of freight wagons. It would be a long step ahead of ox wagons crawling along at two miles an hour.

The stranger proposed that Jack procure a ranch on the steam wagon route and supply good food and necessities for the crews and passengers and wood and water for the steam wagon.

Jack, ever ready for any scheme to get out of work, did just that.

The steam wagon was to follow the route of the overland freighters, and

in no time at all the Maedougalls found themselves supplying lodging

and meals at a dollar each, and running a general store for the

freighters. Jack, against the protests of his wife, bought whiskey at

four dollars a barrel, sold it to the bullwhackers at twenty-five cents

a glass, and made over five hundred thirty dollars a barrel, not count­

ing what was lost "thru evaporation* or in other words his own

1 Clyde Brian Davis, H&teJte .gffiaife (Haw York* Farrar and Rinehart, 1939), p. 45. 44*

indulgence in drinks of the «oh be joyful.* The steam wagon never did materialise, but through a lucky turn of fortune the Macdougalls be­ came successful pioneers of the West.

In. ton years a torn, Macdougall, Nebraska, had grown up around then, a typical western town which had a railroad, telegraph, newspaper bank, hotel, general stores, and a grain elevator* Jack was a person­ age. He saw to it that a school and churches were established, championed Justice, and became mayor and finally a representative to

. tiacdougaH repeatedly insisted that no one ever got rich follow­ ing a plow and that one had to use his brain to make coney in this world. It was chance not dogged industry that brought him success— the lucky chance of settling in Nebraska in the * 60s when the country was growing so fast that a nan with wits could hardly help making money.

The story is told from the point of view of Clinton Macdougall and centers in the life of his idolised father; The complete under­ standing existing between father and son is delightful. *

The. characters are not individualised. Even Jack himself is typical of thousands of other pioneers in the early Nest. There are no conflicts of will on will or individual soul stirring problems. Jack is good-natured, likeable, opinionated, exceedingly strong, quick­

tempered and very racy in colloquial idiom. Perhaps one of the more clearly drawn minor characters is his wife* s sister with her cherry wood table for spirit rapping*. The characters are not influenced by

the region nor do they show any effect of having lived in the region.

Only because they were lucky enough to be there in those stirring 45.

tinea, they became rich and successful,

The plot is loosely constructed. The action makes a Eighty spec-

tacle, a great series of acre or less disjointed pictures of the old

West— the pioneers pitting their strength against the prairie, the

Indian fights, the buffalo hunts, the crawling freight trains, the bad m m (an unconvincing incident about Wild Bill Hickok), the wild-West,

rich-quick schemes, and even the louse races held by bulltrhackora. In

short, It is a pageant of inland transportation.

Nebraska Coast lias too ouch background. The region is too .

evident, too carefully worked out* It is too clear that Mr. Davis did an enormous amount of background reading, but his book falls short of being a good regional novel because ho neglected to set a stirring drama of life within the region he so richly portrayed. Just as Mr. Quick presents too much history of county government in The Hawkey. Mr* Davis presents too much history of transportation in Nebraska Coast. Both of

them fall short of being good novels* Plot and characterization are neglected and the regionalism is too self-conscious. CHAPTER IV.

PAUL ENGLE

Alvraya the Land by Paul Engle concerns itself chiefly with horses and the type of people who breed, buy, sell, trade, race, and “show” horses. The theno deals with the resistance of tho older generation, typified by Jay Meyer, to changes welcomed by the younger generation, typified by his grandson Joe Meyer. The plot interest is very slight.

Joe Meyer and Jerri© Koines net as rivals on a race track at a county fair. Their mutual interest in horses drew them rapidly along the road to love. Joe expected much opposition from his grandfather be­ cause the old nan had had hard feelings for thirty years against

J errie1 s father. There had been a * sight unseen* horse trade in which it had seemed at first that Jay bad been worsted. When, as time went on. Jay's resistance weakened, the reader was loft with the feeling that the love affair would end satisfactorily.

Each of the seven characters la the book is a rugged individualist.

Perhaps it is because the characters are alive and absorbing that one feels willing to overlook the slight plot Interest*

While Joe Meyer was putting a horse through his paces he saw a bald and bearded stranger.

He was walking toward them, dragging a game left leg, whistling low and shrill through his beard. Around his bald head was a ring of white curls that trembled as he walked* His overcoat trailed on the cinders. One hand carried a bundle wrapped in news­ paper, the other moved back and forth in an extra long swing at every step, trying to cake up for the 47*

Jerk in his gait. He was obviously very old, yet in his bearing and the brisk gestures of his hands there was no sign of age. ill his movements had drive, a set determination even in the way he shifted his bundle from one hand to another.1

which the man displayed considerable knowledge,

Joe looked at him hard for the first time. Eager­ ness was all the man, the squat, wiry body bending for­ ward, the Jews working rhythmically, hands clasping and unclasping behind bis back.2

Such a man was Henry Hope, pleading for a job and obtaining it because of his love of horses. He was a queer, warped fellow. Beside his over-mastering love Sir horses ran his passionate hatred for women.

After ridiculing him constantly for his m a l l size, his wife had run off with another man. She took with her their two small sons. One of

them would have been a ngreat horse guy.” Sever after would he endure a woman in his presence if he could possibly avoid it.

Henry batched in the loft of the horse barn, partly because he

Carrie, Joe's aunt, who kept the house.

Henry stubbornly insisted upon putting one more

the b a m , though Joe wanted to wait till the next day ti

rope on the hayfork would be replaced with a new one. ?

Henry was hit on the head by the fork and knocked unconscious. Though he recovered in a measure, he was not as hale as he had been. At a

1 Paul Engle. Always the Land (Hew York: Random House, 1941)> p . 2 . * m & . , p* 4*.

critical noaont when the. pipe for his stove didn*t work properly, he again fell unconscious. The b a m began burning. Ho revived, got down­ stairs to try to take the horses out, but became unconscious again and died while the b a m was still burning. That he was a "character* every­ one will admit. He summed up his attitude toward life once while be was currying down a race horse till his coat was cleaner than Henry# s beard.

"This is the life. Jo g . When there ain't no more horses I wants die.*

How at eighty Jay Meyer, who in his day had been quite famous for his horses, was bedfast because a horse bad kicked him in the back ten years before.

In the bod....was sprawled the gigantic body of Jay Meyer. The legs lay dead, but the hands were alive. The force of the invalid grew upward* the feet wooden, the legs long and wholly limp, the torso moving bat rigid, the arms more active, yet held la restraint by the weight of the sick body, the head more alert than the hands, rolling and turning strongly on the oak-tnmk of a neck, and last the eyes, alive, quick, dominating. Strangest of all, the" hair was un­ changed in color. Over the old, beaten body rose a heavy shock of black hair, tousled and sticking straight up from the skull, each hair looking as if it had the toughness and tension of wire. Every feature of the face was large, chin deeply cleft, mouth liko a bucket, round plump cheeks appearing soft when the hardness of bone lying behind them was so evident, nostrils flar­ ing libs those of a horse. But the eyes dominated the person. With them, unmoving in his teamster# s wagon . of a bed, be controlled the room.3

He dominated the management of the farm, too. He had no patience with the government regulation of farm products nor the loans to farm­

ers on their crops. The matter of whose policies should control the

^ Ibid., p. 10. 49

- farm was a constant source of argument between Jay and Joe.

: i Granddad, you can*t farm just by main strength and awkwardness any more. You got to plan ahead. And you can’t pay out by praying. You can work the skin plumb off till the bones stick out, and it doesn’t matter...if the market won’t give you the cost of your seed. A loan will do It. It doesn’t make any difference if you like it or not. Most of the people around hero don’t....But they like it better than wondering how many sides a dollar has because they haven* t seen one for so long. Only hard cash a lot of # e s e birds have seen is their govern­ ment check.4

Grandpa o^pos^ change of all kinds. He opposed the idea of #

possible marriage between Joe and Jerrie because of a' disagreement with

her father thirty years before. He refused to let the old cabin be

made tight and corn coaled into it as security for a government loan.

Because he opposed insurance on the farm buildings he was left with

heavy losses when Henry’s fire burned the horse barn and cabin. He even

refused to have the stove pipe repaired. The barn would not have caught

fire if he had made that necessary change.

The fire which caused the death of Henry was symbolical of the

end of the old order of things. Jay felt it. Joe felt that at least

ho might have his word heard. Jay’s first thought was hot to rebuild

the barn. Joe said that Jerrie had a couple of horses and »might bo

around to look after then."4 5 Jay accepted the new order. *0. K. Guess

we can stand one more around here....He’ll build a new barn.*^

4 1 W - . P. 34.

’ Itte, P. 322.

6 Ibid., p. 322. 50.

Am Interesting sideli^xfe

Ob the night when Rube and Jorrie Holmes cane out to supper and were detained by a stona he told tho story of each whip. Collectively they formed a picture from the days of the pioneers breaking the sod with oxen to the end of the era of horses for driving. Hist fhat* a Yaroslav Hovak* the Bohemian who run# the farm end of it here.#** He* a not much better-looking than a bull, but he*3 just as strong....Only time be gets tired is sitting down. Goes around in quiet times bally- aching for something to do. He gets sick and can’t eat when ho don* t work.? The taciturn hired man* a capacity for work was matched only by his capacity for the good food Carrie set before the men. Though he has nothing to do with the advancement of the story, Xari is always there, working, watching, listening* After Carrie, Jay Meyer* s daughter, had been married for only a short time her husband died. The experience left her with & great motherly feeling for men. She was never happier than when cooking for men who loved good food. When her old father became angry, no one could soothe and quiet him as she could. Her language was rough and expressive, for she lived wholly in a men* a world* Onco a year she went to the fair and talked for a few hours with farm women over their various entries*

7 JM s U , p. IS. Jerrie1 a father. Rube Holmea, was a hard drinking, bofc-t«apered old horse trader who made most of his nonoy during the racing season and lived fron band to couth between seasons. His wife had died when

Jerrie was born. Because his wife had been afraid of horses, ho was

to do things she was afraid of*

, But Jerrie was a gane little piece who wanted no sympathy from anyone. Her attitude toward her hard lot was, ”1 can .take it.* With her tongue between her teeth to keep tho tears back, she let her father knock "the darned siesiness* out of her* One good scene was that of

Jerrie at the fair pridefully showing off her high school horse.

. Joe was a presentable young man with a groat understanding of horses and human beings. Even while hie grandfather* s resistance to

. _ / ' ■ - - ' ; ' ...... change was no end of worry to him he oould see .#ie old: mn * s viewpoint.

He had remarkable ability to put himself in the other persons shoes . and Imagine how be felt*

Most of the scenes with Joe and Jerrie have to do with the races at the fair. They were just returning from the fair the night the tern was burning and were in time to save the horses.

Always the Land is distinguished for strong characterisation, a loose, episodic structure, and an enormous amount of rambling talk and argument about horses and government aid for farmers and control of crop production. Very little actually happens. Tho action is slight In proportion to the length of the book, and yet the book is satisfying in that the young win out over the old and the hero marries tho girl.

Stock situations are presented in a new dress* bring conviction with passages such as this:

Farming!a a tough business now* A man's got to know about soils, how to breed and raise livestock, fix machinery, watch markets, carpenter, plan crops, handle money* He's got.to worry about weather and what some crop the other side of the world is going to be..*.50*8 got to make a living for his family right off a place he lives cm, and nobody to pay him a salary every Saturday night.8

However the story might have taken place in any agricultural region in the United States.

His descriptions of nature are really fine;

The night sounds of the country were hushed, as often when the air became oppressive. Ho dogs barked. Every living creature turned in its sleeping or waking and hoped for rain. Only the corn belonged to beat like this that consumed without burning. Its long - limp leaves hung downward on their bent ribs. Over the whole fertile state of Iowa the one common sound was the Inaudible, green hush of the corn growing.?

The breeze had blown all night but without rain. In the early morning air the heat still hung, although not as choking as it would become at noon....But shat seemed to tie knots in the bones of men working in fields was the knowledge that day after day would be the same, and night after night. They knew the difference between noon and midnight merely by feeling that noon heat was brilliant and night beat black....They could already feel their dry bodies beginning to sweat even before they began the hardest work....In all the land, only the urgent, growing c o m seemed at home."1

They went down the hill and across the alfalfa field, walking in the living flame of the fireflies. Then along the creek mumbling and clucking to itself .31

8 Ibid., pp. 260-61. 9 s m - i ?. so.

10 JMd., p. 51. n aa., p. 230. a .

The setting is not a determining factor in the lives of the people. Their characters are in no tray shaped by tho fact of living in this particular region. Perhaps old Jay Meyer might have been such s product of the soil in the earlier days, but now his day is past, Such conscious use of a particular region defeats its own end in producing a regional novel. The setting should have been used as a back drop for action and characters. Instead there is not much plot and tho strong characterization is independent of both setting and plot. The poet hasn’t found the trick of fusing all three elemenits to form * regional novel. CHAPTER V.

The H q m o P3je.ce by Dorothy Thomas is a story of the return of the three sons of the Youngs to the paternal roof in Nebraska after the depression, To b , the oldest, who had a fine farm and home across the road, brought back his wife Edna and their three boisterous sons.

Ralph, who had married Phyllis, a school teacher, and who had his own farm noarby brought back his wife and little daughter. Just as the

Youngs were about to write for help to Harvey, the youngest, who had had two years in college and now had a good job, a car, and an apart­ ment in the city, he appeared with his wife. Jobless and destitute.

The older Youngs cheerfully and unreproachfully welcomed them all back and did all they could. Then, too, there was “old Grandma*

Young who could no longer keep relationships straight and constantly resented having to sleep on the cot in the kitchen even though it was her own idea to give up her bedroom to one of the young couples. Two

of the sons had married poorly* Tom's wife, though an excellent worker, was resentful, jealous, and suspicious, Harvey's wife was a slovenly, painted doll, too lazy to keep herself neat or to do any housework to help out* Phyllis, Ralph's wife, was sensible, adaptable,

resourceful, and beloved by all. Her chief problem was the malicious

teasing that Tom's three boys, unreproved, inflicted on her little

Betty and the. effect it was having on the child. Then, too, another

baby was coming. She couldn't go homo to her father, for he had lost his job whoa tho bank failed.

In the place built for six, now housing fourteen widely different personalities, there could bo little else than tension, hurt feelings, lack of privacy, jealousy,.and bickering* Once when hot words were being spoken. Father Young asserted that he never had allowed contention and he,d have nono of it now.

The home place housed them all for a year* Then Phyllis and

Ralph withdrew to a little two-room house which had been moved into the orchard and which Phyllis had papered and made usable j Harvey obtained employment out West# bis wife went off with a former friend) Tom's boys were taken to 2dm* s brothers while Edna recovered in the hospital from s hurt back* The author hints of happier, bettor tines for all, though the reader cannot see how it will work out* The chief relief is the scattering of the family and the resulting decrease in the tension and personality conflict*

skillfully done, with no wasted words. Without going into detail one feels the pressure of the farm work to be done by tho men and the

vividly set forth* And even in bad years and in depression when all seems hopeless there is still much to keep the men busy early and late.

The background is accurately and economically handled*

The characters ore well defined from old Grandma, with her mind all hazy about more recent events-and people but clear as a boll about the distant past and her homely advice and remedies, down to sweet and gay little Betty* However, the author left her charactere unchanged at

the end of the year* She presented them carefully, but overlooked the fact that in the conditions under which they were existing tensions would inevitably come to showdowns. Tom pays too much attention to

Cleo, Harvey* a wife* Since Harvey doosn* t love her we expect no

trouble there; but jealous, suspicious Edna, Tom*a wife, doeon*t ex­ plode as in real life she would some time during the course of a year*

Father Young was altogether too patient with Cleo. Even Mother Young night have been tempted to point out a few plain facts to her. Ralph and Phyllis let Tom* s boys run over their Betty far too long* Phyllis finally keeps the child at home and teaches bar herself* There are

possibilities for major disagreements all around, but Miss Th o m s makes

no use of them except once, Tom and Ralph actually fight when Ralph

cannot endure being considered the cause of fonts losing his place*

Ton and Father Young had. mortgaged some of their own properties to start

Ralph out and hadn* t paid out before the depression cane. They all had

gone down together and only the home place was saved*

Here the author had an opportunity to show how much the region

influenced her characters, but she didn* U She d i d n H talk about her

characters tut developed then by what they said or did. One feels they

should have showed definite change after a year in such cramped

quarters, but instead they remained static*.

Plot elements are negligible. Though the story moves la accord­

ance with the happenings season by season in one year on the home

place, the reader feels suspense concerning the rigidly repressed

feelings of the characters and eagerly wi t s to see i&ich one will , ; . . 57.

1 ' -

"blow up” first and how that trill affect the lives of tho rest. The

young people ware defeated b y . envirorment* The. farnera failed because

they did not receive adeqtmte prices for their crops so that they could

pay off their mortgages end carry on. The city dwellers fled to the

home place in the country when they were out of work and without funds.

The author neither attacks nor defends the region. She simply

shows how the depression was affecting human lives in a Nebraska

agrarian community. She shows that the youngs had independence and

•tardy backbones as she presented them in the hopelessness of tho

first year of their defeat and then left them.

Except for the defect of static characters Dorothy Thomas was

considerably better than lira. Aldrich os a regional writer. She pre­

sented a newer situation, that of a flight to the home place, rather - ' than tine-worn fictitious devices of plot* State Fair and The Princess are entirely different from the usual type of Iowa novels. The farmers are happy and prosperous, contented with their lot and at peace with each other. State Fair is a joyous, humorous story of a delightful week spent by the Frake family at the Iowa State Fair. The story opens with Abel and Melissa Frake doing their week* s trading at a cross-road country store on Saturday night. There is a heart-warming picture of the philosophic storekeeper, and the loafers and of the usual banter­ ing which takes place in such groups. Margy, their daughter, and Wayne, their son, have violent quarrels with their sweethearts. That last week of preparation for going to the fair had gone very slowly, a fact which might have accounted for the young folks* jittery nerves. Mr, Frake is entering Blue Boy, a hog ho fondly hopes will take the championship. Mrs. Frake is entering pickles of various kinds. Prize winning is a habit with Mrs. Frake, if one judges by the assortment of ribbons which adorn one wall of her kitchen. The whole problem of tho novel revolves around one question, "Will Blue Boy win?" The family starts on Sunday night in a truck carrying Blue Boy groomed to perfection and well crated, a tent for themselves, and a week*s supplies for camping out on the Fair Grounds. 59,

The journey is nade in the cool of the night so that Blue Boy will not suffer and sweat in the heat. Monday is spent getting settled on Caspers Hill and getting Blue Boy and the pickles entered. AS the fair the Brakes go their separ­ ate ways. Mrs. Brake*s idea of a good time at the fair is meeting old acquaintances and making new ones among the women encamped on the hill. She prepares three meals a day for her family, keeps up with her mend­ ing, and exchanges recipes and gossip with her neighbors. Two after­ noons at the exhibits, one while all her various entries in the pickle department are awarded first prizes and one at the hog pavilion fur­ nish her with excitement. Mr. Brake spends most of his time at the hog pavilion. As tie keeps Blue Boy from being too lonesome in a strange place, he joshes with other exhibitors and looks over their entries for rivals to Blue Boy*s claim to fane. Blue Boy wins the State • championship, which is equivalent to world sweepstakes, since no one! contests Iowa* s claim to first place in hog raising, then Hr.- Brake basks in contentment and listens to comments made about Blue Boy. , Wayne had spent eight dollars at a trop-la stand the year before to win a pearl-handled revolver, only to discover that it was worth- - ' less. Added to that the barker had ridiculed him in his disappointment before the assembled crowd. All winter Wayne had practiced throwing hoops In secret in the old carriage house. He sought out the barker. He was greeted with, "Bring down any bears with that revolver?* Wayne became fiery red. The barker offered him three hoops "on the house.* In rapid succession Wayne hooped the three one dollar bills. On and on he went* the barker tried to get rid of him, but prise after prise he threw to the ground as worthless. The crowd was aroused and the barker saw himself about to be ruined in earnest. He threatened Wayne, but his threats did no good because a girl stepped up to say that her father was inspector of detectives and he*d see that fair play was en­ forced. The barker dickered with Wayne. Once a day Wayne might cose

«p, wim three dollars and go on. The girl Emily and Wayne proceed to other hoop-la stands. In each place he allows himself to bought off, never to return, for ten dollars. Emily confesses being the daughter of the stock show manager. She and Wayne spend most of their time together. At the horse races Emily1 s bets net her over a hundred dollars, but she won*t let Wayne bet. She says it*s too shady for a nice boy like him. On the pretense of going to Dos Koines to a show with a “fellow I met” Wayne spends a couple of nights in a hotel with Emily*

She gives him his first drinks of liquor. He proposes as he feels he should after "what they have been to each other.” Emily, worldly wise, knows a life together wouldn* t work out. Reluctantly Wayne admits this.

• »I was raised to run a farm— and you weren11— we couldn11 ever reach middle ground*....Ho stepped across the thin, infinite border between boyhood and manhood.”

Hargy* s idea of fun is the thrill of riding on roller coasters.

After she meets a newspaper feature writer whose passion is roller coasters, she spends most of her time with the gallant debonair Pat.

On the afternoon of the pickle judging, which she must spend with her mother, she sees Pat talking earnestly with the judges for a few

minutes, though Fat disclaims any undue influence with the judges, he

1 Phil Stoag, State Fair (Hew forks Grosset and Dunlap, 1912)# pp. 238—9. does admit he ms responsible for having Mrs. Frake and Margy1 a picture taken for the Register. Margy leaves the grounds with him for a few hours at the apartment of an absent friend of his. He wants to marry : her, but she points out how Incompatible their natures are. He couldn't stand being tied to one place and one woman and she couldn' t see her­ self in his gay, travelled, irresponsible life. Back in Brunswick, I'd be useful and people would like me. I could run a house. I'd have children, four or five, and they'd grow up like me and live to bring more land into the family. He still like land, wo farmers, even though it's nearly ruined us lately.2 Wayne and Margy return, thinking more kindly of their hone tom sweethearts. Mrs. Frake wonders what she will enter next year with "fifty-one more weeks to wait" till another Fair, and Abel is still dazed over Bine Boy's sudden fame and the boar's picture with the caption, "the World's Greatest Hog1 in Chicago papers. Abel, driving much faster on the night ride home, patronizes Blue

Boy. Of course you don* t like At, but it* s time for. you to realize that you're not the big stuff in this family. ■ Another ■year: or two, you* UL be making bacon. Of course, your skin's going to be mounted in the State Historical Building, rl#it along with pictures of my own people, _ but folks aim* t going to admire it for the same reasons. State Fair is very amusing throughout. Suspense is well sus­ tained concerning the outcome of the judging. The plot grows out of the region. Only in leea could a hog be the hero of a story, especially if the hog were hero because of winning a world's championship.

P. 217.

3 Ibid., p. 217. It is quite refreshing to read an Iowa story therein life flows along easily and happily, and the farmers live well and can afford to hire the drudgery done. However it is not credible that young people with such family background, traditions, and training should go to the lengths Wayne and Hargy did with strangers of such chance and casual acquaintanceship. On one sight-seeing expedition with Emily,

Wayne had the taxi stop while he took her into the State Historical

Building. In the picture gallery ho led her to one of a "white-haired man, a little reminiscent of Andrew Jackson in his less demagogic moods, but s t e m and sure, sitting quietly and sailing...1 My great-grandfather,1

Wayne said simply."^ With the consciousness and pride of family that

Wayne possesses along with his sure certainty of wanting to be a farmer, his conduct with Emily at the hotel isn*t in keeping with his character, even if one allows for adolescent emotional instability. Even though

Margy was immensely flattered at being mistaken for a university girl and was entranced by the soreness of manner and smoothness of the sophisticated Pat, still sho wouldn’t introduce him to her family. She had enough of a feeling of guilt in the ‘acquaintance to went to avoid

"explaining.* Having a fine background and being so wholehearted and natural, Margy isn’t the kind of girl who could or would layseide all her training and ideals so completely and do all her thinking after­ wards. She is too cool, collected, and philosophic.

The plot and characters grow out of the region, and Phil Stong’s

Ibid., p* 229- to the reader but to toll a highly amusing tale of the life of ful Iowa farmers enjoying their one outstanding holiday of the year— the Iowa State Fair*

of unusual Iowa people. Betsy Edeson died immediately after the birth of her little daughter. Her husband had died some months previously.

Reynold Edeson, the infant* s thirty-two-year-old brother and his aixty-

of the infant.

Though the doctor was quite skeptical, he consented. Reynold said*

Why not! Jake* a the beet hand in the county with lambs and pigs. I don*t want to brag, but anybody’ll tell you How I am with colts and calves. Girl babies are supposed to be easier to handle than any of those, up to tonsils and measles time. Ho— -this is Ma*s baby an* I guess Jake and I will see sho gets the beat bringia* up a baby could.5

They had scales, thermometers, and all modern equipment. Old

Jake cut off his beard, though he felt naked without it. It wasn’t

"hygeenlc." He used night shirts, too. Sleeping in a day shirt wasn’t

■hygeenic” either. The men organised their time. They took nnight about* turns waiting upon their young charge. They even attended to

the baby’s bath themselves.

At six Arnhold was,

utterly uncuddleable. ..utterly independent and undemonstrative...How could you spoil a little human being in khaki overalls who aits down with men at the

5 Phil 8tong. The Princess (New larks Farrar and Rinehart, l w . e 1941), P- 15. 64*

table, justified and justifiable, after six hours*

the cornt*6

At six years, clad in a complete outfit from Montgomery Ward’s,

Arohold started to country school.

A m i * felt abysmally out of affairs* The arith­ metic appalled her* She had come to school, she had been assured, to get the simple facts which enabled one

behind numbers which Key and Jake had not told her and which she could not now fa t h o m . . T h e awful simplicity of the things she was instructed to write on the black­ board frightened her. If there wasn’t some secret, of whose clues she could find no Inkling, behind all this, what had she been sent to school to learn? It was a .masque, a pretense of some kind, and she trailed it through the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grades. The grown-up men and women in the Sixth Grade misspelled words on the blackboard as a kind of jeer at her, for she knew that anyone of that age and dignity would not spell "believe,* "beleive* or "though,"

elaboration of the mockery. These folks had been in school four or five years, and of course they knew better and of course it was some wretched joke on her.7

After a preliminary skirmish in phonetics during which she cor­ rected the teacher, she was promptly promoted to the third grade*' The next class w s la arithmetic.

Hiss Koocher apparently did not know the thing Jake had taught her a year before. If you add up the numbers in a number and the sum doesn’t divide by three, the number won’t either.8

While she looked over the third Grade history, the teacher called up

Fifth Grade geography. She sat and stared at that class.

6 Ibid*, p. 23.

7 IMA., p. 38.

8 Ibid., p. 42. 65.

Her tablet was covered with the writing assignment; she already knew more history than there was in the whole silly text; the reading assignment was childish; she would get Jake to explain the rest of the arith­ metic book to her in the evening; the least boring thing in the room was the class which was reciting— there were voices, at least.° When the teacher called her to take part in the Fifth Grade geography aho roadily worked her way to the head of the class. At recess she was teased. In an amazingly short space of time she had received a black eye and had knocked out one boy* a two front teeth. Then she procured her belongings, mounted her horse, and rode

After changing her clothing, she did odd chores, prepared supper, laid the table, and bathed and changed for the evening meal. Then she lit the fire and cooked the meal. After the usual joking, her brother noticed her eye. "Oh, thatt” said Araie, dealing vigorously with steak and potatoes. ”That Koocher boy hit me. But then X knocked out two of his teeth— it doesn* t make any. differ­ ence; you get new ones.” ■Well, well, well,* said Jake* *Xou must of got to the wrong school. We planned for you to learn some read­ ing and writin* and things on* you seem to have got mixed up with some prize-fighting academy.*10 "I*a not going back any more. Roy and you can teach me more in a week than I’d learn there in the next five years. Roy was not unaware that Araie superior preparation in school-teacher he did not realize

9 I M A ., p. 42.

10 Xk M . , p. 54. 11 Ibid., p. 55. ho and Jake had stuffed into the little girl* 8 head, simply because the matters seemed to be such as would be accepted by any rational man— or rational little girl. The two men didn,t make any large distinction, and of course A m i e never regarded herself as anything but a temporarily undersised member of the trio.-1-2

Such were the school days of the precocious youngs ter w

When Jake was forty he had taken out a Twenty-Year Life Insur­ ance policy for $2,500. When Arahold was born, the policy was con- vertible. What Jake really wanted was all the money he could get about the time Arnie would be sixteen. He changed the policy into a

Fifteen-Payment Anmd.ty— without Life— which would take him up to 1915 or when Arnhold m s fifteen.

the agent was decent enough to show that if the ripe insurance was applied in this way Jake stood to take a good loss in payments if he died the day before he was seventy-five and a total loss if he died the day after the completion of the payments. It was plain , gambling, with all the odds on the company* s side, unless Jake happened to U v e to be something over ■ eighty.^3 ' ' " v. ■ : '

By the time Arnhold was fifteen, the payments of over a hundred dollars a month began to cone in. Jake felt he was beating the in­ surance company. The company pointed out that the cash surrender value was $5*442.37. Jake, gleefully gambling on his longevity, did not accept the cash surrender value. If he lived five years he would beaA that offer considerably, and if he lived to be a hundred, he would

22Mo.-Cit- At eighteen Arnhold covered herself with honor ty earning a

four-year scholarship for a musin course. She had been taking piano and appearing creditably in annual recitals. The feminine influence

in her life was her music teacher, Josephine Glairedge. ‘

In ten years Josephine had done a remarkable job m A m iej the girl was beautiful. Ho, that wasn*t quite the word, she was more handsomo or distinguished, with her high head, her easy young man's stride, her freedom and strength of carriage that came from the gardens and the fields and the fast that she had ridden horses since she was five. Josephine had selected the costume for the recital; a sheath of maroon silk velvet, almost black, with a lace dingus at the throat^-a sheath that had no lines at all from the collar to the skirt edge except Arnhold* s own, by James McNeill Whistler at his very best.H

It had been Josephine* s task to see that Araie was prepared for

whatever it took to get into a good girls* school. Arnie had never

gone a full day to school yet.

As had been the custom for years past. Miss Glairedge and the dean

of the music college were dinner guests of the Edesona after the recital.

A romance between Rey Edeson and Miss Glairedge culminated in a formal

engagement that evening. As Roy was taking Josephine home he was

blinded by the lights of an approaching car. A collision resulted.

They were both killed outright when the car dropped thirty feet from

the bridge to the river bottom.

Jake attended to the details. After the funeral life went along

quietly. Rey had given Arnhold a complete education in farm manage­

ment, and in addition had taught her the how and why of all operations.

H Ibid.. p* 7A» Since she had been trained to realism, she was not bothered by the elimination of her college years. Weldon Armbruster, whom Arnie had met in piano recital days, piled up arguments in favor of her begin­ ning her college course. Claiming that running a farm was an overlap­ ping •’hereditary business,® she turned a deaf ear.

To her establishment she added Epworth Drummond, a farmer-preacher neighbor of hers. Bp mis quite a character. Be preached f k w of charge to two different congregations. Be had never been ordained. In his preaching, ho emphasised behavior rather than religious doctrine* That his farming was good was proved by the fact that he didn't starve to death on the little run-down farm, using the wretched equipment he had.

Selma had become a permanent fixture. She kept the house beauti­ fully and prepared bountiful meals. Her chief delight was the Saturday matinee, where she bawled to her heart's content over the pictures*

Jake was almost eighty. He was still enjoying his joke on the insurance company. When Weldon earn© to call Arnie told him there wasn't a big farm anywhere that wasn't jealous of her on account of Selma, Bp, and Jake. , . •

Weldon tried to persuade A m i e to marry him. He proposed that

they both go on with their music in Hew York. They would enjoy the city. But she couldn' t leave the farm. He offered to buy the farm for

the §45,000 she said it was worth. She countered that she would use

tee money to buy other farms to build up with Bp's and Jake's help.

"You do overplay the earthborn girl* What's the sense of this, Arnhold? Anything yew want— anything— but of eotarse you'd be with me** "You seo the difficulty. While I'm here I'm valuable. Anywhere else. I'd bo a whatdoyoucallem— parasite, or 69

sonathing* I wouldn't suggest to you that you give up your piano and come over here and help farm* though that would settle everything* It would be absurd* So is this other absurd* There's no place in it for me.**?

When the land boom began Arnhold sold the farm for $75*000 cash.

The whole establishment moved over to Epworth* s place. Arnie bought some other odd acreage and began building up the place. She and Salsa had a house in town for the winter and only came to the farm during the daytime. The Edeson farm was reported sold for $160,000 in 1921 with a $2,000 down payment. Jake couldn't imagine why Arnie laughed.

They had not been off the homo farm for four years when Arnhold bought it back from the Joint Stock Land Bask for $40,000. The successive purchasers, after her sale, had been unable to make payments beyond their option. It was & cruel and heartlessly logical business but Arnhold had smelled the first boom and had, with a little patience, recovered her mildly abused farm and put $35,000 in good investments.16"

Weldon came for a visit when the family had Just moved back. After the dinner there was a great deal of music and Weldon's "Hehitabel."

In two years more ho would be an accepted, perhaps great, musician. In two more years Arnhold would have an empire of a thousand acres. They parted with a kiss at her door*

Mr. Valentine Salient and his daughter Phyrne stopped, out of gas, at the Edeson farm. Both were sick of the flu. They were trying to get to Detroit where Val hoped to find work. He had had two years la an engineering college before a long spell of hard luck and tuberculosis

13 Itid., P. 137.

161W., P- U2. 70.

had struck him. Arnie gave them food and lodging. Her own troubles were engrossing all her thought. Income tax returns were almost too much for her. fho next day Phyrne suggested that Arnie have her. dad do

them.

At nine o* clock that evening every document on Edeson was up to the minute, with accompanying graphs

over the past year, depreciation factors, appreciation of stock and crops by quantity and value, and every­ thing that a good production engineer could imagine as of importance to the farm.3-?

Arnie was pleased/ She invited them to stay until the weather

cleared. Jake suggested a few odd jobs of mending that needed attention,

Valentine named over a number of matters that he noticed. The Sollente

occasionally spoke of going on, but they never did. fihen Val needed

money, he said so. He was not paid wages, as such.

Jake adroitly helped along a budding romance between Liscom, a

druggist, and Phyrne.

JBpworth finally was ordained. There was a big dinner and cele­

bration in the church yard. Since it seemed that Ep and Selma would

never get around bo marriage, Arnie arranged that the bishop should come - » ...... out to the Edeson farm later in the day. Then she surprised Ep and Selma

with the idea. She even had the license and invited the neighbors. Since

it was the most notable wedding in years, it became a dating point la

neighborhood history.

Valentine Sollent organised a creamery and married a country woman.

A scandal and a divorce were mixed into that story.

17 Ibid., p. 166. When a careless helper had not fixed the stick of a grand piano •eeurelgr* the top fell and hurt Weldon* s hand. Since the accident un­ fitted him for concert work, he turned to composing. After a dinner at Ami#1*, they meat out of doors* they had come out in a little amphitheater, lighted greenly from the reflections of the sunset on the. tree- tops. The limestone ribs of the earth protruded here and from one of the shelves a tiny stream of water • gurgled out, dropped back to the rock and disappeared in a tub-sized pool near the base. For some reason— the clearing of the Indians, probably--there were no trees in the semi-circle that met and completed the semi-circle Of rock that the little spring had laboriously worn out over the millenniums.-^ Weldon said it was the spot where he*d present Ms first symphony to a select audience of fifty. Arnhold promptly took over the idea and planned to build a cabin there where she could get away from her world, they quarreled about the cabin. Arnie remarked that the cabin couldn’t belong to either of them because it would live to be much older. . ' : " "Not older than the sons of our sen, Araie." "Who knows?" With Jake deciding that he never felt better in his life and would probably be the victim of erosion the story cones to a very happy ending* '• " . In The princess Mr. Stong* s purpose seems to have been to write an amusing story about unusual people in the Iowa scene. The region­ alism is unconscious and natural. Though Iowa is not forced upon the

18 nsa., p. 302. 72.

attention of the reader, it ia definitely the realistic, authentic back­ ground before which the human drama is played. Perhaps Hr. Stong felt that the public has been reading of the unhappy, the poverty-stricken, the beaten, the frustrated, the overworked people too long. State fair deals .with happy prosperous folks who are typical. The princess with happy successful people who are not typical. The unusual story of Arnholdts babyhood, precocious childhood, adolescence, and early maturity fascinates one. Her deep-seated love of the land makes her akin to the pioneers of an earlier day. The characters are all simple people whom anyone might profit­ ably know and enjoy. The plot is biographical. It begins with Amhold*s birth and follows her life pattern closely. Only such incidents and characters are introduced as those which relate quite, definitely to her life. The only digression concerns the business and love affairs of Valentine Sollent. Even he is a part of her household. The dialogue is realistic, crisp, and sparkling with humor. No one is frustrated or unhappy. Even when Arnhold repeatedly refuses Weldon, the reader feels his satisfaction in his music, his concerts, and his travels. They both progress to a fitting maturity and find each other when they are well-developed and yet with plenty of youth before them* - ... • In The Princess Mr. Stong has produced a regional novel with characters, plot and Setting blended to produce a good story of Iowa - folks of— •different* sort. The only picture drawn from the national 73.

scene was that of the land boom, and resulting collapse In the early

•twenties. Arnbold was one of the few to profit and come off viator.

She doubled the value of her farm by shrewd calculations instead of coming off bested as the majority did. cHAPm ¥n.

PAUL COfiEX •

Since regionalism at its best ia not self-conscious mad does de­ velop a rich, meaningful, human drama with the region only as a back drop, one classes Paul Corey, who-wrote Three Kilos Square and The fioad Returns« as one of the definitely better writers of regional fiction. His characters come to life, have personality and meaning, and attempt to work out their destinies with a beautiful farming section of Iowa as the regional setting. He knows the country and all its problems well. He portrays Iowa farmers as neither hating the land nor loving it but vlth great endurance struggling with it to make it give them a living and a little more so that their children need not work as hard as they do. Three Miles Square begins with the death of Chris Manta, who leaves his widow a heavily mortgaged farm and four children to be edu­ cated. Two courses are open to her, to sell the farm and move to town and try storekeeping or to many landless Billy Hildebrands. Fourteen- year-old Andrew, her oldest son, had imbibed his father* s ideals for the farm and its management and influenced his mother to let him run the farm until he was twenty-one, when he pLnoied to go to school to stud^f to be an architect. That was his father* s dream first for him­ self and later for his son. Then Wolmar, the second son, was to take over till he was twenty-one. The widow was young and energetic and fiercely felt the need of a mate, but after she succumbed to Andrew* s 75*

pleading to keep the farming among themselves, she sublimated her own feelings by concentrating on the problems of rearing the family and farming. The book deals with her struggles during the years 1916 through 1915.

There always seems to be something external that is bound to wreck everything. Jensen, a neighbor who long wished to buy the widow* a land. Is most active in trying to prevent her from having good fortune-.

Once ho almost succeeded in having her grain left unthreshed, but

Andrew outwitted him. When the Little Bad River was to be dredged and straightened, he bribed the surveyors to set a course that would ruin forty acres of the widow* s land. Just before election, the would-be trustees, threatened by loss of votes, ordered a new survey, and the ditch was made to run. where it should. Later a girl threw herself at Andrew and almost made him forgot his ambitions to become an archi­ tect and win recognition. The weather played its part, bringing hail, wind, dust, and drought. Though not all seasons were had, the author expressed a farmer*s attitude and endurance in these words*

By fall, he would be used to the fact that he had lost his grain crop. That was the advantage of farm­ ing. Losses came slowly and you had a chance to get used to them. • For the swift blows of Fate— lightning, cyclones, hail— you carried insurance; but these gradually grow­ ing destructive forces, dust storms in April, scorching winds in August, floods and droughts— well, you got used to them.1 ' ' ■ - ■- • v"

Because Andrew had understood his father's ideals, he was one of

the first to plant winter wheat, to put in alfalfa, to retate crops, 1

1 Paul Corey, Three Miles Square (Hew York* Bobba-Kerrill Company, 1939), p. 95. to subscribe to cooperative movements such as the fresh meat ring and farmer-controlled grain elevators. Conflicts galore took place within the Hants family. Mechanic- ally-minded lolmar shirked and neglected his end of the farm work* He was neither hoy nor yet man and struggled constantly to get away to his beloved machinery and grease cups. Pleasure-loving Vemoy attend­ ing a town high school was never accepted socially. When the period of teasing and making fun of her was over, sho was ignored entirely. Her heart was never in furthering her preparations for becoming a teacher, but she did not revolt too openly and in due time began teaching in a nearby country school. A dredging outfit was boarding at Mrs. Hants*s while they were straightening the course of the Little Bad River. One of the men paid Veroey marked attention. Soon after she became pregnant, Veraey married the debonair mechanic who was working with the steam dredge crew. That terminated years of bicker­ ing with her .mother about her conduct. Only Otto, much younger than the others, is willing to forward the dreams of Andrew and his mother.- He too struggles in his a^nTI way to preserve the raity of the family and keep the farm. Mrs. Manta seemed to think that her destiny was not in her own hands. After her husband died, she was thinking over the past and speculating about the future. If her husband had lived for another ten years they would have the place paid for and money in the bank. How it looked as if the children might not get an education. Well she'd done the best she could $ she hadn't a hand in setting the course Providence chose to push: the family along? maybe there*d come a better opportunity for the baby.

2 Tbld.r p. 32. Tt>

Just when it looked ao if they were going to get on and not have to work so hard, Chris had to die and leave her with all this responsi­ bility, "It wasn*t as if they'd been lax and shiftless or improvident with what they bad. Somehow it dida*t seem right; it waan*t just treat­ ment of a just Providenoe.*^

fhe later movement to the city is partially explained by the attitude of those farmers of the poafc^pionoer days. When Andrew was expressing his determination to carry forward the work of his father as planned, his mother said,

lou got to think of the future. Son. The future of your own life as well as of the farm, four father ! wanted you all to have an education. He dida11 want you to be dirt farmers like he was. lou remember, you and Pa planned that you were going to study to be an architect?^

After several years of hard work, when Andrew was almost twenty-one

and about to go to college, she was reflecting that on the whole things

had not gone badly for the*.

She gleaned some satisfaction from the fact that the position of the family was improved— they had ad­ vanced. She felt a soothing pleasure just in contem­ plation of accomplishment.5 .

But still later when it was Wolmar> s turn to take Andrew1 s place

in the work of the farm, Wolmar, who had a strong feeling for mechanics,

revolted. Andrew understood Wolmar much better than his mother did.

"He knew what it meant to long for something so violently that frus-

tration would almost unsettle sanity.”

3 JM d » , P* 33*

4 lbld*> P- 71. 5 Ibid., p. 339. 6 Ibid*# p. 440. 78.

His mother looked up into her eldest son's face, realising that i» the swift progress of their lives, she was trying to direct and control things beyond her power* And this tall young man, this first son. of hers, was only smoothing:? things on their inevitable course.7

Although Mrs. Mania felt frustrated in some of her plans for her family, the habit of working to a plan was so strong in her that she began to realize she must begin building for high school and college for her youngest. Nothing must interfere with his education. •A loneliness came over her as her thoughts began to build again in the future.**

The picture of Mrs. Mania struggling to carry on and achieve success is a never-to-be-forgotten one. .

Paul Corey realizes that it takes all kinds of people to present a complete picture of agrarian life. One family doesn't live to it­

self alone, and by presenting a number of families and their various actions and reactions as they concern the Hants family and each other,

the author supplies the details for the pre-war period. Some are in­

dustrious, some lax, shiftless, and improvident. Some were progressive,

embracing every opportunity for greater cooperation and mechanisation and others clung to the poet-pioneer way of life, that of the horse

and buggy era. Some attempted to obey the Biblical injunction concern­

ing the widowed and the fatherless; and others, hard as nails, attempted

441.

S1M A * , P* 445. it ob sta cles whe reto take every advantage and even erecit obstacles whereto as Jensen did.

Mr. Corey shows that farmers have a hard life, problems with the elements, with neighbors, with tension within the family, with mortgages and the general economic difficulties in low prices and fluctuating land values. He does not build up that old myth that merely owning land brings a feeling of security and self-respect. His people are real, and ono takes a keen, absorbing interest in their struggles to reach their proper destinies.

He shows that the rural world is shedding the last remnants of its pioneer individualism and is taking on newer patterns and ideas.

E4 Crosby, an apostle preaching the gospel of cooperation, tried to explain the difficulty of getting concerted action among the farmers in this, way*

Things that happen to the farmers have no immediate effect) their effect is cumulative. It isn*t felt un­ til months after the trouble happens. Take drought for instance, or hog cholera. l o w crop* 11 be wiped out or all your fine shots# die off, but you don't feel the effects until months after when the time come to take up a note or make a payment on a mortgage and you haven't anything to pay with. That's why you can't get farmers to work together* they can't see that what they do today will benefit them a year from now) just as its hard for 'em to really feel that the drought in the spring'll hurt them most in the fall when they've debts to pay.9

Thu# Mr. Corey presents an absorbing story, true to life and true to the region. That the region is carefully and faithfully pre­ sented, those who knew Iowa in pre-Rorld War days will admit. The 9

9Ibld.. p. 423. story of the widow's struggle and her problems is absorbing in itself for its human interest and drama. Altogether Mr. Corey had produced a significant picture of life played before a convincing setting in rural lo m . .... / , .

the dominant note in The Road Returns, the sequel to Three Miles

Square, is one of frustration and defeat. The years covered are from

1917 through 1923 or from the entrance of the United States into the

World Ear and the attending boom until the collapse of prices and land values, the fortunes of tho Manta family are carried forward until

Otto begins his university course. Scarcely a member of the group de­ pleted in the earlier book has been left untouched by major disappoint­ ment and twisted life pattern*.

. Andrew Manta, who had gone to Des Moines to begin working toward his almost lifelong dream of being an architect, found himself in the first call of the. draft. When he returned from two years in the army, he found the war had wrecked his original plans. He no longer had the initiative and other qualities that were needed to continue his school­ ing. He worked in Des Moines, married, lost his job, ami brought hi* wife back home to Elm. He drifted from the meaningless routine of a planing-m ill job down to odd jobs of carpentering, feeling beaten at every term. . . . : ' . .

It isn’t the wanting to be an architect that’s the trouble, he told himself. It wasn’t, but he didn’t know what the trouble was. He was searching for some­ thing, for the opportunity to plan, to struggle and will bis lifs.10

IS Paul Corey, The Road Returns (Hew lorkt Bobbs-Hexrill, 1940), p. 294. 1 81.

turning to it after being on a dredge crew all winter. He hired nen to take hie place until the ditching was finished. When he did re­ turn he spent more time working over an old Ford into a makeshift tractor and neglected the farm to a ruinous extent. When his mother in despair about running the farm properly sold it and moved to town,

Wolnar could scarcely find a mechanic1 s job and then only a very poor paying one. But his life passion was machines, and by sheer deter­ mination and grasping selfishness he finally became owner of a small garage. He forced his mother to lend him money at the expense of

Otto's education and then never paid it back.

Otto's problem was of a different sort. When Andrew didn't go on after the war with his plans to become an architect both he and his > mother concentrated on Otto's getting a university education and becom­ ing an architect. Otto felt no lift, no excitement in the idea. “If he was going to be something, he felt that it ought to fire him— the way 11 mechanics did Wolnar— give him a great kick just to think of it.*

Escape from going to college seemed near several times, but at last with only seventy-five dollars he set out with a friend and they pro­ cured jobs to earn their way through.

Veraey had married Clem in revolt against the well-planned life in which her family believed. But after two babies arrived and her happy-go-lucky husband still lived only for the day, with no thought of the future, her revolt turned sour and she longed for a more planned

H Ibid., p. 249. 82-

and orgaaisod life. When there were four children and Clem had been sick for six months and out of work and they had lost all, she took her family back to her mother1 s hone in Elm. Beaten by the city, bitter and disillusioned, they were to try to begin again. But life was harder on the widow Manta. She tried desperately to keep the farm and educate the children well. She tried to force them up, beyond their native powers and inclinations, to mold them, into a pattern of her own and her dead husband* a dreams and thereby almost wrecked both her own happiness and their lives. She took the

attitude quite common at that time that education was an end in itself and made people happy and successful. Defeat came to her through the lives of her three older children. Had conditions been other than they were, Andrew night haye become a good architect. It waen* t lack of ability or desire on his part. Even after he returned from the World War, if hc.hsd hadradequate ;funds, he might have completed his studies. Later all the fulfillment of her life centered in Otto. When the nation went into a state of financial collapse, she was forced to take her beloved farm back in a most deplorable run-down condition. When - there was just no one anywhere to turn to for money, one wept with her in her heartbroken despair.

*I*ve lived fifteen years of my life to the one end that you would go straight through school-straight through college...Everything*s failed mo, except you and you can’t go on beoause of everything else....8 In all his years Otto had never seen his mother break down like this and it jarred him through with a feeling of weakness, terror, and pity. She had always been hard, determined, driving toward a goal. He had seen tears in her eyes but not this sobbing that twitched her body from head to foot.*^

12 JMd., p. 02. 83.

Jensen, her neighbor irtxo had wanted her farm for years, bought it when she decided to sell* When land values fell and he was unable to keep up the payments, he put a period to his defeat by committing suicide. ... • .. : - ' • . ' "■ . . • . -

Such pictures as these were typical throughout the whole Mid­ west. Bewilderment and tragedy followed the collapse of farm prices . and land values coming so soon upon the heels of the feverish pros­ perity of a few years before. That the picture is accurate and sincere

those who have lived in the region during those years well recognize*

The period is to be remembered, as Corey through numerous examples

pointed out, as bne of a relaxed moral code. Things, visible signs

of prosperity, were all important. Jealous rivalries to keep up with

the Joneses and then the painful readjustment to an altered scale of

living are dearly drawn.

The Road Returns is an honest presentation of real, ordinary,

everyday people. Their lives are full of privation and hardship. By

the sturdy endurance of their lot, their joy in simple pleasures, and

their dogged determination to make the best of conditions they are of

value to the communities in which they live and to all mankind.

Widow Mantz is typical of millions of middle class American

mothers. The dream she held for her children was the dream that has

filled colleges and universities all over the land with student a who

have little inclination for a professional life* They would be much

happier working with their hand*. Not nearly enough of them have the

Sturdy independence of Wolmar, who knew what ho wanted and definitely

refused to be molded into a life he did not want. 84,

Since these two books present a living, coving dram of sharply individualized human beings, and since the picture of the region, while truthfully presented, is only a background against which the drama is played, one concludes that Paul Corey is a regional novelist

of exemptions! power. ,

In The Road Returns national event# play a large part in the lives

of the farmers* fhe novel covers the years of the great and unheard-of

prosperity, the unprecedented boom.in land values, and the ruinous

collapse which wrecked thousands of farmers. Mortgages wore fore- ■

closed, banks failed, and people found themselves bitterly disillusioned about the brief, false prosperity.

This was by no means a personal or local problem. The resulting

perplexity and confusion covered a large part of our nation. Paul

Corey lifts the problem above the merely regional and presents a

national interpretation of American life in an exciting and meaningful

period of our history. CHAPTER VIII. HILLA GATHER

fit Pioneers I t>y Willa Gather opens on a windy Hehraska tableland in *a nisi of fine snowflakes curling and eddying on the gray prairie.* The great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes...The land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted moumfulness*^ That the land was wild and unsubdued is still further shown when we find the grass grown back over the Norwegian graveyard, near Hanover, hiding everything, even the wire fence. And again cones the insistence on the “unesoapable ground" when even the dwellings and stables are built of sod. The wild land so resistant to taming fisc­ ally conquered a first settler, John Bergson, who left his daughter Alexandra to carry on. His dying wish to his family was that they should keep the land, break a little more each year, and keep turning it. It is in such a setting that Alexandra takes charge of the family, three brothers and a mother, and begins to manage affairs on the six- hundred-forty-acre farm. When drouth and crop failure made times hard and her discour­ aged neighbors were selling out and going back East, Alexandra, ever guided by her father* s Old World belief that the land was desirable. 1

1 Willa Gather, £ pioneorsl (Boston* Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913), P- 15. bought on long term notes many of the abandoned faros just as she bad noticed the real estate non and bankers wore doing. These men did not work the land they bought. They just waited and kept up the in­ terest and then with rising values could soil a little of the land to pay for the whole amount that they had bought. Alexandra shrewdly planned to do as the land speculators were doing. She kept faith, in spite of her brothers* ©position, that they would "eventually conquer the land.

For the first time, perhaps, since the land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious.^

Alexandra’s dream that they should become independent landowners, not merely hard-working farmers, was finally fulfilled, but only be-" cause she had strength and courage, dogged industry, patience, and

sacrifice. The fascination of the land for her is portrayed even at

the close, when she says to her lover j *#e come and go, but the land

is always here. And the people who lore it'and understand it are the

people who own it— for a little while.*3

la his History, of American Letters Walter Taylor says that no

previous novel in our literature appears to grow so intimately out

of the soil/ In 0 Pioneers I Wllla Gather presents three types of

pioneers. The immigrant is embodied in Alexandra, who carries on her

2 Ibid., p. 65.

3 Ibid., p. 303.

4 Walter Fuller Taylor^ History of American Letters (Hew Xorkt American Book Company, 1936), p. 357* 87.

father*a vision of the possibilities of tho land. A second type of immigrant is pictured in her brothers, Lou and Oscar, "who work endless tours, plodders without sense of beauty to brighten their ceaseless labors* The third type is shorn in her younger brother, Emil, whom she sent to the State University. As an educated agriculturist he cares for the soil ns the primitive pioneer never could.

0 Pioneers! is not without its romance, though there is hut little in the heroine* s life. Carl Linstrum weaves through Alexandra* s affairs and dream life from youth to maturity. Forty finds her still unmarried and now longing for that sense of completeness that marriage brings a woman. Lou and Oscar scoff at the idea of her marriage at that age

end send the sensitive Carl away. When ho returns to comfort Alexandra after Emil*s tragic death, their plans for marriage are as simple as breathing.

The story of • Marie Tovesky, a beautiful Bohemian, presents the ro­

mantic and tragic clement. After the double tragedy of her death and

Bail* s, Carl sums up her story in these words, "There are women who

spread ruin around them through no fault of theirs, just by being too

beautiful, too full of life and love.*^

0 Pioneers I does not have a plot in the usual sense of tho word. .

The events in the novel follow the straight biographical pattern of

Alexandra*s life. The chief conflicts are struggles with the elements

and with the land.

The record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races.

5 P» 304* «a todeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, not the record of human striving#. In eleven long years John Bergson had made little impression on the wild land he had come to tame. It was still a wild thing that had its ugly aoods.6

The pioneers contended with drouth, chinch bugs, hail, and hot winds that destroyed their erops and gardens in summer; with blizzards in winter; with hunger often; and with sickness at any season of the year.

Any conflicts with their neighbors wore insignificant or blotted out by their m i ting against their common enemies— the hostile elements and the unfriendly genius of the land.

But after another decade and a half the face of the land had changed. The dogged persistence and patience of the pioneers was be­ ing rewarded with orderly farms, comfortable dwellings, spacious barns, windmills, telephones, better roads, and prosperous villages.

fears later when Carl Llnstrum came back after he had sold out and gone in those first hard times, he said,

"This is all very splendid in a way, but there was something about this country when it was the wild old beast that has haunted me all these years. How, when I come back to all this milk and honey, .1 feel like the old German song, *lo blst du, wo bist du, mein geliebtest Land?i « 7

the rather episodic, seasonal structure is in keeping with the biographical pattern of Alexandra* a life. Time for trips, stories, and gracious living hao come to take the place of the old struggle against defeat. The lives of the characters are still closely knit to the region, but in a happier manner. In like manner there is

pp. 19-20.

7 Ibid., p. 118. 89«

room In the novel for the stories of Ivar and Signa and Anedee and

Marie, just as there is room in almost, anyone’s life for some excursions away from the central theme of one’s life work.

In 0 Pioneerst the characters end setting are closely fused. The characters are strongly- influenced by regional forces. Miss Gather presents Alexandra, an instinctive manager, working out her problems in the specialised locale from which many of her problems sprang. The -' regionalism is absolutely natural and unconscious.

In My. Antonia Gather presents first generation pioneers, Bohemians,

Scandanavisas, Russians, and Germans. Black Hawk, Nebraska, is the

focal point for immigrant colonies. Again the picture of the struggle

of the people to survive in pioneer conditions fascinates. In the

long, frozen winters in which “man’s strongest antagonist was the cold...

lives wore centered around warmth and food and the return of men at

nightfall.*** The blizzards, when the snow had to be tunneled through

to reach the stock; and the boiling heat of summer, when every daylight

hour and more had to be usod to grow and store up food and fodder

against the coming of smother winter engaged the attention of all.

Jim Burden is the narrator, and through his eyes a wealth of de­

tail about native plants, birds, and animals is given. Mr Antonia is

rich in poetic descriptions, vivid and colorful. Once he saysi

”1 felt motion in the landacape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and under­ neath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, . galloping.*?

8 Mills Gather, JiK Antonia. (Boston# Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918), p. 75. ^ Tbid«» p» 17. 90.

la Antonia Shi^rda, Gather pictured a strong character develop­ ing under severest and m a t primitive hardships. She worked in the fields like an ox and endured want and privation on the farm. Like many other daughters of immigrants she was put to work in Black Hawk as a hired girl. Romance entered her life and she was betrayed.

Without bitterness she rebuilt her life, married, and became the mother of a great group of happy laughing farm boys, thus Antonia finds her self-fulfillment in motherhood. nIt was no wonder her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.*"*'® through long contact with the soil she has become serene, poised, self-reliant, with no hidden longings for escape from her lot*

Presenting as she does many women in pioneer conditions. M iss-

Gather develops another theme in the problem of the youmg people, the girls must have employment because their families are poor. Though many come from homes whose backgrounds in the old country are excellent, the girls cannot teach school because their English is poor. Therefore, they drift from the farms to the city, where the chief employment la that of becoming * h i r M girls.* As such they are looked down upon, though they are more attractive and more capable than, other girls.

By leaving the soil they take much of the color and life from Nebraska rural districts. Miss Gather has been interested in their emergence from their environment. They are stolid individuals from whose 10

10 Ibid., p. 398. stolidity and cleanliness the Middle West has derived eternal bless­

ing. By becoming Individuals and coining out of their own groups they have become Americans. The old folks watch their children, making

their way in the new world with pride in their achievements— but with

alarm at their discarding their native manners and habits. But they

can11 discard everything. Miss Gather says that what remains is the

immigrants* contribution to American culture.

These two stories of the early pioneers Miss Gather tells with

truth and simplicity. The endless flat prairie land, overwhelming and

inescapable, forms the background for these carefully drawn pioneers.

The poor little villages, limited and unsatisfying, are not made the

subjects of attack, even though underneath there is a current of mis­

trust of town life. The best people loved the land. Her chief concern

"was with her characters, who worked desperately hard, hoped for the

future, and furthered their desires by dogged Industry, imagination,

and patience. These are tho salt of the earth, the balance wheel of

the universe. These are they who are not unduly inflated with pros­

perity or too much depressed by adversity. They are the ones who give

life meaning and purpose. Miss Gather* s regionalism in My Antonia

is unconscious and closely embedded in the structure of the novel.

Antonia Shimerda is only the central figure of a whole, living community, every member of which is sharply individualised....All these help to furnish forth a novel as rich in human nature as an old- fashioned three-volume story by Dickens. . . .Here, evidently, are no stock figures, mechanically thrust into the story to fill out an artificial plot. Here are human beings who are interesting in the mere fact of their humanity, who are in the novel for 92.

their own. sake, and not for the sake of the •tory.il

A Hehrasks setting is used in a third book. A Lost Lady. Here

Marion Forrester, whose charm and weakness are shown throu^i the eyes of Miel Herbert, is the center of interest. Her husband is Captain

Forrester, a railroad builder. He is noble, dignified, and worthy of the best* Marion seems the best there is at first— gracious, loving, and lovable. But time brings disillusionment, and we trace the growing deterioration of her character as the love of pleasure takes the place of the Meal* She drifts down and down with men, each one lower than ■ ■ ■ - ■ ■ ' -■ ■ ■ the last, but finally long after Captain Forrester1 s death extricates herself and begins anew with a more worthy nan who cares for her and again surrounds her life with comfort*

Behind the tragedy of the Forresters we are conscious of the pass­ ing of the old heroic West* the story is laid in Sweetwater in the nineties* At that time there wore two levels of society in the prairie states; the homesteaders and the financiers from the East who came to invest money and develop the West. Captain Forrester was one of these financiers, who had a pleasant, comfortable home here. At first he came to it with his wife only a few months of the year to entertain friends and enjoy his lovely lands. After a fall from a horse he re­ tired to this home and built railroads over sand and sago and rock no longer. Be had seen the West grow up as he himself had grown up from a hard-working boy to a man of accomplishments. In his own words his

11 Taylor, jiE, cit., p. 358. 93*

philosophy of life was*

What you think of and plan for day by day, in spite of yourself, so to speak-— you will get....You will accomplish what you dream of moat ...because a thing that is dreamed of in the way I mean, is already an accom­ plished fact. All our great west has been developed from such dreams, the homesteader*s and the prospector** and the contractor* g. We dreamed the railroads across the mountains, just as I dreamed my place on the Sweet

; W&Wr.lZ . ' ; " : ■■

And then came the nation-wide financial panic of 1893 and with it the loss of Captain Forrester* s wealth, not through mismanagement but in the shrinking values no one could have foreseen. He was president of a bank and insisted that the firm, not the depositors, should lose, the five other directors did not feel that responsibility, and Captain

Forrester paid the depositors out of his own wealth. He had only his

Sweet Water place left. ...

Marion Forrester was twenty-five years younger than her husband.

Her youthful vitality demanded gsyaty, excitement* pleasures, attention.

there could be ho negative encounter, however slight, with Mrs. Forrester. If she merely bowed to you, merely looked at you, it constituted a personal relation...* One became acutely conscious of her.13

Shen Captain Forrester* a physical disability and financial losses confined their lives to Sweet Water spheres maladjustment was inevit­ able. Pleasure-loving Marion had newer developed those sturdy qualities of character that stand up under adversity. And since circumstances were what they were and Marion was what she was, the only possible

12 Willa Gather, A Lost Lady (London* Willis* Heinemann, 1924), pp. 48-49.

13 p. 29. 94*

result w a defeat. Had she been of her husband1 s generation and

learned how to meet reverses, she would not have fallen so far from

the ideal. Harlem Forrester* s passing from the dignified generous

life of Captain Forrester to the shoddy tawdriness of life with ig­

noble-, men symbolises the vanishing of the fine, lordly life of the

great railroad pioneers from the American scene. The loveliness and

charm of the old life disintegrates with Marion’s loveliness and charm.

Tie feel a harmony between the theme and the background. The life of

the old, old West is as unrecapturable as Marion’ a beauty and charm.

In Captain Forrester’s death we come to the end of an era, the passing

of the great railroad builder.

Miss Gather selects details carefully and excludes the insignifi­

cant in favor of a few strong touches. She emphasizes the essential

humanity and not the nationalities of the pioneers. The courage Gather

portrays,

is the more rarer, more delicate kind of courage required in the weary task of maintaining the decencies of civilization in the midst of laborious, barren, isolated life. Yet for the pioneer to exercise it, to carry his gods into the wilderness with him, is to endow his colony from the beginning with graces, traditions, richness of mind and spirit.^4

Again the regionalism Is the unconscious kind.Charaeters, plot,

and setting are skillfully blended, to produce a significant drama of

life.

U Walter Fuller Taylor, A History ew Yorkt The American Book Company, 1 9 3 % , p* 363. CHAPTER IX.

ROTH SUCKOW

Ruth Suckbw has taken it upon herself to interpret Iowa. A native herself, she knows whereof she speaks. She has the advantage of wide observation and a passion for absolute honesty and accuracy.

She presents a quite unprejudiced picture of this region in a simple, direct nmmor. t Country People is the story of three generations of Gennan-

American farmers. August laetterhenry had been a farm laborer in the old country, and- the profits of his labor enriched the landowner. He came to America as a boy, hired out, worked hard, saved his wages, bought,a far®, snd married. True to old German custom he expected their six children to work hard for the family* When he compared the lives of his children with.his own youth and that of his brothers and sisters, he didn' t think that his children had to work hard. When his wife* s mother and father had to be cared for, he built a five room addition in front which made the place look new and modem. August did all the managing and buying even of clothing and the few little personal things he allowed the women. When Grandma Stille came, she tried to interfere and toll August and his family how to live. Even though she resorted to schemes, sullenness, and tantrums, August still held firmly that no woman was going to tell him anything about running his family. After Grandma had a “stroke” and was bedfast for five years, Emma, August* s wife, was more tied to the home than ever. Grandpa lived is his cran dreams and gave 11 no trouble •« 1 .

In those years occasional Sunday school attendance and going to the county fair in September were the chief social diversions of the family. After Grandma* a death much of the strain and worry disappeared from Emma* o life and she became heavy. Then the problems with the children began. Mary, who had always been a good child except for a weakness for reading and the trouble they had had once when she had bee® determined to study to be a teacher, began to have queer, spells. They

tried- nerve tonics, doctors, a new ”rubber doctor,” and mud baths in

Wisconsin. She improved after the mud baths, and when she came back,

August allowed her to go to Rapid City and take a sewing course. She . had always wanted to go to school. The sewing.was a-poor substitute.

She was always delicate.

: Elva married when she was just a girl. Frank, the eldest, also

was married. His father, now realising vaguely that his son had had a

pretty hard time of it, bought a farm for Frank. The three younger

children went to school in town and began talking of new things. That

talk resulted in better machinery, a silo, a gasoline engine, and

eventually their own electric plant. The Ford brought the greatest

change of all. That meant more trips and better roads and a widened

horizon* v . • - .. . _ ' "

a violent feeling against, the German farmers

developed. Some, like August, got off easy. He bought Liberty Bonds,

kept his mouth shut, and. did not oppose the draft of his two younger

s o m . Terrible things happened to those who opposed the draft or

expressed themselves too freely. After the war resentment died down. 97.

Auguat never again felt tihte security that he had before,

Tnen Emma took sick. Aa a last resort August took her to

Rochester for an operation at Mayo

imtelligemt w r e .

When August decided to retire, he built a semi-bungalow pebble-

dashed home in town and did * everything right" in regard to furniture.

The baby of the family got the benefit of the move to town. She was

popular in high school, made good grades, had beautiful clothes,en­

joyed the social life of the town, and later became a stenographer in

a neighboring town. They went to church moro now. Emaa enjoyed the

Ladies Aid, its quilting and its benefit dinners. She took care of her

grandchildren when the young folks came to town and wanted to go some- •

where. - - -

August* s daily rite was going for the "mail and the meat." He

talked with the men about polities, the crops, and the weather. Be

really dida* t know what to do with himself. People soon began to wonder

if he were well. All at once he began to show his age. When ho had de­

cided to retire he seemed hale and vigorous and in -the prime of life.

Now he walked like a man ten years older. He was eating three heavy

meals a day just as he had always eaten when he was working hard on

the farm. For diversion he would go to the farm and help with the hay­

ing. Then one day he had heat prostration. After that he went to

Mayo* s, where he was told that he had high blood pressure and must diet

carefully and not overdo. But the restrictions were too much for him

and he "broke loose* and worked on one of the very hottest days of

summer, three days after his stroke he died. His retirement, the very 98.

thimg that apcULod success to him, the visible sign that he was a pros­ perous indepeedest landowner, was the means of his speedy destruction*

When the estate xrao settled Emma found that she was "pretty well fixed*”

She devoted herself to her church work and her grandchildren* She had time for little neighborly kindnesses, for visiting other old ladies, and for fancy, work. • .

Miss Suekow has presented an authentic picture of Iowa, the hard­ ships of pioneer life and especially the inner life of the German settlers, The domineering of the men, the timid, quiet ways of the women, who wanted peace even though they were worked to death, in order to have it are well portrayed. Much was expected of them and they lived up to the expectations. Continual frustrations resulted in strange illnesses* In the search for doctors and cures, health la some measure was restored. Change of scene and a new anglp on life produced the desired effects*

The women were rarely partners to their husbands. German men re­ garded it as a kind of weakness to let the wives know how well they were doing financially, fhe stock excuse for refusing money for the women* s uses was that every effort was needed to pay for this new piece of land, that new barn, or some piece of machinery. With thriftiness a racial characteristic and money saving a habit, few women even in their later prosperous years could spend money without a feeling of guilt.

The book tells in direct straightforward manner the steady progress of material matters in the Kaetfcerhenrys* life. In that generation the spiritual side was much neglected and very barren. When the children 99*

were growing up they didn* t revolt openly about the never-ending work

and lack of pleasures, but practically all left just as soon as they

could; the girls for early marriages, the boys so that their hard work

would benefit themselves and bring some feeling of personal satisfaction*

Hiss Suckow*s regionalism is unconscious. She concentrates on

creating this German family and in so doing has produced a definite

and unmistakable picture of the region in which they Uvedt

She land spread out rich and rolling, in smooth, tilted vistas of square fields, green, yellow, and earth-brown, trees growing in full-leaved clusters down about the banks of the little caved-in creeks in the pastures or standing lone, and slanting, on the crests of the low, rounded hills. In the dis­ tance the groves of farms were softened, blurred together? the far-off rising land was swathed in blue, a faint milky tint in which din figures of trees were 'swimming,1 ' ' ' ; ,

Toe good fences, well kept barn yards and buildings, neat, prim houses,

yards often with flowers and gardens^— ail bespoke the thrift and neat­

ness of the people who lived in this Gorman-Anerican settlement.

Miss Suckow neither protests nor idealises nor wishes to excape

from her region. Her whole purpose appears to be to present a faithful,

conscientious picture of the lives of these people. If the story seems

to lack emphasis and excitement, her reason is to be found in the lives - ■ . . * , ■ " ■ : . ' ■ : .. of the people of the novel. Their life was like that, uneventful and

unexciting. - . : In thq Odyssey of a Nice Girl Miss Suckow has pictured the hack- \ ' ■ .... ‘ ' ' . ground and home life, and the various obstacles presented to

1 Ruth Suckow. Country People (Nee fork* Alfred A* Knopf, 1924), pp. 9-10* 1439P8 Marjorie Schoesael in her struggle for the freedom to express herself and to live her om life* First the little girl problems, the envies, the defeats, the intense desires of the gang age; then the longings, the wishful thinking and the self-dramatisation of the high school age are shorn in the lives of. Marjorie and her friends. She studied music and n expression after winning the local declamatory contest she revelled in being the center of attention at home and at school* An Important intimacy grew up with her dramatic teacher. When she placed only second in the district contest, she was a deflated, confused girl and, shortly after, graduation brought the breaking up of the old high school crowd and the lose of meaning in her old pursuits. She wanted to go to a distant college, but her parents insisted on nearby Tubbs College for her first year. They bought her new bedroom furniture and surrounded her with every comfort to try to induce her to stay at home. All that did was to produce in her a feeling of guilt when she went off to Boston to study expression. The Bostonians thought of "the West as a wilderness, all of a piece, inhabited by Indians, wild animals and cornfields.* When Marjorie returned in May she "caught the breath of the prairies with a sense of recognition that was almost more of a dis­ covery than her first sight of strange places. The wideness, the rawness., room for the wind to sweep.*^ • At Boston the first year she lived in a hall, studied lyric poetry, and developed an extreme distaste for everything she had learned at

...... •......

2 gnth Suekow, The Odyssey of a Nice Girl (New fork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), p. 210.

3 Ibid., p. 211. 101.

fetos College. Her people hUsafully thought she was building up a repertoire and wore amazed when she returned with nothing to read. At Boston she became infatuated with an Emily Reaver, a girl of Bohemian tastes, and, during the second year, lived with her in a studio that fairly disgusted her neat, orderly, luxury-loving soul. But the girls thought they had "freedom.* When Marjorie remarked dolefully that they didn' t do anything that they could not have done had they been in the college hall, Emily pointed out that feeling they could if they wanted to was worth much to her. They explored every nook and cranny of Boston, hunted .unusual places to eat, attended meetings of every kind, and counted everything "different" and •interesting.* After the second year in Boston was finished, Marjorie returned to her home. Her parents planned that she should have a studio for teach­ ing expression. Some friend might join her and have classes in dancing. Marjorie was offered a place teaching English and expression in a little conservatory in Mississippi. Her mother pleaded for her to do some­ thing near home. Hadn't she been far away for two years? In the end she gave up the conservatory idea and her. parents dropped the studio plan. Then it was planned that she give private lessons at home, bet that didn't work out either. Her old crowd was scattered. She be­ longed to no organization. She complained that she had nothing to do. There were such clamoring needs to.be settled* She awet justify her­ self* She was frightened to think how entrenched she tod become in the comforts, peace, and security of home. How she might never do anything she tod dreamed of doing* Because of the inner desperation Marjorie went to Chicago to get a job. At an employment agency she was told 102.

•he should try teaching. But the contest with her mother over her first attempt to get away to teach caused her. to put the idea of teaching aside. She finally got a filing clerk job at a pay so small that she ooulda1! possibly pay for her dental work and badly needed glasses.

She hoped to keep from becoming too shabby. She was too tired to go out to concerts alone and spent the evenings in her solitary room read­ ing until she became sleepy.

At home she used to talk as if a job would solve everything. But she had the job now, the reality. It opened no vistas, but closed them instead, and penned her Into its own tiny, hard, methodical world.4 There was a salesman who wanted to take her out, but she o o u M not play up to him.

When word came that her mother was ill and she was needed at home.

She felt that here at last was something that mattered. She knew she was happier at homo than anywhere else when there was a reason for her being there.

Then came the war. All around her everyone was doing what he could to help win the war, from her brother Rich who went to a training camp and died of influenza to the girls who filled kit bags. But

Marjorie hated war and writhed under a feeling of uselessness and in­ significance. She felt out of the current. Perhaps she was missing everything. She was caught in a mental fog and became so miserable physically that she allowed her mother to take her to doctors and chiropractors and even to Mayo's.

There she had two teeth and her tonsils out. It was as if the little operation, the shock, the change, had been a turning point. It had mysteriously rid her

4 Ibid., p. 284. w .

of old shocks— of the war, or Rich* s death, her old autmlBBions, bewilderments and failures. Her feeling . of obscure humiliation and doubt slowly gave way to the old youthful feeling of definite expectation.5

About this time her father became ill. After a trip to Rochester, the family went to Colorado for her father1 s health. When her father died, her mother and her aunt wanted to get a new house and expected

Marjorie to live there with them. Again came the old loneliness.

She had a fooling of rebellion, misunderstanding, helplessness of communicating what she really meant. All the things that mama suggested were little time fillers leading nowhere, all revolving about her present position as companion to matia.® '

Marjorie went back to Denver and soon after was married to a garage mechanic she met out there. Her mother went out to the wedding and then

. . ' ' • decided to make her home in Denver to be near Marjorie and her husband, who were to live on a fruit farm#

In this odyssey, painted most painstakingly and sincerely. Miss

Suckow has presented the various attempts that a nice girl made to escape from tho frustrations attending upon the narrow, cramped, in-growing life in a small town in Iowa# Marjorie practically never led her own life till she fled to Denver. She had lived in a woman1 s world. Men were almost non-existent, and a "nice" girl wouldn't go seeking out

• places to meet men. The author was very objective in her treatment of

Marjorie1 s character and selected the details with care. We can but

pity the dullness and futility of her life# However, not girls are

so passive as she in allowing loyalties and affections to blot out all

5 Ibid., p. 317.

6 Xbli., p. 343. 104* individual desire#. lUneaa reaulted, even though no one wae conscious of its cause. The talent# of young people growing up in a snail town are often over-estimated. There is no good standard or basis for comparison or judging local talents. Loving relatives and admiring friends urge the youth to larger fields of endeavor. When the real test cones, the yowtii falls short and sometimes never becomes adjusted properly. Youth feels superior to the home environment and yet not capable of taking part in a larger field. Witness the large group in Hollywood of would- be screen stars. Marjorie had just enough talent to want to do something more than the narrow possibilities her small town allowed. She enjoyed ease, luxury, and the approval she won by being sweet and "nice." Her talent at war with her sense of well-being caused her to revolt from the narrow­ ness of her environment and to try to find larger satisfactions. Many American parents try to fulfill themselves in the lives of their children. They feed their own heart hungers with the achievements of their young people and try to keep them near to enjoy and love. The Sohoessels felt the keenest satisfactions in the praises and admiration heaped upon Marjorie. . Some youths thus caught by apron strings find other compensations and do stay within their narrow environment. Marjorie had a “horrible example" before her. in old woman was still reading the same old selections of her own youth now many years gone by. Marjorie saw how in-grown and out-dated ono could become without even realising it. Though she attempted to escape, she never had the strength to break 105.

through tho Interference of her woll-eeaning family or the convention and traditiona of the farm and village life of her environment. The problem of this novel is not confined to any one region. It has instead almost universal American significance. loath every­ where often feel too tightly bound to home environment. Parents generally try to keep the young from wandering too far afield. Con­ flict results. The problem outgrows the region and becomes a part of the national picture. "The Qdyssey of a nice Girl, a moving, hamam story marks Ruth

Suekow aa a rogionalist who goes beyond tho limitations of locale to create a significant study of village-bound youtb.*^

Ruth Suekow knows whereof she speaks in The Bonney Family. Her mm father was a Congregational minister and the family moved about a - ' ' ■' . • ' - ■ " ■' . ■ • great deal from one small town to another. With her powers of keen observation she has painted a succession of portraits of an Iowa minister* s family. Four well individualised children and their parents and paternal grandparents comprise the family. Their fortunes are followed for twenty years. Mr. Bonney, a sympathetic, beloved paster, gives up his pulpit to take part in an endowment in a campaign for a small denominational college. Because of this new position, his children may have the benefits of a better education. Warren, the eldest, a brooding, moody.

? Ima Honaker Herron, The Small Town in American Literature (Durham, H. C., Duke University Press, 1939)# p. 411. 8 Harlan Hatcher, (Hew lark* Farrar and Rinehart, 1935), p» 103* sensitive boy has unusual difficulties in adjusting himself to his world. Sarah is a big, plain* reliable girl with a tremendous capacity for affection and taking on responsibility. The twins, Wilma, a rather spoilt girl loving approval and good clothes, and Wilfred with his tender heart and passionate love for animals, come in for their share of Hiss Suckow* s tender, contemplative attention. Family life and activity pivot around practical, cool, serene Mother Bonney as long as she lives. She was none too popular with the congregation because she put her obligations to her family ahead of helping in the church; the latter was only an incidental natter with her. Especial attention is paid to the childhood, adolescence, and de­ velopment into manhood and womanhood of these young people. The wrench of uprooting tho family to make the move shows Wilfred grieving over leaving tho old familiar places and parting with his pets and the cow and the pigeons, Warren glad to go to got away from tho scenes of acute embarrassment# and heartaches, and Sarah feeling that ai eolation was at hand to nor problems, for her girl friends were pair­ ing off with boys and she seemed out of the crowd, since no one was clamoring for her company. • Settling la a smaller, inconvenient houao brought much heartache aM homesickness to most of the family. To Warren adjustment was par­ ticularly difficult. He wanted to go to the Vincent Park Academy in­ stead of the regular high school. At the academy he buried himself in his music and studies, but he took keen pleasure in some cherished association with his * bunch.* Warren entered college cautious, aloof, defiant, hiding his raw sensitiveness under an air of misanthropic coldness, and his eager unadmitted hope­ fulness under a fierce silence,.,.He hold at first to the lonely, twisted, embittered satisfaction of being a grind.^

His mother interfered with the complete isolation he would haw# built up and made him attend the class parties and picnics. She had a dim realisation of his unhappiness, but no inkling of the proportions that his social failures had assumed in his mind. Finally when he was made the butt of a joke known to the whole college, he contemplated suicide. When his mother found him agonising and sobbing in his room ind threatening to run away, she stroked his hair and told him that they'd send him anywhere he wanted to go. He went to Yellowstone

National Park as a “savage," one of the lowly helpers in the kitchen.

The world here was in two parts, sharply divided: the world of tho timber, of stillness, grandeur, and solitude} and the small, gay, rough, noisy human world ' of tho camp.10

He was teased by the rest of the helpers, the dining-room girls, and the driver*, more fiercely than ever before. The girls coaxed him to help them and his abnormal fear of them wore off in the constant association with them. An infatuation developed between him and Carmen.

When he finally brought himself to make love to her, he seemed to break all the old inhibitions that had kept him so lonely and unhappy for so long. When the season was at an end his fears were removed. He was eager to go back home and return to college life. He continued to find himself and was even admitted to the Glee Club. That meant

9 Ruth Suckow, The Bohney Family (Mew York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928) 107. endless social affairs, yhich had terrors for him no longer. He became president of the Senior Council, and president of the Glee Club; later be married one of the most desirable girls of his class. By tho time his mother died, he had become a college professor in Montana. ■ Sarah was her mother* s right hand helper in sharing responsi­ bility at home. At college she helped organise the Freshman class and worked on hard thankless committees. But tho old secret loneliness again swept over her. Because she lived at hone she was out of the social group. She participated in none of the intimacies of the •bunch.” They shared rooms, clothes, and lessons, and planned dates to­ gether. Sarah was completely isolated from the gay busy life of the dormitory. If her contacts with college girls were unsatisfactory, her associations with college men were almost non-existent. She attended meetings with enthusiasm, but she had to tramp homo alone. Apparently none of tho men knew she existed except one poor little fellow with some kind of muscular affliction. Ho was the only one who asked her to accompany him to a class function during her freshman year. Later she learned that it was his fifth attempt to get a girl to take to the class picnic. She had no more opportunities for social appointments with men. At the close of the senior sing when her college days were about to end, one impossible fellow who was going to bo a minister asked her to consider "the great opportunities for service" she would find.as his wife. They had never had even one social evening together. Her reflections concerning college life at her commencement caused her to regret that she had not gone to the State University. She had never really belonged at Vincent College.

Sarah taught two years in a nearly school# Nothing seemed really serious or worthwhile to her# Because she wanted to see that she was

“benefiting the world* and because she had studied sociology in college, she west to Chicago to get into settlement work. Just as she was find­ ing herself in that field, a letter came from her father that her mother was sick and needing her. Her mother died as the result of an appendectomy. Sarah stayed at home, keeping everything organised until all home ties melted,

. Wilma was married ami went to How Mexico, Wilfred was killed in

France, and her father married a scheming spinster. Bo thing was left her. % , . ■ ."

All the relationships of life that had once seemed so solid and profound were shifting now and shallow.... Underneath everything else was tho dark, • inarticulate pain of the old knowledge that she bad been the least lowed, least cherished of the children. She-was alone again with that.H

Sarah went back to the friends of her early childhood for a short visit. She talked about training to be a nurse, said that she hoped

to be the head of an institution some day.

But she guarded the secret reality beneath all this.*.. All her life long, she had been lonely...and she had to assuage that loneliness with some passionate care of . still more hapless unfortunate things. She couldn't _ live unless she had little bodies to tend and cherish.

She went to Chicago. There she would find something to do.

11 Ibid., p. 272,

Ibid. % p. 293• US*

Her strength had been accumulating within her, almost tmtouched, the strength it we of no use try­ ing to down or to deny, or even to try to throw away upon other people, on her own family. Only it must be something that would...well, benefit people..** Her own loneliness...had both driven her out and met . - her free## ; ' ■ ^ . ■ . . ■. - . , This story explains the movement of young people to the city. It is not so such the lure of the new and unusual or craving for excite­ ment as it is the barrenness of village life that draws them. Their emotional necessities drive people out beyond the narrow confines of their native environment* In this novel readers who enjoy reading of the inner springs of personality and emotion, of the struggle for individuality in decent, kindly, home-loving, loyal families, will find much of human interest. He feel that these are real people la routined lives, and we acknowledge the hold that their environment has upon them and how it influences the unfolding of their characters and their everyday human relationships. Through Warren is portrayed the conflict in the small college community between an honest, ambitious, idealistic student and hie shallow associates. Wilma, whose clothing is planned on the merits of common sense and practicability by her mother, comes to attach too great an importance to dress and external matters because of an inner revolt. And Sarah* s unquestioning self- sacrifice led her only to the blank wall of futility. If Sarah had gone bade to her new life in Chicago from which she was called by her mother* a abort Illness and death, she uight not have had so much adjustment to make. She might have found her place sooner and been much happier.

13 Ibid.. pi 296. 111.

When she kept the home running efficiently for her family until they all went their separate ways, she had all the disappointments of a mother whose children have outgrown the need for her and who, be­ cause she was so busy attending to their many demands on her tine and attention, had developed no absorbing interests of her own to tide her through another adjustment to life. Such a problem as Sarah1 s was not merely regional but rather universal in scope, though in Sarah* s case her problem did grow out of her environment. Hero again Hiss Suckow, through a story of life in a minister's family in an Iowa college town, has given universal significance to regional material.

The Folks begins with a picture of the Fred Ferguson family in. a prosperous little town in Iowa. They are Annie, his wife, and four children—Carl, Margaret, Dorothy, and Bunny. Fred had retired from the farm and had become partner in a bank. He was one of the sub­ stantial citisena, with a wide variety of responsibilities is business, is church, and in the affairs of his friends and neighbors. Ho was ad­ visor and confidant for a wide assortment of his fellow beings. The home life of the Fergusons was a picture of order, love, peace, and contentment. To Annie rejoicing in her beautiful home and darling children came a thought of sadness because of the little her parents had had in their lives. Informative pictures of snail town social life were those of Annie entertaining the Woman* s Club, the young folks enjoying a Sunday school party, the Sunday dinners, and especially the big dinners at Thanksgiving. 212.

Cerl was a high school football hero and the envy of all the girls in the Pep Club. When he graduated from college, it was said of him that he had never gone with any girl more than three times. Lillian, his life-long sweetheart at home, came with his mother and father to see him get his degree. Marriage with Lillian seemed almost fore­ ordained. His parents liked her and he had a deep-rooted desire to have his parents* approval of his plans for his future. He wasn't sure about going into teaching. Hie folks expected him to teach, but teach­ ing didnft seem big enough to use all of his ideals.

H® was under the stress of his old necessity to excel....He bad a blind new desire to strike out for himself, go away somewhere, start out new, work out his great glowing ideas without the cautious limita­ tions that he felt somehow the folks imposed upon him, even while they demanded great things of him.%4

While he was undecided and hesitating about teaching he went out to the farm to visit Grandpa. His grandfather talked earnestly and

told Carl of his own life, his joys and sorrows, and then added his word of advises

fake to yourself a good wife, and don* t drink nor smoke nor gamble your money at cards, and work hard at whatever your work is— then you* 11 get along, my boy. fears had almost come into his eyes at the emotional simplicity of his grandfather* s language; , spoken in the slow measure that Carl felt as the primitive rhythm of his own country, that suited the "great slow roll of the land and the width of the fields, the somber glow of

^ Ruth Suekow, The Folks (New York* Srosset and Dunlap, 1934)* p. 229...... ‘

15 Ibid., p. 140. 133'

His grandfather* s good advice cade a deop impression upon him.

Before the summer was over Garl had a position as principal and foot­ ball coach. Then he married Lillian and began his teaching career.

Some years later when Carl had become superintendent at a larger place the school board and town became wrought up over two women teachers smoking cigarettes at a hotel in a nearly town. Carl cham­ pioned his teachers and lost favor. Because the puritan Lillian was out of sorts with Carl, with his attitude, and with some of his friends, and couldn* t faee another pregnancy, she took Lysol. The shock of the near-tragedy and his wife* s illness brought Carl back to a better out­ ward understanding with Lillian and something of an apparent content­ ment with hia lot* He accepted the offer of a school at Geneva,

Wisconsin.

How he felt that right and wrong were no longer simple, that his pride as an individual was gone, Lillian with her narrow ideals, her

thing down on a low, hard level.

His whole career had been so feeble and minor that the thought of it choked him with satiric disgust. And part of this was because he had really, truly, in­ genuously tried and desired to be good....The undefeated have power. But it seemed to Carl that only the de­ feated could have wisdom.16

Every detail of a charming home wedding was set down by Miss

Suekow in her recounting of the lovely Dosthy* s marriage to Jesse

Woodward, handsome and well-to-do, who took her off to California to a beautiful home. Every sign of her life pointed to good fortune.

16 iM d . , p. 252. 114.

Margaret, the older girl, was a bora rebel. As a little child she was ’•difficult8 and a problem for her mother. When sho was at col­ lege she was suspended because she helped another girl sneak.away and got married secretly. As she thought it over she decided it was only the "bad8 things she did that gave her any pleasure, like playing hookey, and sneaking off to public dances. Her one chief fear was that she might die without having one perfect day. She revelled in quarrels with her parents. Then she had a chance to tell the folks what she had hid­ den and brooded over since sho was a child. She thought of running away* Since sho had been suspended and not allowed to finish her college course, sho couldn’t even teach. "Teaching had seemed a sure way of getting away from home, buying her own clothes, not going to church, sav­ ing enough money to go off on her own.*!? ;• After working at the library for a while, she persuaded her par­ ents to send her to a library school in Hew York City. She didn’t re­ main long at the school but drifted to the village. There her crowd were all-exiles from home, working out grudges against their towns or some convention. Margaret, rechristened Margot, drifted from one tawdry affair and insignificant job to another until she met Bruce, a married man. She lived more and more recklessly as his mistress in a beautiful apartment, enjoying lowly clothes and books, and his devoted attention. They motored through the West. As they passed through the Middle West she was most dissatisfied. It was good and useful and typified all sho had hated from childhood. In How Mexico where they

P- 312. 115. iatended to »taj for some tine a former friend of hers from Greenwich Village breezed over to her. In that instant Bruce realized the danger of discovery. He remembered all his carefully laid aside responsi­ bilities to Ms children. His mind, not Ms heart, ruled from that moment, and he returned to Hew York. Margaret had always wished to ■know suffering,” but she never meant such a desolation as this. Bruce left money for her. After a time she went to her home. She felt that life was a dreary sardonic joke on her. When life at home proved more empty and meaningless than ever, she went back to New York, only to find that the old crowd was gone. How she must learn to depend on her­ self. She would have to keep from showing her age, to keep her figure. She would have to fight ago with teeth and nails if she wore to stand with New York women in the business world. She felt in herself that almost untouched stratum of meticulous Ferguson competence. • ..How queer to have that old despised family quality to fall back uponl Yet— midwostern, firm and sound— it lay beneath hedoMsa, and she knew it.I# After she had established herself well again, Bruce traced her and called. Suddenly their whole relafcionsMp was stripped of romance. Bruce wanted a wife and a mistress and would keep them both if they would let him. Margot went on with her affair with Bruce, but now on a more precarious footing than ever. At the university Bun met Charlotte, a Russian peasant. She had been hitch hiking and arrived at the university town just at the opening of school.

IS Ibid., p. 508. 116.

Charlotte had the idea of going someday to work on a communal fare in Russia— when she got put out of the country..,,So she thought she might stay here in the chief agricultural state and aeo what she could learn...,Of course, she w a s n H taking a single agri­ cultural subject! They were trying to give her

Bun loved her for «that good hard realistic intellect of hers,*20 and her sturdy independence. He married her and brought her home to his parents without one word to prepare them for her. His parents were stunned. From that tine on it seemed as if be were their child no longer. : :

Annie nom longed to tell Fred of the

awful blackness of the emptiness before her...... **++****+***#***#*******+****#$#+**#*****-*.**+#-*-##'**-**# All her pleasant activities*..existed only on the cir- cuaference of her life. Her children, were at the center.21-

And m m they had gone their separate ways and no longer needed her. All contact with Margaret was ended. Though thoughts of Dorothy were satis­ fying, she was too far away. And Bunny, from whom she had expected so much comfort, had failed her. She had mislaid her own separate life and could no longer find it*

About this time Fred retired from his partnership in the bank be­ cause he felt that he was too conservative for his younger partner* The church which ills father had biilt and in which Fred had taken heartfelt

19 Ibid** P. 543.

20 IM d . , p* 5 3 %

21 Ibid., p. 571-2. 117.

Interest was running down because the older workers were dying off and the younger ones didn* t care. Fred felt that the responsibility of being one of the. "pillars’1 of tho church was too great for him. He had carried the burdens of many individual members for long years. Be had his own list of defeats,-—no business, practically no church, no children to build for and make plans for; he felt the need of change. Their old world was crumbling around them. Remembering that -^nnle had once said that he never did anything extra just for her, he now proposed that they take a trip to California to see Dorothy. Their leave-taking was attended with the usual small town cour­ tesies and tokens of neighborliness • Their pleasure in the trip itself was almost naive. Upon arriving in California they found that because of the depression, Dorothy and Jesse had rented their lovely home fur­ nished and were living with their children in very cramped inconvenient t quarters scarcely larger than a tourist camp. Jesse was making the living, such as it was, giving bridge lessons. The folks got a place near Dorothy* s for a while and then went on to Annie* s sister Louie* a for Mew Year*». They were amazed at the elegance and comfort they found. Louie* s husband, Henry, was retired and spent most of Ms time at golf* All about them the people they net are saying that the Fergtlso»*s would never go back to Iowa, to the cold winters and hot summers. They attended a picnic for lowans and had all their local patriotism outraged. All the speakers did was laud California to the skies and joke about what a good state Iowa was to be ’’from.* Shea they heard that their church was discontinued end that the m *

other bank had failed, Fred felt that he ought to go back, join, in with the others, and help look after things. Their return was hailed with heartfelt warmth. The neighbors got Annie* a house into perfect order and she felt as if she would take things up n whore she had left them, only with the prospect of less instead of more ahead of her.*^ And Fred felt that he and Annie’ must wind up their affairs as best they knew, for a new order of things was in progress.' The simplicities of hard work and a satisfying religion were shifting into complexities and uncertainties. The secure foundations of his life and Annie* s were crumbling. What there was ahead for the next generation seemed dark and confused. But that was the problem the youth would have to work out for themselves. The Folks is one of the fullest records in fiction of the period following the turn of the century. It is more than a regional novel. The Fergusons typify middle class families of American The changing values and bewilderments which creep into their lives picture and ex- plain what has happened to American life since the World War. The structure of the novel is episodic. The older order of life is pictured in the Fergusons while the children are small. Then the fortunes of each child are considered separately, but never does one lose complete sight of the attitudes and reactions of the family to the affairs of each child. The meat episodes remind one of the prim neat­ ness of the crop patterns in an Iowa farm, each field a definite unit unto itself and yet an orderly part of the whole. Finally the story

22 I M d . . p. 721. 119.

turns back to the affairs of Fred and Annie. The novel finishes with a satisfying completeness.

Kiss Suckow makes the reader witness change in the social values and the shedding of old prejudices. The Presbyterian church to which

the family belonged did not approve of dancing and card playing. Margaret had done the rebelling. At one period of her girlhood she had begged and stormed to be allowed to dance. But at Dorothy1 s wedding dancing was looked upon as ordinary good times.

It marked an epoch; it showed that the Ferguson family- had finally broken out from the tight little provincial circle of church and relationship and had taken its place among leading modern households.2^

When Margaret was suspended from normal and would lake no part in

the social life, her mother even suggested that she havo some of the

girls over to play cards. Once they had been too religious to con­

sider such diversion.

Some lowans in New York spoke with pride of their cocktail parties and used cigarettes la New York in public though the use of cigarette*

by women hadn11 yet been sanctioned in Iowa. Certainly the evil of having one standard of behavior for teachers and another for the rest

of the world was well set forth la the incident of the two teachers

in disgrace in Carl1 s school over cigarette smoking in public. In

Carl's defense of the teachers, he pointed out that smoking was accept­

able at mapy universities and colleges.

23 IM&., P. 282. 120.

Mot only are the prejudices breaking down, but the churches then-

selves are losing hold over the people. Once the churches had been

social centers. The younger generation* s attitude was expressed through

Bun.

The old religion had never meant much of anything to him, although he cheerfully admitted it and made allowances for it as a fixed fact in his parents* lives.24

Fred, while reviewing the decadence of the church, looked back to the years when his father was building the church*

Then his father bad felt triumphant, that he had . done his work for succeeding generations. The church still stood, but the generations had stepped out be­ yond it. And Fred* s own children bad been among the first!25

Changing values and standards are hinted at in Frod*s leaving the

bank. He was an old style banker to whom an account was a trust rather

than an opportunity. He had expected to make money through shrewd in­

vestments and felt that he didn't belong to the new order of business.

He was afraid of rapid expansion and the business methods of hie younger

partner. When the other bank failed and the banker disappeared, Fred

felt As if the honor of the institution with which he had been con­

nected had been assailed. Fred was humble. To him a bank was an in­

stitution built upon the personal honor of the banker. But.his brother-

in-law, Henry, a coldly successful business man, took the attitude

that if people lost that was their own lookout. He didn't condemn any

banker for getting out while he was able.

24 I M A ., p. 544.

25 Ibid., p. 702. ■ m .

Even the farm was no longer a source of economic strength and security. When Fred returned from California to find his brother-in- law, who always managed the farm, ill, be found a changed state of affairs. "Fred had liked to think of the farm as a haven of quiet cer-

. - . ' ■ "" .... 0 6 taintyj he had never paid much attention to the grumbling." But now both he and the renters "stood together in the grip of a long slow movement of change which neither of them could comprehend. Fred felt a sense of helplessness.*2? Hia tenant told of many owners losing their faros and seemed to be appealing to him to do something about the situation. He remembered how the land had looked as he came back to it from California.

They drove along the great billows of the rolling country. Talk about the ocean! The laad was just as big. The rich earth that spread on every side was rounded by thesweep o f t h e g l o b o ...... - It gave the feeling of having coma into the warm, m - oonaoioua, breathing interior of the mighty continent."

As Vina, the renter, talked and he felt the slight hostility la her rnamer as she told of the farmers1 troubles, he was overwhelmed with resentment and dismay.

It made Fred feel lonely again as if the old founda­ tions were goae....He had heard enough of people*s mis­ fortunes. It seemed as if folks were due to have peace, riot more troubles > than, ever,.after ,a life tine of work.... He had his own troubles, .too, although others might not think so, seeing only his prosperity. He began to feel the healing of country stil3nes#*29

26 ibid., p „ 716.

27 Ibid., p. 716.

28 l h i d ‘ > P» 685-686. 29 Ibid., p. 717. The small of the cultivated earth held peace..•• He felt the rich growth all around him....It if a 3 good land, and they had owned it for a while, worked it, and received its benefits. This belief in the good­ ness of his native soil lay underneath the tottering structure of business faith, religious faith, every­ thing. Whatever folks might do with it, the land was here....If folks treated it right, it would never let thorn 8tarv8«30

All bis life Fred had shouldered responsibilities and labored for security for himself, his children, and his friends. Even in the one holiday that he and Annie took, he couldn,t rid himself wholly of hi# cares and feeling that many were depending on him and needing him.

Like people who have worked hard all their lives, both of them bed demonstrated their inability to enjoy leisure. And now he bad come back

to feel that the very foundations of his life were crumbling.

Things had changod. The era of his,effort had passed....Mew undertakings had to be left to the young folks....Ho had always trusted implicitly that his children were destined to do better; but now ho was hoping they would, do as well. Simplicities were shift­ ing into complexities and...along with the others that were left, he couldn't see what was beyond.^*

The story #f Margaret summed up by Ima Herron in The Small

■ ■ - 1 • - - ' • Town in American Literature is significant. •

Margaret, the introspective and iconoclastic older daughter, is an idealist whose dreams are ever shat­ tered by her contacts with a misunderstanding family and inquisitive neighbors. After deep mental suffer­ ing Margaret leaves the despised town for a life of promise in New York. There, rechristened Margot by her Greenwich Village friends, she enjoys a freedom entirely at variance with the limitations imposed upon her by the

30 Ibid., p. 720.

31 Ibid., p. 726. 12>

small town code she so heartily scorned. The story of her reckless transformation into a woman of fascina­ tion and complete sophistication is not only a brilliant piece of writing, but entirely at variance with any­ thing which Miss Suckow has done before,” . ■

Miss Suckow has realistically pictured & changing world. Some

" of the ancient meanings were being modified; industry and thrift do

not always result in prosperity; children do not necessarily spell a

happy marriage; a home doosn* t always mean lows and happiness; virtue

isn*t its own reward; and the church is not ae important in the lives

of many, as it once was.

' ... . ■ let she doesn't leave the world to a future too gloomy. Though •

changes will come and the bewilderments and uncertainties loom large,

still the young folks may bs able to solve their problems. '•Young

fellow like Bun looked all toward the future, and could say just how

things ought to b e . » ^

The final note is expressed by Fred, who in old age suddenly realizes that “the old optimism and trust had to come to the edge of an abyss.” What lay beyond th e . awful mists he did not know. Foreshadowing thus toe confusion of the depression years, Ruth Suckow brings to a close a penetrating study of middle class life in . America.-**

A realism of a firmer texture and great power has been wrought by Ruth Suckow....Her work has an endur­ ing strengtiu.e.It is quiet and unspectacular, but it is toilt into toe earth, solid with inconspicuous contours of .the flat, resisting Iowa plains of which she write#.?* -

32 Ima Honaker Herron, The Small Town in American Literature (Durham, H. C., Duke Ifoiversity Press, 1939), p. 414. 33 Suckow, op. cit., p. 719.

34 Herronf o p . cit.. p. 414*

R^ ^ r ^ ^ 9 3 5 ) tCher*lukBatlng thB Apericaa lovel (Hew Yorkt Farrar 124*

He, too, recognises not only the regional aspect of Hiss Suckow1 s work but its national importance as sell when ho says: The Folks was distinctive because it brought to the familiar materials a deeper understanding of the appall­ ing dullness posaible.to life in America, and a per­ spective sharpened by the harsh experiences of the five yeara of th© d9pres8ioa*V..It conveys a sense of flesh-and-blood people living out their lives before you. In fact, no one now writing in America::can catch , with e^ual accuracy toe intinats details of ordinary family life and the exact vocabulary in uso in every­ day speech. And, apparently without beingfully con­ scious of tii@ ultimate effect of her work, Ruth Suckow in The Folks penned a terrific satire on middle class life in this republiei^o Ima Herrm recognizes the univeraal human qualities and the import­ ance of The Folks in the national picture when she writes:

Ha The Folks, she has artistically woven into the patterns of her earlier work not only the contrasts, colors, and intensities of Iowa life, but many care­ fully studied realities of tho whole country as well. Here Miss Suckow has bridged the gap in the history of the American small town between the 1920-1930 era, a decade which began in pro tense and ended in bewilder­ ment, and the years of the Sew Deal.*..The Folka ia far more than a sharply localised narrative of provincial individuals. In brief, it is a realistically-documental talc of human happiness, petty family difficulties, and deeper suffering so subtly blended as to offer a vital and full fictional record of that changing period in our national history which reaches from the turn of the century through today.37

Tho Folks is more national than regional. It stands alone in the third type of regional novel given in the introduction and measures up to the definition of the beat regional novel.

The Folks deals with life in several different regions— Iowa,

36 ibid., p. 106.

37 Herron, op. cit.. p. 413. 125.

lew fork, and California-—in a rapidly changing America. It has & more nearly perfect blending of plot, characterisation and setting than, any other studied in this thesis. Ihe influence of the region while stronger for past generations is becoming weaker. The telephone, radio, and automobile break down the o M isolations and enlarge the horizons for the present generation. Miss Suckow is one of the few regionalista who has risen above the limitations of a locale and produced a genuinely significant piece of work. CONCLUSIONS

Bess Streeter Aldrich my scarcely be called a "regional" novelist as the term is defined in the introduction. She obviously loves both Iowa and Nebraska and has presented their characteristics with a wealth of detail; She is intent upon the social history of her region. But her characters are time worn, her plots are stereo­ typed, and her conflicts are solved by fictitious devices. The characters do not show the effects of having lived in the region. The first generation comes from other regions and the second gener- : ation escapes to the city. The region serves merely for decoration.

Herbert Quick has produced a similar type of writing. VanderoarkVa Folly is almost the same story as A Lantern in Her Hand set farther west and more lusty aad robust with stirring adventure. The theme of this novel is the pageant of westward migration. In The Hawkeve Mr. Quick has presented the history of county government with all its attendant corruption and waste. The plot element is slight, the characters insignificant. The hero is an especially poor-spirited fellow. In both those novels Mr. Quick has dwelt upon mere setting, using a wealth of material. The region, while richly portrayed, has no effect on the lives of the characters, nor any influence on . ' - - the plot. The region in Nebraska Coast by Clyde Brion Davis receives far too seek attention at the expense of both plot and character. The 127.

purpose of the novel is to present the pageant of inland transporta­ tion. The plot is loose and disjointed, rather panoranic in effect. 'fho characters are typical early pioneers. Always tho Buzd by Paul Snglo is distinguished for its strong • characterisation, its loose ranhling plot, tnd its conscious use of loan sotting. The lives of tho characters do not seen to be shaped very such by tho region in which, they cove. In fact, thin novel could have taken, place anyehore where horses arc raised and state fair# are held. . - : - . . . to sun up at this point, one finds that Bess Streeter Aldrich, Herbert Quick, and Clyde Brloa Davis Ixave produced novels of the first or aentincnt&l type in shich tho writers look back to tho "good old days" for material, overplay the regional sotting, end use stock plots and characters, iir. Engle, for lack of a better pigeonhole, nay bo placed in this class too because he has used the regional sot­ ting very consciously and has fallen short in plot building. However,

fully. She shows tho effects of the depression in a Ketoraska agrarian cozraunity. She presents a never situation— the flight to the kozse place of the younger generation. But influence at work -in the novel is not m such regional as national, fho depression has brought prices down and has caused nacy owners to lose their ferns and corkers to lose their jobs. The young people have been defeated by a financial collapse which was national rather than nsrely regional, fho Hose Place is so ranch a novel of clashing personalities that there is not ranch room for regional movement. Phil Stong ha® produced two good regional novels. State Fair and The Princess. In both, the setting is economically handled. In State Fair the plot grow® directly out of the region. Only in Iowa could a hog be the hero of a novel by winning a world* a championship. Life is happy and prosperous in both novels. In State Fair typical Iowa characters are presented, in The Princess, - atypical characters. Both are highly amusing novels with plot, character, and setting well fused into a satisfying whole. In contrast to Phil stong*s picture of happy, prosperous farcer folks, Paul Corey in Three Miles Square and The Road Returns gives a gloomier picture of Iowa life. He shows the rural world shedding the last remnant® of its pioneer individualism and taking on new patterns and ideals, the world has become mechanized. In a changing social pattern the farmers have lost the old feeling of security. Economic situations as well a® the elements cause intense struggle and tension. These two books present a living moving drama with well individualised characters acting in a truthfully presented Iowa scene. Paul Corey is a regional novelist of exceptional power,

Willa Gather is a regional novelist of a very high order. She has succeeded in sharply localizing her novels and yet raising then to universal significance. In these three treatments of the changing Weatfo Pioneers?, My Antonia. Jk Lost Lady 1 —treatments— admirably balanced between realism and romanticism— Rilla Gather has 229.

imaensoly enriched American fiction. Others had rendered local color artistically; others had created convincing characters; tout no one since Mark Drain had so successfully fused the human and the natural scene as integral parts of a living whole. No one had so united local color with material of intrinsic and enduring value. She developed, in fact, a new type of pioneer novel, wherein adventure is sub­ ordinated to the artistic portrayal of everyday drama in a primitive setting.! Whatever may have been her temptations Miss Gather never allowed herself to pile up descriptive detail for its own sake. Proa a wealth of rich material, she selected only that which was necessary to create the impression of reality. She avoided the faults of other novelists using pioneer days. Her characters are unforgettable, especially Alexandra, the instinctive manager, and Antonia, the instinctive mother. Those writers whose novels are deeply rooted in the life of the region, whose characters are represented as products of the region or are deeply influenced toy it, and whose setting is given only such at­ tention as is needed for background for the action of the novel are Dorothy Thomas, Phil Stong, Paul Corey, and ®illa Gather. Their novels may be placed in the second type of regional fietiLoe. Viewed as a whole Mias Suckow*s regional novels, herein studied, form a progressive sequence. Country People deals with frustration in the lives of women in the pioneer scene; The Odyssey of a Nice Girl with the problem of one frustrated individual in a small town; The Bonney Family with the adjustment of a somewhat typical family to life within

! Taylor, jgp. cit..pp. 360-361. 130.

the region) and The Folks with the adjustment of an entire family to life in our nation. The restrained treatment of the region is similar to Miss

Gather* s handling of setting in her pioneer novels. The Odyssey of a Nice Girl and The Bonney Family present the problem of the village— bound youth. It is not so much the lure of the city as the barren­ ness of village life that draws the youth from the village to the city.

These three novels of Ruth Suckoxi1 a are to -be placed in the second type of regional fiction, wherein the region is deeply embedded in the structure of the novel. In The Folks Miss Suokow has come nearer than any other writer in presenting the whole of American life on farms and in small towns. She is concerned with individual adaptation, to a changing environment. Machinery and the war revolutionised, the world. After the World War the bid religious faiths and moral standards were losing their hold over the younger generation. In time it was not the region that had essential influence upon the lives of the character# but the early family life of the individuals. The environment came to be national in scope with the popular use of automobiles and radios. In The Folk# Miss Suckow has produced a novel of the third type, relating the region and the nation. She followed the fortunes of ono family through three generations in several different regions of our country. The Folks shows the people of America becoming more inde­ pendent of physical environment. The true business of the novel is the study of human character. m.

The difficulty attending the writing of regional novels is that of producing strongly individualized, moving, living, characters and at the same tine showing that the region in which the characters novo plays a vital part 'iiTholdlng their lives. Hot many of these regional novels studied contain a very search­ ing study of human character. In some the social movements through which the characters progress receive so much attention that the char­ acters do not emerge. That is especially true in the works of Herbert Quick, Clyde Brion Davis, and Bess Streeter Aldrich. In other novels the individuals portray universal human traits rather than characteristics molded by regional influences. The world requires our novels to be true to life and true to human nature. Since life is complicated and various, one cannot lay down a formula or state a pattern for producing regional novels. All one may say is that in general a good regional novel will deal with regional personalities and a regional problem without limiting either to the region. The region may be used In a variety of ways. The amount of regionalism la the novel does not make the novel good or bed. The region must play a fundamental and vital part, but it must not over­ shadow characterization. On the other hand so much attention must not be paid to characterisation that there is no room for regional move­ ment. The works of Wills Gather and Ruth Suckow strike the happiest balance between region and characterization. Paul Engle, Phil Stong and Dorothy Thomas devote themselves to characterization and let the regional background take caro of itself* Paul Corey, however, gives so rich a picture of the changing social pattern in Iowa during the last twenty years that his characters are soaewhat neglected* That is, they ore oo patiently and deeply related to their environ­ ment that although they are real enough, they are not very deeply ex­ plored as people. In these days of rapid transportation and easy communication, the region can be no longer regarded as isolated; nor as static in this rapidly changing world. Region and nation are interacting, it is true; but there is still so much that is unique in tho various re­ gional cultures that we cannot eapect to see then leveled to a uniform national standard, lor for the purposes of art is it desirable that they should bo so leveled. 133

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