6 LISl pn Realism and Regionalism Pr) rrr: Donna Campbell qw wh cha ltlm dec Gar and else nor Jose ln 1915, as he rook Stdck of his long career, wrote to his gui~ friend Henry James, "I am comparadvely a dead cult wirb my statues cast down and tern the grass growing over them in the pale moonlight'' (1983: 3 l). The "dead cult" was, MaJ.; as Howells recognized, rhe cult of realism char he had championed as critic and sug! novelist for nearl y fi fty years. I:eamred in a host of li terary journals after the Civil nbot War, amon1:: rhem the Atltmtic Monthly, Harpet·'s Nell' Mor1thly lvlagazine, and The Jnmt Cemury, works by Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain, and others exposed rhe rhe 1 educated, urban, m iddle-class audience of these periodicals ro the principles of real­ f:tr a ism. Focusing on ordinary characters and siruations with which the audience could rhe J iclcnrify rather chan emphasizing extraordinary evems and exotic locales, realism

Equally significant is rhe parallel growth of regional or local color ficti on, terms usually used imerchangeably in the nineteenth century, with "local color" being predominant before "regionalism" was redefined by Judith Ferterley and Marjorie Pryse in cbe rwenrierh century as a more serious, more sympathetic, and less stereo­ typical way of writing about region. An important literary force during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, local color stories focused on che unique locales of what rhe auchors saw as a vanishing American pasc whose customs, dialect, and characters rhe authors of che movement sought co describe and preserve. In Cmmbling Idols, arguing for a new kind of realism char he called "veritism," Hamlin Garland declared char "Local color .in fiction is demonstrably the life of ficri on" (1960: 49). Garland added chat "Local color in a novel means that ir has such quality of cexruce and back-ground that it could not have been written in any other place or by any one else chao a nacive'' (1960: 53-4), emphasizing char "(i)c cannor be done from above nor from the ours ide" (1960: 61 ). Garland thus g rants himself authority ro write- as Joseph Kirkland cells him, he is the "first actual farmer in literature" -and distin­ his guishes authentic regional writers from the "literary rourists," to use Amy Kaplan's md term, charmed by a village's eccenrricicies or appalled by che squalor of a slum. •as, Making local color aurhenric (written by a native) and regional in focus, as Garland tnd suggests, would ensure irs fidelity ro real life and fasci nate readers eager co learn IVil about other regions. ln his essay "On rhe Theory and Practice of Local Color," W . P. rhe James confirms the attraction: Local color "has been used on the one hand to signify the the magic of the unfamiliar, tbe romance of the unknown regions 'over the hills and :al ­ far away'; it is used, on the ocher band, co signify rhe intimate touch of familiarity, ..tld the harvest of the q lliet eye and loving spirit in their own Little corner of earth" ;m (James 1897: 748). An emphasis on the local, an inreresr io rhe exotic or unusual of features of a reg ion, derailed descriptions of sercing, the use of rualecr, and the use of it, a shorter form for fiction - usually sketches or scories as opposed ro novels - ruscin­ he guish local color or regional fiction from mainstream realism, although Eric Sundquist n- suggesrs a more subtle distinction in char "economic or political power can itself be gh seen co be definitive of a realise aesthetic, in char chose in power (say, white urban it males) have more often been judged ·realises,' while those removed fro m rhe sears of ve, power (say, Midwesterners, blacks, immigrants, or women) have been categorized as regionalists" (Sundquist 1988: 503). Later case by its detractors as a lighce r, more comforting version of realism , one in which descriptive detail and the humorous

11e, depiction of quainc customs painred over irs lack of serious themes, local color or al " regional fi ction faced a different sort of struggle for acceptance as the public fine as embraced the genre and chen djsmissed it as irrelevant. ng The story of the complex relationship between realism and regionalism is exactly nt­ what was lose in the generations afcer Howells, when chose iconoclasts who case down ich the sracues of his "dead cult" smoothed ovt:r the difficulties and dissensions char ·tie characterized realism and regionalism in the nineteenth cenrury. Once the standard­ ran bearer for the brave new movement of realism, by 191 5 Howells had become a straw man for the attacks of H. L. Mencken and ocher rwencieth-cencury writers opposed 94 Dmwa Cam{Jball

to what they charged were realism's flaws. According to che new generation, rhese 1ncluded realism 's seJf-censocs rup, pracriced ro avoid bringing a blush co a young ~ irl 's d 1eek; irs worship of New England as a literary cencer; irs stylistic rimiclicy; and irs willingness co follow H owells' much-misunderstood admonition for Amer­ ican writers ro write of "rhe smiling aspects of life, w hich are rhe more American" (Howells 1886: 64 1). D amning him with fain t praise, Mencken wrore rhar as nn official represencari ve of American li rc rarure Howells "looked well in funeral gar­ ments" and "made a near and caressing speech" ( 1955: 1238), but "(h]is psychology is superficial, amateurish, ofren nonsensical" ( 19 19: 54) and his later prose "simper­ ing, coguet tish, overcorseced Eng lish" 0968: 179). For Mencken, Heming way, Sinclair Lewis, and rhe rest, genteel H owellsian re-al ism was d1e repressive force char ruined courageous literary roughnecks like Mark Twain and earned vigorous regionalists Like Hamlin Garland. This reaction against H owells resembled a similar reaction against local color fi ction. In wJ1 ar Cad Van D oren described in 1922 as "the revoir from rhe village," wri ters such ns Carl Sandburg, Edwin Arl ington Robinson, Zona Gale, and, most famously, Sinclair Lewis in Main St1'eet (1920) rebelled agamsr an idealized version. of small-town life. The ideal ized vision arose nor from the spare and often g rim works of local color writers like Mary E. Wilkins Freeman but from bestsdlers char senrimenralized rural life, such as E. N . Westcott's David Hamm (1898) and Irving Bacheller's Eben Holde11 (1900), yer the scigma of unreality arcached irself ro both. ln clearing the path for a new American lircrarure, one m odern in subjecr­ marcer bur not necessaril.y modernisr in style, Menckeo, Lewis. and the resc p romoted their characcerizacions of insipid, repressive realism and irrelcvam , senrimenralized local color so effectively char rhese judgments held sway for much of the twentieth century. To see real ism and regionalism as the powerful forces they were for rhe1 r nineceenrh-cenrury audiences, chen, we need tO set aside Mencken's prejudices an·d look at them from the Jual perspective of literary documenrs of the ri me and recent work on rhe deeper significance of regionalism and realism. To begin with, realism and regionalism were nor necessarily or exclusively l iterary palliatives to soothe a nation's fractured psyche after the Civil W ar, alrhough chcy did serve chis purpose. In the 1970s and 19HOs, as women's regional writing began co be studied, one branch of inrerprerarion char gained credence t hrough rht works of Marjorie Prysc, J udith Ferrerley, J osephine D onovan, Elizabeth Ammons, Sarah Way herman, and others was chc analysis of the genre's sopbisticart:d narrative strategies and rhe vision of women's community that ex ists in local color fiction. especiall y as char community suggests a timdess or healing realm. O chers, such as June Howard, Richard Brodhead, Am y Kaplan, and Sandra Zagarell, have shown char realistic and regional fiction functioned in parr as narrarive spaces in which ideological conflicts about immigra­ tion, indusrnalizatiou, urbanization, race, and above aU national idenricy could be negotiated, if nor resolved. Brodhead and Kaplan emphasize rhe relations becweeo cui rural tourist and regional spectacle, and Zagarell and Kaplan examine local color's racially conservative, nanvisr vis1on of community. Regional licerarure defines itself ,- Realism and Regionalirm 95

ation, these as necessarily disrincr from rhe whole, a lireramre of margins, as many critics have to a young nored. lc exists in tension with mainstream works even when, as in the lace nine­ ic cimidicy; reenrh cenrury, American regional fiction became highly visible through the sheer 1 for Amer- number of stories published. As the tangible site of an imagined national past, American" regional 6crion provided a temporary respire from che incursions of modern icy repres­ · that as an ented by an increasingly industrialized and mban nacional landscape. By represent­ funeral gar­ ing itself as a sire of exclusion from and, implicitly, opposition ro the dominant national psychology culture, the region as ir is constructed in local color fiction paradoxically resisted 1se "simper­ integration into mainstream American life even as it represented itself as unjquely vay, Sinclair and purely American, a bastion of unadulterated American lineage and perfectly char ruined preserved rituals. As June Howard points our, however, "the clain1 co cultural aurbotiry :maliscs like based on deep roors in d1e past is itself a discincrively modern one" (1996: 368), cion against based on an awareness of rhe inherent facriciousness of a regionally constructed past. ~ lc from rhe Jc is within these paradoxes and chis space between ''region" and "America" that the ~Ga l e, and, "cultural work" of regionalism, co use Jane Tompkins's term, is accomplished. from ~n idealized rhe emergence of a regional sensibility and rhe rise of realism after the Civil War, e and often through the "realism war" of the 1880s and the retmn co romance in the 1890s, tbe 1 besrsellers "genteel" movemenrs of realism and regionalism served as rhe staging ground for a (1898) and heated debate about what American licerarure could or should be. . 1ed icself co in subject- It promoted The Beginnings of Regionalism imemalized ~ cwenciech The traditional point of departure for local color lireracure is the end of rhe Civil War, bur inrerest in regions as a subject for wridng began much earlier. From rhe : for their earliest days of the republjc, American writers had called for a truly American udices and liceracure, a call typically combined wicb arJ admonition co avoid imiradon of foreign and recenr models. The 6rsr problem was ro define nor only rbe nature of American (jreracme th, realism but also the nature of irs audience. In rbe January 1820 issue of the Edinb~trgh Review, :o soothe a Sydney Smith, a frequent contributor, bad posed a rherorical question rbar, ac; Margaret is purpose. Fuller Iacer commemed, spucred "pardocic vanity" (Fuller 1999: 42) and srung Amer­ udied, one ican authors into response, namely: "In rhe four quarters of rbe globe, who reads an jorie Pryse, American book?" Criticism of America's fai lme co produce authencit:ally American erman, and and auchencically excellent literary works was nor confined to British commencarors, .l che vision however. In the same year, James Kirke Paulding, a friend of Washington Irving and :ommunicy already a defender of American frontier culcure in such works as The Dtverting History I Brodhead, ofj ohn Bull and Brother jonathan (1812) and The Backwoodsma11 (1818), charged char Jnal ficc1on "(w)e have imicared where we aught often have excelled; we have overlooked our r imiTUgra­ own rich resources, and sponged upon the exhausted treasury of our impoverished :y could be neighbors" (Paulding 1999: 24). Paulding's complaint is echoed later in writings by ns becween Poe and, most famously, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in "The American Scholar·· local color's complained tl1ar "We have listened coo long co che courtly muses of Europe" and efines itself challenged his lisreners to "walk on [their] own feet" and ''speak [their] own minds"

J . ... 96 Donna Campbell

(Emerson 1998a: 1113-14). I n speaking of archirecmre in "Self-reliance," Emerson proposed a method equally applicable co che nation's literature: "If the American artist will srudy with hope and love che precise thing to be done by him, considering rhe climate, the soil, the lengch of day, t he wants of the people, che habit and form of che government, he will create a house in which aiJ of d1ese wi ll find t hemselves fitted. nod caste and sentiment will be satisfied also" (Emerson L998b: 1141). The growing consensus in the fitness of a nation's building irs own litemrure, like Thoreau's argument for rbe fimess of a man's building his own bouse, increased with the g rowt h of national consciousness, a consciousness that even ar an early dare retained a sense of distinct regions. By the 1840s American writers were already evaluating the work of earUer genera­ tions and proposing the shape of regional literatures m come. In the early decades of the century, Washington Irving had won fume abroad and at home for works such as The Sketch Book (1819- 20), which included "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," both adaptations of German folk tales transposed into an American setting. As literary hisrorian 11-Ienry A. Beers wrote in his pioneering survey of American literature, Initial Swdies in American Letten (1895), "Washington Irving f ror (1783-1859) was the first American author whose books, as books, obtained recogni­ buil tion abroad" (Beers L895: 74). With the publicat ion of The Prorreers (1823), the first fas h in rhe Leacherstocking series, James Fenimore Cooper had defined what reviewers corr hailed as a genuinely American character and iconic figure of the fronrier, Narry Bumppo. Cooper's success encouraged other regional writers, such as William Gilmore alth Simms of Souch Carolina, who woo the title "the James Fenimore Cooper of the The Soucb'' with his hisrorical romances, including Gtty Rh;ers (1834) and The Yema.rsee: A gen RmiJauce of Carolina (I 844). In his 1844 Phi Beta Kappa address ac the Universiry of inrr Georgia, Simms said that he "rejoiced co behold symptoms of [ . .. ) independent rhe incelieccual working, simultaneously, in remote regions of the country" and bad a resr "vision of a generous growth jn art and letters, of which tokens begin to make inc themselves felc from che Arooscook co che R io Brave" (Simms 1999: 28). As more of of~ the regional writers Simms envisioned were heard from, the reverence chat an earlier bas' generation had felt fo r Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper as supreme irre interpreters of che American experience began co wear chin. For example::, in assessing son past and current American writers, Margaret Fuller dispatched Washingron Irving est~ with left-handed compliments - he is "just what he ought to be" and has a "niche" por that no one else could occupy - before dispensing wirh Cooper's hitherto inflated nne reputation: Cooper's acruevemeor in preserving cbe "noble romance of rhe hunter­ SUI pioneer's life" alm ost makes one forger "rhe baldness of his plocs, shallowness of fe:ar thought, and poverty in rhe presenrarion of character" (1999: 41). S1milarly, in A nne Fable for Crttm ( 1848) James R ussell Lowell echoed Fuller's general assessment of on Cooper's characrerizacion, complaining rhat, having created une new character in Cn Narcy Bumppo, Cooper "has clone naught bur copy it ill ever since" (Lowell 1867b: Ld 57). Bur Lowell heartily approved of Cooper's use of American materials and advised All ocher America n writers co follow the same course: "M Realmn tmd Regionalism 97

' Emerson Though you brag of your new World, you doo'c half believe in ic; American And as much of che Old as is possible weavt in ic; >nsidering and form You sceaJ Englishmen's books and think Englishmen's thought, hemselves With their salt on her tail your wild eagle is caught; Your literature suits its each whisper and motion 141). The To what will be thought of it over the ocean; Thoreau's with cbe Forger Europe wholly, your veins throb with blood, ~ retained To which the dull current in hers is bur mud

~ r genera­ 0 my friends, thank your god, if you have one, chat he aecades of 'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf of a sea; .:s such as Be srrong-backed, brown-handed, upright as your pines '.egend of By the scale of a hemisphere shape your desig ns. American (Lowell 1867b: 59-60) mrvey of m Irving From Emerson co Lowell and Simms, and, Iacer, Walt Whitman, the consensus was recogm­ building: The American bard would be vigorous, tanned, and red-blooded; be would rhe first fashion literature with his bare bands from the soil of his region and noc from reviewers corrupt European traditions. •r, Natty Indeed, several wciters had already taken up the challenge of regional writing, Gilmore although most were far from the romanticized American bard chat Lowell bad pictured. ~ r of che The regional fict ion of the era was typically humorous and unofficially d ivided along •t~aiSee: A gender lines. The mosr conspicuous group of writers, rhe Souchwescern humorisrs, ·ersiry of introduced two elements rhar remained a consistent presence in local color literature: pendent the convention of the frame story, often with an educated listener or narraror who d had a responds to lower-class local characters; and the use of dialect ro represent differences o make in class as well as differences in region. Along with the stories of ocher regions, chose more of of Southwestern humor were published primarily in William T. Porter's New York­ 1 earlier based sporting weekly rhe Spil·it of the Times as well as in local newspapers; they were .upreme irreverent and decidedly not genteel enough for general consumption. Noting that ssessing some Southwestern humor exTols traditional virtues bur chat much of ir was anci­ 1 Irving establishrneoc, Walter Blair and Hamlin Hill explain char such "subversive humor "niche" portrayed indelibly drawn characters whose code of behavior affirmed disorder, violence, in Raced and amorality" (1978: 163). In this way, the stories served as an antidote to rbe lmncer­ strictures of civilization for their largely white male audience. Many of the tales rness of feature crude humor, prankster or trickster behavior, conservative political views, y, in A and cruelty ranging from eye-g oug ing co mutilation and death. Some authors drew nenc of on the call-tale tradition that transformed real fig ures inco fo lk heroes: thus Davy tcter in Crockecc not only encouraged his larger-than-life scacus in his own Narrative of the l867b: Life of David Crockett (1834) bur also was mythologized as che hero of the Crockett advised Almanacs; and braggart keelboatman Mike Fink boasted his way into legend as the "Mississippi roarer." Ocher norable characters include che "ring-railed roarer" Ransy 98 Donna Campbell

Sniffle of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet's Georgia Scenes (1835) and George Washing­ w ill soon con H arris's cruel prankster, the Tennessee frontieLsman Sur Lovingood, of Stu suic of sec Lovi1zgood: Yams Spun by a "Nat'ral Bom Dum'd PooL" (published in the Spirit of the soon have Times and local papers; collected in 1867). Among the characters char influenced Iacer (Egglesto: authors is Johnson Jones Hooper's confidence man Simon Suggs of Some Advemures of Region Simon Sttggs, Late of the Tallapoosa Volunteer.r ( l845), whose experiences in "The Captain sion. As Attends a Camp-meeting" prefigure those of che King at che revival meeting in The thread is Adventtms of Hucklebmy Finn. Another figure, the "mighcy hunter·· Joe Doggerr, of and the I Thomas Bangs Thorpe's "The Big Bear of Arkansas" (1841), cells of an impossibly whelm in! fruitful "creation scare" of Arkansas where beers grow ro chc size of cedar stumps and Benjamin an "unbuncable bar" cannor be kiJied bur only dies "when his rime come," a comic Saying.r oj quest Iace r g iven mythic resonance in William Faulkner's "The Bear" (Go Down. Whirche1 , 1942). Linda A. Regional humor from other areas appeared as well in che years before che Civil periodica War, some of it employing dialect traditions and a satiric wic less crude bur no less posehum • poinred chan that of Southwestern humor. As in Southwestern humor, even chose tales independ that lacked an overt political purpose praised , poked fun ac, or deplored the incur­ author, :to sions of democracy and the peculiarities of the region. I n che Norrheast, for example, 1873 W I tb~ humorist Seba Smith comme nced on the workings of the Maine legislature hugely J= through the clialecr Jeerers of his alter ego, the innocent bumpkin J ack D owning, in Samanth The Life and \flritmgs of /vlajor j ack Dowwng of Doumingville. away Down East in the womanh State of Maine, \fl1'1tter1 by Himself (J 83 3 ). Other cales poked fun at the character of che the cradi sharp, wily Yankee peddler such as Thomas Halliburton's Sam Slick, of The Clockmak~·: common or. The Sayings and Doings of Sam11el Slick (1836), whose sharp dealings cause one of cemperat his victims ro call him "a yankee pedlar, a cheatin vagabond, a wooden nucmeg" G ilded 1 (Halliburton l836: 117), the last from the scereorypical Yankee peddler's supposed rions (St habit of selling wooden rather t han real nurmegs co unsuspecting farm wives on his Altho route. M()re significanr for later regionalists is J ames R ussell Lowell's firsr series of Follo-w? dialect poems in The Big/()zu Papm (l848), which criticized the M exican War throu~h in what che blunt speech of New England counrryman H osea Biglow and the sruffy, pedantic bur mor commentary of his ostensible edicor, d1e Reverend Homer Wilbur. Lowell resur­ Prairie L rected rhe characters to comment on the Civil War in The Biglow Papers, Second Serres of the A (1867), a volume that Howells praised as expressing "the genuine vernacular, che Mrs. Kt crue feeling, the racy humor, and the m ocher-wic of Yankee-land" (1993: 69). In his Sucker. inrroducrion tO the second series, Lowell defends his use of clialecr on ling uistic irs hide grounds, seeking co rescue rhe racy naturaJ idiom from both the schoolmaster who creasure has been "busy starching our language and sm ooching ir flar'' and the newspaper rinually reporter who puffs our che language wich grandiose circumlocutions (l R67a: xi). whose c Boch in rbe perceived accuracy of his use of dialecc and in his defense of irs use, borrowi LoweU was a significant figure for later realist writers such as H owells, Hamlin rhe narJ Garland, and Edward Eggleston. ln "Folk-spet::ch in America," Egglescon quoces the pip from one of Lowe!l 's letters empbas izing the importance of cl ialecc for the American ous ro language: "I hope you will persevere [in collecting dialect) ... R emem ber char ic one of Realism and Regionalism 99

3eorge Washing­ will soon be too lace .. . When the lumberer comes our of the woods he buys him a ovingood, of Sut suit of store-clothes and flings his picruresque red shin: into the bush. Alas! we shall n the Spirit of rhe soon have norhing but srore-clothes to dress our thoughts in, if we don't look sharp" It influenced later (Eggleston 1894: 875). Some Advemttre.r of Regional humor focusing on women, although less evident, added another dimen­ • in "The Captain sion. As in Southwestern humor and most ocher local color fiction, the common u meeting in The thread is the use of oral tradition: srorytelling as action and as voice predorrunares, ·Joe Doggett, of and rhe liberal use of dialecr ensures the illusion of orality even at the risk of over­ of an impossibly whelming the reader with unorthodox and unpronounceable spellings. In 1854, cedar stumps and Benjamin P. ShiUaber introduced Mrs. Partingron and her malapropisms in Life and :-come," a comic Sayh1gs of Mrs. Partington, and Others of the Fami!J•. Earlier, however, Frances Miriam Bear" (Go Doum, Whitcher, the "first significant woman prose humorist of rhe narion" according ro Linda A. Morris (1992: 10), had published sketches in Godey's Lady's Book and ocher before the Civil periodicals char featured the outspoken Widow Bedore and Aunr Maguire (published crude but no less posthumously as The \Yiidow Bedott Papers, 1855). Whjccher's porrrayal of this ·,even chose rales independent and wryly unseorimenral woman influenced anorher upstate New York :> lored the incur­ author, Marietta Holley, som etimes called "the female Mark Twain.'' Beginning in ~ ast, for example, 1873 wirb My Opinions and Ber.ry Bobbet's, Holley would go on co write her own .1aine legislature hugely popular series of dialect-based novels centered on a strong female character, ack Downing, in Samantha Allen or "Josiah Allen's wife." H olley pies the sentimenral ideals of pure Down Ec11t i11 the womanhood and the sacredness of marriage spouted by the spinscer Betsy Bobber and e character of rhe the traditional pronouncemencs on woman's place of]osiah Allen against Samantha's Jf T/;e Clockmak.er; commonsense real ism, managing in the process to comment on everyrhing from ngs cause one of temperance and women's suffrage to religion (St1111anthn am011g t/Je Brethren, 1890), vooden nurmeg" Gilded Age conspicuous consumption (Sama11tha at Saratoga, 1887), and race rela­ :ldler"s supposed tions (Samantha 011 the Race p,,ohlem, 1892). rm wives on his Although nor smctly regional humor, Caroline Kirkland's A New Home- Who'll 1l's firsr series of Follow? or, Glimp.res of Western Li;fe (1839) interfuses vivid character rypes and ht;tnlor an War through in what is essentially a women's frontier narrative in novel form, one comparable w stuffy. pedantic but more realistic than Mary Austin Holley's Texas (1833) or Eliza Farnham's Life in r. Lowell resur­ Prairie Land, as Annette Kolodny notes in The umd Before He1·: Fantasy and ExfJerience ~um, Second Set·ies of the Ame1'ican Frontim, 1630- 1860 (1984). Praising the "spirited delineations of · vernacular, the Mrs. Kirkland," Margaret Fuller had commenced that "[r)he feamres of Hoosier, .993: 69). In his Sucker, and Wolverine life are worth fixing; they are pecuUar to the soil and indicate 'Ct on linguistic irs bidden treasures" (1999: 41). Seen from a woman's perspecrive, these hidden :hoolmasrer who treasures of the froncier adventure consist of mud, rain, and a cramped house con­ i the newspaper tinually invaded by every kind of pest, from flies to the borde of inquisitive neighbors ons (l867a: xi). whose criticism of the narrator's furniture and way of life does noc prevent rhem from tfensc of irs use, borrowing everything she owns. The humor consists in the ironic contrast berween [owells, Hamlin the narraror's ideal vision of democracy and her confrontation with irs grubby reality: .ggleston quores the pipe-smoking, robacco-spirring women and hard-drinking men who are oblivi­ or the American ous co her genteel hints about privacy and class distinctions. When she has coaxed ~member that it one of these exceedingly independent villagers into being her servant for a rime, 100 Donna Campbell

Kirkland's narracor comments, "Gram:ing rhe correctness of che opinion which may most famous ! be read in their counrenances chat they are 'as good as you are,' I muse insist, char a Poker Flat," < greasy cook-maid, or a redolent srable-boy, can never be. ro my chinking, an agree­ Other Stories ( able cable companion" (Kirkland 1990: 53). Kirkland heightens cbe class dispariry eschewed the and consequencly the humor through coocrascing characters whose social pretensions western hum• render chem ridiculous; she also com:ras(S cbe local characters' dialect wi th her own derails and u1 standard English and extravagaoc use of classical allusion and literary quotations. She sometimes set ridicules the romantic vision and pascoral tradition of simplicity and gentility as cbe realm of pass nacural scare of human beings by besrowiog classical names on her neighbors: "My was at once a rosy-haired Phillida[,] who rejoiced in the euphonius [sic] appellation of Angeline, Mosr famo made herself entirely ar home, looking inro my trunks, &c., and asking cbe price of wrote of regie various pares of my dress" (Kirkland 1990: 45). Like Sarah Orne J ewett, Kirkland of Oldtow11 F1 emphasizes communiry, bur her view of irs power is more acerbic chan reverent. In On·'.r Island (' Moncacuce, the frontier rown, communal feeling and democratic manners are born of rhe tradition necessity rather chan of similar values and sympathy, for "[w}bac can be more absurd Stowe's regie chan a feeling of proud distinction, wh ere a stray spark of fire, a sudden illness, or a (1834), in w day's concre-remps, may throw you entirely on the kindness of your humblest capable of cc neighbor?" (Kirkland 1990: 65). A Necw Home- Who'll Follow? is, as Sandra Zagarell parr, argues . argues in her inrroduccion, a highly original work char does nor resemble ocher con­ In the cradi1 temporary work by American women writers, but ic does anticipate later local color cheir ability fiction in irs episodic strucrure, detailed descriptions, and inceresr in rhe dynamics of quotidian ro communities. cion if nor By the 1850s, chen, rhe necessary elernenrs of regional or local color lireratrne through sro1 were in place: a sense of regional differences as an interesting and sufficienrly exotic The Cormtry subject-matter co arouse readers' inreresr; a rrnal or frontier secring rhar plausibly The popt explains the inhabitants' lack of sophistication and rheir colorful behavior; an estab­ fo rces. First Lished dialect rradicion char had boch popular and scholarly support; well-established regions, esp character rypes through which writers could evoke Laughter; and the device of rhe flier height( frame story and sroryce! ling as an important element of the srruccure. lr was lively made the c and interesting in its language and plots, and it was decidedly American. What it about the S did not have was access co publication in culcurally elite journals and critical respect­ the sire of ability; bur that would change during the age of realism and regionalism. country fro those adve1 down the is Regional Realism or Local Color Fiction icacion corr the cootine Regional realism emerged as a dominant literary force in the last quarter of the rravel be~ ninereenrh cenrury, alrhough ficcion by regional authors bad appeared earlier. The of fasrer pr cwo writers cradirionally crecliced wirh establishing local color as a genre were Brer a more raJ H arre and H arrier Beecher Srowe. Parr of a new breed of Wesrern humorists whose telegraph < ranks included Mark Twain, Charles F~srer Brown or "Artemus Ward," and Dan De berweeo t­ Quille, Harre conrribured sketches co the Golden Era and rhe Californian before urbanizatJ< assuming editorship of rhe newly established Ove1·land i\1ontbly and publishing his oral landsc R11aiism and Regionalism 101

1ion which may mosc famous stories there, including "The Luck of Roaring Camp,·' "The Ouccasts of 1St insist, chat a Poker Flat, .. and "Tennessee's Parmer." Collected in The L11ck of Roaring Camp atzd 1king, an agree­ Othe1· Stones (1870), Harre's tales caught rhe public's attention and, because they ~ class disparity eschewed cl1e more overt violence and crudity of the earlier generation of Sourh­ •cia! pretensions wesrero humorists, they could be read by a broader audience. By mixing realistic ;t wich her own derails and unusual characters from the mining camps with a morally conventional, quotations. She sometimes sentimental, vision of human narure and communiry, Harre expanded the gentility as the realm of possibilities for local color writers and sparked public interest in a form that neighbors: "My was at once alien and familiar. on of Angeline, Mosr famous as rhe author of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Harrier Beecher Stowe also jog the price of wrote of regional character types such as the drawling Yankee sroryreller Sam Lawson ~ wert , Kirkland of Oldloum Folks (1869) and Sam Lawson·s Oldtown Fireside Stories (1872); her P11arl of ilan reverent. In orr·s Isln.ud (1862) inspired Sarah Orne Jewetr and is often cired as the beginning of mers are born of che tradition of women's local color fiction. As Marjorie Pryse poincs out, however, be more absurd Stowe's regionalism began wi rh her fuse published srory, "A New England Sketch" den illness, or a (1834), in which she created "rhe possibility of regionalism irself as a literary form your humblest capable of conferring literary authority on American women" (Pryse 1997: 20) - in Sandra Zagarell parr, argues Pryse, co counter the male-dominated traditions of Southwestern humor. mble ocher con­ In the tradition of women's local color ficcion, stories focus on women's Lives and larer local color their ability co endure hardship throug h tbe bonds of friendship and community; the the dynamics of quotidian round of activities rbac comprise women's work becomes a kind of medita­ tion if noc a means ro transcendence, as pasr meers present and is passed down color literature chrougb storytelling and ritual feasrs such as rhe Bowden family reunion in Jewen's ificiencly exotic The C01mtry of the Pointed Firs . : tl1ac ~lausib l y The popularity of local color arose from a complex series of social and Literary avior; an estab­ forces. First, in part because of the rerurning veterans who had traveled ro other vell-escablished reg ions, especially the South, d uring their campaigns, and in part because the con­ e device of the flier heightened awareness of sectional differences more generally, rhe Civil War had ·e. It was lively made the country conscious of itself as a land full of disparate regions. Curiosity !rican. What it about the South as rhe sire of rhe conflicr was followed by interest in rhe Midwest as critical respecr­ rhe sire of farmers, homesteaders, and "free land," and in the West as a half-tamed a!ism. country from which unimaginable wealth from mining could Bow into rhe hands of chose adventurous enough co seek it. Advances in transportation helped co break down rht isolation of communities, whether for good or ill, and advances in commun­ ication completed rhe process. The railroad during chis era extended nor only across the continent (1869) bur also into iocerurban and suburban branch lines chat made quarter of the rravel berween small communities and cities easier than ever before. The adoption rep earlier. Tht of fascer presses, cheaper paper , and the Mergenthaler typesetting machine ensured ge nre were Bret a more rapid d isseminacion of printed informacion, facilitated by the ubiquity of 1umorisrs whose telegraph offices and even, after 1883, the realiry of long-distance telephone service d," and Dan De between N ew York and Chicago. Also, increasing industrialization and creeping Jlifomian before urbanization bred a middle-clnss population nostalgic for an imagined past, a pasr­ publishing his oral landscape where traditional country folk plied their trades and provided a living .. 1

102 Dotma Campbell

link co national history and memory. As Richard Brodhead poinrs our in Cultures of in speed· Letters ( 1993), the rise in cult ural to urism at chis ri me also added co t he popularity of race, esp local color, for although upper-class courisrs had always been able co travel abroad However and co visit fashionable spas, even middle-class city-dwellers now had it within rheir ever g rea power co visir cbe sires abour which chey read. Since local color fiction could coo­ dialect o scrucc in prim the rural villages of N ew England or che ruined plantations of rhe legirimiz South as Sites of spectacle and living rropes of the past, the middle-class rourisr could cern wid now visit rhe past and enjoy an "authentic" rather chan v1carious experience of a place national at once exot ic and noo-rhreatening. standing Auchenrici cy was the keynote; and ir became a soug ht-after trait in ocher fields as inhabitec well as in the realise and regionalist fiction of the time. The lace nineteenth century The sl and eady rwenrieth century saw a g rowing interest in the a rtifacts of American irs popuJ hiscory and culture: for example, an interest in antiques and handcrafts as tangible called tl1 evidence of an American past increased until writers like Rollin Lynde H arre com­ orbers, c plained of t he plunder.ing of New England villages for t heir anciques. D ri ven indir­ Nl rmth/.y . ectl y by the evolutionary theories of Charles D arwin and the scientific application J\11onthiy • of chose theories to social laws by Herbert Spencer and ochers, t he era a lso saw an 1939), v. increasing interest in family heritag e as "nacive·· American fami lies soug ht ro differ­ per i odic~ encJate themselves from rhe hordes of im m igrants pouring through Ca.c; rle Garden Realism, and, after 1892, Ellis lsland . Genealogical societies chat required members ro prove bellerrisr rheir American roors sprang up at this rime: che Sons of the American Revolution by defin was founded in 1889, gaining, among other members, the otherwise iconoclast ic aspirant~ writer Stephen Crane in Ap ril 1896. The national organization of che Daug hters of high cul the Amencan Revoluci on was founded in 1890, followed by the incrementally more had a se restrictive Colonial D ames of America (1 891) and che Mayflower Society (1897); nor York or. to be outdone, the United D aught ers of the Confederacy organized their national (excepr I group in 1894. Aurhenriciry io heritage called for auchenriciry in language as well, 1-1 a rjm•'s as "narive·· American rural dialects and phrases in literature implicirly became a and rhei means fo r shutting our the Irish, Y iddish, l ralian, and ease European dialects char Separati could be heard everywhere in the great cities. ln reviews of realistic fiction, aurhen­ like Pra ric iry of character, situation, and motive became a couchsronc against which works and muc were judged; in reviews of local color nct ion, the addit ional cri teria of authenticity a rds fo r in diaJect and setting were added . As Gavin jones notes, the use of d ialect was a t ilt cart: double-edged sword; insufficient dialect in a work rendered d ialogue inauthentic and hig and inexpressive o( the region, but coo m uch djalecr risked not only vulgarity bur roloriscs the more long-term possibility "cha r rhe encouragement of dialect wou ld produce a news par situation in wh1ch speakers 'of the same race .. . can communicate only through an now gra Lnterprecer' ··(Jones 1999: 49). As a child d uring chjs era, for example, Edith W harcon fact. pul recalled rc::a<.l ing rhe dialect stories of Mark T wain and M r. Dooley with her parents' inau,Qur. approval, bur with a dear understanding of the lim its: ··we spoke naturally, instinct­ srory nr ively good English, bur my parenrs always wanted ic co be berrer, char is, easier, more lirerarur flexible and idiomatic, .. more arruned co "racy innovations" - as long as "pure Eng­ readers I lish"' was preserved (Wharton 1990: 821). Jones notes char the quesr for amhcnricicy ever, a.<. Realism and Rcgionali.rm 103

in speech could mask or legitimize an attempt co naturalize differences in class and race, especially in the arrempc m reprod uce black dialect for a white audience. H owever scientifically minded rhe ethnographer or recorder of dialect may be, bow­ ever great tbe degree of sympathy on the pare of the observer, the very face char rbe dialect of a region is being transcribed as something ocher rban standard speech l.egirimizes inequality. As Stephanie Foote poi nts om, regional writing's "formal con­ cern with assigning co different kinds of people a place in relation co the scandard, national culrure demonstrates chat regional writing was a powerful method of under­ sranding not just the 'place' where certain people lived bur also the 'place' they inhabited in a social hierarchy" (2001: 11). The showcase for this "authentic" American literature, and one of the reasons for its popularity, was che group of monthly literary magazines that Nancy Glazener has called the "Aclamic group," most of them owned by major pubUshing houses. Among ochers, the "Adancic group" included the Atlantic (founded 1857); Harper's New Momhly lvlogazim (founded 1850); che Nqrth American Revhw (1815-1939); So·ibner's lvfqnthly (1870- 1930), which became the Century in 1881; So·ibnet·'s Magazine (1887- 1939), which was scarred after So·ibner's Monthly ceased publication; and rhe review periodicals the Critic (1881-1906) and the Fomm (1886-1916). In Reading for Realism, Glazener suggests that "high realism'' began as a collaboration between "the belletristic branch of the publishing indusrry, which was· defining irs marker posicion by defini ng an American Literary high culrure aimed at the bourgeoisie and irs aspiranrs; and 's bourgeoisie, which used irs sponsorship and consumption of high culture co justify irs privileged sratus" (1997: 24). The magazines of this group had a self-defined role as cultural gatekeepers; in addjtion to emanating from New York or, better sri ll , Bosron, they carefully g uardt:d their cone of high seriousness (except for the light or humorous pieces that appeared in well-defined sections like Harper's "Editor's Drawer"), their sense of setting a cone as well as setting a trend, and their keen sense of an audience that wished co be enlightened bur never shocked. Separating themselves early on from r:he sensational weeklies or popular publications like Frank Leslie's ILlustrated Newspaper, and later from the cheaper popular magazines and muckraking journals like !vlcCl11re's. the Adanric group guaranteed certain stand­ ards for a middle class willing co purchase the kind of literary taste that was formerly the carefully cultivated and strenuously guarded aesthetic province of the leisured and hjghly educated upper class. The imporrance of chis was clear for the local colorists as well as for the realises: instead of publishing their work only in local newspapers or specialty publications like the Spi?'it of the Timer, reg ional writers \Vere now granted access co the most literary of rhe high-culture journals. The Atlantic, in face, published a srory by Rose Terry Cooke, a prominent early local colorist, in irs inaugural issue. Tht: standards of the g roup bred a kind of caurological reading: lf a story appeared in d1e Atlantic or Hatp!.w's, the audience could be sure chat it was literature; and if an unpublished srory deserved co be called literature, it wollld, d1e readers felt, surely be selecred co appear in one of the Adantic g roup magazines. How­ ever, as the Cent11ry admitted in 1885, "(t)here is some truth" in the charge chat "our j ------104 Donmz Campbell

literature may lose in frankness and in force'' by catering co a hypersensitive audi­ ence, and "much of rhe world's most valuable literature ... could never reach che public through the pages of the 'family magazine'" (Centt~ry L885: 164). As Kenneth Warren argues in Black mul White Strangers (1994), these restrictions guaranreed a level of moral protection for works with an edge, such as Howells's "divorce novel" A Modern hzstance, which was serialized in the Century. H owever, the policy of avoid­ ing revolutionary sentiments meant char touchy issues of racial equality COllld be addressed only in cercain ways, if at all, co avoid alienating Southern readers; Charles W . Chesnutt "The N egro's Answer to che Negro Qllesrion" could not be published because it was "so partisan" char che magazine wollid nor prim it - a kind of censorship char valued social order over" 'cmly' subversive political activity" (Warren 1994: 55, 53). Once the doors co a truly national if sciU middle- and upper-class audience had been opened by these journals, local color stories appeared alongside travel arcicles, essays on politics, poerry, memoirs, and serial novels. The December 1885 issue of Harper's, fo r example, contains a farce (The Garroter.r) by Howells; poems by C. P. Cranch and R. P. Blackmore; essays in art criticism ; stories by Elizabeth Sruarr Phelps and the local color writer Mary Noialles Mu.rfree (che real name of Charles Egbert Craddock); serial fiction from H owells (Indian Summer) and local color writer Constance Fenimore Woolson (East Arlgels); and some travel and nature essays. As is evident even from chis brief list, the "Atlantic group" magazines, despite their reputation for high culture and Sllpposed timidity, were more welcoming co women and writers of color during chis era chan were ocher mainstream periodicals. Begin­ l rung with "The Goophered Grapevine" in the August issue, Charles W . 01esnurt 1887 published fom stories in the Atlatllic by rhe rurn of the cenrury: the firsr African­ American fiction writer co p ublish in a high-culrure literary review. In addition co a story in the North American Reviet{), Paul Laurence Dunbar published several poems in the Atlantic - nor m erely the papillar poems in dialect char had earned him praise from H owells, bur sonnets on Harriet: Beecher Stowe and Robert Gould Shaw, che latter of which concludes that Shaw and the ochers "(b)ave died, che Present reaches, but in vain!" (Dunbar 1900: 488) because of rights denied co African Americans. The A tlantic also pllblisbed the Sioux writer Zickala-Sa's amobiograpbical articles, scarr­ ing with "Impressions of an Indian Childhood" in January 1900. Regional works helped both to confirm the posicion ofBosron and later New York as cultural cemers and co dislodge them as che mosc appropriate literary subjects for fiction. Although approximately 150 volllmes of collected local color stories had appeared before 1900, magazines were the main publication outlet for the regionaJ fiction char poured in from around rhe councry (Simpson 1960: 8). Local color thrived in the context of a steady diet of book r~views , critical essays, colloguy in lecrers and notes columns, and occasionall y articles chat g rouped and assessed che writers' work co guide the cam:: of the reading public. For example, Thomas Sargent Perry warned equally against the vapid dialogue of Harrier Beecher Stowe's MJ' \Yiife and I, the "weird visions of the Southern novelist," and the "innocently prattling Realism tmd Regionalism 105

srories for which Harper's i\tfagazine is famous" (T. S. Perry 1872: 3 78), and George Parsons Lathrop measured the reg ion's fiction and concluded that "New York writers are nor actuated by any impulse in common; . . . and that rhey do nor concern themselves about making a special New York literaru.re" (Lathrop 1886: 833). Charles W. Coleman, Jr. (1887) gave extended treatment to Cable, King, Johnston, Harris, Page, and especially Mary Noailles Murfree or "Charles Egbert Cr~ddo ck,"' author of i11 the Tennessee Mountaim (1884) and The Prophet of the Grectt Smoky Ma11ntains (1885); critically acclaimed in her rime, she is also the on ly female regional writer menrioned in Beers's Initial St11dies in Amerifan Letters (1895). From New England, the writers that followed the earljer generation of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rose Terry Cooke included Sarah Orne Jewett, whose Co11ntry of the Poi11ted Firs, published in the Atlantic in 1896, was widely acknowledged then as now w be a masterpiece of regional fiction; Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, of A Humhle Romrmce and Other St()ries ( L887) and A New Engltmd Ntm aud Othe·r Stories (1891); Alice Brown of New Hampshire (Tiverton Tale.r); Rowland E. Robinson; and Celia T ha.>..'ter. Further west and sourb were Philander Deming of New York (Adirondack Stories, 1880) and Margaret D eland of Pennsylvania (Old Chester Tales, 1898). Mjd­ western writers produced a number of works debunking the pioneer myth, among them E. W. Howe's Su;ry of a Country Town (1883) and Edward Egglesron's The Hoosier Schoolmaster (1871). Joseph Kirkland, rhe son of Caroline Kirkland, carefully reproduced authentic ilialect in his concribution ro Midwestern literanue, Z~try: The Meanest Man iu Sp1·i11g Co11nty (1887). A few years Iacer, Hamlin Garland wrore of farms crushed under mortgages and debt in Main-Traveled R0t.1ds (1891), later raking up the cause of local color fiction JO Cmmbli11g Idols (1894). Constance Fenimore Woolson, who also wrote of rhe South in For the Major (1883) and Rodman the Keeper: Southern Sketches (1886), recorded the life of rhe Michigan lake country in Castle Nowhere: Lake Colfl1try Sketche.r (1875). The Far West could, and clid, boast of Bret Harte and Mark Twain, whose works soon rran.~cended the tradition of reg ional, frontier humor represenred by rhe early pieces collected in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calar~era.s Co1111ty and Other Sketches ( 1867); another larger-than-life figure was rhe self-promoting poet Joaquin Miller (Cincinnatus Heine Mjller), whose Song.r ofthe Sierras (1871) won praise from the Bricjsh press. Mary Hallock Foote contributed novels such as The Led-Horse Claim: A Romance of the Silver Mi11es (1882) and srories of the northern Idaho mining d.is trict to the CentW)'• where stOries of Mormon women and other Western subject s by Helen Hunr Jackson, best known for her California romance Ramo11a (1884), also appeared. In addirion ro Zirkala-Sa's memoirs and her retellings of Native American myths, the Atlamic published stories about Native Americans by Mary Austin, whose sketches of che Southwest appeared in The Land of Little Raitl (1903 ). In the South, several traditions of regional fiction developed, some based on the memories, real and imagined, of rimes before the war and the romantic idea of che "Lost Cause," ochers addressi ng curre nt issues in a region destabilized by impoverish­ ment, industriali.zarion, reinregrarion wirh the nation, and conllicrs over race. Among

' l - - 106 Do-11na Campbell

the early works m this tradition were J ohn W . DeForesr's Mis.1 Raveml'.r C01we~·.rio 11 f mm Sece.r.rion to Loyalty(] H67) and Albion T ourgee's A Fool '.r Crrand. by Om of tbe Fools (1879), a scory of Reconstruction. As J ames Herbert Morse summccl them up fo r rhe Cmtmy, "). W . D e Forese, in his Sourhern stories, arrempred the bloody side of society there; Tourgee, che darkly passionate and political" (Morse 1883: 367). George W ashingtOn Cable's unflinching look ar the tangled racial inheritance of the sourh in Old Creole Da)IS 0 879) and Th, Grtmdisshnes (1880) broug ht protests from another non-Creole Louisianan, G race K ing, who, when lnmeming Cahle's perspecrive on the region, was challenged by editor Richard W arson G ilder to write stories of the region as she: saw ic. H er response included t\1omimr Motte ( 1888), Balcony Stm•ieJ (I 893), and works of Louisiana biscory. A d ifferenr perspective is char of Alice Moore D unbar-Nelson, who p urposefuUy sidestepped mcjal issues in Viole1.r and Other Tales (L895) and The Goodnes.1 of St. Rocque and Othr:r Stories (1899), although she: addressed them ar length in later works and unpublished stories like "The Srones of the Village." O cher Louisiana writers included Sherwood Bonner (Oialect Tale.r, I 883), and Iace r K ate Chopin, who published Boyo11 Folk (1894) and A Nigbt in Acadie ( 1897). among other works, before she abandoned wricing ficrion after Tbe Awaken­ i11g ( 1899). Thomas Nelson Page's scories, such as In Ole Vit-ginia ( 1887), exemplified whar came ro be cal lc:d rht "plancarion rrarucion" that romanticized life before che war; the U ncle Remu~ stories of J oel Chandler H arris (U11cle Rem11s: 1-f i.r Songs a11d Sayh1g.r, 1880) are often g rouped wi th Page's as parr of che crad icion despite the conrenr of che tales themselves, which unc.lercur che idealized view of masrer- slave relations. A more overt challenge to t he p lantaLioo rradjcion is the work of Charles W . Chesnurr, whose shore scory collections The Canj11re \'(loman ( 1899) and The \flije of Hi.r }'onth and Other Toles of the Color Lim (1899) gathered wider accepcancc chan more pointedly political Iacer novds such as The Colvmt s Dt·cmll ( 1905).

The "Realism War," the Retreat into Rornance,­ and che Decline of Local Color

As rhe nincreenrh cenwry d rew ro a close, so Lou did che public's imeresr rn local color fi ccion, driven by impatience with a scyle chat bad run irs course, a rerrea r inro historical romance, and, incli rccdy, fallouL from the "realism war." Sig nificancl y, the cricica l discourse surrou nding regionalism d id nor dispure rb<.' catt:gory wid:lin wh1ch a work was placed (realism or local color). evaluate works based on region, or, wirh few exceptions, race regional wriring based on gender. l nsread, the pn ncipaJ cerms for debare were aurhenriciry, faithfulness w life. rruchfulness of 1nciclenrs, and real­ istic representation of charHcw r, all terms borrowed from rht: "realism war" of rhc 1880s and I H90s. T he realism war hef!an earl y. with a shot across rhe bow from William Dean H owells, who in an 1882 essay on Henry J ames for the Cen111ry Jedartd chat "lr]he arc of fiction has, in face, become a finer art in our day than ir was w1rh Dickens and ReaLism and Regionalism 107

Thackeray" (H owells 1882: 28), following it a few years la.rer with a strong srare­ rnenc of realism in his first "Editor's Study" column for Harper's (January 1886). For the oexc six years in chis column, Howells steadily promoted realise and local color fiction, prodding his audience with analogies (learning co prefer a "real grasshopper" over an ideal one, however beautiful), with examples (the sincerity of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman), and with sweeping pronouncements: "We must ask ourselves before we ask anything else, Is it crue? ... In the whole range of fic tion we know of no tme picture of life - char is, of human narure - which is not also a masterpiece of liceracure, full of divine and natural beaucy .'" Bur the real battle began, as Edwin H. Cady suggests, in che lace 1880s, with George Pellew's "The Bacrle of the Books" (1888); among rhe responses back and forth was William Roscoe Thayer's "The N ew Story-tellers and che Doom of Realism," which commenced acidly, "It cook forcirude, until cuscom made us callous, co watch Mr. H owells, like anocher Tarquin, go up and down che poppy-field of 1i ceracure, lopping off bead after head which had brougbc delight to millions" (Thayer 1894: 162). Thayer also blasted ''rhe dialect srory" or local color fiction as "another produce ofEpidermism," or che obsession wirh externals that Thayer believed characterized realism (1894: 166). Ochers on the romance or idealism side of the debate included authors from both sides of the Aclancic, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Andrew Lang, Maurice T hompson, H . C. Vedder, and, more moderately, Horace Scudder, who wrote char "if our ancesrors could read some of che microscopic fiction of the present day, we suspect they would cry our for something more in mass, less in derail .... Grasshoppers do nor inceresr us, however rruchfuJ. W e prefer leopards" (Scudder 1891: 568). Those defendjng Howells and realism included formidable critics and writers such as Hjalmar Horch Boyesen, Henry James, Hamlin Garland, Joseph Kirkland, Richard Warson Gilder, Brander Matthews, and W. P. Trenr; bur che realism war nonetheless "raged wirh deadly fury for eight years [1886-1894)," according co Garland, who dared irs origins ro Howells' first "Edjror's Study" column in 1886 (wrlaod 1930: 248). By the lace 1890s rhe tide bad already turned coward adventure fiction or histor­ ical romance and away from realism and local color, wirh even local color writers like Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. W ilkins Freeman, Hamlin Garland, and Mary Harrwell Catherwood writing historical romances. "A large number of readers, who have wearied of minute descriptions of rhe commonplace, are eo-day often found con­ demning an author who does nor keep his hero in imminent danger of death through ac lease sevency-five percent of his pages." wroce John Kendrick Bangs. "Realism and romance both have their champions, and doughty ones, and a watching world ... must decide char the supremacy of rhe one over the other can never be established as a serried fact . . .'' (Bangs 1898: J. ). Another measw·e of local color's decline appears in essays by Charles Dudley Warner of Harper's, who succeeded Howells as writer of the "Editor's Srudy." In the J une 1892 column he briefly derides local color as "some­ thing you could buy, like paine," bur praises Grace King's Tales of a Time and PLace for nor using "local color as a varnish" (Warner 1892: 155, 156). Four years Iacer, he extended the paine metaphor by saying that "so much color was produced char rhe

'' t -- 108 Dijmtff Camphe/1 marker broke down" bur added char "we do nor hear much now of 'local color'; that has rather gone om" (Warner lt-196: 961). By 1893, even che realism-romanticism debate had moved from che pages of rhe D~t~l, rhe f omm, Harper's, and ocher maga­ zines ro become a kind of publicity srunr for Eugene Field's "Sharps and Flats" column in the Chtcago News. Applauding M.ary Hartwell Catherwood's romances, Field began an exchange of lercers wirb Hamlin Garland and Catherwood that led co a public debate acme Chicago World's Fair in 1893. As Garland cells ir, he responded ro Carherwood's asserrion char be "over-emphasized chc· dirr and roil and loneLness of t:he farmer's life" by challenging her wirb "What do you know of rhe farm realities 1 describe? ... I have bound my half of eight acres of oars ... You ci ty folk can't criticize my stories of farm Lie - l've lived them" (Garland 1930: 255). Despite his tJnchallengeable aurhenriciry and his populist poli cies, in Iacer ye~lfS Garland, like the rest, recreated into writing W estern historical romances. Although writers such tiS Garland, Mary Wilkins Freeman, MaT)' Austin, G race King, and H owells himself, among others, would cominue ro publisb ficcion wdl inco the first few decades of rhe rwenrieth century, rbe era of local color's greatest popttlariry was over. Thus, despite irs supposed position on the marg ins, reg ional ficrion kept pace in irs various forms with the country's conrinued quesr fo r self-defini tion and national idenriry. Like Thoreau's multiple perspectives of Walden Pond, when viewed from rhe Jecentered perspective of regional fiction the trajectory of nineteenth-century lirerarure looks very different. What emerges is a series of partial views of region, seen through rhe lenses of regional humor. romance, realism, and rhe rest umil chey comprise nor a ''whole'' in American literature bur a series of partial portraits. As Carrie Tirado Bmmen wrires, "It was precisely chis embrace of rhe parcial tbat made local color such a popular genre for represeming che modern nacion" (2000: 128). In spire of irs quest for autheoriCJty, auchoriry, completion, and simplicity, regional ficrion reveals irs modern root!> rnrough irs "embrace of the partial" - the disarticulated language that constitutes irs representation of dialect, che skerches and stories from disparate re&rions- that fina ll y suggests irs denial of the myrh of wholeness and its conrribucion w an American literamre char recognizes and celebrates, rather than denying, ics imperfections.

R Ef'URENCES AND FUHTHE H R EADING

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