Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1959 The Right Place and the Right People: Sherwood Anderson's Search for Salvation. John Howard Ferres Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Ferres, John Howard, "The Right Place and the Right People: Sherwood Anderson's Search for Salvation." (1959). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 510. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/510 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE RIGHT PLAGE AND THE RIGHT PEOPLE SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S SEARCH FOR SALVATION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Dbctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by^ John E.° Ferres B.A. (Hons .) , University of Western Australia, 195U M.A. , Louisiana State University, 1956 January, 1959 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The author appreciates the help and encouragement of Dr. Lewis P. Simpson, who directed this study. He wishes to thank Mrs. Amy Nyholm and Me. Ben Bowman, who made available the Newberry Library's Anderson collection, and the staff of the Interlibrary Loan Department, who were always helpful in securing material from other libraries. The author is also grateful to Mrs. Eleanor Anderson and Walter B. Rideout for their interest in the s tudy. TABLE OP CONTENTS ABSTRACT.............................................. iv CHAPTER I Introduction: the criticism of Anderson. 1 CHAPTER II Sherwood Anderson’s life and literary career . ^5 CHAPTER III Origins of the search............................45 CHAPTER IV The one and the m a n y ............................ 59 CHAPTER V The hope in the corn 92 CHAPTER VI The white wonder of l i f e ........................1^0 CHAPTER VII A sinking back into l i f e ....................... 1 7 2 CHAPTER VII Conclusion: Anderson’s literary achievement. 199 BIBLIOGRAPHY, 210 VITA......... 221 iii ABSTRACT Despite the abundance of literary criticism devoted to Sherwood Anderson, the pattern of his life and literary career has never been adequately investigated. Each of the authors of the four books about him fails to see that Ander­ son was engaged in more than a search for the meaning of his own life and the American life about him. A close reading of his major works reveals that the basic pattern of Ander­ son's life and literary career was more definitive-- it assumes the form of a genuine search for the spiritual salva­ tion both of his own soul and the American soul. The search represents Anderson's abortive attempt to solve the problem of spiritual desolation in twentieth-century America. After a chapter outlining Anderson's life, this study begins by considering the inspirational sources, literary and personal, of his quest for salvation, His works which clearly illustrate the thesis are discussed in four chapters, corre­ sponding to the four stages of Anderson's quest for salvation. It is found that Anderson's first two books, Windy McPherson's Son and Marching Men, assert the centrality to salvation of two life-principles: child-rearing and brotherhood. His next three, Mid-American Chants, WInesbrrg, Oh1o and Poor White . investigate "the hope in the corn,1' the chances of a return to an elemental, agrarian kind of existence. Following the iv authority of Sigmund Preud and D. H. Lawrence, Anderson*s next two novels, Many Marriages and Dark Laughter. seek in sex, "the white wonder of life,’* a medium of universal communion and self-realization. Contrasting the "impotence” of the white man with the primitive vitality of the Negro, these novels ask whether a life of elemental and spontaneous emotion will not restore man’s former purity and nobility. Written in the belief that communion with the little lives of ordinary Americans was essential to the success of his search, subsequent works b~ Anderson, Hello Towns I. Perhaps Women. Puzzled America. and Beyond Desire, record his attempt to "sink back into life" by editing country newspapers and championing the cause of oppressed workers in the depression years. Anderson’s search for spiritual salvation failed because his constant need for redeeming personal renewal made it impossible for him to attain a state of spiritual repose implicit in the idea of salvation and because each of his paths to salvation returned to its commencement. More basically, he failed becatise of his underlying deterministic conviction that all human relations and aspirations are ultimately futile. His successive visions of community slipped away from him. Inadequately nourished on vague nostalgia and romantic ideal­ ism, the fruit of his search for salvation could only be the realization that "the right place and the right people" were not to be found because they never were. v But in spite of the limitations of his vision, Anderson made a valuable literary achievement. For while his work reveals his failure to reconcile the forces of abstraction and materialism, or the world-as-idea and the world-as-will, it endures as an impressive statement of the conflict between these two chief impulses in the American experience. In this sense, Anderson's achievement is a record of the struggle of American culture to come of age. By investiga­ ting the Interior of the cultural conflict in America he defined a new approach to the American experience for American writers. Moreover, in portraying the American small town as the nexus of the forces of abstraction and materialism, he became one of its profoundest interpreters. vi CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: THE CRITICISM OP ANDERSON Although Winesburg, Ohio is the only one of his twenty- five books that is widely read today* there has never been a dearth of academic interest in the life and literary career of Sherwood Anderson. In 192?, the mid-point of his career, two book-length studies of him were published by Cleveland Bo Chase and N 0 Bryllion Pagin. In 1951, ten years after his death, two more were published by Irving Howe and James Schevill. Walter B 0 Rideout has promised for I960 a book that should be a definitive biography, based as it is on the recently collated Anderson collection at the Newberry Library. This library also houses eight unpublished theses and dissertations on Anderson, one being an extensive bibliography by Raymond D. Goszi. Sine© Anderson began writing there has been a constant flow of articles, essays, and monographs on him. This commentary ranges from the informal reminiscences of his "Chicago Renaissance" friends (Margaret Anderson, Harry Hansen, Eunice Tietjens, Harriett Monroe), through the sympathetic appreciation of his contemporaries (Waldo Prank, Van Wyck Brooks, Paul Rosenfeld, Edmund Wilson), to the mixed reactions of the generation of critics who followed 2 them (Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, Frederick Hoffman, Maxwell Geismar).* 1 1 By and large critics have never been enthusiastic about Anderson* Almost without exception, they have dis­ missed all but the smallest segment of his work, given sane qualified praise to this, and then drawn sweeping conclusions concerning the nature of his art and the limitations of his talent* They have held Winesburg* Ohio* Poor White* Dark Laughter and some half dozen short s'.tories— such as "The Triumph of the Egg," ”I*m a Fool,** "I Want to Hhow Why,” " The Man Who Became a Woman," "Death in the Woods," and "Brother Death"— to be sufficiently representative of the best and worst in Anderson* While Winesburg* Ohio and the "best" stories demonstrate Anderson*s early brilliance of technique, the critics say, Poor White and Dark Laughter demonstrate his failure to develop a style capable of sustaining an idea throughout a full-length novel. And invariably the critics have concluded that Anderson*s appeal is to the emotional responses of adolescence rather than to the discernment of maturity* ^Representstive approaches and attitudes to Anderson are conveniently brought together in Story magazine for September—October, 19l|.l, and The Newberry Library Bulletin for December, 19ij.o, both of which were Anderson memorial' ’ issues. 3 Let us see more specifically what it is in Anderson8s thought and art that his most important oritics find unacceptable. Cleveland B„ Chase, whose Sherwood Anderson (1927) was one of the first full-length studies made of himj finds that "Anderson turned to writing as a refuge from life, and, having established that refuge, he retreated into it and barricaded himself thereOnly eleven years after Anderson*s literary career had begun, Chase saw that Ander­ son was re-enacting that retreat, "in almost every book he has writteno He writes to escape from life, and, as a rule life Escapes from his writingo"^ This pervasive escapism in Anderson is responsible for "that softness, that senti­ mentality, that inability or that unwillingness to see things that keeps him from being the great writer he so often shows the promise of becoming."^ His compulsion toward escape is rooted in the fact that "Anderson doesn*-t under­ stand and at heart dislikes modern lifo."^ The dilemma of Anderson, as Chase sees it, is that "no matter