American
fiction was not like the British one since it searched for darker aspects and
was not optimistic. American characters were alienated individuals, isolated,
lonely and obsessed. Their fates are dark and they are trying to find the
meaning. While British authors lived in a complex traditional society and
shared their reader's attitudes, America with its Revolution, wilderness and
relatively classless democratic society lacks that tradition.
A short story
in America held a prominent place for two centuries, it was considered a
national art form, invented in the modern literary sense around 1820.
with forerunners being The Canterbury Tales, Decameron and Thousand and One
Night. One of the very first American short story writers in 1820s was
Washington Irving but it was Edgar Allan Poe who defined a short story as an
American form because Americans did not enjoy long and hard to understand
novels.
In America,
it was better accepted than long novels because publication of cheap easily
available magazines encouraged short pieces and it was also a democratic form
of literature since almost everybody could afford it. In short stories, the
overall idea of the story dominates over the character, plot and even themes
and whereas the novel can incorporate several ideas and the relations between
them, a short story has only one and conveys the point of the story.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) /hófórn/
He was born
in Salem as a descendant of a prominent Puritan family (one of his ancestors
was involved in the witch trials) and spent most of his life in his mother´s
house. He added W to his name so some scholars speculate that he wanted to
distant himself from ancestors but the author himself said that he just wanted
the right pronunciation of the name. He was reading British gothic novels and decided to be a professional writer.
As author he
dealt with the consequences of guilt, religious faith and sin = he was trying to re-evaluate the Puritan heritage
but he does not care what is done; he is interested only in consequences. He
helped the development of American short story and transformed a historical tale into a really American form with gothic
elements and psychological development of characters since Washington’s
characters did not change during the plot. He wanted to publish his works as a
short story cycle in a certain order but publishers took only some stories.
His very
first work was a gothic novel imitating British tradition called Fanshawe
(1828) but nobody knows what it is about because after publication he realised
it was horrible and stole it from libraries. Twice Told Tales is a collection
of his short stories was the first success. There are stories about nature,
with gothic themes but there are also optimistic tales so readers can choose.
Hawthorne is rewriting history of New England from the first settlers to
American Revolution.
He joined the
Transcendentalist experiment at the Brook Farm but he soon left and describes
his experience describes in The Blithedale Romance which is an ironic
comedy about utopia with tragic ending as the reformer is too enthusiastic and
isolates the community from the rest of the world. Mosses from the Old Manse is his
second collection of short stories which Young Goodman Brown Rappaccini's Daughter.
The most
famous novel The
Scarlet Letter (1850) is a romance (not a love story) about a married
woman and a priest. The woman is banished from community, gives birth to a
child and has to wear scarlet letter A as adulteress. The author does not care
for the sin itself but what it does to the married woman and the priest. The
woman later on admits her action was bad and is accepted back to community but
the priest never claimed the child as his and spent the rest of life in fear. However,
the incident made him a better preacher because now he understands that people
sin sometimes. The woman character became a model for feminists and independent
female characters later on. The novel has a very long introduction called Custom House
published separately. Similarly to Poe´s Composition, Hawthorne explains why he
wrote the novel and what inspired him but he did not mean it as a joke.
Then he moved
to Europe and published a non-fiction work English Notebooks where he focused on English influence
on American culture. His last novel The Marble Faun is set in Rome (where he lived
for some time) and it is an abstract romance combined with idea what art is and
its relationship with life.
His short
stories have limited themes, gothic features and are about mad scientists. The Birth-Mark
is about a scientist that marries the most beautiful woman but she has a
birthmark he found disgusting. She would be perfect if not for this so he tries
to remove it but she dies (theme of desire for perfection). Rappaccini´s
Daughter features a scientist who has a beautiful garden but plants
are highly poisonous. He has also a nice daughter and gives her poison
secretly. When she fell in love and kissed her lover, he dies on poison. The
father did not want her to be dirtied. He also wrote apocalyptic short stories New Adam and
Eve and Earth’s Holocaust so he can be considered to
be the very first American sci-fi writer.
Young Goodman Brown is set in Salem, Massachusetts, 19th
century, as young Goodman Brown
leaves Faith, his wife an
unknown errand in the forest. She is an adult, yet childish, naïve and wears
pink ribbons (though, she only hides behind apparent innocence) – she
represents Brown´s faith (Puritan). In the forest he meets an
old man (symbol of Devil),
dressed in a similar manner to himself and bearing a resemblance to himself
(teaching him that evil is everybody, even Brown). The man carries a black
serpent-shaped staff (symbol of snake of paradise). Brown is reluctant to
follow the Devil persuades him that he knew his ancestors and helped them. The
first Brown´s disillusion is that he did not thinks anyone of his family would
ever go to the place he aims to.
They two
encounter Goody Cloyse who
complains about the need to walk and, evidently friendly with the stranger,
accepts his snake staff and flies away to her destination. She is Brown´s
religious teacher, in fact a witch!
Now it is clear they are heading to the black Sabbath. When he meets ministers
of his church who also attend Sabbath, his doubts deepen. He clings to his wife
Faith but then he hears her voice and discovers is also participating! He meets
her at the venue, together with other Salem´s citizens – both rightful and
outcast = the evil unites them all. He tries to resist calling out Faith (both
wife and his belief). Then he wakes up alone in the forest. But he is not the
same; he realized that everybody is evil and hypocritical, including his wife.
Brown grows bitter and rejects society and religion. He keeps this attitude
till his death years later; he lost both his Faith and belief. However, what it
all reality or dream? It does not matter; the evil is the same no matter how
experienced. It is a story of initiation – he failed to accept the evil inside
him just as Dr. Jekyll.
The Minister's Black Veil is set in the 18th
century Puritan New England at the Sabbath Day, time of worship and rest,
Sunday. Mr Hooper, the preacher is described as a gentlemanly person, around
30, still a bachelor, dressed with clerical neatness. The community considered
him to be a good preacher but not an energetic one, he won his people by mild
persuasive influences, he was too nice
on people. People reacts to the veil with astonishment, wondering if it is
really him. It is interesting how a simple veil, wore normally by women, become
such a terrible thing on the pastor, making him scary.
However, the sermon
seems more powerful than usual, they are intimidated. His face is disclosed in
the moment he bends above the dead body and it seems as if the corpse shakes
upon seeing his face. Only the old women notices it but can we believe the old
superstitious lady? At the wedding, people afraid that the pastor will bring
the evil and atmosphere is like at the funeral, people did not feel comfortable
about the veil. The bride so afraid and looks like a corpse. When Mr Hooper
sees himself in the mirror during the toast, he is shocked by his own appearance. Strangely,
nobody asks him about the veil, the dread caused each to shift the responsibility
of asking upon another. Only one elderly lady Elizabeth feels it should be her
privilege to know what the black veil conceals. Mr Hooper tells her that there
will come an hour when all of us shall cast aside our veils so he will continue
to wear that veil of his till that day actually comes.
He is bound
to wear it from some kind of obligation but he actually feels miserable about
it since it isolated him. Only Elizabeth supports him and becomes a nun. she
refused to marry him but took care of him at his old age. Hated, it isolated
him. He’s lovely, crying for sympathy. Elizabeth eventually understood and
supported him, became a nun. The black veil made him into a very efficient
clergyman and with it he became a man of awful power. Its gloom enabled him to
sympathize with all dark affections. Even strangers visited his sermons as they
thought he sinned as well so he could understand them. He does not disclose the
veil even at his deathbed, his resolve stayed strong and he is buried with the
veil. The veil can symbolise that every person wears a black veil of some
secret sin but does not admit it. Mr Hooper wore it as a reminder of people’s
sins they try to conceal. It is a symbol of hidden sin.
EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809 – 1849)
Except for
being a poet, Poe is moreover a founder
of American short story, the very first who defined this new genre and
became the first theoretic of it. He was influenced by a German Romantic writer
E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles
Brown, the very first American who wrote openly about insanity,
mental disorders and transplanted British gothic novel into American context =
the first American gothic fiction was Brown’s Wieland. Poe realized that the
setting for gothic fiction like castles and secret societies are not in America
so he focused on distorted mind or set his stories in Europe (mainly France and
Germany).
In his
stories, the protagonist is trying to solve the case with rationality and
logical deduction which does not exactly work with something mysterious. Poe
even created the figure of an amateur detective, similar to Sherlock Holmes.
But beware, narrator is mainly mad (living in inner world, lost contact with
reality) and if you do not notice it, you are lost. Poe wrote two types of
short stories: Detective stories in which the protagonist is an amateur
detective who is trying to solve mystery by power of logic. Supernatural
stories in which the protagonists is surrounded by irrational things and
has to deal with the unknown and the dark side of human soul.
He was also
influenced by Emerson but in the different way – he only took that symbols have
no fixed meaning = Poe become the
founder of symbolism in America and he is also partly transcendentalist
since he was interested in something beyond. However, unlike optimistic Emerson, Poe´s
nature is not a beautiful network of meaning but something that cannot be
understood by humans and only insane person can understand more than the normal
person would.
His only
novel is The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is about sea voyage to the last
unknown continent Antarctica but everybody dies in snow. For one century, Poe was
forgotten in America, his direct followers considered him to be a European
writer and in Europe he influenced late symbolist poets like Charles Baudelaire who admired him. The
only direct American follower is a horror writer Howard
Phillips Lovecraft.
Hop-Frog: The court jester Hop-Frog is a
crippled dwarf and his king enjoys jokes a lot, especially ridiculing somebody
else. Because of his physical deformity, which prevents him from walking
upright, the King nicknames him Hop-Frog. Hop-Frog has a best friend in a
dancer Trippetta who is also small but beautiful and well-proportioned. These
two are basically slaves stole from their homeland so Poe attacks also slavery.
They are partners in their misfortunate, maybe even lovers.
Hop-Frog
reacts badly to alcohol, and though the king knows this, he forces
Hop-Frog to consume it. Trippetta begs the king to stop and but he strikes her.
The counsellors, also abusive, only laugh and ask Hop-Frog for advice on an
upcoming masquerade. He suggests some very realistic costumes for the men:
costumes of orangutans chained together. The men love the idea of scaring
their guests and agree to wear clothes saturated with tar and covered
with flax. In full costume, the men are then chained together and led into
the hall of masqueraders. As predicted, the guests are shocked and many believe
the men to be real beasts since they have never seen real orangutans.
Many guests rush
for the doors to escape, but the King has insisted the doors be locked so that
scared guests cannot run from the performance and the keys are left with
Hop-Frog. Amidst the chaos, Hop-Frog attaches a chain from the ceiling to the
chain linked around the men in costume. The chain then pulls them up. Hop-Frog puts on a spectacle so that the
guests presume it is a part of the performance. He climbs up, holds a torch
close to the men's faces and they quickly catch fire because of tar. The audience
is horror-stricken. Finally, before escaping with Trippetta to their home
country, Hop-Frog identifies the men in costume as the king and his
councillors. He says goodbye, stating "this is my last jest."
The
Fall of the House of Usher: The tale opens with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his
introvert friend, Roderick Usher,
having received a letter from him complaining of an illness. How weird is that
somebody like that is asking you for help after so many years? There is a
destroyed nature around the house like decayed trees but is it for real? Maybe
somebody else could define it positive, we are getting inside narrator´s head
(scenery pervaded my spirit) who can
be also mad – presenting himself as rational but he is not. He finds windows
weird like they are watching him – sign of paranoia. Also the fissure (maybe crack in the mind itself) in the house is very
disturbing, as much as the tarn
(symbol of subconscious). The inside of the house is also dark and sorrowful
with strange arrangements but the narrator also comes from aristocratic family
so he knows these objects.
Roderick is
pale, thin, shaking and stressed. His senses are very sensitive, he cannot stand
bright light so his house is dark. This illness is something gained from family
– incest was not rare since
aristocrats wanted their lineage to be pure. Roderick´s introvert sister Madeline is also sick and often falls
into death-like trances. Later on, Madeline dies and is put into family tomb,
though the narrator notices she has rosy cheeks. Roderick was afraid of losing
her, he was the only person he had but did not want to allow the doctor to examine her (describing
him as strange and suspicious, thought he looks like the only sane character)
since it could reveals that Roderick abused her.
When a storm
begins, Roderick comes to the narrator's bedroom, opens the window notices that
the tarn surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark. Radiation of gloom = oxymoron. The narrator reads him a story about
a knight and a dragon but suddenly cracking sounds are heard somewhere in the
house. Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical, and eventually exclaims that
these sounds are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was
entombed because of another of her death-like trances. The bedroom door is
blown open to reveal Madeline standing there. She falls on her brother, and
both land on the floor as corpses = finally
reunited in death with embrace (Roderick with mental problems symbolises
mind, Madeline sick body). The narrator flees the house in time to watch it
break in two, the fragments sinking into the tarn. The fissure is nevermore, no more mirroring = unity.
The
Tell-Tale Heart:
It is a first-person narrative of an unnamed narrator who
insists s/he is sane but suffering from a nervousness which causes over-acuteness of the senses. The old
man with whom s/he lives has a clouded, pale, blue vulture-like eye which so distresses the narrator that s/he plots
to murder the old man, though the narrator states that he loves the old man,
and hates only the eye. The narrator insists that his careful precision in
committing the murder shows that s/he cannot possibly be insane. For seven
nights, the narrator opens the door of the old man's room, a process which
takes him a full hour. However, the old man's vulture eye is always closed,
making it impossible to "do the work".
On the eighth
night, a single ray of lantern’s light shines out and lands precisely on the
old man's eye, revealing that it is wide open. Hearing the old man's heart
beating unusually and dangerously fast from terror, the narrator decides to
strike, smothering (dusit) the old man. The narrator dismembers the body
and conceals the pieces under the floor, making certain to hide all signs of
the crime. Even so, the old man's scream during the night causes a neighbour to
report to the police. The narrator invites the three arriving officers in
to look around. S/he claims that the screams heard were his own in a nightmare
and that the man is absent in the country. Confident that they will not find
any evidence of the murder, the narrator brings chairs for them and they sit in
the old man's room, on the very spot where the body is concealed, yet they
suspect nothing, as the narrator has a pleasant and easy manner about him.
The narrator,
however, begins to hear a faint noise. As the noise grows louder, the narrator
comes to the conclusion that it is the heartbeat of the old man coming from
under the floor. The sound increases steadily, though the officers seem to pay
no attention to it. Shocked by the constant beating of the heart and a feeling
that not only are the officers aware of the sound, but that they also suspect
him, the narrator confesses to killing the old man and tells them to tear up
the floor to reveal the body.
Since the narrator is nameless and Edgar Allan Poe did
not use any pronouns, we can only speculate whether the main character is a man
or a woman. Neither the relationship between the murderer and the victim is
clear. ´...with what dissimulation I went
to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I
killed him.´ This sentence suggests that the murderer works for the old
man. Moreover this job enables staying at an employer´s place even during
nights so the possibility that the narrator is actually a servant is high. Next
is the question about her sanity. She claims that ´He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult.´ Yet there
is something about him she cannot stand - his evil vulture eye. It is quite
possible that the old man always looked at her in a perverted way and it
gradually drove her mad. But he never did anything to her physically so it was
only that evil eye of his she detested so much and therefore could not kill him
when the eye was closed. And maybe the ´heartbeat´she
can hear even after his death and that in the end forces her to confess are the
bugs eating the corpse. The sound of bugs she should know so well because maids
are expected to clean the rooms and automatically kill intrusive insects.
The Purloined Letter features an unnamed
narrator talking with the famous Parisian amateur detective Dupin when they are joined by the Prefect of the Police G—. A letter has
been stolen from the Queen by the unscrupulous Minister
D—, said to contain compromising information. D was in the room, saw
the letter, and switched it for a letter of no importance. He has been
blackmailing his victim. The Prefect says that he and his police detectives
have found nothing when inspecting Minister D-'s room. Dupin asks the Prefect
if he knows what he is seeking and the Prefect reads off a minute description
of the letter, which Dupin memorizes. A month later, the Prefect returns, motivated
to continue by the promise of a large reward. Dupin asks him to write that
check now and he will give him the letter. The Prefect is astonished, but knows
that Dupin is not joking and Dupin really hand out the letter.
The narrator asks Dupin how he found the letter. Dupin
explains the Paris police are competent within their limitations, but have
underestimated with whom they are dealing. He explains that D— knew the police
detectives would have assumed that the blackmailer would have concealed the
letter in an elaborate hiding place, and thus hid it in plain sight. Dupin says
he had visited the minister at his hotel. Complaining of weak eyes he wore a
pair of green spectacles, the true purpose of which was to disguise his eyes as
he searched for the letter. In a cheap card rack he saw a half-torn letter and
recognized it. It did not resemble the letter the Prefect described so in
detail. Dupin concluded that D— wrote a new address on the reverse of the
stolen one, re-folded it the opposite way and sealed it with his own seal. Dupin
left a snuff box behind as an excuse to return the next day. Striking up the
same conversation they had begun the previous day, D— was startled by a gunshot
in the street. While he went to investigate, Dupin switched D—'s letter for a
duplicate. Dupin hopes that D— will try to use the power he no longer has, to
his political downfall, and at the end be presented with an insulting note that
implies Dupin was the thief.
HERMAN MELVILLE (1810-1891)
He was a
novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He came from a prominent
family of merchants, father told him sea tales of adventure and exotic places.
Melville became a sailor and this experience influences his writing, especially
because it provided material for his sea adventures. His first book gained much
contemporary attention, becoming a bestseller – Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life
is a classic literature of travel and adventure partly based on his actual
experiences as a captive, made him notorious as the "man who lived among
the cannibals." based on his sea sailing adventures
Billy Budd is a novella with bad editorial
history as misinterpretation of Melville's notes on the manuscript. It follows Billy Budd, a seaman who served on ships
after American Revolution. White Jacket is a novel of initiation, following
its protagonist from childhood to adulthood that faces some crucial event he
will either manage or not. Often he does not manage and loses his childish
innocence. He also wrote a collection of poetry called Battle Pieces about the
Civil War.
He is best
known for his novel Moby-Dick or the Whale (1851), considered to
be one of the greatest American novels. It’s a story about adventures of
wandering sailor Ishmael, and his
voyage on the whaleship commanded by Captain Ahab.
Ishmael soon learns that Ahab has one purpose on this voyage: to seek out a
specific whale Moby-Dick, a ferocious,
enigmatic white whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat
and bit off his leg, which now drives Ahab to take revenge. For use of symbols
and metaphors it’s classified as
American Romanticism. Melville wanted to combine philosophy and adventure
which he managed in this piece.
We can read
it in many ways: as the encyclopaedia of whaling since it provides many details
about it, as an adventure story about
hunting or as an allegoric novel where the ship allegorically represents the
whole world because its crew is multicultural (Afro-Americans, Indians,
Arabians) and Moby Dick is a creature who cannot be understood or defeated. The
book is critical of transcendentalism; nature is not the mirror of God order so
it cannot be understood by man. The whole novel opens with the most popular
sentence in the American fiction „Call Me
Ishmael.“ It is not his real name and we don´t know anything about him, he’s
a man without past who survives in the wilderness.
In a short
story Bartleby
the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street the
narrator is an elderly Manhattan lawyer with a very comfortable business helping wealthy men deal with mortgages
and deeds. At the start of the story, the narrator already employs two scriveners, nicknamed Nippers and Turkey to copy legal documents by hand. Younger Nippers suffers from chronic
indigestion and Turkey is an alcoholic, but the office survives because in the
mornings Turkey is sober and Nippers is irritable, while in the afternoons
Nippers has calmed down and Turkey is drunk. Ginger Nut, (child labor!) the office boy, gets his name from the little cakes he
brings the two scriveners. An increase in business leads the narrator to
advertise for a third scrivener, and he hires the Bartleby in hopes that his calmness will soothe the temperaments of Nippers and
Turkey.
At
first, Bartleby produces a large volume of high-quality work. One day, though,
when asked by the narrator to help Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his
stock response: "I would prefer not
to." Bartleby performs fewer and fewer tasks around the office. The
narrator makes several attempts to reason with him and to learn something about
him, but Bartleby offers nothing but his signature "I would prefer not
to." One weekend the narrator stops by the office unexpectedly and
discovers that Bartleby has started living there. The loneliness of Bartleby's
life impresses him: at night and on Sundays, Wall
Street is as desolate as a ghost
town, and the window in Bartleby's corner allows him no view except that of a
blank wall three feet away. The narrator's feelings for Bartleby alternate
between pity and revulsion. And yet the narrator finds himself unable to make
Bartleby leave; his unwillingness or inability to move against Bartleby mirrors
Bartleby's own strange inaction.
Sensing
the threat of a ruined reputation, but emotionally unable to throw Bartleby
out, the narrator finally decides to move his entire business and leaving
Bartleby behind. But soon the new tenants of the old space come to ask for his
help: Bartleby still will not leave. Although they have thrown him out of the
rooms, he now sits on the stairs all day. Feeling desperate, the narrator now
surprises even himself by inviting Bartleby to come and live with him at his
own home. But Bartleby, alas, "would prefer not to." Later, the
narrator returns to find that Bartleby has been forcibly removed and imprisoned
at The Tombs.
The
narrator visits him, finding him even glummer than usual. The narrator bribes a
guard to make sure Bartleby gets good food. But when the narrator visits again
a few days later, he discovers that Bartleby has died of starvation, having
apparently preferred not to eat. Some time afterward, the narrator hears of a rumour
to the effect that Bartleby had worked in a dead letter office. The narrator
reflects that the dead letters would have made anyone of Bartleby's temperament
sink into an even darker gloom. The closing words of the story are the
narrator's resigned and pained sigh: "Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!"
As first person narrative by the owner of
the office, it feels like reader deals with Bartleby. He want him just to do
his work - rewrite papers and check copies – but how long would can one do it?
It is very stereotypical. The narrator is not interested in Bartleby until he
has problem with him. Not showing emotion to other people happens in the
business of Wall Street. The office itself is depressive, there´s an elevator shaft,
dead window with view to another wall, two rooms, one for Turkey and Nipper,
other for the boss. There´s also a little wall so they would not see the boss
but he could call for them. Bartleby's character can be read literally as
having a mental illness or symbolically as a citizen in a oppressive society.
Bartleby tends to be very blunt to the lawyer when he repeats the phrase, “I
would prefer not to,” when asked to do something. His unwillingness to explain
his behaviour reflects his unwillingness to conform to Wall Street society.
Bartleby shows classic symptoms of depression, especially his lack of
motivation.
The
Piazza is about
a man who buys a house and builds his dreamy piazza where is can feel the
nature but at the same time he is securely within the house. This short story
is autobiographical since the narrator as well as the author used to be
sailors, they see the landscape as the sea and Melville himself built himself
piazza. The narrator thinks hard on which side to build his piazza and decides
on the north since he wants winter piazza that is not too hot. All he is
talking about is the scenery around the house and how nature changes during
seasons but he does not enter the scenery, he stays safe at his piazza. He is
like a visitor in a gallery, watching art from the bench. He mentions Edmund
Spencer, Don Quixote, Captain Cook, Shakespeare's plays and even Biblical
references.
He notices
another house in the distance and fantasies about who lives there and basically
things the grass is greener there which is the main theme of the short story.
He expects that happy people live there in that shiny house but when he
actually goes there, he sees only pale unhappy girl Marianne living in the
rotting house but he feels like an explorer and sees her as innocent beauty he
is supposed to save. Marianne also wonders who lives in the distant house, the
narrator's house. But he is not the prince Charming and she is not Spencer's
Fairie Queene, the romantic quest fails. In the end the whole expedition to the
distant house was just his dreamy fantasy, he never left his piazza, he just
fell asleep and maybe in the dream he realises he is not happy alone. The
darkness of coming night reveals that the light just created an illusion of a
house in the distance like for lonely Marianne in the dream shadows created
reality.
WILLIAM
WELLS BROWN wrote
the very first novel published by
Afro-American, Clotel or the President’s Daughter (1853). It
was about Thomas Jefferson in the time he was already a president who had a
fictional daughter with a black woman. Even though he wrote the famous
Declaration of Independence, he was also a slave owner so we should take his
statement "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" with
reservations.
Female writers
In the 19th century there was a rising movement
of female writers who were trying to fight social inequality since they could
not attain higher education, had no vote right and could not own property. They
were struggling for independence and also
wanted abolish of slavery. Their sentimental novels but became popular, mainly
because they dramatised social issues touching family and the woman role.
HARRIET
BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896) was born
into a family of a Calvinist preacher. Her sister founded the female seminar and
Stowe later started teaching there. Her first wok The Mayflowers and Among the Descendents of
Puritans features her Puritan heritage but after she met met runaway
slaves, was started to be interested in abolitionism.
The result was her opus Uncle Tom's
Cabin (1852) that soon became bestseller and Abraham Lincoln himself
claimed that the lady caused the Civil War which this novel. Even though she
was later criticised for creating bad image of Afro-Americans, portraying Tom
as obedient, loyal and meek, she managed to plantation story, romance and slave
narrative. The main protagonist, Tom, is separated from his family and sold to
plantation. His second master is very cruel and Tom is supposed to be killed
because he refuses to reveal where two female slaves are hiding. The son of his
former kind master is determined to free all his slaves so it is highly sentimental
but Stowe managed to depict slavery as anti-democratic inhuman system dividing
families and reducing humans to properly. In A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin she
is defending her novel.
LYDIA CHILD was a leading feminist figure of the 19th century. Her novel Hobomok
depicts the need for racial and religious toleration, set in Salem. She found a
private girl school and was an active abolitionist.
No comments:
Post a Comment