I'll say right off that I won't be addressing James or Twain. Being familiar with some James, though, I think that figures such as he and Eliot bear some vesitigial traces of the European anxiety-producing gaze. This is weird, because Eliot was from St Louis...
Virtually everything about Silas Lapham strikes me as over-determined: Howells inserts frequent comments about how "this is how an American man or woman would always do or feel at such an occasion", and Lapham's lines at the end of the novel reinforce the feeling of unalterable destiny. I don't want to level the charge of social Darwinism just yet, but the novel that came foremost to my mind as I read was Frank Norris' McTeague. The biggest difference between the two would have to be the pastoral-romance bent to Howells, as he leaves Lapham in rural Vermont, for which he receives all kinds of social kudos, as opposed to the opposition against which he had run up earlier in the novel. I want to say that that scene with the streetlights is important here, but I don't have my text. At any rate, Howells goes to great lengths to create absurd moral dilemmae, all of which seem to involve a very simple solution which the characters absurdly resist. The easy answer comes out of the "economy of pain," which Howells contrasts to the stupid heroism of "shallow sentimentality" (241). However, unless I'm wrong about this, the novel's action unambiguously privileges the shallow heroism of the self-sacrificing idiot. These observations kept me asking: what is this novel's intended audience/social purpose? Is Howells challenging or reinforcing the entrenched class structure of the Eastern seaboard?
In Jacobs I kept finding myself drawn toward her use of rhetoric (begone, thou spectre Breen!). The issue of "experience" always intrigues me: in Jacobs, as in some of the other narrative I have read, "experience" allows both the sympathetic pathos of inexpressibility and the refusal to put all of herself up for consumption. On the one hand, you can't know unless you've been there, and on the other I can't describe this so you'll just have to imagine based on your experience.
Class concerns come up again in Jacobs with her freqent comparisons and contrasts to poor whites, especially the Irish (comments along the lines of, "I'd rather be a poor Irish worker than a pampered slave"). (Take note of the Irish driver who tries to take advantage of Jacobs and her friend.) Slavery means, more than anything, compulsion (especially in regard to crooked morals) in a way that poverty does not. The poor could make themselves better, but slaves have no options. I started to wonder if their was an implied American dream narrative here: that the poor can work their way up and probably should have already, but they haven't because they're lazy Irish chumps. There's a bit of Winthrop here, as American slaves begin to seem like a kind of elect (189).
How about surveillance? It keeps Jacobs' master from being too abusive toward her, but also keeps slaves from free expression and keeps fugivites terrified. Racial and geographic hybridity comes into play at several points, especially in regard to northern women who marry into slave plantations. Jacobs' mixed children are beautiful, but the rampant "miscegenation" of the South allows for absurdities such as the line about "half free niggers" (67).
There has to be a doctoral thesis on Jacobs' imprisonment in her grandmother's attic while she writes letters postmarked from the north.
We get another Chesapeake Bay scene when Jacobs first heads toward free territory. Her comment, "I could enjoy them without fear or restraint," makes no sense to me, especially in light of Douglass' reflection on the same scene.
My favorite line: "the north aped the customs of slavery" (168).
This posting will end with freedom rather than a conclusion.
2 Comments:
Is Harriet Jacobs not scheduled for this week?
I'll say right off that I won't be addressing James or Twain. Being familiar with some James, though, I think that figures such as he and Eliot bear some vesitigial traces of the European anxiety-producing gaze. This is weird, because Eliot was from St Louis...
Virtually everything about Silas Lapham strikes me as over-determined: Howells inserts frequent comments about how "this is how an American man or woman would always do or feel at such an occasion", and Lapham's lines at the end of the novel reinforce the feeling of unalterable destiny. I don't want to level the charge of social Darwinism just yet, but the novel that came foremost to my mind as I read was Frank Norris' McTeague. The biggest difference between the two would have to be the pastoral-romance bent to Howells, as he leaves Lapham in rural Vermont, for which he receives all kinds of social kudos, as opposed to the opposition against which he had run up earlier in the novel. I want to say that that scene with the streetlights is important here, but I don't have my text. At any rate, Howells goes to great lengths to create absurd moral dilemmae, all of which seem to involve a very simple solution which the characters absurdly resist. The easy answer comes out of the "economy of pain," which Howells contrasts to the stupid heroism of "shallow sentimentality" (241). However, unless I'm wrong about this, the novel's action unambiguously privileges the shallow heroism of the self-sacrificing idiot. These observations kept me asking: what is this novel's intended audience/social purpose? Is Howells challenging or reinforcing the entrenched class structure of the Eastern seaboard?
In Jacobs I kept finding myself drawn toward her use of rhetoric (begone, thou spectre Breen!). The issue of "experience" always intrigues me: in Jacobs, as in some of the other narrative I have read, "experience" allows both the sympathetic pathos of inexpressibility and the refusal to put all of herself up for consumption. On the one hand, you can't know unless you've been there, and on the other I can't describe this so you'll just have to imagine based on your experience.
Class concerns come up again in Jacobs with her freqent comparisons and contrasts to poor whites, especially the Irish (comments along the lines of, "I'd rather be a poor Irish worker than a pampered slave"). (Take note of the Irish driver who tries to take advantage of Jacobs and her friend.) Slavery means, more than anything, compulsion (especially in regard to crooked morals) in a way that poverty does not. The poor could make themselves better, but slaves have no options. I started to wonder if their was an implied American dream narrative here: that the poor can work their way up and probably should have already, but they haven't because they're lazy Irish chumps. There's a bit of Winthrop here, as American slaves begin to seem like a kind of elect (189).
How about surveillance? It keeps Jacobs' master from being too abusive toward her, but also keeps slaves from free expression and keeps fugivites terrified. Racial and geographic hybridity comes into play at several points, especially in regard to northern women who marry into slave plantations. Jacobs' mixed children are beautiful, but the rampant "miscegenation" of the South allows for absurdities such as the line about "half free niggers" (67).
There has to be a doctoral thesis on Jacobs' imprisonment in her grandmother's attic while she writes letters postmarked from the north.
We get another Chesapeake Bay scene when Jacobs first heads toward free territory. Her comment, "I could enjoy them without fear or restraint," makes no sense to me, especially in light of Douglass' reflection on the same scene.
My favorite line: "the north aped the customs of slavery" (168).
This posting will end with freedom rather than a conclusion.
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