Civil War Impact on American Literature & Realism
Responses to the War: Idealism
In Concord, Massachusetts, home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many other intellectual leaders of the nation, army volunteers met in 1861 at the bridge that Emerson had immortalized in “Concord Hymn,” his famous poem about the beginning of the American Revolution.
The War in Literature
- Ernest Hemingway went to war intending to return with the material for novels.
- Few major American writers saw the Civil War firsthand.
- Emerson was in Concord during most of the war, knitting socks and mittens for soldiers and writing patriotic lectures, as he wrote to his son.
- Emerson was a fervent abolitionist. He died in 1882.
- Hawthorne died two years later.
- Emily Dickinson remained in Amherst, Massachusetts.
- A younger generation of writers included: William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Henry Adams.
- Literary forms of the time were inadequate to express the horrifying details of the Civil War.
- The Realistic Novel was the most appropriate form for handling such strong material, but it was not fully developed in the United States.
- The Red Badge of Courage: The great novel of the war, by Stephen Crane. He was born six years after the war ended.
- Poetry and fiction were poor during the Civil War because few major American writers experienced the war firsthand.
- Poignant letters and diaries helped literature to express the war.
- Real war found a place in American Fiction until the development of the realistic novel.
William Dean Howells and Realism
William Dean Howells, the most active proponent of realism in American Fiction, was the editor of the influential magazine, The Atlantic Monthly. He insisted that realism should deal with the lives of ordinary people, be faithful to character even at the expense of action, and discuss the social questions perplexing Americans.
Frank Norris and Naturalism
Frank Norris was born in California. He was an earthier writer, interested in the impact of large social forces on individuals. The Octopus (1901) is about struggles between wheat farmers and the railroad monopoly in California.
Norris was the first to use the novel to examine social institutions with the aim of reforming them. Norris was considered a Naturalist, following the lead of Emile Zola from France.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Influence
Harriet Beecher Stowe, born in Connecticut, published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852, before the Civil War. According to Lincoln and many historians, she helped to cause the war. It was more melodrama than realistic fiction.
Naturalism Defined
Naturalists believed that human behavior was determined by forces beyond the individual’s power, especially by biology and environment. They look at human life as a grim losing battle, with characters having limited choices and motivation.
The Rise of Realism
- The Romantic Novel, born of the chivalric romance, presents readers with lives lived idealistically, beyond the level of everyday life.
- James Fenimore Cooper engaged in romantic adventures, with courageous acts, chases, and escapes.
- Fiction writers of the mid-nineteenth century, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, shared an aversion to simple realism. They used romance not only to entertain but also to reveal truths hidden in a realistic story.
- After the Civil War, a new generation of writers came of age, known as Realists.
- Subjects of Realistic novels included ordinary life, the slums of growing cities, factories that replaced farmlands, poor factory workers, corrupt politicians, and prostitutes.