Deconstructing

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• Deconstructing
• the American Dream
• William Dean Howells
• The Rise of
• Silas Lapham (1885)

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• William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

• born in Ohio as the second of eight children
  (father was a newspaper editor printer)

- started writing poetry in 1858 and worked as a
translator (German/English)

• was rewarded for his campaign biography of
  Abraham Lincoln in 1860

• The Dean of American Letters

• close friend of Mark Twain since 1869

- Realism

• as a literary critic he helped launch the careers
  of Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris,
  Emily Dickinson, and Sarah Orne Jewett

- Idealization of the common man
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• Realism

What is realism?

• the depiction of subjects as they appear in
  reality, with minimal alterations or
  interpretation

When did realism start as a movement in the US?

• after the Civil War (1860-65)

• along with the spreading of photography

What are its main goals?

• a.) tell the truth to society

• b.) subvert and discredit the irresponsible the
  romantic, artificial, the purely artistic

Grant Wood, American Gothic (1930)
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(No Transcript)
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Realism is nothing more and nothing less than
the truthful treatment of material.
We must ask ourselves before we ask
anything else, Is it true? William
Dean Howells, Criticism and Fiction (1891), pp.
229-241
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The simple
The plain
The common
What is unpretentious and what is true is always
beautiful and good, and nothing else is so.
William Dean Howells, Criticism and
Fiction (1891), p. 194
the life of actual men and women
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• Realism

• a strategy for imagining and managing the
  threats of social change(Amy Kaplan 1988, p.
  10)

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• Works by William Dean Howells

Fiction

• The Wedding Journey (1872)

- A Modern Instance (1882)
- A Hazard of New Fortunes (1882)

• A Traveller from Altruria (1892)

Non-fiction

• Criticism and Fiction (1891)

• My Mark Twain (1910)

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The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)
Narrative

• the rise of Silas Lapham, from rags to riches

- a barefooted son of a poor farmer in Vermont,
Silas becomes a selfmade man in Boston

• in the moment of his greatest success, he kicks
  out his partner Rogers, but is haunted by remorse
  afterwards

• when the paint factory goes bankrupt, Silas
  rejects an immoral offer that might avert his
  financial ruin

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The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)
Narrative

• the rise of Silas Lapham, from rags to riches

Themes and symbols
- a barefooted son of a poor farmer in Vermont,
Silas becomes a selfmade man in Boston
- struggle of conscience (greed vs. morality)
- aristocracy vs. democracy
- the rise
is a moral one (Silas loses everything, but
he remains a decent man)

• in the moment of his greatest success, he kicks
  out his partner Rogers, but is haunted by remorse
  afterwards

- the paint factory
symbolizes the artificiality of
aristocratic society
- Laphams local dialect (vernacular) -
- points to his simplicity and
decency (in contrast to Bartley Hubbards
unscrupulous behavior)

• when the paint factory goes bankrupt, Silas
  rejects an immoral offer that might avert his
  financial ruin

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Democracy in literature wishes to tell the
truth, confident that consolation and delight are
there it does not care to paint the marvelous
and impossible for the vulgar so many, or to
sentimentalize and falsify the actual for the
vulgar few. William Dean Howells,
Criticism and Fiction (1891), p. 282
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I hope the time is coming when not only the
artist, but the common, average man, who always
has the standard of the arts in his power, will
have also the courage to apply it.
William Dean Howells, Criticism and
Fiction (1891), p. 198
Commonplace? The commonplace is just that light,
impalpable, aerial essence which theyve never
got into their confounded books yet. The novelist
who could interpret the common feelings of
commonplace people would have the answers to the
riddles of the painful earth on his tongue.
William Dean Howells, The Rise of
Silas Lapham (1885), p. 179
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Hitherto, the mass of common men have been
afraid to apply their own simplicity,
naturalness, and honesty to the appreciation of
the beautiful. William Dean Howells,
Criticism and Fiction (1891), p. 197
The true realist feels in every nerve the
equality of things and the unity of men his soul
is exalted, not by vain shows and shadows and
ideals, but by realities, in which alone the
truth lives. William Dean Howells,
Criticism and Fiction (1891), p. 201
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The novels climaxa dinner party at the
Coreys Lapham gets drunk and mortifies the
refined society with his coarse vocabulary and
rude behavior.
The next day, he apologizes to
Tom Corey
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Did they talk it over after I left?! asked
Lapham, vulgarly. Excuse me, said Corey,
blushing, my father does not talk his guests
over with one another. He added, with youthful
superfluity, You were among gentlemen. I was
the only one that wasnt a gentleman there!
lamented Lapham. I disgraced you! I disgraced my
family! I mortified your father before his
friends! His head dropped. I showed that I
wasnt fit to go with you. Im not fit for any
decent place. William Dean Howells, The Rise
of Silas Lapham (1885), p. 179
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The characters

• Silas Lapham the epitome of the humble, common
  man he loses a fortune, but retains his dignity

• Bartley Hubbard corrupt immoral journalist

• Tom and Penelope people of good sense and -
  right ideas

I ask not for the great, the remote, the
romantic , I embrace the common.
Ralph Waldo, The American Scholar
(1837)
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For the next session America as a Reverted
Utopia Read and prepare Mark Twain From A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court (1889)