Deconstructing the American Dream

William Dean Howells

The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)

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

- close friend of Mark Twain since 1869

-The Dean of American Letters

- 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”

Realism

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

- after the Civil War (1860-65)

When did realism start as a movement in the US?

What is realism?

Grant Wood, American Gothic (1930)

- along with the spreading of photographyWhat are its main goals?

- a.) tell the „truth“ to society

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

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

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 simple

The plain

The common

“the life of actual men and women”

-“a strategy for imagining and

managing the threats of social change”

(Amy Kaplan 1988, p. 10)

Realism

Works by William Dean Howells

- The Wedding Journey (1872)

- A Modern Instance (1882)

- A Traveller from Altruria (1892)

- A Hazard of New Fortunes (1882)

- Criticism and Fiction (1891)

- My Mark Twain (1910)

Non-fiction

Fiction

NarrativeThe Rise of Silas

Lapham (1885)- 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

NarrativeThe Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) - 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

Themes and symbols

- struggle of conscience (greed vs. morality)

- the paint factory –

- Lapham‘s local dialect (vernacular) -

- aristocracy vs. democracy

- the „rise“ – – is a moral one (Silas loses everything, but he remains a decent man)

– symbolizes the artificiality of aristocratic society

- points to his simplicity and decency (in contrast to Bartley Hubbard‘s unscrupulous behavior)

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

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 they’ve 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

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

The novel’s climax:a 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:

“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 wasn’t 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 wasn’t fit to go with you. I’m not fit for any decent place.”

William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), p. 179

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)

For the next sessionAmerica as a

Reverted Utopia:

Read and prepareMark Twain

From A Connecticut Yankee in King

Arthur’s Court (1889)