The Literature of the Late Nineteenth Century

1865-1900

Cost of the Civil War

•The Human Cost1,094,543 CasualtiesThe North lost one out of ten110,100 in battle224,580 to disease

The South lost one out of four94,000 in battle64,000 to disease

Two percent of US population died in the Civil War, with only WWII claiming more lives

•Economic CostEstimated at 6.6 billion, which would be 165 billion today

The Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment had abolished slavery

The industrial North had defeated the agrarian South

Social order grew based on mass labor and mass consumption;• Steam power replaced water power• Machines replaced hand labor

The Industrial Revolution had begun

Migration from rural to urban areas

Independent, skilled workers replaced by semi-skilled laborers

Large corporations were established, devaluing the personal relationship between management and workers or company and customers.

Political power shifted to the laboring classes

Political patronage and graft caused civic corruption

The power of the federal government expanded during the Civil War• National conscription laws;• Federal income taxes levied;• Paper money backed by federal government

rather than individual states issued.

Coast-to-coast communication• Pony Express (1860)

—10 days• Telegraph (1861)—

just seconds to communicate across country

• Transatlantic telegraph cable (1866) allowed instant communicate with Europe

• Telephone patented (1867)By 1900, 1.3 million telephones in U.S.

• Coast-to-coast travelTranscontinental Railroad (1869)By 1889, coast-to-coast travel—4 days

Alexander Graham Bell

Samuel Morse

Increased commercial development

Farm and ranching products available nation wide

National retail organizations undersold local shop keepers

• Richard Sears and Montgomery Wards

• Ready-made goods and clothes less expensive than local, hand-produced wares

Time zones reduced from 56 to 4 in 1883

Migration westward expanded the U.S. from the Atlantic to the Pacific•Native American populations displaced and subjugated;

Growth of Industry•Steelmaking, the nation’s dominant industry

•Alternating electrical current (1886)•American petroleum industry begins

Growth of population•Total population doubled from 1870 to 1890

•National income quadrupled

•Gap between rich and poor widens

Reconstruction in the South ends by 1877• Poll taxes and

literacy tests disqualified black voters

• Separate and unequal schools created

• White supremacy re-established

Women’s rights increase• More women

entered the workforce

• All female colleges were formed: Vassar, Wellesley and Smith

• Women do not gain the right to vote until 1922

Foreign immigration increases

• By 1910, one-third of largest cities foreign-born

Need for public education increases

• The Morrill Act of 1862—land given to states for establishment of “land-grant” universities

Changes in thinking brought about by changes in society

Specifically…. Science Psychology Philosophy

Intellectual Changes

Published The Origin of Species

• Hypothesized that man is

the product of evolution

• Man is special not because God created him in His image

but because man had

successfully adapted to changing environmental conditions

and had passed on his survival-making characteristics to his progeny.

Believed that the mind could be understood in terms of repressed urges, usually sexual

Theorized an unconscious system of ideas that governs human reactions and response

Id, Ego, and Super-ego

Explained human history as the result of class struggles

Human identity is defined by social context

It is human nature to transform nature.

Truth is tested by its usefulness or practical consequences

Truth is a commodity accessible on the surface of things

Truth is perceptible to the senses and verifiable through experience

Permanent truths exist apart from the material world—the mind of God, Plato’s ideal forms

William James

Realism• first begun as the local color movement

Naturalism

Begins in France, as realisme, a literary doctrine calling for “reality and truth in the depiction of ordinary life.”

•Grounded in the belief that there is an objective reality which can be portrayed with truth and accuracy as the goal

•The writer does not select facts in accord with preconceived ideals, but rather sets down observations impartially and objectively.

These authors sought to portray life as they saw it, insisting that the ordinary and local were just as suitable for art as the sublime.

““Nothing more and nothing less Nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of than the truthful treatment of

material. “ William Dean Howellsmaterial. “ William Dean Howells

Definition of Local Color:• Literature that focuses on the characters,

dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region that exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms, and habits of that specific region .

Setting—often remote and usually integral to the story

Characters—more concerned with the character of the region than an individual—quaint, stereotypical

• Narrator-- an educated observer from the world beyond who’s often deceived

• Emphasis on dialect

• Use of stock characters

Dislike of change, nostalgia for an always-past Golden Age

Triumphant trickster or trickster tricked

Tall tale-tradition, conflicts described humorously, larger than life

Subject matter—ordinary people and events

Purpose—Verisimilitude, the truthful representation of life

Point of View—omniscient and objective

Characters—middle class, psychological realism

Plot de-emphasized

•Focus on everyday life•Complex ethical choices often the subject

•Events are made to seem the inevitable result of characters’ choices

Humans control their destinies•characters act on their environment

rather than simply reacting to it.

Slice-of-life technique•often ends without traditional formal

closure, leaving much untold to suggest man’s limited ability to make sense of his life.

Whose reality is portrayed?• Those in power, usually male, white and

privileged

Whose reality is marginalized and ignored?• Those without power: women, people of

color, people of lower economic means

Definition: A literature that depicts social problems and views humans as victims of larger biological, psychological and social and economic forces.

• Scientific determinism• Psychological determinism• Historical determinism

Man has no direct control over who or what he is. His fate is determined by outside forces that can be discovered through scientific inquiry

Humans respond to environmental forces and internal stresses and drives, none of which can be fully controlled or understood

• People are driven by fundamental urges like fear, hunger, sex

• The world is a “competitive jungle”

Man is a victim of his inner and subconscious self (Freud).

Historical or socio-economic determinism (Marx): the world is a battleground of economic and social forces;

Presentation is objective and detached

Subject matter—raw and unpleasant experiences which reduce people to degrading circumstances in order to survive

Setting commonplace and un-heroic

Novelist discovers qualities in lower class characters usually associated with heroes

•Suggestion that life on lowest levels is more complicated

Man is fundamentally an animal, without free will

Pessimistic view of human capabilities—life is a trap

Governed by determinism• External and internal forces, environment or

heredity control behavior• Characters have compensating humanistic

values which affirm life• Struggle for life becomes heroic and affirms

human dignity