Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Welcome to today's discussion of literary naturalism. It is not necessary to be a complete nihilist, but it helps.

Naturalism is literary realism that read Darwin, gasped, and said, "Dang, Emerson was wrong! Humans are not the center of the universe, and nature doesn't look out for them. They're just as pointless as the flies we swat every summer afternoon."

This theory was further refined to maintain that humans were the helpless victims of their genetics and their environment, and those two things would conspire to make them miserable at every turn. Further, if they somehow escaped with good genes and good luck, nature itself would try to kill them. The mantra of literary naturalism is "Life sucks, and then you die."

One might wonder why, if writers truly believed that humanity had no point, they bothered to write about it. Possibly they felt that shared misery was more bearable than the lonely belief in their futility. Possibly they just wanted to shock people. More likely, though, and I'm actually being serious here, they got sick of the moral complacency that arose out of Transcendentalism. "If we're so great," a naturalist would ask, "Why was the war so brutal, and why do we continue to exploit everything and everyone we come across?"

Late 19th century American industrialism and expansion came at a price, and often it was a very high one in terms of human life and human quality of life. Children died in industrial accidents; Native Americans died in settlement disputes, and over all of this was the specter of the Civil War, that left many people desperately poor and still oppressed. The naturalists looked at this world and felt confident in saying that people are not inherently good, and life is not full of promise.

Prominent "naturalistic" writers include Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, and Frank Norris. In all their work, we can discern the grey thread of hopelessness, mingled with the red one of vicious nature, looking for its next meal.

It is interesting to note that, with the possible exceptions of London and Drieser, a lot of naturalists died young. Ambrose Bierce was getting up there in age when he disappeared in the Mexican desert but we can assume he wasn't happy about it.

We're Ba-a-a-a-ck

Yes, the American Literature blog continues, with yet more opinion, irreverence, and tangential discussion.
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When we left off, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman had revolutionized poetry, at least for the American literati. The popular taste, as it is wont to do, lagged behind. One of the behinds that it lagged was Julia A. Moore, "The Sweet Singer of Michigan," whose poetry left many readers speechless.
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Mrs. Moore wrote several volumes on such topics as gory disasters and untimely deaths. She also enjoyed dispensing advice to children, when she wasn't writing about dead ones. Her idiosyncratic terribleness, complimented by her tin ear and her horrible choice of subject matter, made her the favorite poet of Samuel Clemens, and he said so, at length. Because irony was lost on her, Mrs. Moore took this as an endorsement, and used Clemens' name to sell even more volumes of poetry. She was, and I wish I was kidding, one of the best-selling poets of the late 19th Century, although it's impossible to tell whether anybody took her seriously, or if they read her work for the same reason they ogle train wrecks (which she also wrote about).
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Just to whet your appetite for another four months of American Literature, here is a sample of the work of Julia A. Moore. Enjoy.
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Hattie House
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Come all kind friends, wherever you may be,
Come listen to what I say,
It's of a little girl that was pleasant to see,
And she died while out doors at play.
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Oh! Hattie, dear Hattie,
Sweet little Hattie House --
May the flowers ever bloom o'er the little tomb,
Of our loved one, Hattie House.
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She had blue eyes and light flaxen hair,
Her little heart was light and gay,
She said to her mother, that morning fair,
"Mother, can I go out and play?"
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Her mother tied her bonnet on,
Not thinking it would be the last
She would ever see her dear little one
In this world, little Hattie House.
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She left the house, this dear little girl,
On that bright and pleasant day --
She went to play with two little girls
That were near about her age.
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She was not gone but a little while
When they heard her playmates call --
Her friends hastened there to save the child,
Alas, she was dead and gone.
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Those little girls will not forget
The day little Hattie died,
For she was with them when she fell in a fit,
While playing by their side.
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She was her parents' only child,
And her age was near six years,
And now she has left them for a while --
Left all her friends in tears.
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She has left this world of grief and woe,
Dear friends, she has left behind --
She is waiting on the other shore,
To meet them bye and bye.
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One fine morning, the fifth of July,
The summer flowers were in bloom,
Eighteen seventy-one, little Hattie died,
And is sleeping in her tomb.
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If you just have to have more of this, and I have no doubt that you will, then you can find LOTS of Mrs. Moore's work here: http://www.poemhunter.com/julia-a-moore/poems/ Feel free to weigh in . . . oh, yes.

Confessions of an Emily Dickinson Hater

It is with extreme reluctance that I confess to a deep and abiding dislike of Emily Dickinson's poetry. I know that it's considered the best thing since movable type. I know that our very own textbook says, and I quote, "Her poems shed the unmistakable light of greatness." I know that as a teacher of literature I'm supposed to oooh and ahhh and marvel at her origniality in using dashes instead of punctuation and capitalizing weirdly.

I can't do it.

Where other people see a mysterious recluse, abiding by the rules of her own genius, I see a drama queen, hiding behind doors because she has realized that the best way to get lots of attention is to be hysterical most of the time. Her publisher, Thomas Higginson, met her in person twice, and afterward said he thanked God he didn't have to do it more often.

Emily took a toll on people. Her letters, such of them that survive, are punctuated with the same dashes as her verse, and they give her a breathless, schoolgirl quality. She doesn't speak directly, but in a series of ellipses, designed to convey that she feels something very powerfully, but declines to specify what. No wonder she became the darling of postmodernism; she could be saying anything.

And then there's the matter of slant rhyme. When the late Julia A. Moore used it, people rightly decided that she had a tin ear. When Emily Dickinson does it, it's genius. The only difference I can see is that Emily chooses better subject matter.

Here's the crux of my belief about Emily Dickinson. I think that her poems were "discovered" at exactly the right time. Her idiosyncratic style fit perfectly with the 20th Century's rejection of traditional poetic forms. Furthermore, since she was dead and was not, even when alive, all that communicative about her poetry, people could read into it, and her, whatever they wanted. Her singular lack of metric variation, her slant rhyme, her missing punctuation, could all be marks of genius, or they could be personal tics. We'll never know.

Yes, her poems are short. Yes, they're unconventional (for a given value of unconventional). Yes, her images are usually clear. Yes, she occasionally creates a striking phrase. I dont' care. I've tried to care, and I can't. You can sing most of her poems to the tune of the theme song for Gilligan's Island. She is as preoccupied with death as E.A. Poe, and as narrow as Anne Bradstreet, possibly even narrower. She wades in pools of grief and enjoys the expression of agony on other people's faces. She feels funerals in her brain, hears flies buzzing when she dies, and goes for buggy rides with Death. Frost beheads playful flowers, houses bustle when someone dies, and brains run smoothly in their grooves. She could be Ezra Pound's mother.

Naturally, I do not wish, by so exposing my own bias, to discourage anyone from going into transports of delight at Dickinson's poetry and strewing boquets about. The appreciation of poetry is largely a matter of taste, and as E.D. herself said, "I taste a liquor never brewed." I don't think we mean the same thing.

In the interest of fair play, here is a blogger who has brought Emily into a different, and better light, and if you want to read a positive review, check this out. You'll like it. Be advised, there's some dropping of the f-bomb in this blog, along with some other "strong" language.

http://theblevinsblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/emily-dickinson-monkey-mojito/

Civil Disobedience?

And just like this poor feline, most people who attempt civil disobedience in America learn that the leash is pretty strong, and so is the arm that holds it. Is that Thoreau's point in his essay "Civil Disobedience?"

No.

Thoreau was quite unhappy about slavery and about the Mexican War. (This would be the war that "freed" Texas from Mexico. The problem wasn't exactly the war, but what kind of state Texas would be if and when it was admitted to the Union. Would it be slave or free? And what were we doing slugging it out with Mexico over Mexico's own territory? Can you just invade a sovereign nation and grab the land because you want to? Lots of people were unhappy about the Iraq --oops -- Mexican war.)

Thoreau was so unhappy, he declined to pay his taxes, for which offense he spent a night in jail. While there, he discovered that his body could be locked up, but his mind was free to ramble, and it rambled right on over to considering who has the right to tell him what to do. The government, he decided, does not have the right to govern him in ways contrary to his own conscience. It must respect him as an individual; he does not owe it respect as a government, unless it keeps its end of the bargain.

In case you purged everything that came earlier in the semester, remember that this is straight out of Rousseau, who believed that the only legitimate government is the one that supports the rights of the individual. Further, Rousseau asserted that individuals who are NOT so supported can choose to opt out of being governed. Rousseau, remember, believed that people were basically good. It was only governments that were bad. Thoreau saw the obvious problem with this and decided to say that government attracts to itself people who are not as good, as intelligent, or as "able" as most people. It's a kind of idiot farm, really. And as such, nobody has to pay any attention to it if they don't want.

Does this seem simplistic? It's a little naive, for sure, because Thoreau was operating on the basic principal that people would, left to their own devices, treat each other well and do the right things. Obviously he had never heard of Enron. And too, he was living in Concord, not in a slum in New York or Philadelphia, where he might have been less charitable about his landlord.

At any rate, he wants to refuse to support the government the only way he can, which is to withhold his taxes. Not content with that, however, he reminds his neighbors that they, too, are acting immorally when they pay taxes to a corrupt government. Further, he reminds us that merely "voting right" is slactivism of the worst kind; it does nothing to better the condition of one's fellow man. Even further, he says that in a society that imprisons men unjustly (and he implies that he was himself unjustly jailed), the only place for a truly just person is in jail right alongside them.

To "opt out" of government may seem like a great idea, but there are problems. For one, even in Thoreau's time, the taxes did more than pay for wars; they built roads, schools, and provided courts and law enforcement. In our own time, we might complain about taxes, but we do not have the money ourselves to pave our own highways, build our own schools, or hire bodyguards to replace public police.

Another problem is that governments do, in fact, offer us a kind of protection and legitimacy that we take for granted because they are invisible. We are free to travel about the world as American citizens, and if we get into trouble abroad, the embassies are there to back us up (sometimes). Not having citizenship can be a real problem -- just ask the Palestinians.

A third problem is what to do with those who decide not to be governed. Do they have to live in a special no-service area? Do they have to pay to use roads and schools? To whom do they resign, anyway: "Dear Congress, I hereby declare that you don't govern me"?

Thoreau resigned from paying the mandatory tithe in Massachusetts by saying that he does not wish to be enrolled in any organization that he never joined in the first place. It seems simple enough. It's only when we apply that idea to citizenship itself that it becomes quite a thorny issue.

Emerson and Nature

If you want to believe that Nature is sentient, and both loves and cares for humans, then it helps to live in an area like Concord, MA. The countryside there ripples in gentle folds, dotted with farms and generally prosperous. In Emerson's day, it was a bucolic paradise, close enough to Boston to attract a sophisticated population, and far enough away to be safe from the corrupting influences of civilization.
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Emerson's house, The Old Manse (see the painting above), was an attractive one, large enough for his four children, plus servants, plus friends. Thoreau lived there for years, off and on. From the house, Emerson could stroll through peaceful woods and fields, where "Nature, red in tooth and claw" was rarely visible. Instead, his vision of Nature was one of peace and plenty, tamed by farms and made productive by farmers. Emerson could walk philosophically through rain and snow, knowing that his warm, snug abode lay nearby. That takes a lot of the sting out of the cold.

From this comfy position, it's possible for Emerson to write that Nature is a human being's spiritual guide, moral teacher, and source of wisdom. He can advocate contact with Nature as a cure for mental and physical disease, and can, without any sense of hypocrisy or irony, proclaim that Nature directs itself always to the good of humans, with a human-like benevolence. He doesn't mean, of course, that Nature "thinks" the way people think, but he does believe that it was designed (by exactly who or what, Emerson is vague) to benefit people.

Later in the 19th Century, people like Ambrose Bierce looked at this view of nature and scoffed mightily. They found it at best naive, and at worst, unforgiveably anthropocentric. In Emerson's world, humans are at the center of Nature, its point and focus. Nature reasons like a human, behaves like a human, and focuses creative energy on teaching humans and helping them develop sound bodies and minds. Nature functions a lot like a Boy Scout leader, to be honest. It's easy to believe in the utter goodness of Nature when one lives in Concord, and has scenes like the Old North Bridge, above, to comfort one. I still wonder, what would Emerson have thought if he'd lived in Canada and routinely been chased by mad walruses, or perhaps had his aunts nibbled by polar bears? I'm betting Nature wouldn't be so cuddly . . .
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Henry David Thoreau, the Iconoclast of Concord, took Emerson at his word and set off, once, into the Maine woods, where he almost died from an overdose of Nature. The awareness that -- gasp -- Nature was indifferent to him created a crisis in his philosophy and a bit of a breach between himself and Emerson. Thoreau remained a Transcendentalist, but he backed way off from the idea that Nature is aware of humans and wants to help them. I think this is the saner, and safer, position.

Transcendentalism!

Who is this man, and why is he staring off into the middle distance? It's a young-ish Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sage of Concord, whose philosophy, articulated in a series of essays, spawned the movement we know as Transcendentalism. Emerson looks so calm and assured because nothing really bad ever happened to him.

Transcendentalism has its roots in Romanticism and its head in the clouds. Its heyday was from roughly 1835 to 1845, but its influence permeated the 19th Century. We can see its Romantic roots in the following tenets:

* People are basically Good.

* Nature is Good and the source of all Goodness.

* People can be perfect, and have unlimited potential.

* Individual experience is the only experience that matters.

It differed from Romanticism in that it taught that men and women were equal, and that the mind controlled the world, not the other way around.

The Transcendentalists' view of religion gave rise to Unitarianism as we know it. It differed significantly from earlier views, and was a complete rejection of Puritanical Calvinism. In short, it taught:

* God can be known, through nature and individual experience.

* God is in everyone, and everyone is in God.

* Everyone is part of a universal "over-soul" that unites all of humanity in Goodness.

* All religions hold some truth, and no one religion is right or wrong. Religion, however, is not necessary for a relationship with God.

* The Bible is unnecessary, because it is too narrow.

* Jesus is unnecessary, because people are Good and don't need a savior.

* Miracles don't happen, and never have.

* Human religious traditions are unnecessary and harmful.

Transcendentalists had a very Platonic idea of the world -- they believed that Truth existed outside our physical sphere, and could be found out there, along with idealized versions of things that our reality merely copies. Perfection could be dragged, presumably kicking and screaming, because that's always how things are dragged in literature, into reality by study, solitary contemplation of nature, and the exercise of optimism.

As a philosophy, Transcendentalism was positive and optimistic. It affirmed the worth of every person, and the dignity of humankind. As a practice, Transcendentalism, well, sucked. The 19th Century is replete with stories of communities founded to create (does this sound familiar at all?) perfect societies. The trouble was, people didn't behave in those "Good" ways that they were supposed to. It is a tribute to the firmness of the Transcendentalists' beliefs that they didn't turn cynical sooner, as one utopian community after another failed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson stands out as the primary articulator of Transcendental thought, but he had lots of company. Margaret Fuller was his co-editor of the Transcendentalist journal The Dial, and had a very interesting literary (and personal) career. Henry David Thoreau went into the woods to find himself, and his chronicle of that experience has inspired generations of solitary thinkers and environmentalists. Bronson Alcott embodied the belief that people were Good and could have perfect societies, and even though he failed to create any, he managed to hang onto that belief. He also fathered Louisa May Alcott, whose Little Women books continue to charm their readers.

A Disjointed Series of Things to Think About

Okay, only for a given value of "Romantic," because we have to make certain we define it correctly, but here are some pre-test things to think about that might prove profitable on Thursday.

What makes Edgar Allan Poe "gothic" as opposed to merely another overwrought Romantic, staring down the abyss? The concept of the sublime only sort-of comes into play with Poe. I'd venture to say that none of his settings fall into the "sublime" category of nature that Romantics were so fond of, but his storms do. The thunderstorm in "The Fall of the House of Usher" is definately siblime. And, happily, it scares the mortal poo out of everyone. I digress. "Ligeia" has so many gothic elements, it's hard to list them all, but you can't go wrong with dead women, weird turreted bedrooms, Medieval wall hangings, and the suggestion of madness and decay. Don't forget ghosts, suspected vampires, and unreliable narrators.

Yet another Poe question intrigues me. He writes in the first person so that he can show the interiority of his narrators -- their emotions, thoughts, fears, and insanity -- in ways that you just can't do with an external narrator. This limits him, though, because it means that his narrators always have to survive. You know at the beginning of a first-person story that the narrator isn't going to croak at the end of it; otherwise how would that person finish the tale? Does this survival-of-the-narrator strategy hurts the overall horror factor of Poe's tales? I kind of think it does, because I'm always thinking, "If this was so scary, how did you make it out?" I suppose this is a good place to remember the differences between terror and horror.

One of the characteristics of literature of this period is its unwillingness to do all the work for the reader. The endings of everything from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" to "Ligeia" leave the reader with questions. Why do these writers refuse to tie up all the loose ends, and how does that reflect the ideas of literary Romanticism?

Let's see, we might also find ourselves discussing the condition of women in the 19th Century and the things that shaped that condition -- Romanticism, Christianity, and the American legal system come to mind. How do women fare in the stories and poems we read these past few weeks? Which writers seem sympathetic to women, and which are clearly not?

Sojourner Truth can obviously be paired with Phillis Wheatley, although their lives never overlapped. The contrasts between the two are more important than the similarities, but one has to wonder what ST would have been like if she'd had Wheatley's education. Perhaps she would not have been as forceful an advocate for justice; the experience of injustice at the hands of her owners is what made her so adamant to protect others, after all. Wheatley was less an abolitionist because she had no abuse or injustice to protest. This lack of personal experience in injustice is also what kept a number of women quiet on the subject of women's rights. They were comfortable, and felt that other women's discomfort was their own fault.

One of the characteristics of Romantic literature is the unreliable narrator, or the unreliable experience. It would be helpful to think about the ways that Goodman Brown's experiences may or may not be real, and the ways the narrator in "Ligeia" might be unreliable. Come to think of it, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" may be pulling our leg, and so might "The Raven." I see a trend.

Some short takes: It's good to know the ways that the Enlightenment and Romanticism opposed one another. Situate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Fenimore Cooper in the same philosophical box, too, in their treatment of Native Americans. Women and slaves have some of the same problems, but not the same solutions.