|
Conclusion. Naturalism is an extension of realism that goes beyond realism by the use of pessimistic determinism. Donald Pizer believes that many definitions of the movement are too confined within the belief system of the most prevalent naturalist, but he encourages readers to look appreciate the complexity of naturalism. Pizer divides the movement into two tensions, each having its own elements. The first tension has three elements and the second tension has two.
CHAPTER 2
The Founding Figures of American Literary Naturalism
2.1 Theodore Dreiser. Dreiser was born B. 1871 in Terre Haute, Indiana, in a German catholic household. The family lived in near-poverty, and endorsed what a few biographers call “non -Victorian” moral standards. One of Dreiser’s sisters had an affair out of wedlock. She probably served as inspiration for Carrie Meeber in Sister Carrie.
Dreiser’s uncle, Paul Dresser, was a famous composer of popular songs. As a successful cultural entrepreneur, Paul Dresser served as model for Theodore Dreiser’s career. Dreiser finished high school and spent a year at Indiana University. He did not graduate. He read science and philosophy, hence rapidly becoming skeptical of religion. As a young man, Dreiser did some newspaper work in Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York. He met Sarah Osborn White (“Jug”) at the 1893 Chicago World Fair and married her.
In 1900, he published Sister Carrie. The novel proved controversial from the very first. The publisher (Doubleday), fearing censorship, refused to give it adequate promotion, even though the novel had been recommended by successful naturalist novelist Frank Norris (Mc Teague, The Octopus). As a result of Carrie’s partial failure, Dreiser suffered a nervous breakdown. This experience is chronicled in his autobiographical narrative an Amateur Laborer. It is also given a fictional shape in The “Genius,” a partly autobiographical novel of artistic education. Still uncertain of his prospects as a novelist, Dreiser worked as editor for a fashion-oriented magazine for a time.
His second novel, Jennie Gerhardt (1911)—another “fallen woman” narrative—was a critical success. He then started writing what would later be called “The Trilogy of Desire.” This term refers to the sequence of novels composed of The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic (1947). In these texts, Dreiser depicts the career of a ruthless businessman. The novels are written from a Nietzschean, apparently pro-capitalist perspective, therefore partly contradicting the image of Dreiser as a left-wing writer.
The publication of The “Genius” in 1917 triggered another censorship scandal: the partly autobiographical work contains sexually frank descriptions of the protagonist’s failed marriage and of his affair with a young woman. The novel reflects the crisis of his first marriage, which ended in divorce. He later married silent film actress Helen Patges-Richardson and moved with her to California. Dreiser’s autobiographical writings contain very explicit depictions of this new relationship.
An American Tragedy, Dreiser’s second major novel was published in 1925. The novel is based on an actual murder—The Chester Gillette Grace Brown case. It describes the slow process that leads a young man to murder his girlfriend because he fears she will be an obstacle to his social advancement. The tone of the novel is markedly more disenchanted than in Sister Carrie, The Financier and The Titan.
By the 1920s, Dreiser had indeed become disillusioned with capitalist America. In the mid1920s, he visited the Soviet Union, a trip recorded in Dreiser Looks at Russia. In 1931, Dreiser and novelist John Dos Passos (Manhattan Transfer) were arrested as they were investigating mining conditions in Kentucky.
In his later years, Dreiser turned to vitalist mysticism, Hinduism, and Eastern Philosophies—a philosophical evolution reflected in The Stoic. Besides novels, Dreiser published autobiographical writings—A Traveler at Forty (1913); A Book about Myself / Newspaper Days (1922)—and theoretical/philosophical essays.
As a literary personality, Dreiser has always been a controversial figure. On the one hand, he is regarded as the leading figure of American naturalism—the author of novels that are true to their social environment yet also display supreme imaginative energy. Still, Dreiser is not regarded as a good writer in the belletristic sense of the term: unlike Henry James, he did not seek to write well-crafted literary objects (and was arguably unable to do so). Dreiser’s writing style has been a perennial object of complaints among critics. It has been argued that Dreiser never learned to master elegant prose-writing skill because of his non-Anglo-Saxon (German), non-genteel background. In a positive light, the rough character of his prose has been described as the proper medium for a self-taught genius.
Still, in one respect, the looseness of Dreiser’s writing raises an important problem for a realist writer. Dreiser, unlike Edith Wharton and Henry James, seems unable to handle realistic irony and demystification. It is not always clear in Dreiser’s novel how author (and readers) are expected to position themselves towards the narrative and the characters.
In 1981, a new text of Sister Carrie was published by a team of editors at the University of Philadelphia (the “Philadelphia” edition of Sister Carrie). The new text corresponds to Dreiser’s initial manuscript, before it was processed by the editor at Doubleday and by Dreiser’s first wife. The writing style of the “Philadelphia” edition is indeed rougher than the 1900 Doubleday text. The novel is also longer, grittier, and more pessimistic.
By the 1980s, Dreiser’s politics—and no longer his writing style—became an object of controversy. A new generation of critics embarked on a re-evaluation of realism and naturalism (Walter Benn Michaels, Rachel Bowlby, June Howard, Amy Kaplan). They argue that American naturalist writers were not anti-capitalist left-wingers, as most critics had argued thus far. There are indeed ambiguities in Dreiser’s politics: is he a socialist or a champion of consumerism? How can we interpret the Nietzschean features of his novels? This issue can be partly solved, however, by taking his personal development into account. Dreiser’s support of socialism is a feature of the second part of his career (the moment when he wrote An American Tragedy). In Sister Carrie, Dreiser’s attitude to urban consumerism was ambivalent (see below)—a mixture of fascination and criticism. There are ambiguities in Dreiser’s relation to science and religion as well. He often profiles himself as an evolutionary positivist, influenced by Darwin and Spencer. Yet there are also accents of vitalist mysticism in his texts.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
