…A More Perfect Union

1. …A More Perfect Union The United States 1865 -1914

2. “Equal Protection of the Laws” • The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments directly or indirectly affected: • African-Americans (Reconstruction) • women • immigrants • the working class • What do these groups have in common? • How should the country be re-built in light of these amendments?

3. My, There Sure Are a Lot of People!!! • the U.S. population in… • 1870 -- 38.5 million • 1910 -- 92 million • 1920 -- 123 million

4. Look at All the City-folk! • NYC in… • 1865 -- 0.5 million • 1900 -- 3.5 million • Chicago in… • 1859 -- 29,000 • 1910 -- > 2 million

5. Look at All the City-folk! • In 1860, 20% of the country lived in the cities. • By 1900, 40% lived in the cities. • cities were “swollen by millions of new immigrants” • “The frontier’s closed, man!” • By the turn of the 20th Century, the U.S. was the 3rd largest nation in the world.

6. Let’s Invent Some New-Fangled Contraptions! • 1869-1885 - four trans. railroads • 1870 - Rockefeller + Standard Oil • 1876 - Bell patents the telephone • 1878 - Edison’s phonograph • 1879 - Edison’s electric light • People were talking a lot about “progress”

7. This’ll Really Blow Their Minds! • 1859 - Darwin’s The Origin of the Species • “natural selection,” “survival of the fittest,” “evolution” (‘Maybe we’ll just keep getting better!”) • 1895 - Sigmund Freud starts practicing “psychoanalysis,” or “the talking cure.” His books and practice give birth to modern psychology.

8. Thinking Ahead… • What effect do you think the population increase is going to have on the country? • How about the advance in technology? • What about Darwin and Freud’s theories? • What do you think the literature of this period is going to be concerned with?

9. Realism • “the truthful treatment of material” --Walter Dean Howells • “verisimilitude” • the faithful representation in literature of the actual events in life • focus on the commonplace and the common man (and woman!) • a break away from New England as literary capital – “Local Color” and “Regionalism”

10. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. (1885) In that same village…there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant…. (1820)

11. In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her. This may seem like a ponderous weight of wisdom to descend upon the soul of a young woman of twenty-eight—perhaps more wisdom than the Holy Ghost is usually pleased to vouchsafe to any woman. But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult! (1899) He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient, henpecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. (1820)

12. Characteristics of Realism • characters are more important than the plot and action; detailed descriptions of ordinary characters • “class” is important; emphasis on city-dwellers and working-class Americans. • subjects drawn from slums, factories, newspapers (prostitutes, corrupt officials, workers, etc.) • diction is natural, not heightened or poetic • language reflects “local color” of authors’ home regions • Huck (Missourah, Mississippi River) • The Awakening (N’Awlins; Creole culture) • Charles Chesnutt (African-American vernacular)

13. Characteristics of Realism • use of everyday (and regional) speech patterns to reveal regional differences and class distinctions • heavily influenced by Darwin, photography, newspapers, psychology, social reform movements, magazines, urbanization, immigration, muckraking, sensationalism