University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

William Dean Howells: The Literary Theories In "Criticism And Fiction." Their Application In The Novels Of 1886 And 1887

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William Dean Howells: The Literary Theories In "Criticism And Fiction." Their Application In The Novels Of 1886 And 1887

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Content This dissertation has been
microfilmed exactly as received
69-16,549
FOX, Harold D ee, 1927-
WILL1AM DEAN HOWELLS: THE LITERARY
THEORIES IN CRITICISM AND FICTION AND THEIR
A P P L i c A T i o N n n r f S r i ^ ^ S i r o r m e a n d 1887.
U niversity of Southern California, Ph.D., 1969
Language and Literature, modern
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
© _ Harold DffP. Fox l^fiq_____
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS: THE LITERARY THEORIES IN
CRITICISM AND FICTION AND THEIR APPLICATION
IN THE NOVELS OF 1886 AND 1887
by
Harold Dee Fox
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
January 1969
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SC H O O L
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, C A LIFOR N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
....... .^pLD..DEE.F(aX............
under the direction of Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Gradu
ate School, in partial fulfillment of require
ments for the degree of
D O C T O R OF P H I L O S O P H Y
( / Dean
Da(e January 1969
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
.....
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' L.^£a: i . . . . /£.
\ ..........
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION ................................. 1
The Question of Criticism and Fiction . . . I
II. CRITICISM AND FICTION: HOWELLS' THEORY OF
THE NOVEL . . . . T"......................... 12
III, REPRESENTATIVE SELECTION AND THE "SOCIAL
FABRIC"...................................... 64
IVo THE MEASURING OF CONSCIOUSNESS AGAINST
ACTUALITY FOR THE PURPOSE OF IRONIC
SOCIAL COMMENTARY............................ 128
Howells1 "Dramatic Method and the Problem
of Meaning".................................. 129
Indian Summer and April Hopes: The
American "Aristocracy" . . ."............... 151
The Minister's Charge: The Subversion
of American Values 7 ....................... 174
Howells as Realist and Moral Teacher .... 200
V0 THE USE OF AMBIGUOUS INTRUSION TO EMPHASIZE
SOCIAL THEMES ................................ 205
VI. THE VALUE OF CRITICISM AND FICTION . . . . . . 260
LIST OF WORKS CITED
270
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The Question of Criticism and Fiction
The key to an understanding of the literary views in
Criticism and Fiction, the work in which William Dean
Howells professed to define his "creed" of realism, surely
lies in fiction he published between 1886 and 1891--the
period throughout which he wrote for Harper * s Magazine the
material he later included in the book. If, as some schol
ars contend, Criticism and Fiction fails to account for
Howells' practice in the later novels of this period, the
logical place to look for applications of Howells 1 "creed"
is in the three novels of 1886 and 1887.
Certainly one who hopes to appraise Howells' achieve
ment in fiction in the light of Howells' probable inten
tions 'needs to consider Howells' statements in Criticism
and Fiction. Since its publication in 1891,-*- critics have
agreed that if Howells defined his literary creed in any
single work, that one work was Criticism and Fiction. Re
viewing the book soon after its publication, Brander
■''New York.
1
Matthews called it the "body of doctrine which Mr. Howells
[believes] and declares, and by which he is willing to
stand his trial."2 Subsequent critics expressed a similar
opinion. In 1933, Granville Hicks wrote that Howells'
"theory was expressed in Criticism and Fiction.A year
later Bernard Smith declared that Howells' "primary criti
cism" was Criticism and Fiction.^ In 1948, Alexander Cowie
wrote that the small book "comprises most of the articles
of [Howells'] belief."5 By publishing a scholarly edition
in 1959,^ Clara Marburg Kirk and Rudolf Kirk indicated
their belief in the significance of the work as a statement
of Howells' literary views. And in 1961, Donald Pizer
stated that Criticism and Fiction was an "adequate repre
sentation of [Howells'] critical position."7 Even Howells
^"Recent Essays in Criticism," The Cosmopolitan, XII
(November 1891), 124.
^The Great Tradition (New York, 1933), p. 94.
^"Howells, the Genteel Radical," The Saturday Review
of Literature, XI (August 11, 1934), 43TT
^The Rise of the American Novel (New York, 1948),
p. 694.
^Howells: Criticism and Fiction (New York, 1959),
pp. 3-87.
^"The Evolutionary Foundation of W. D. Howells'
Criticism and Fiction," Philological Quarterly, XL (Janu
ary 1961), 103.
g
himself, by editing it for a new publication in 1909, sug
gested that he considered the book a satisfactory statement
of his literary views--at least those views that he held
in 1891.
The difficulty heretofore has been that most critics
have viewed Criticism and Fiction as the prescription of
an inadequate fictive art. Even before Howells' death in
1920, critics began to condemn Howells' literary theory be
cause of his statement in Criticism and Fiction that. Ameri
can novelists "concern themselves with the more smiling
aspects of life, which are the more American" (p. 128).
Van Wyck Brooks established the tone of this condemnation
in 1918, when he wondered of this statement whether one
could "ask for a more essential declaration of artistic
bankruptcy.Subsequent critics echoed Brooks's assump
tion that this one statement by Howells was at the heart
of his theory of what the American novel should reflect.
In the 1920's, Re'gis Michaud declared that Howells in his
fiction "confined himself in what he called the most smil
ing aspects of life, i.e., the most American"10; and
8
New York.
^Letters and Leadership (New York, 1918), p. 40.
■*-®"Howells," in The American Novel Today (Boston,
1928), p. 62.
Ernest Boyd insisted that when he "said that 'the more
smiling aspects of life . . . are the more American1
Howells dug his literary grave.In the 1930's, V. F.
Calverton-^ and Harry Hartwick^ also declared that Howells
dealt only with "the smiling aspects of life." Critics of
the 1940's and 1950's continued generally to concentrate
upon the "smiling aspects" passage as if that passage re
flected Howells' central position in the whole of Criticism
and Fiction.^ As late as 1961, Louis D. Rubin, Jr., and
■^"Readers and Writers," Independent, CXIV (January 3,
1925), 20.
■t O
From Sectionalism to Nationalism," in The Libera
tion of American Literature (New York, 1932), p. 471.
1 ^
Sweetness and Light," in The Foreground of American
Fiction (New York, 1934), p. 340.
^See Edwin H. Cady, "A Note on Howells and 'the
Smiling Aspects of Life," American Literature, XVII (May
1945), 175-178; Robert E. Splller, et al., Literary History
of the United States (New York, 1948), II, 893; E. W.
Parks, "Realist Avoids Reality: W. D. Howells and the Civil
War Years," South Atlantic Quarterly, LII (January 1953),
93-97; and Lionel Trilling, "William Dean Howells," in The
Opposing Self (London, 1955), pp. 76-103. With the excep
tion or Cady and Trilling, all the critics cited in the
paragraph and in this note accepted the "smiling aspects"
statement as sufficient evidence that Howells argued ir
responsibly for superficial themes in novels dealing with
American life. Cady, however, felt that Howells intended
the statement as an index to artistic" control of theme
rather than as a restriction upon the subject matter of
the American novel. Trilling argued that in the statement
Howells accurately described middle-class or "average"
American life— that, in fact, "the smiling aspects of life"
characterized "normal" middle-class American life even in
the twentieth century.
John Rees Moore echoed what they apparently assumed to be
a consensus of contemporary critical opinion when they
wrote in The Idea of an American Novel that Howells
"thought American life should be portrayed only in its
'more smiling aspects'" (italics added).
One can perceive four fundamental oversights, however,
in all such comments upon Criticism and Fiction. In the
first place, none of these critics examines Howells' state
ment in the light of a careful analysis of Howells' own
novels. In other words, such critics react almost totally
to the statement of a novelist about fiction rather than
to the statements of a novelist in his fiction. In the
second place, these critics assume on the basis of a
single passage that Howells' theory of fiction was essen
tially one relating to the material of fiction; as a result
they are distracted from a consideration of the relation
ship in Howells' theory between technique and material--a
relationship that is essential in a coherent theory of
fiction. In the third place, such critics judge the whole
of Criticism and Fiction by Howells' statement in a single
passage of that work. In other words, they permit this
statement to color their reading of the entire work,
whereas a valid reading of Criticism and Fiction involves
■^New York, 1961, p. 40.
a balancing of each statement against the total purpose of
the work. And finally, these critics assume that Criticism
and Fiction, which appeared in 1891, represents Howells1
"" v. ■
literary views for his entire career as a novelist— a
career which began in 1871 and continued until 1920. But
before one can make such an assumption, one must first es
tablish whether Howells 1 theories in Criticism and Fiction
reflect his literary practice even during the period im
mediately preceding 1891.
A few critics have seen in Howells1 later novels of
the period from 1886 to 1891 apparent changes in his atti
tudes toward American society--changes not accounted for in
such superficial readings of Criticism and Fiction. Vernon
Louis Parrington, for instance, declared that "it was not
till [Howells1] removal to New York in 1886 . . . that he
set about seriously studying the ways of plutocracy" in
America; Parrington indicated, however, that the fruits of
that study began to appear with A Hazard of New Fortunes,
which was not published until three years later in 1889.-^
Similarly, Walter F. Taylor believed that Howells1 fiction
began, with the publication of Annie Kilbum in 1888, to
reveal a deepening interest in the economic problems of
American life; this interest, Taylor said, continued
• ^Main Currents in American Thought (New York, 1930),
in, . 2437 ;
through A Hazard of New Fortunes.^ Both these critics,
in other words, saw in these novels a sharp change in theme
from what Howells had previously been doing in fiction.
Everett Carter and Edwin H. Cady similarly saw in these
two novels a sudden awakening on Howells1 part to tragic
implications in the contemporary structure of American
society. Carter declared, for instance, that with Annie
Kilburn, Howells ' "pen was turning in the direction of
critical realism,"18 which Carter defined as "literature
which truthfully reports warped and maladjusted social re
lationships so that men may study and improve them"
(p. 171) . Carter also considered A Hazard of New Fortunes
to be the only other novel of the period from 1886 to 1891
which likewise exemplified Howells' "critical realism."
Similarly, Cady declared that Annie Kilburn was "the first
of [Howells'] works intimately engaged during its composi
tion with Howells' black time," that is, with what Cady
considered Howells' growing awareness of "the widening
fissures in the face of American civilization."19
■^"William Dean Howells and the Economic Novel,"
American Literature, IV (May 1932), 105.
^Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadelphia, 1950),
p. 192.
i q
The Realist at War (Syracuse, 1958), p. 64.
However, these critics often found that in identifying
change in American social themes in Howells' fiction during
the period from 1886 to 1891 they had to account for
Howells1 statement in Criticism and Fiction that American
novelists "concern themselves with the more smiling aspects
of life, which are the more American." Though Parrington
did not seem aware of the contradiction between the appar
ently optimistic view of American life in Howells' state
ment and Parrington's own view of A Hazard of New Fortunes
as a new "note of social dissension" in Howells' portrayal
of American society (p. 245), the others were conscious of
this contradiction. Taylor, however, attempted to dismiss
the conflict by declaring that "nothing in Howells' theo
ry .. . prevented him from so disposing his story as to
illustrate his own standard of values."20 Carter and Cady,
on the other hand, met the conflict squarely. Carter de
clared, for instance, that Howells' real views during the
period are expressed in the "Editor's Study" essays, which
account, Carter said, as Criticism and Fiction does not,
for such changing attitudes toward American society as
Carter believed Howells to have revealed in Annie Kilburn
and A Hazard of New Fortunes (pp. 185-190). Criticism and
Fiction, Carter argued, should be rejected as a "hastily
^The Economic Novel in America (Chapel Hill, 1942),
p. 229.
contrived product of the scissors and the pastepot" (p.
190). Though Cady argued in 1945 that Howells meant the
"smiling aspects" passage for "artistic, not social criti
cism,"^ he declared later that "the only right place to
find Howells for that period is in the 'Editor's Study'
itself.When the Kirks's edition of Criticism and
Fiction appeared in 1959, Cady objected to its having been
published again and insisted that only in the "Editor's
Study" articles could one find a valid statement of
Howells' critical views during the period.^
Ultimately a thorough understanding of Howells' atti
tudes toward American fiction and American society during
the period from 1886 to 1891 as well as the reflection of
these attitudes in his own fiction of the period depends
upon an examination of the "Editor's Study" essays. How
ever, though Howells did profess to condense in Criticism
and Fiction the essence of his literary views throughout
the period, neither Carter nor Cady has examined Criticism
and Fiction in sufficient detail to substantiate their
opinions that Criticism and Fiction inadequately represents
Howells' views of the period. Instead, both have generally
^"A Note on Howells," p. 178.
^The Realist at War, p. 50.
^ " H o w e l l s Revival: Rounds Two and Three," New
England Quarterly, XXXII (Summer 1959), 404.
acceded to a traditional assumption that the essence of
Howells’ literary theory in Criticism and Fiction lies in
his statement that American novelists "concern themselves
with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more
American." Furthermore, despite the truism in logic that
one should assess change by examining conditions both be
fore and after a presumed change, those critics arguing
that Howells changed his social views during the period
(i.e., Parrington, Taylor, Carter, and Cady) have focused
almost entirely upon the social themes of those novels
which followed what they considered a change in Howells'
attitudes toward American society and American fiction.
They have consequently implied that the preceding novels
of the period lacked probing and meaningful social themes.
In fact, during the period from 1886 to 1891, Howells
published three novels before he published Annie Kilburn--
Indian Summer in 1886, The Minister's Charge in 1886, and
April Hopes in 1887, As a consequence of their argument
that Howells changed as a novelist when he wrote Annie
Kilburn and that Criticism and Fiction does not account for
such change, both Carter and Cady imply that Howells' views
in Criticism and Fiction correspond--if they correspond to
his practice in any of his novels--to his practice as a
novelist in the first three novels of the period. Accord
ingly, it seems logical that any study of change in either
Howells' theory or his practice during the period from 1886
11
to 1891 should begin with an examination, not of the later
novels of the period nor even of the "Editor's Study"
essays, but of the novels of 1886 and 1887 in the light of
the critical work which Howells professed to account for
his views during the whole five-year period--Criticism and
Fiction. Furthermore, since the question of Howells' fic-
tive intention centers on his attitude toward what the
American novel should reflect about American society, such
a study must examine both his total view of American so
ciety as he describes it in Criticism and Fiction and his
statements about American society in the novels of 1886 and
1887. Finally, since technique comprises as important a
part of any literary theory as material does, such a study
must consider the techniques Howells defines in Criticism
and Fiction and those he employs in these three novels.
Only when one has completed such a study is he prepared to
investigate change in either Howells' theory or his prac
tice during the period from 1886 to 1891.
CHAPTER II
CRITICISM AND FICTION: HOWELLS1
THEORY OF THE NOVEL
If William Dean Howells changed his literary theories
between 1886 and 1891, one ought to find an account of such
changes in Criticism and Fiction, which, published in May
1891,^ represents Howells’ selection and arrangement of the
literary opinions he expressed each month during the pre
ceding five years in his "Editor's Study" essays. By se
lecting material from the essays for each of the five years
9
beginning in January 1886 and ending in December 1890,
Howells suggested that Criticism and Fiction not only
■%ew York.
^See William M. Gibson and George Arms, A Bibliography
of William Dean Howells (New York, 1948), pp. 39-4(5, for
the dates of the "Editor s Study" essays used by Howells in
Criticism and Fiction. Though Howells used portions of the
essays from each of the five years, each year is not equal
ly represented in Criticism and Fiction. Only eight pages
in Criticism and Fiction were selected, for instance, from
the "Editor's Study" essays of the year 1888, whereas
sixty-eight were from those of 1887 and fifty from those of
1889. The years 1886 and 1890 are represented by thirty-
three pages and twenty-six pages respectively. But even
so, the representation is sufficient to imply that any
change in literary principles recorded in the "Editor s
Study" essays should also be accounted for in Criticism and
Fiction.
12
13
reflected the literary views he held at the date of the
book’s publication but represented what he had said about
literature throughout the whole period.
For this reason, a study to determine whether Howells
changed his literary theories or his practice as a novelist
during the five-year period logically begins with an exam
ination of Criticism and Fiction. Such an examination in
volves an analysis of the theory of realism which Howells
describes in this work for evidence that Howells considered
the theory itself changeable or that his theory of realism
tolerated changes in his practice as a novelist. Since
Howells' theory embraces both the material and the tech
niques of literature, toward either of which his attitudes
could change, his views on both are significant. Equally
important are the rationale by which Howells justified
realism as a literary creed and his application of that
rationale to what most interested him as both critic and
novelist— the art of fiction.
Howells makes clear in the first few pages of Criti
cism and Fiction that fiction is one of the literary arts,
whose function, like that of the other arts, such as paint
ing, is to reflect the artist’s conception of the ’’ beauti
ful and good" (pp. 1-3) . This conception of the "beautiful
and good," he declares, does not always reflect public
taste, since taste changes. "The ugly delights as well as
the beautiful" (p. 4), writes Howells; and he recognizes
14
the need for a lasting criterion for art so that "fashion"
may not mislead the artist into creating something other
than the "beautiful and good" (pp. 3-6).
In his effort to define such a criterion, Howells
cites two pieces of writing a hundred years apart whose au
thors also expressed concern about a criterion for art that
could be universally applied. He quotes the eighteenth-
century Englishman Edmund Burke as having written in his
Of the Sublime and the Beautiful that "the true standard of
the arts is in every man's power; and an easy observation
of the most common, sometimes of the meanest things, in na
ture will give the truest lights, where the greatest sagac
ity and industry that slights such observation will leave
us in the dark, or, what is worse, amuse and mislead us by
false lights.Howells points out that though "the true
standard of the arts" may be in "every man's power," most
men have failed to apply that standard (pp. 8-9). Howells
hopes that the "communistic era in taste foreshadowed by
Burke is approaching, and that it will occur within the
lives of men now overawed by the foolish old superstition
that literature and art are anything but the expression of
life, and are to be judged by any other test than that of
^Criticism and Fiction, p. 7. The passage Howells
quotes appears in Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry
into the Nature of the Sublime and the Beautiful (London,
17577; p.' "38.-------------------------------------
15
their fidelity to it" (p. 8). The second work Howells
cites for his purpose is The Renaissance in Italy by
Howells' contemporary John Addington Symonds, who, in a
section of that work, Howells says, "seeks to determine
whether there be an enduring criterion or not" (p. 1). In
a passage which Howells quotes from Symonds1 book, Symonds
announces the hope that public taste in the future will be
such that nothing will be accepted "but what is solid and
positive," that "the scientific spirit shall make men more
and more conscious," and that men will be "more and more
capable of living in the whole; also that in proportion as
we gain a firmer hold upon our own place in the world, we
shall come to comprehend with more instinctive certitude
what is simple, natural, and honest, welcoming with glad
ness all artistic products that exhibit these qualities."^
Symonds, like Burke before him', sees as the abiding cri
terion for art a true knowledge of man and the world in
which man lives; he feels that art should be simply and
honestly faithful to that knowledge. He sees favorable
possibilities for the future of art, since in a scientific
age such as he considers his own time to be, men can more
easily ascertain than they could in the past whether art is
^Criticism and Fiction, pp. 1-2. Howells is quoting
from Renaissance in Italy; The Catholic Reaction (London,
1886), II, 401.
16
faithful to such knowledge; not only is man gaining a truer
knowledge of his world and his relationship to it, he is
more appreciative of the importance of such knowledge.
Howells does not excuse the past for its failure to
observe the criterion Symonds identifies; he interprets the
passage from Symonds to mean that "what is unpretentious
and what is true is always beautiful and good, and nothing
else is so" (p. 3). "The greatest classics," Howells
writes, "are sometimes not at all great," and we can profit
by them only when we hold them, like our meanest contempo
raries to a strict accounting, and verify their worth by
the standard of the arts which we all have in our power,
the simple, the natural, and the honest" (p. 14). By thus
adopting the phraseology of both Burke and Symonds, Howells
announces that he has authoritative support for his in
sistence upon truth in fiction. With their statements to
support him, Howells asserts the validity of a movement in
literature whose principles, he says, are not new, but have
"never before universally characterized literary endeavor"
(p. 15). Howells identifies this movement as "realism"
(p. 15), which he says is "nothing more and nothing less
than the truthful treatment of material" (p. 73).
As Howells quotes them in Criticism and Fiction,
neither Burke nor Symonds deals with the problem of the
treatment by which the knowledge of man and his world is
transformed into art. When Howells insists that art must
17
be "true to life" (p. 47), that a writer's characters
should have "life-likeness" (p. 10), that "good art .
is never anything but the reflection of life" (p. 23), that
the novelist "must be true to what life has taught me is
the truth" (pp. 85-86), he, like Burke and Symonds, shows
concern for the material of art rather than for the tech
niques by which fidelity to life is achieved in art. The
"true standard" of art that "is in every man's power" is
merely a test of the fidelity of art to its material. The
question of how an artist achieves such fidelity is another
matter. Howells states explicitly that in judging "any
work of the imagination . . .
we must ask ourselves before we ask anything else, Is
it true?--true to the motives, the impulses, the prin
ciples that shape the life of actual men and women?
This truth, which necessarily includes the highest
morality and the highest artistry--this truth given,
the book cannot be wicked and cannot be weak; and
without it all graces of style and feats of invention
and cunning of construction are so many superfluities
of naughtiness. (pp. 99-100)
The artist who creates the work to be judged must antici
pate this test of truth; but before he works out the prob
lem of translating life into art so that his judges may
find it true to life, he must perform an initial task that
is equally necessary. He must hold "his ear close to
Nature's lip" and catch "her very accent" (p. 14). He
must study the proper material of art, which Howells and
Burke and Symonds agree is man and man's world as they are
in actuality.
18
Howells sees the artist's search for truth as similar
to the scientist's exploration of the material world.^ Of
the realist Howells writes:
In life he finds nothing insignificant; all tells for
destiny and character. . . . He cannot look upon hu
man life and declare this thing or that thing un
worthy of notice, any more than the scientist can
declare a fact of the material world beneath the dig
nity of his inquiry. (p. 16)
As a "silent partner" (p. 58), he quotes a similar state
ment by Armando Palacio Valdes:
"The man of our time wishes to know everything: he
turns the objective of a powerful equatorial towards
the heavenly spaces where gravitate the infinitude
of the stars, just as he applies the microscope to
the infinitude of the smallest insects. . . . His
experience, united with intuition, has convinced him
that in nature there is neither great nor small; all
is equal."6
Like the astronomer and the biologist, the contemporary
artist, Valdes implies, is a "man of our time"; and like
the astronomer and the biologist, he finds, by applying the
same probing impartiality, that "all is equally grand, all
is equally just; all is equally beautiful" (p. 61).
"Beauty," Howells adds in summarizing Valdes, "exists in
-*For a contemporary recognition of an affinity between
Howells' literary principles and the methods of science,
see John Burroughs, "Mr. Howells' Agreements with Walt
Whitman," Critic, XVIIns (February 6, 1892), 85.
^Criticism and Fiction, p. 61. The material of this
quotation appears in the "Prologue" to The Sister of San
Sulphizo, Nathan Haskell Dole, tr., (New York, 1890),
p. 19.
19
the human spirit, and is the beautiful effect it receives
from the true meaning of things; it does not matter what
the things are, and it is the function of the artist who
feels this effect to impart it to others1 1 (pp. 61-62).
The artist, in other words, differs from the scientist in
that he transforms "the true meaning of things" into art.
In addition to his implied agreement with Valdes1s view,
Howells says that like the scientist, the artist lives in
a world which "is now very large," where all knowledge can
no longer "be grasped by a single mind." As the scientist
"must devote himself to a single department," so must the
artist limit himself to the portion of the world that he
can best explore. Howells says of the novelist who does so
that "he contributes his share to a thorough knowledge of
groups of the human race under conditions which are full of
inspiring novelty and interest" (p. 144). Howells believes
that for the sake of the accuracy of such knowledge no one
should discourage the novelist from seeking truth just as
no one charges that the scientist commits a "sin against
culture" when he describes a "grasshopper," for instance,
as his own observation tells him a grasshopper really is
(pp. 10-12). Like the scientist, the artist who is a real
ist seeks the truth, Howells says; and if this artist
wishes to perceive that truth and to communicate it through
art, he must free himself from traditional misconceptions
of truth.
20
Though Howells speaks often in Criticism and Fiction
of art in general, he is primarily concerned as a novelist
with the more specific art of fiction. The term fiction in
one of the ways Howells uses it is the name of a generic
art form which includes the short story (p. 181), the ro
mance, and the novel— all of which depict in prose narra
tive form the simulated experiences of "personages"
(p. 115). Howells distinguishes the short story from the
other two kinds of fiction by its length; and though like
longer fiction the short story may, Howells says, employ
the "angels" and "ghosts” (p. 164) of romance, it serves
its most useful function in Howells' opinion when its
writers "turn to human life" and "present some of its actu
alities" (p. 170). The personages of the romance, Howells
says, "can hardly be characters with a living growth, but
are apt to be types, limited to the expression of one prin
ciple, simple, elemental, lacking the God-given complexity
of motive which we find in all the human beings we know."
The romance, he adds, plays "with some superstition long
outgrown" or invents "a new superstition to play with"
(p. 115). Howells occasionally uses the term romance to
condemn what he considers a bad novel. He does so in the
case of Balzac's Le Pire Goriot, which he calls a romance
"not worthy the name of novel" because Balzac "fills the
scene" with "exaggerated passions and motives" (p. 25).
When describing the faults of what he considers bad
21
fiction, Howells sometimes uses the terms novel and romance
alternately (pp. 95, 110). Such practice indicates that
Howells considers the romance, as a kind of fiction, in
ferior to the novel. But, for Howells, the significant dis
tinction between the novel and the romance as types of fic
tion is one of intent. Howells argues that the intention
of the novel, unlike that of the romance, is to "represent
and body forth human experience" with the "complexity of
motive" of actual human beings, who are "characters with a
living growth." According to Howells, the novel, unlike
the romance, deals "with things vital in every one's pulse"
and "brings the reader face to face with human nature" as
it appears in actual life. The novel, as Howells describes
it then, reflects the assumption that what is true, however
familiar, is beautiful; Howells believes that the romance,
on the other hand, reflects the assumption that the
strange, the fantastic, and the distant are beautiful
7
(p. 116). Except when the romance approaches the intent
^Compare Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven
Gables (Boston, 1851), p. iii. Hawthorne writes of the
novel that it is presumed to aim at a very minute fideli
ty, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and
ordinary course of man s experience" and of the romance
that "while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject it
self to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it
may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart— has
fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances,
to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or crea
tion.
of the novel as Howells feels Hawthorne's The Scarlet
Letter and The Blithedale Romance do (p. 115), Howells con
siders the novel, along with the short story which observes
the novel's principles, the only valid form for fiction.
Its material, according to Howells' definition, is the ma
terial of life, which is the legitimate material of art.
For this reason, when Howells uses the term fiction, he
usually intends it as a synonym for the term novel.
Since the intent of the novel is to "represent and
body forth human experience," the novelist who wishes to
fulfill that intent must, Howells quotes Valdes as saying,
"study humanity" (p. 70). "Human experience" as Howells
interprets it consists not only of the actions (p. 183) and
speech (pp. 137-138) of human beings but their motives
(p. 99), emotions (p. 126), impulses (p. 99), passions
(p. 104), and thoughts (p. 183) as well. Accordingly, the
process followed by the novelist who pursues an objective
study of the "human experience" which his novel must "rep
resent and body forth" consists of two steps: that of de
tached observation of what Howells calls "facts" (p. 16),
and that of an inductive interpretation of what he has ob
served. The first step corresponds to the application of
the "telescope" and the "microscope" by "the man of our
time" as Valdefs characterizes him (p. 61), the second to
the discovery of "the true meaning of things" (p. 62). As
the responsible novelist analyzes human actions in an
23
effort to arrive at their "true meaning," suggests Howells
throughout Criticism and Fiction, he considers two aspects
of humanity. He seeks to understand, in addition to the
characteristics of "human nature" that exist in human be
ings everywhere, the distinctive characteristics as well
of the particular societies of the people he studies. In
other words, the responsible novelist must study not only
man for the truth about man, but man's society as well for
the truth about it and its impact upon individual people.
Though such a process of observation and interpretation
is not peculiar to the novelist, it is essential to him
if he is to perceive and his novels are to reflect the
"beautiful," the unadorned truth.
Howells insists upon a third step in the selection of
material for fiction, that of moral judgment, of the de
termination by the novelist of whether actions or attitudes
or conditions are right or wrong. This moral judgment, an
evaluation of the significance and consequences of "human
experience," involves the application of the novelist's own
moral convictions to the objectively observed and inter
preted material. The results of all three steps in the
process--observation, intellectual interpretation, and
moral judgment--constitute for Howells the material of fic
tion; and a careful consideration of each is essential for
an accurate understanding of Howells' view of realism.
Only if all three steps in the process are completed does
24
Howells feel that the novelist has discovered both the
"beautiful" and the "good," which Howells considers the
necessary qualities of a work of art (p. 3).
According to Howells, the responsible novelist's de
tached observation of "human experience" includes "notice"
of everything pertaining to "human life" (p. 16): human
action, human speech, human society. It also includes no
tice by the novelist of "himself" (p. 102), of his own
feelings, motives, and thoughts and of their manifestations
in his action and speech. The "human experience" so ob
served is the raw material which Howells says the novelist
interprets for the "true meaning of things." But Howells
does not consider this material in its inchoate form to be
suitable for fiction. Recognizing the possibility that
realism in fiction might tend toward a mere recording of
the results of observation, Howells warns, "When realism
becomes false to itself, when it heaps up facts merely, and
maps life instead of picturing it, realism will perish"
(pp. 15-16). "Every true realist instinctively knows
this," he explains, "and it is perhaps the reason why he is
careful of every fact and feels himself bound to indicate
its meaning" (p. 16). Howells does not believe that "the
novel is to be a map, with everything scrupulously laid
down in it" (p. 156), without the novelist's consideration
of the true meaning of the facts laid down. But for
Howells the true meaning does depend upon the facts of
25
"human experience," and the responsible novelist must scru
pulously seek them.® Such facts, results of accurate ob
servation of the actual world, will be reflected, Howells
says, in the fiction for which they are a source, but only
after the novelist has perceived what for him is their
meaning.
In his objective search for meaning, the realistic
novelist is primarily concerned with an understanding of
human nature, "which [says Howells] it is his privilege,
his high duty, to interpret" (p. 8). Howells explains that
for his source "no one need go far--no one need really go
out of himself" (p. 102). By this, Howells means that each
person can recognize in himself those qualities that are
universally human. "The realist feels in every nerve,"
Howells declares, "the unity of men" (p. 16), the universal
similarity of each man to every other. Though he can know
only his own motives and can only guess the motives of
others, he can by analogy between himself and others assign
"probability of motive" (p. 15) to their actions and
speech. By thus interpreting human nature through an
o
That Howells himself followed this precept is indi
cated by his visit to Crawfordsville, Indiana, in prepara
tion for writing A Modern Instance (Boston, 1882), and his
inspection of factories, in Lowell, Massachusetts, in prep
aration for writing Annie Kilburn (New York, 1888). See
Edwin H. Cady, The Road to Realism (Syracuse, 1956), pp.
207-208, and The Realist at War (Syracuse, 1958), p. 64.
analysis of "human experience" observed both within and
outside himself, the novelist, Howells believes, can por
tray "men and women as they are" (p. 104) with "human feel
ings and human motives, as God made them and as men know
them" (p. 27). Howells considers such fidelity to human
nature so important to literature that he declares that the
"greatest classics are not at all great" when they do not
achieve it (p. 14). In fact, he feels that fidelity to
human nature is the only essential element in fiction:
"in the whole range of fiction," he writes, "we know of no
true picture of life--that is, of human nature--which is
not also a masterpiece of literature." If a novel is "true
to what men know of one another's souls," he declares, "it
will be true enough" (p. 100).
Since every reader has substantially the same capaci
ties as the novelist for interpreting human nature, every
reader also has in his power the "standard of the arts"
(pp. 8, 14) by which he can test the novelist's interpre
tation for its fidelity to human nature. Each man knows
from his own observation and experience what human beings
are like, and he has only to measure the characters in a
novel against his own knowledge. Because he believes that
many readers fail to use their own true knowledge in read
ing fiction, Howells points out some of the universally
known human truths that he feels many popular novelists
repeatedly deny. "No living man," he writes, for instance,
27
"is a type, but a character” (p. 18). Each man's motives
are not simple, but complex (p. 115). A man is never pure
ly "noble" or "ignoble" or "grand" or "little" (p. 18) or
villainous (p. 25). If he is poor, he is not "impossibly
virtuous and beautiful" (p. 185). If he is greedy, no
miraculous dream will make him generous and kind (p. 164);
and his good resolutions are not likely to result in reform
(p. 167). "Love, or the passion or fancy" mistaken for it
"is not the chief interest of a life, which is really con
cerned with a great many other things" (p. 96). But since
the ability to interpret human nature intelligently is in
"every man's power" (pp. 8, 14), Howells identifies only
those truths about mankind that he finds commonly misrep
resented. The responsible novelist, he argues, should
avoid the temptation to achieve the popularity that such
misrepresentations appear to offer; he should instead rely
only on his own true knowledge (p. 145).
As the novelist searches for the truth of human na
ture, Howells explains, he discovers not only truths about
the universal human condition but truths peculiar to his
own contemporary civilization. Howells declares, for in
stance, that "men actually sin, suffer, and die”; that men
suffer, for instance, for their "follies" and their "sins,"
and taste "joy only through the mortification of self, and
in the help of others" (p. 116); that there is little
"whirling splendor of peril and achievement" or "heroic
28
adventure" (p. 106); that "hairbreadth escapes" or "immi
nent deadly breaches" (p. 107) are not the common experi
ences of actual life; that marriage does not always lead in
actuality to a happy ending (p. 150); and that "people in
the actual world" "appear and disappear in our knowledge"
without their careers being rounded out (p. 23), as some
novelists pretend (p. 106). These conditions, Howells
asserts, are inherent in the human condition itself and
have their impact on human nature. But observations of
contemporary life, which are also "in every man's power,"
reveal characteristics, Howells indicates, that distinguish
it from the life of other times. Howells points out that
his age is a scientific age, for instance, in which man
seeks to know empirical truth (pp. 2, 61). He says that
unlike some periods of the past, it is an age of propriety
(p. 148), good manners, comparative decency, and some
squeamishness in regard to sexual matters (p. 154). If the
novelist is to reflect actuality, Howells believes, he must
reflect all these truths, including those peculiar to his
own times. But when he reflects them, he "represents and
bodies forth” something more than the truth about human na
ture which Howells says will be "true enough." He inter
prets in addition to the people who populate it the world
in which they live.
When Howells says that a novel which is true to human
nature will be "true enough," he uses the term enough in
the sense of mere adequacy. Such a novel may not have, as
he says, any “touch or tint of this special civilization or
of that" in it and be "true enough," but if it does, he
says, it "had better have this local color well ascer
tained" (p. 100). "Human experience" outside a social con
text may be possible; but if a novel deals with life in a
social context and is to reflect actuality, it will re
flect a specific social environment. Furthermore, when
Howells declares that "it behooves us to know and to under
stand" "the social fabric" (p. 94), he indicates that the
novelist who wishes his reader to do so must faithfully re
flect the particular portion of the "social fabric” that he
portrays. Accordingly Howells commends "a great number of"
regional American novelists for the contributions of each
to "his share of knowledge of groups of the human race"
(p. 144). Each is "instinctively striving," writes
Howells, "to make each part of our civilization known to
all the other parts" (p. 144). As a result of the work of
such American novelists and of such novelists elsewhere in
the world, Howells declares, "the whole field of human ex
perience was never so nearly covered by imaginative liter
ature in any age as this" (p. 143). "Each man is a micro
cosm," Howells writes, indicating his belief that the
source of all knowledge of humanity exists in each in
dividual; but he adds, extending the nature of that knowl
edge beyond the knowledge of human nature alone, "and the
30
writer who is able to acquaint us intimately with half a
dozen people, or the conditions of a neighborhood or a
class, has done something which cannot in any bad sense be
called narrow" (p. 142). Howells indicates by this state
ment that though he considers individual human nature im
portant in fiction he also considers it the novelist's
responsibility to portray accurately the social character
istics of particular localities. Obviously, the novelist
who intends to do so must understand the society he pic
tures as well as the universal human nature of its inhabi
tants .
Howells recognizes that, though human nature is con
sistently and universally similar, man's social experience
varies from society to society and from era to era; and he
knows that when the novelist who wishes to be true to his
"own knowledge of things" (p. 145) portrays the "local
color" or characteristics of a particular place or time, he
is capturing a limited and fleeting aspect. Howells ob
serves, for instance, that local variations of American ex
perience are so numerous that no one novelist could pos
sibly capture the totality of American life (pp. 143-144);
and he remarks that fashion and taste change with the pass
ing of time (pp. 3-4). But though truth to human nature,
in Howells' opinion, is "deeper and finer than aspects"
(p. 100), Howells nevertheless believes that complete fi
delity to life includes not only fidelity to human nature,
31
bat fidelity as well to the actual conditions of locality
and time within which human nature reveals itself and plays
its role. The realistic novelist who agrees with Howells,
then, attempts to write a social novel, that is, a novel
which examines the customs and conditions of the specific
society it reflects.
It is not "in every man's power" to test a novelist's
fidelity to the customs and conditions of an unfamiliar so
ciety or region. Yet it does not seem to occur to Howells
that a realist who depicts human nature faithfully could
also falsify the conditions of his society or so inade
quately interpret them that the reflection is by and large
false. Without knowing intimately the cultures of other
countries than his own, Howells apparently assumes that
such writers as Valdes (p. 59) in Spain; Flaubert (pp. 59-
60) and Zola (p. 141) in France; Dostoievsky (p. 128),
Turgenev (p. 141), and Tolstoi (p. 141) in Russia; and
various Norwegian realists (p. 141) faithfully reflect the
conditions of theirs. Though he does not identify his
evaluations as guesses, he can apparently only guess that
all the American regional novelists he admires are faith
fully interpreting their regions and making reliable con- -
tributions to the knowledge of America (p. 142). Even so,
his guess depends on guidelines fundamental to his theory
of realism. If a novelist is true to "what men know of one
another's souls," the reader assumes that such truth grows
32
out of the "human experience" that the writer has observed
and that the writer who depicts that experience is faithful
to it and therefore to the social characteristics of the
nation or region in which it occurred. In the case of
American writers, the American reader can also test the
accuracy of a regional novelist's picture by the novelist's
fidelity to characteristics that, despite local variations,
are typically American. As such an American reader,
Howells devotes a considerable portion of Criticism and
Fiction to what he considers typical characteristics of
American life.
One characteristic which Howells deplores in several
sections of Criticism and Fiction is the sentimental read
ing tastes of his contemporary Americans. Contemporary
American readers, he says, show a "love of the marvelous
and impossible in fiction" (p. 108). They admire the
heroine of fiction, for instance, who has "long taught by
example" that "Love" is "worthy of every sacrifice," and
is "altogether a finer thing than prudence, obedience,
reason; that love alone" is "glorious and beautiful."
Such readers admire as well, he declares, the fictional
heroine's tendency "to idolize and illustrate Duty . . .
opposing duty also to prudence, obedience, and reason."
And finally, he says, they admire "the stock hero" who
also sees love as "the great affair, whether . . . of
chivalrous achievement or manifold suffering for love's
33
sake" (pp. 96-97). Howells does not directly suggest in
Criticism and Fiction that realists portray in their fic
tion characters with such tastes, but his own belief that
fiction should reflect actual life requires that a novelist
who sees such people in his society in significant numbers
should picture them in his novels.
One American characteristic that Howells does declare
that the American novelist should show in fiction is the
people's ordinariness, their lack of distinction, their
commonplaceness (p. 139). He feels that American reading
tastes reflect both this ordinariness and a desire on the
part of most Americans not to be ordinary. The reason most
Americans prefer the English novel, for instance, is that
the English novel, "with its hackneyed plot, scenes, and
figures, is more comfortable to the ordinary American than
an American novel, which deals, at its worst, with com
paratively new interests and motives. To adjust one's self
to the enjoyment of these [new interests and motives] re
quires an intellectual effort, and an intellectual effort
is what no ordinary person likes to make." "An English
novel, full of titles and rank, is apparently essential to
the happiness of such people"; they are comfortable with
it. The characters of the American novel, "so like their
own, strike them as commonplace; they do not wish to know
such people." Americans, Howells explains, are "all, or
nearly all, struggling to be distinguished from the mass,
and to be set apart in select circles and upper classes
like the fine people we have read about.1 1 Instead of ac
cepting the fact that they "are really a mixture of the
plebeian ingredients of the whole world,” Americans believe
that the "superfine" as offered by the English novel is
better (pp. 78-81). Despite the fact that "we have been
now some hundred years building up a state on the affirma
tion of the essential equality of men in their rights and
duties" (p. 139), Americans, because they do not like to
think of themselves as common, are nevertheless, Howells
declares, a class-conscious people. But the attempts of
American novelists to assemble "urbane life" in our pic
tures are failures," Howells says, "possibly because that
life is too transitory, too intangible in its nature with
us, to be truthfully represented as really existent"
(p. 131). Yet American readers do not, Howells charges,
want to make the intellectual effort required to identify
their real worth, the "worth of the vulgar" (p. 81), whose
beauty the responsible American novelist tries to capture.
Howells indicates, however, that despite the dissatis
faction of most Americans with their common lot, a spirit
of optimism pervades American society, where the real "dif
ferences are not of classes, but of types, and not of types
either so much as of characters" (p. 142). The American,
Howells says, "breathes a rarefied air full of shining
possibilities and radiant promises" (p„ 126). Howells adds
35
that violence is not typical in American life, that in
American novels accurately reflecting "American experience"
"nothing happens; that is, nobody murders or debauches any
body else; there is no arson or pillage of any sort"
(p. 127). Discussing Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment,
Howells writes:
Whoever struck a note so profoundly tragic in American
fiction would do a false and mistaken thing. . . . In
a land where journeymen carpenters and plumbers strike
for four dollars a day the sum of hunger and cold is
comparatively small, and the wrong from class to class
has been almost inappreciable, though all this is
changing for the worse. Our novelists, therefore,
concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of
life, which are the more American, and seek the uni
versal in the individual rather than the social in
terests. It is worth while to be true to our well-
to-do actualities; the very passions themselves seem
to be softened and modified by conditions which for
merly at least could not be said to wrong any one, to
cramp endeavor, or to cross lawful desire. (pp. 128-
129)
Not even, says Howells, the "sin and suffering and
shame" that America shares with the rest of the world are
due to unfavorable social conditions: "I believe [writes
Howells] that in this new world of ours injustice is still
mainly from one to another one, and oftener still from one
to one's self." Death and "painful disease," though common
in America, are inherent "in the very nature of things" and
are "not peculiarly American, as the large cheerful average
of health and success and happy life is." "Apart from
these purely mortal troubles, the race here has enjoyed
conditions in which most of the ills that have darkened its
36
annals might be averted by honest work and unselfish be
havior.1' (p. 129) In these sentences Howells describes an
American society in which a "broad level of prosperity"
(p. 128) has in the past insured such an economic suffi
ciency that few who wished to work have suffered from dep
rivation caused by the social structure itself. As Howells
sees it, even the discontent of strikers grows out of de
sire, not for relief from oppression, but for a greater
share of the available plenty. To be true to such an
American actuality, a novelist cannot honestly claim that
such favorable conditions do not exist. Howells does not
say that the "smiling aspects," which metaphorically repre
sent only the face of things,^ do not conceal certain prob
lems in America. He implies, however, that such problems
as exist are less apparent than these "smiling aspects."
Furthermore, he suggests that the novelist who honestly
explores American problems--such as the common lack among
^See Criticism and Fiction, p. 100. Speaking of the
novelist's responsibility for ascertaining the "local
color" he reflects in his fiction, Howells warns that "the
truth is deeper and finer than aspects" (italics added).
This use of the term aspects indicates that Howells con
sidered it to be a synonym for appearances. In saying then
that American novelists concern themselves with the more
smiling aspects of life," he is merely saying that these
novelists must do so in order to be true to the obvious
"local-color" of American life. Furthermore, unless he
contradicts himself, Howells believes that such novelists
should also present that truth which he says is "deeper
and finer than aspects."
37
Americans of mature intellectual self-dependency and the
common dissatisfaction of Americans with their own lack of
social distinction, both of which Howells himself attests
to--must show these problems within the context of the
"well-to-do actualities" which he feels more obviously pre
vail in American life. 1-0 Howells simply means that social
conditions in America aid the individual in his struggle
for betterment rather than hamper him, and that though the
individual may be too foolish or immature to know his best
interest, these social conditions do encourage him to im
prove his circumstances. Such social conditions do not
offer the American obvious guidance in his own intellectual
and moral development. They merely provide an atmosphere
in which he can determine his own direction in his own best
lights. They are not conditions, Howells believes, in
which despair has hardened sympathy or in which passionate
demands are necessary to secure one a fair portion of the
general good. They are the conditions which Howells be
lieves as an "objective” observer to have generally charac
terized American civilization. As such he considers them
10The passage under discussion has usually been misin
terpreted as a statement by Howells that fiction about
American life should reflect only the "well-to-do actuali
ties." See above, pp. 3-5. Such interpretations of the
passage consider it only in isolation. The passage as
Howells intended it in Criticism and Fiction should be
read only within the total context of that work.
38
part of the "local color" of American life which the Ameri
can novelist "had better have" "well-ascertained" (p. 100).
Howells indicates by his description of the kind of
material he believes the American realist should portray
that he feels the American novelist should present American
social themes. Howells means that the realist who portrays
the society of a small village in America reveals a true
picture not only of that small village but of its signifi
cance to all of American life as well. Howells’ statements
suggest that he believes American novelists should communi
cate American themes through the faithful portrayal of the
societies of small groups of Americans. The American
realistic novel is, in Howells' opinion, a social novel,
which communicates, whatever the limits of its locale, a
statement about American social life.
Though Howells appears to prescribe the kind of Amer
ica American realists should reflect in fiction, he does
not imply that American life is static and unchangeable.
He hopes that American readers will learn to apply "the
standard of the arts" that "is in every man's power"
(pp. 7, 14), that their tastes will improve, and that
Americans will grow to recognize the values of their own
social principle of equality and their actual commonplace
ness. He hopes too that American admiration for British
artistic and social traditions will disappear. Such hopes
reflect Howells’ recognition that changes in such attitudes
39
are possible. He states explicitly that "the wrong from
class to class" that ''has been almost inappreciable" and
the conditions in which "the sum of hunger and cold is
comparatively small” are all "changing for the worse"
(p. 128). In his statement that "conditions" "formerly at
least could not be said to wrong any one, to cramp en
deavor, or to cross lawful desire" (p. 129), he implies by
the phrase formerly at least that there is evidence that
such conditions are changing, "it is a day," he writes of
his own times, "of bold denial that the conditions in which
we would fain have rested are sacred or immutable. Espe
cially in America, where the race has gained a height never
reached before, the eminence enables more men than ever be
fore to see how even here vast masses of men are sunk in
misery that must grow every day more hopeless, or embroiled
in a struggle for mere life that must end in enslaving and
imbruting them." (pp. 183-184) Howells recognizes in fact
that change is occurring constantly in America. The
"smiling aspects" of American society, which reflect the
generally prosperous conditions and the traditional Ameri
can principle of equality, are, Howells feels, undergoing
a serious change. The American novelist, Howells implies,
must, if he sees such changes, reflect them in his fiction
about American life.
The views of contemporary American society that
Howells presents in Criticism and Fiction do not then
40
irrevocably commit Howells or any other American novelist
to a prescribed interpretation of American life. If condi
tions can worsen they can also change completely. The
"smiling aspects of life" in America can conceivably disap
pear, or they can be darkened by immediate circumstance to
the point that they are not apparent. For those "sunk in
misery" in the midst of plenty, the "smiling aspects of
life" may provide an ironic contrast to their own suffer
ing. Furthermore, Howells’ views in Criticism and Fiction
allow the possibility that even prior to its publication in
1891 he might at times have seen American society different
ly. Events may change the face of a society even from day
to day, and a novelist in tune with such events may, in re
flecting what he observes, note such changes. His inter
pretations of these changes may likewise vary as particular
conditions appear to dominate for a while only to be re
placed by apparently new conditions or as he himself
changes his mind. But looking back in 1891 at the history
of American civilization, Howells seems to feel that the
overall picture is one in which American experience has
generally consisted of "shining possibilities and radiant
promises" (p. 126).-*-^
■^This comment does not ignore the fact that he seems
to have felt the same in 1886 when he originally published
the passage. See "Editor's Study," Harper's New Monthly
Magazine, LXIII (September 1886), 64T~l However, the pur
pose of the present chapter is an examination of Criticism
and Fiction alone in terms of its particular statement of
Howells 1 literary views.
41
For Howells, though, the realist, whether American or
otherwise, must do more than merely present an accurate re
flection of human nature and a particular human society.
In Howells1 view, the novelist whose work faithfully re
flects the results of a detached observation of "human ex
perience" and an intelligent interpretation of this experi
ence into truth about human nature and human society has
indeed created a work of beauty (p. 62). But for Howells
a work of art expresses not only the beautiful, but the
beautiful and the good (p. 3). "If it is true," Howells
writes, that "’the object of a novel should be to charm
through a faithful representation of human actions and hu
man passions, and to create by this fidelity to nature a
beautiful work,1 and if 'the creation of the beautiful1 is
solely ’the object of art,' it never was and never can be
solely its effect as long as men are men and women are wom
en. "12 "The finest effect of the beautiful will be ethi
cal and not aesthetic merely." Howells goes on to say that
•^Criticism and Fiction, pp. 82-83. Howells indicates
that he is quoting Juan Valera y Alcala Galiano, Pepita
Ximenez (Madrid, 1874). According to Clara Marburg Kirk
and Rudolf Kirk, eds., Criticism and Fiction and Other
Essays (New York, 1959), p. 386, the passages quoted appear
on p. 24 of a translation by Alcala Galiano into English
in 1886. See also Walt Whitman, "Democratic Vistas," in
Complete Prose Works (Philadelphia, 1892), p. 253. Whitman
writes that "all works of art are to be first tried by
their art qualities. . . . Then . . . they are to be
strictly and sternly tried by their foundation in . . .
the ethical principles."
42
"beauty may clothe" "a false morality," in which case "it
will corrupt"; or it may "clothe" a "true" morality, in
which case "it will edify"; "in either case it will in
fallibly and inevitably have an ethical effect" (pp. 82-
83). Howells believes that the novelist, recognizing that
readers will be affected by the moral implications of his
novel, should make sure that it has a "true" morality, and
"the greater his power, the greater his responsibility be
fore the human conscience, which is God in us." (p. 86)
"No one hereafter [says Howells] will be able to achieve
greatness who is false to humanity, either in its facts or
its duties." (p. 98)
The responsible novelist, according to such a view,
will not only show how humanity behaves; he will also indi
cate whether such behavior is right or wrong. The "con
scientious" novelist, Howells declares, is "bound to dis
tinguish so clearly that no reader of his may be misled be
tween what is right and what is wrong, what is noble and
what is base, what is health and what is perdition in the
actions and characters he portrays" (pp. 98-99). Because
Howells believes that novels affect the characters of read
ers, many of which characters have not yet fully formed
(p. 94), he insists that responsible fiction must have a
clearly defined ethical intention. Fiction must not merely
"charm," he says, but must tend "somehow, clearly or ob
scurely" "to make the race better and kinder" (p. 188).
43
Responsible fiction teaches, for instance, says
Howells, "that forgiveness, and charity, and the endeavor
for life better and purer than each has lived are the prin
ciples upon which alone the world holds together and gets
forward" (p. 179); it teaches "that certain feelings which
grace human nature, as tenderness for the sick and help
less, self-sacrifice and generosity, self-respect and man
liness and womanliness, are the common heritage of the
race, the direct gift of Heaven, shared equally by the rich
and poor" (p. 180); and it teaches that the "sins of sense"
are punished by "penalties following, swift or slow, but
inexorably sure" (p. 95). It is part of fiction's moral
duty, Howells declares, to "make friends with Need" (p.
184), whether this need be that of "the poor," "the hun
gry, the houseless, the ragged," or that of "the rich,
cursed with aimlessness, the satiety, the despair of
wealth, wasting their lives in a fool's paradise of shows
and semblances, with nothing real but the misery that comes
of insincerity and selfishness" (pp. 185-186).
In other words, Howells argues, responsible fiction
must devote itself, like all "the best literature of our
time," "to the service of humanity" (p. 185), by fidelity
not only to the facts about humanity, but to the duties of
humanity as well. Thus though Howells agrees with the nov
elist Valera that "it is in very bad taste, always imper
tinent and often pedantic, to attempt to prove theses by
44
13
writing stories1' (p. 82), he believes also that a novel
should point out the moral implications of the conditions,
attitudes, and actions it reflects. The novel of realism,
then, whenever it reflects the conditions and attitudes of
a society as well as the individual behavior of characters,
is, as Howells defines realistic fiction, a social novel
which, besides picturing the society it represents, also
contains the novelistfs moral assessment of the conditions
and attitudes of that society.
Despite the apparent subjectivity of the moral judg
ment which Howells feels the novel should reflect, he be
lieves that such qualities as selflessness and generosity
are universal ideals of the human race (pp. 179-180). As
ideals, they reflect "God in us" (p. 86); they are Mthe
direct gift of Heaven1 1 (p. 180). As such, they are con
cepts 1,1 in every man's power111 and are not secretly and es
pecially confided to the artist. Unlike the facts of the
material world of actual things and actual "human experi
ence," these concepts are not discovered by mere detached
observation and rational analysis. They are a part of the
moral nature of the race and depend for validation upon a
sense of right and wrong which one perceives within himself
and which he attributes by analogy to others. They reflect
* 1 O
The quotation is from the same passage in Pepita
Ximenez.
45
a value system by which one measures man as he is against
man as he ought to be. The responsible novelist, as
Howells sees him, must not only reflect man and his world
as they are but measure them against their ideal possibili
ties .
However, until he translates his material— the results
of his observation, of his rational analysis, and of his
moral evaluation— into fiction, the realistic novelist does
little more than any other conscious student of life. Each
man, Howells believes, who applies himself to understanding
life, observes it, makes generalizations about what he
sees, and attempts to evaluate his observations and gener
alizations in moral terms. Howells does not consider the
novelist's material privileged material, bestowed by grace
upon some men of genius. The "belief in genius," Howells
says, "seems to me rather a mischievous superstition." He
feels that what passes for genius is merely "the Mastery
which comes to any man according to his powers and dili
gence in any direction" (p. 88). Any man may train himself
to become a conscious student of man, as Howells feels the
novelist must, and still not be a novelist. The truths
that the mere student discovers may be factually and mor
ally the same as the novelist's; but the novelist conveys
his truths through art.
It is this transformation of the commonly available
materials of life into art that Howells feels distinguishes
46
the serious artist from any other conscious "man of our
time" (pp. 61-62). "Realism," he writes, "is nothing more
and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material"
(p. 73). Although the legitimate material of art is life
itself as the artist observes and interprets it, the artis
tic process by which he communicates his observations and
interpretations is a matter of technique, or in Howells'
own terms, of the "treatment of material." Howells argues
that the realist treats the material of life so that his
art reflects the actual world. If this realist is a novel
ist, he uses techniques that enable him "to represent and
body forth human experience" (p. 116). Howells insists
that though the realist conveys intellectual and moral in
terpretations of the life he pictures, he does not permit
"ethical intention" to dominate his art. Howells says, for
instance, that though George Eliot outdid Jane Austen in
"ethical intention," Eliot,"fell helplessly below" Austen
in "the form and method most essential to art."-^ Because
in Howells' opinion George Eliot failed to convey her mean
ings with sufficient artistry, Howells declares her not
"worthy to be named with" Jane Austen as an artist (p. 75);
•*-^Tn light of Howells' position, see Joseph Warren
Beach's comment in The Twentieth Century Novel: Studies in
Technique (New York, 1932), p. 308: "William Dean Howells
has been greatly neglected in these pages because, with all
his preoccupation with truth (in a narrow range), he had so
little notion of form."
47
"Jane Austen," Howells says, "was the first and the last of
the English novelists to treat meterial with entire truth
fulness." She "dealt with nature nearly a hundred years
ago," he asserts, "as realism deals with it today” (p. 73).
In other words, Howells believes that Jane Austen dealt
with real life and achieved and maintained while depicting
it the "illusion" of actuality, "in which alone," Howells
declares, "the truth of art resides" (p. 76). Ideally,
suggests Howells, the experience of reading a novel that
successfully does this is similar to an examination of the
actual world.
To achieve the illusion of actuality, Howells says,
the novelist avoids impressing on the reader his presence
as an author. He does not "stand about in his scene, talk
ing it over with his hands in his pockets, interrupting the
action" (p. 76). He is similarly reluctant to "talk over"
his characters. In depicting his characters, he does not
"trust his readers' intuitions so little" as to "rub in
his appeals to them" (pp. 21-22). He does not, for in
stance, "sympathize with certain of his people" or "point
out others for the abhorrence of his readers" (p. 20). He
does not "make a foray among his characters, and catch
them up to show them to the reader and tell him how beauti
ful or ugly" they are, "and cry out over their amazing
properties" (p. 76). He does not evolve his characters by
"analytical" means, either, which Howells characterizes as
48
"long-winded explanation and commentary" (p. 21). The
"truthful" novelist avoids "allegorization" (p. 23) and
"mechanical plots" (p. 20) and the temptation "to moralize
openly and baldly" (p. 20). When Eilian Hughes as Howells
quotes him says of the American realist that "he is never
caught identifying himself" with his characters and that
"he must preserve impartiality at all costs,he des
cribes what Howells considers the ideal "truthful treat
ment" for which the true realist strives. Though he only
feigns impartiality, such a realist to all appearances
keeps himself entirely out of the picture; he makes his art
alone perform the double task of reflecting actuality and
conveying meaning.
In presenting his material, the realist, according to
Howells, is "unpretentious" (p. 3) and "lets the characters
suffice for themselves" (p. 20). He is dramatic in his
treatment, Howells declares, rather than "analytical" (p.
21); he presents without "long-winded explanation and com
mentary" (p. 21) the thoughts, speech, and actions of his
characters. Howells fails to explain explicitly how the
novelist uses such "dramatic" treatment to convey his mean
ings. But by such treatment, he argues, the realist "rep
resents and bodies forth human experience" without
• ^Criticism and Fiction, p. 123. Quoted by Howells
from "Present Day Novels: American Versus English," in
Some Aspects of Humanity (London, 1889), p. 64.
49
intruding and maintains if he is successful the illusion of
actuality in the same way a playwright does in a successful
play.
But, for Howells, the realist's illusion of actuality
is always a reflection of the actual world. The illusion
which Howells insists upon in realistic fiction depends as
much upon this reflection as it does upon the "dramatic"
techniques by which it is presented. A considerable por
tion of the realist's treatment therefore consists of the
techniques by which he transforms the factual material of
life as it "abounds outside of all fiction" (p. 124) into
material that can be "dramatically" presented in fiction.
Obviously, no realist can present in a novel all the ob
served experiences that have led him to the inductive in
terpretations or moral implications he wishes the novel to
communicate. In the first place, the printed words of fic
tion cannot embody actuality and must convey only an il
lusion of itr (p. 75). In the second place, even if a novel
could embody actuality in exact and complete detail, the
novelist could hardly, without intrusion, guide his readers
unerringly to the "true meaning" he himself has found in
the details which he communicates. But for Howells the
responsible artist does guide or "teach" (p. 187) and the
realist does so without obviously intruding. Working with
in the restrictions of the novel as an art form, the real
ist as Howells describes him selects and uses material that
50
will both reflect actuality as it is usually experienced
and communicate his interpretations of it. Since his ma
terial is presented "dramatically," such a realist's novel
may seem merely a detailed, apparently factual, disinter
ested account of human experience; nevertheless, it will,
if it meets Howells1 specifications, convey an intellectual
and moral interpretation of that experience.
For Howells, even the story of a novel has the essen
tial function of reflecting actuality and revealing its
meaning. "The fatuity of the story merely as a story," he
writes, "must early impress the storyteller who does not
live in the stone age of fiction and criticism" (pp. 118-
119) . Howells sees the love story as no exception. Though
he considers a "love intrigue of some sort all but essen
tial to the popularity of any fiction" (p. 151), Howells
feels, nevertheless, that the novelist "can no longer ex
pect to be received on the ground of entertainment only"
(p. 155). Howells also feels that the depiction of trage
dy, or intense human suffering, is justified in fiction
only when it accurately reflects representative human ex
perience and makes an honest statement about it (pp. 150-
151, 128-129). The realist selects his story because it
represents some aspect of the actuality he has observed and
because it provides a means of saying something about that
actuality.
In portraying character, the realist, according to
51
Howells, reflects "fidelity to experience and probability
of motive" (p. 15). He "portrays men and women as they
are, actuated by the motives and the passions in the meas
ure we all know," "with the different interests in their
true proportions" (p. 104). According to these specifica
tions, each character represents one or more generaliza
tions about human nature; the realist says in effect that
each character he presents is a microcosm of all humanity,
that men and women in actual life are really like his
character. For this reason the realist does not select the
bizarre or unusual or spectacular in human nature except in
proportion to its frequency in actuality. He bases his
selection on the probable, that is, the "statistically"
probable, and the representative. But since it is also
the novelist's duty "to distinguish between what is right
and what is wrong . . . in the actions and characters he
portrays" (pp. 98-99), the realist's attitudes toward his
characters are far from passive.
Though each person in real life is an individual, he
is also a member of various social groups. Since the
realist wishes to achieve fidelity in his pictures of such
groups as well as fidelity to human nature itself, he
selects characters that are representative of these groups
in some way. Such a character is both an individual and a
social type. Whenever the realist as Howells defines him
identifies a character with a group, he suggests at once
that the character is a representative member. If the
character is not really typical, the realist's image of
the group is distorted unless he indicates the divergence.
If the character ia typical, the realist uses him to say
something about the group. As the realist develops a
character that he has identified with a group, he provides
increased insight not only into the nature of the character
but into the nature of the group as well.
Despite Howells1 statement that "no man is a type, but
a character" (p. 18) and despite his distaste for the
"touch of exaggeration that typifies" (p. 19), his prin
ciple of representative selection implies, nonetheless, a
sophisticated employment of "types" in fiction. What How
ells objects to in the usual portrayal of types is the
over-simplification of character that often accompanies it
in some novels (p. 19) and in the romance (p. 115); each
person in a novel should be a character, too, Howells in
sists, "fully rounded and complex" (p. 115). Nevertheless,
Howells' theory implies that since each character the real
ist uses represents in some way the social group with which
the realist identifies him, this character helps the real
ist to generalize about the group. For instance, the real
ist who pictures a New Englander uses the New Englander's
character to generalize about New England society--and in
turn about American society itself as manifested in New
England behavior and attitudes.
Howells believes then that the conditions and social
attitudes presented in fiction should be based on repre
sentative conditions and attitudes as they occur in actu
ality. In his statement that American social tragedy
modeled on Dostoievsky’s Crime and Punishment would be
false and mistaken, Howells does not mean to imply that
there are no instances of social injustice in America.
Rather he argues that ’’ most of the ills that have darkened
its annals might be averted by honest work and unselfish
behavior1 1 (p. 129, italics added), that there is in Ameri
ca a "large, cheerful average of health and success and
happy life" (p. 129, italics added). The novelist who
wishes to be faithful in his treatment of the society he
pictures uses the "average" as his standard and presents
in their true proportions those conditions and attitudes
that deviate from this standard.
From this position Howells defends the failure of his
contemporary American novelists to treat sex openly in
fiction. Their restraint, he writes, is "faithfully rep
resentative of the tone of modern American life" (p. 148).
"The guilty intrigue, the betrayal, the extreme flirtation
even" are "the exceptional thing in life" as most Ameri
cans see it, Howells argues,"and unless the scheme of
•^For discussions of Howells’ attitudes toward sex,
see Everett Carter, Howells and the Age of Realism (Phila
delphia, 1950), pp. 139-152; and Edwin H. Cady, The Real-
ist at War (Syracuse, 1958)^ pp. 121-128. ---------
54
the story necessary involved it . . . it would be bad art
to lug it in" (p. 149). Though he admits that such sexual
behavior occurs, and "is unquestionably the material of
tragedy, the stuff from which intense effects are wrought,"
Howells declares that "vicious love" is not in "any just
sense characteristic of our society" (pp. 150-151). The
American novelists who refrain from the exploitation of
sex, says Howells, "have kept a true perspective in regard"
to sexual "realities" (p. 156); "they have relegated them
in their pictures of life to the space and place they occu
py in life itself. . . . They have kept a correct propor
tion" (p. 156). In other words, Howells believes that the
novelist can represent a society accurately in fiction only
if he reflects in what he considers a correct proportion
the characteristics that constitute it.
The social world of a novel with a "correct propor
tion" is ideally an accurate picture of part of the actual
world. It is accurate in its detail, in what Howells con
siders observable "facts"; since the novelist has selected
what he himself considers "proportionate," his picture re
flects his intellectual generalizations about the external
world. Such a novel as Howells recommends also conveys a
moral judgment.
However, Howells does not account for a means by which
the realist can clearly communicate moral judgments about
the actuality he portrays in fiction. Because he cannot
55
intrude as an author, the realist, according to Howells,
conveys his view of "what is right and what is wrong" in
the behavior and attitudes of his characters by dramatic
presentation alone. He depends then largely upon his
readers' recognizing independently the moral standards by
which he himself judges such behavior and attitudes.
Howells says, of course, that the novelist must demonstrate
the "penalties" which are visited upon the "sins of sense"
in the "real world" (p. 96). But since Howells insists
that the realist must not intrude himself into his fiction
such a realist must depend upon his readers1 recognizing
what he considers "sins of sense" whenever he portrays
them.
Howells indicates throughout Criticism and Fiction
that he considers the most opprobious human traits to be
foolishness and selfishness--both of which one can inter
pret as "sins of sense," whether by sense Howells means
"common sense" or mere physical sensation. At any rate,
the reader who is to understand the moral statement in
such a realistic novel as Howells prescribes must be made
to recognize, by the picture alone, the kinds of behavior
the novelist considers "sins of sense." The likelihood of
such a reader's doing so depends largely upon his pos
sessing perceptions, both intellectual and moral, similar
to the novelist's.
56
Howells assumes that the moral quality of selflessness
is a universal ideal of the human race,17 and by implica
tion he assumes also that anyone can recognize selfishness
when it is demonstrated in characters. Similarly, he must
assume that readers can recognize foolishness when novel
ists picture it. Thus, the ’’ duty1 1 of the novelist as a
moral teacher is, in Howells' view, merely to remind read
ers of moral truths which they already know or to apply
those moral truths to conditions too complex to evaluate
easily. Nevertheless, such a "duty" does involve an awak
ening of readers' consciousness. If what readers see in a
novel is a truly faithful simulation of the world they al
ready know, they will probably fail to understand moral im
plications that they do not already recognize in their own
actual world. Howells does indicate by his insistence that
the novelist demonstrate the "penalties" of "sins of
sense," that the realist can provide some clue to his char
acters' "sins of sense" by portraying the consequences of
such "sins." Though, obviously, as Howells himself points
out, some suffering "comes in the very nature of things"
(p. 129) and is not always reliable evidence of preceding
"sins," the realist can picture what appear to be conse
quences of human behavior and by so doing alert readers to
the need to assess such behavior morally.
l-^See above, p. 44.
57
When the novelist's "illusion" of actuality faithfully
reflects the actual world, his work, Howells says, can be
verified by "the standard of the arts which we all have in
our power, the simple, the natural, and the honest" (p.
14). The criterion Howells speaks of is one for testing
the author's fidelity to material rather than for evalu
ating "form and method," which Howells says are "most
essential to art" (p. 75). By such a standard, any reader
can at least make a preliminary assessment of the worth of
a piece of fiction.
To the ordinary reader, because the realist avoids
tricks of plot and of style and of character portrayal or
attempts at "dramatic effect" (p. 44), a successful novel
of realism seems "simple." Because it conveys an "illu
sion" of actuality based on life itself, it seems "natu
ral." Because it seriously attempts to avoid "lies about
human nature and the social fabric" (p. 94) and because its
author examines its questions with apparent sincerity and
impartiality, it seems honest as well. On all counts, how
ever, the reader may be mistaken in his judgment. The ap
parent simplicity of the finished novel of realism depends
upon techniques of selection and presentation whose com
plexity is not evident to the casual reader. What appears
to be natural, even though it reflects the real world, is
only an illusion based on carefully considered selection
and presentation by the author. And though the realist
58
may seem sincerely disinterested, Howells does not expect
him to be impartial regarding the moral implications of his
material.
For these reasons a thorough appreciation of a novel
of realism as Howells defines it requires more than a test
ing of the people and the world of the novel against real
life. It is necessary as well to recognize the techniques
by which a novelist achieves the "illusion” which the read
er may test. These techniques may vary from realist to
realist. Though Howells is prescriptive, he does not limit
the number of possible techniques that a novelist may use
in the conversion of the external world into his "illu
sion." The only restriction that Howells insists on is
that the novelist keep himself out of the work and let the
characters and the action convey his meanings. Though
Howells seems to feel that the novelist cannot convey a
reliable "illusion" of actuality without "dramatic" treat
ment and "proportionate" selection, he does not define them
as the only methods at the realist's disposal. Since fic
tion is for Howells a means of conveying "the meaning of
things" (p. 187) by a simulation of actuality, the tech
niques by which the realist conveys both meaning and the
"illusion" of actuality are important. A knowledge of
them provides the reader with a way of getting at the mean
ing as well as a way of testing the fidelity of a picture.
If the reader does not understand the realist's techniques,
59
he may assume that the realist is telling merely a factual
story with little significant meaning.
But such an assumption is invalid. "Fiction," Howells
does indeed say, "is a finer art than it has ever been
hitherto, and more nearly meets the requirements of the in
fallible standard" (p. 86). By this statement, Howells
suggests that the "illusion" of actuality achieved in con
temporary fiction reflects the actual world so faithfully
that it almost meets the test for fidelity to truth that is
in "every man's power." But the value of such fiction lies
not in its achievement of such fidelity alone. "I have
hopes of real usefulness in it, [i.e. fiction]," Howells
adds, "because it is at last building on the only sure
foundation" (p. 186). Fiction, whose "sure foundation" or
"infallible standard" is external actuality, is valid only
when it also serves a moral purpose. Unless, says Howells,
fiction and other arts "tend to make the race better and
kinder," they "are all lower than the lowest crafts that
feed and house and clothe, for except they do this office
they are idle; and they cannot do this except from and
through the truth" (p. 188, italics added). Responsible
fiction draws its truth from the facts and "true meanings"
of the real world; it conveys this truth through art,
which for the realist is "the truthful treatment of materi
al” (p. 73) in the communication of the "beautiful and
good" (p. 3).
60
Ultimately then, Howells sees realism as a matter of
both material and technique. The material that the realist
treats truthfully must be the observed and interpreted ma
terial of the world he experiences. The material of such
a world is in constant flux, and the realist who is faith
ful in his pictures records its changes. But whereas the
real world, as Howells consistently recognizes, undergoes
changes, "the standard of the arts" that he considers valid
is supposed to be universal, applicable to the achievement
of authors of any time or place. Howells feels that good
artists of any age detach themselves from their material
and let the material they select and the way they present
it convey the artists' concepts. The novelist should con
vey his own feelings about his world as well as his in
ductive generalizations about it only by means of art.
Though in speaking of the material of fiction Howells
is specific about some features of it, he does not so arbi
trarily define that material that he does not account for
the possibility of change in the nature of it. Each nov
elist, Howells feels, should draw human experience accord
ing to his knowledge of it, and if the society he reflects
changes or his view of the society changes he is faithful
to his knowledge if he accounts in fiction for such
changes.
Nevertheless, Howells does not account in Criticism
and Fiction for any remarkable change in American society
61
or any significant change in his view of it. Since Howells
implies that Criticism and Fiction represented his views
from 1886 to 1891, the work should account for any change
that occurred during those five years. Despite Howells1
recognition of some social injustice in America and some
undesirable American tendencies, American novels of the
period, including his own, should, according to his inter
pretation of American society and his literary principles,
reflect an America in which optimism and prosperity pre
vail .
Yet the realist faithfully reflects the conditions of
the particular time and place he represents in his fiction,
and a novelist whose picture of his society is faithful to
life as he sees it can change his mind from time to time
about it. If Howells' own fiction from 1886 to 1891, for
instance, reflects a change of attitude toward America,
Howells himself, if his picture is faithful to the immedi
ate aspects it portrays, does not violate his principles
as a novelist because of the change. If he is inconsis
tent at all in such a case, it is because he does not suf
ficiently account in Criticism and Fiction for such change.
On the other hand, Howells does not allow for such
variations in technique as he does in material. Whatever
techniques the realist uses in a novel to convey "the il
lusion of actuality," he must remain apparently detached
from his material. Howells consistently condemns the
62
techniques of novelists who destroy their illusion by any
form of authorial intrusion. The action and characteriza
tion alone must convey the author’s intellectual and moral
convictions.
Since Howells was a novelist as well as a critic, his
position as he expresses it in Criticism and Fiction can
best be understood in the light of his attempts to apply
his principles to his own fiction of the period from 1886
to 1891. If all these novels reflect the specific views
of American society that Howells expresses in Criticism
and Fiction, all of them convey a picture of an optimistic
and affluent society in which Americans are "all, or nearly
all" foolishly striving to prove that they are not equal
socially with everyone else. And finally, if all these
novels reflect the techniques of realism which Howells
identified in Criticism and Fiction, Howells portrays in
all of them socially representative types which he presents
with a dramatic "illusion" of objectivity. In order to de
termine whether Howells changed his practice in any one of
these areas, one must ultimately study all the novels of
the period. However, critics have heretofore implied that
in his fiction of the period Howells did not begin to mani
fest a deep concern with American social problems until he
published Annie Kilburn in 1888.-^ Therefore, a study of
■^See above, pp. 6-10.
63
change in Howells' fictive practice during the period be
gins logically with an examination of the first three nov-
19 i
els of the period--Indian Summer, The Minister s
Charge,^ and April Hopes.^ The purpose of such a study
is to determine whether Howells included in these novels
such meaningful American social themes as he argued for in
Criticism and Fiction and, if so, how he attempted to com
municate them. To the extent that these three novels re
flect Howells' prescribed themes and literary method, such
a study should throw light upon Howells1 difficulties in
communicating social themes through his technique of real
ism. Finally, such a study should determine whether
Howells' theory in Criticism and Fiction can be applied in
an appraisal of Howells1 practice in the later novels of
the period.
•^Boston, 1886.
^Boston, 1886.
2%ew York, 1887.
CHAPTER III
REPRESENTATIVE SELECTION AND
THE ’’ SOCIAL FABRIC"
The three novels of William Dean Howells that were
published in 1886 and 1887 all engaged his attention in
1886, and therefore should reflect the literary views he
held at the beginning of the five-year period during which
the material of Criticism and Fiction was published.• * -
Though Howells obtained the copyrights of Indian Summer
2
and The Minister's Charge in 1885, he published both nov
els in book form in 1886,^ soon after they completed their
runs as serials earlier in the year.^ The third novel of
■*-The material of Criticism and Fiction was selected by
Howells in 1891 from h’ i ' s " "Editor’s Study" essays which ap
peared monthly in Harper's New Monthly Magazine from Janu
ary 1886 to December 1890. (See footnote 2, p. 12 above).
^For the date of the copyright of Indian Summer, see
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, XXXI (July 1885), 261; for
that o£ The Minister's charge, see The Century Magazine,
XXXI (February 1886), Sol.
^Both novels were published in Boston: Indian Summer
on February 19, 1886; The Minister's Charge on December Tl,
1886. See William M. Gibson and George Arms, A Bibliogra
phy of William Dean Howells (New York, 1948), pp. 109-110.
^For the last installment of Indian Summer see Har
per ' s New Monthly Magazine, LXXII (February 1886), pp. 448-
46U; the last installment of The Minister's Charge appeared
in The Century Magazine, XXXIII (December 1886),183-192.
64
the period, April Hopes,was not published in book form
until December 10, 1887^; but since the first seven chap
ters of the serialized version appeared in Harperr s New
Monthly Magazine of February 1887^ Howells probably wrote
these seven chapters, if not the whole of April Hopes, by
December 15, 1886, the apparent deadline for copy for the
February issue.^ With the problems of seeing two of the
novels into book publication and of planning and writing
the third, Howells was occupied with all three of these
novels in 1886; and it is reasonable to suppose that he
considered all three of them practical illustrations of the
principle of realism that he was simultaneously defining in
his early "Editor's Study" essays.
Furthermore, if Howells described in Criticism and
Fiction his literary practice during the entire period from
1886 to 1891,. one should find that these first three novels
of the period demonstrate the principles of realism Howells
pronounced in Criticism and Fiction as well as the kinds of
American social themes he defined therein.
-*New York. See Gibson and Arms, Bibliography, p. 112.
6LXXIV (February 1887), 381-396.
^See "Monthly Record of Current Events," Harper1 s New
Monthly Magazine, LXIV (December 1886), 163, which reads:
"Our record is closed on the 15th of December." Presumab
ly, since the magazine probably closed its records of cur
rent events after all else for the issue was in, the first
seven chapters of April Hopes were already in by December
— 66
However, despite Howells' argument in Criticism and
Fiction that the American realist should make intellectual
and moral statements about American society,^ critics have
commonly read two of the three novels--Indian Summer and
April Hopes--as love stories of little social significance
beyond their implied criticism of popular American atti
tudes toward courtship and matrimony. Of twentieth-century
critics who have discussed the two novels, both Delmar
Gross Cooke and Oscar W. Firkins explicitly call them love
stories. Cooke says that Indian Summer has "the salient
features . . . of the love romance" and that April Hopes
is a "love story . . . constantly enlivened by sketches of
the Boston aristocracy."9 Similarly, Firkins disregards
the two as novels of social significance. He describes
Indian Summer as a "love story" that "lacks both the weight
and the burden of a sociological motive" and April Hopes
as "Mr. Howells' most vivid portraiture of love."10 Clara
Marburg Kirk and Rudolf Kirk remark of April Hopes only
that it is light and of Indian Summer that "the contrast
between age twenty and age forty in love is the theme on
which Howells hangs his tale." Evidence of the Kirks'
Q
See above, pp. 28-44.
William Dean Howells (New York, 1922), pp. 205, 207.
• ^ ^William Dean Howells (Cambridge, Mass., 1924), pp.
123, 131.
67
belief in the inconsequentiality of the social themes of
Indian Summer is their statement that writing this novel
was "a vacation [for Howells] from his more serious social
novels. The attempts of other critics to find deeper
and broader social significance in the two novels have been
generally unsuccessful. Everett Carter, in discussing
Howells1 novelistic criticism of American social institu
tions in the 1880's, does not mention April Hopes at all.
Of Indian Summer, Carter declares that "romantic codes of
behavior between the sexes were the fixed principles
Howells attacked" in that novel.^ Edwin H. Cady, who ap
parently considers Indian Summer a psychological study of
three characters in love rather than a direct examination
of society, does not credit the work with social signifi
cance other than as a lesson "for Americans who too easily
become obsessed with the advantages of resilient tissue and
physical euphoria--with youth."13 And George N. Bennett
writes that the theme of Indian Summer, like that of April
Hopes, "is the familiar [in Howells] antisentimental
11
"introduction," William Dean Howells: Representative
Selections (New York, 1950), pp. xciii, lxxxvi, lxxxv.
• ^Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadelphia, 1950),
p. 154.
• ^The Road to Realism (Syracuse, 1956), pp. 224-229.
68
proposal that people exercise common sense even in love
affairs."14 The implication of such interpretations as
thesel^ is that if the novels reflect American society at
all, they reflect only one side of it; namely, that side
having to do with courtship and marriage.
Such interpretations fail to recognize Howells1 at
tempts in these novels to relate the problems of American
courtship to the total American social experience. Howells
said in Criticism and Fiction that "Love" is not "the chief
interest of a life, which is really concerned with a great
many other things."16 Such a statement leads one to wonder
whether Howells intended Indian Summer and April Hopes as
simple love stories or even as novels whose only social
concerns are the problems of courtship. If he intended
them as either, Howells reveals in these two novels a con
siderable concern with what he described in Criticism and
Fiction as an inconsiderable aspect of human experience.
Howells felt that the love story and the immediate
^•\filliam Dean Howells: The Development of a Novel
ist, (Norman, Okla., 1959), p. 147.
^For similar readings of the two novels, see Vernon
Louis Farrington, Main Currents in American Thought (New
York, 1930), III, 252". George C. Carrington, J rT , The
Immense Complex Drama (Columbus, 1966), pp. 78, 133, also
concentrates upon the love intrigue of Indian Summer;
Carrington does not discuss April Hopes.
■^New York, 1891, p. 96.
social problems connected with love making should ideally
be kept in their proper perspective (p. 156). As a prac
ticing realist who believed that for the realist every fact
in fiction must have a meaning (pp. 15-16), Howells im
plicitly uses the "facts" of a love story meaningfully.
By his argument in Criticism and Fiction that the realistic
novel should interpret the particular society it reflects,
Howells implies that in such contemporaneous fiction as
Indian Summer and April Hopes, whose characters are Ameri
cans, he attempts to communicate meaningful statements
about American life. If in these novels Howells substanti
ates in any way his view that "love" and courtship repre
sent only a portion of the total American experience, these
novels, despite their obvious love stories, include social
statements which Howells considered of greater import than
concerns relating merely to American courtship.
Even without applying the literary principles Howells
defined in Criticism and Fiction, readers have not gener
ally interpreted his The Minister's Charge merely as a love
story. This novel does have a "love intrigue" such as
Howells finds "all but essential to the popularity of any
fiction" (Criticism and Fiction, p. 151); but the account
of Lemuel Barker's attempts to find happiness through love
is clearly an adjunct to the story of his efforts among
people at several levels of Boston life to achieve finan
cial security and social acceptance. Because Lemuel's
70
various social experiences and apparent attitudes undergo
considerable moral analysis by the Reverend David Sewell
and by Sewell’s acquaintances in Boston, most critics have
interpreted The Minister's Charge as some kind of social
statement.
Such critics from Firkins to the present have argued
specifically that The Minister's Charge is Howells' vehicle
to express a doctrine of "complicity," which, as Howells
has Sewell explain in a sermon, states that men are morally
bound to each other by "ties" of mutual responsibility
(p. 458). Firkins, for instance, assumes that Howells in
tended The Minister's Charge to illustrate the principle of
"complicity" (p. 121). The Kirks also see the varied ex
periences depicted in the novel as the source material of
Sewell's sermon on "complicity," which, they say, is "one
of Howells' favorite ideas" (p. cxiii). Cady agrees with
them when he writes that "the tale . . . climaxes in the
minister's charge--to his people, a charge Howells would
make to all the world.”17 Bennett states that one of
Howells' intentions in The Minister's Charge is "to drama
tize . . . the doctrine of complicity" (p. 165) and that
Sewell's interpretation of the dramatized incidents in
terms of complicity is "the real meaning of the novel"
(p. 168). These interpretations imply that the theme of
~ ^The Realist at War (Syracuse, 1958), p. 7.
71
the novel is essentially moral and is presented by a sim
ple, obvious, and common device for communicating moral
statements--a clergyman's sermon.
Firkins and Bennett, who cannot reconcile some ele
ments of the novel to this interpretation, account for
their difficulty by insisting that the novel is flawed.
Firkins feels that though "complicity" is indeed Howells’
theme, there is too little justification in the novel for
his use of Sewell's voice to express that theme. Firkins
considers Sewell so inordinately guilt-ridden over Lemuel's
presence in Boston that his attitude "irks the reader to a
point which deadens his responsiveness to precept" (p.
121). Though Bennett likewise considers Howells' view of
"complicity" the "thematic burden" of the novel (p. 165),
he feels that Howells fails to relate to that "thematic
burden" the main body of incident, whose purpose is to win
"the reader's entire sympathy and respect" for a "country
boy" (pp. 164-165). Such difficulties of interpretation
signify that though this novel appears to deal obviously
with social themes, the apparently obvious, apparently
didactic moral theme of "complicity" does not incontro-
vertibly provide the novel with artistic coherence.
The chief difficulty in the case of The Minister's
Charge arises then not from a failure by critics like
Firkins, Cady, the Kirks, or Bennett to recognize the
presence of social themes, but from a common failure on
72
the critics1 part to show that they considered this novel
in the light of principles of fiction which Howells clearly
defined in Criticism and Fiction. The first instance of
this failure is in the critics' usual assumption that
■ I O
Sewell is Howells’ spokesman, despite Howells' view in
Criticism and Fiction that a novel should maintain an
"illusion" of objective actuality. If Howells had used
Sewell merely as a spokesman, Howells would not only have
identified with Sewell but moralized openly through him.
Yet Howells stated in Criticism and Fiction that the re
sponsible realistic novelist avoids the temptation "to
moralize openly and baldly" (p. 20) and that such a novel
ist "is never caught identifying" himself with his charac
ters. Indeed, Howells said, the realist "preserves im
partiality at all costs" (p. 123). Another related as
sumption that disregards Howells1 statement of his literary
principles in Criticism and Fiction is that Howells wrote
The Minister's Charge to prove a moral thesis. Howells
clearly indicated in Criticism and Fiction that he believed
that one should not obviously "attempt to prove theses by
writing stories" (p. 82). A third example of failure by
these critics to show that they considered Howells' criti
cal views in reading The Minister's Charge is their common
18
See also Carrington, p. 39. Carrington specifically
calls Sewell "Howells' mouthpiece."
73
failure to identify themes beyond the apparently obvious
moral theme of "complicity." A reading of the novel as an
expression of that theme without some consideration of
other possible themes does not account for an objective
interpretation of human nature and human society which,
Howells argued in Criticism and Fiction, the realistic' nov
el should also achieve.19 if, therefore, those critics who
have read The Minister's Charge as merely a lesson about
"complicity" are correct, Howells has violated three of
the principles he insisted upon in Criticism and Fiction:
He has intruded himself into his art, he has written a
novel to prove a moral thesis, and he has failed to make
an intellectual interpretation^ as well as a moral one of
the characters and the society with which his novel deals.
In fact, besides his insistence in Criticism and Fic
tion that the responsible novel should contain intellectu
al and moral statements about man and man's society,
Howells identified also in that work specific American
1 9
See above, p. 22.
20see above, pp. 22-63. According to Howells, the
realistic novelist makes two kinds of statements about man
and man's society. In one kind, the intellect is as near
ly detached from subjective judgment as possible, and the
statement ideally consists of an objective generalization
about what man and his society are like; the other kind of
statement consists of a moral evaluation of the attitudes
and conditions described by such an objective generaliza
tion. The terms intellectual and moral are used in the
present study to distinguish the two types.
characteristics and attitudes which he felt the realistic
novel about American life should reflect. America, he
said, is a land of "shining possibilities and radiant prom
ises" (p. 126) where economic and social opportunity have
made "the more smiling aspects of life . . . the more
American" (p. 128). He believed that most Americans of his
time, however, saw the "shining possibilities and radiant
promises" as opportunities for rising socially. Though
Americans, he said, "are really a mixture of the plebian
ingredients of the whole world" (p. 81) and "have been some
hundred years building up a state on the essential equality
of men in their rights and duties" (p. 139), "all, or near
ly all are struggling to be distinguished from the mass,
and to be set apart in select circles and upper classes
like the fine people we have read about" (p. 80). Ameri
cans had such ambitions, Howells believed, partly because
they read fiction which glorified an aristocratic way of
life. Americans were also taught by such fiction, Howells
said, that the passion of "Love" is "worthy of every sac
rifice," that "love" alone is "glorious and beautiful"
(p. 96). Howells added that such fiction was currently
teaching a similar idealization of "duty" (pp. 96-97). In
other words, Howells believed that the common American
dreams of wealth, leisure, and social distinction, and the
common American hope that love and self-sacrifice will
bring happiness, were being reinforced by the distorted
75
pictures of human experience that contemporary Americans
found in their reading.^ However, said Howells, the
"urbane life" that Americans longed for and that seemed to
offer social distinction is as foreign to the American
ideal of equality (p. 131) as the idealization of love and
duty that he found prevalent in American life is contrary
to "prudence, obedience, and reason" (pp. 96-97).
When Howells declared that the idealization of "love"
and'<3uty"is contrary to "prudence" and "reason," he clear
ly expressed his subjective opinion that such idealization
is foolish. In writing fiction reflecting his principle
of artistic "detachment," however, Howells cannot identify
his personal attitude toward such idealization so obvious
ly as he did in Criticism and Fiction. But if Howells 1
three novels of 1886 and 1887 faithfully reflect Howells'
literary and social views of the time, as Howells identi
fied them in Criticism and Fiction, not only do the novels
depict instances in which "love" and "duty" are idealized,
but they communicate Howells' subjective view that such
idealization is foolish. A reading of these novels with
Howells' known attitude toward the idealization of "love"
and "duty" in mind will enable the reader to identify
^Howells declared that the writers who were particu
larly guilty of such "distorted pictures" were the English
novelists Scott, Bulwer-Lytton, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte,
Thackeray, and George Eliot. (See Criticism and Fiction,
p. 74).
76
Howells' manner of communicating his own social and moral
views in his fiction.
More basic to an understanding of Howells' social
themes in these three novels, however, is an understanding
of his personal attitude toward the pursuit of an aristo
cratic ideal. For such a pursuit, as Howells pointed out,
represents a departure from the American equalitarian tra
dition and tends to affect the entire social structure.
Nevertheless, whether such a departure is good or bad is a
matter of personal opinion; and since "all, or nearly all"
Americans, according to Howells, considered such a pursuit
desirable the question arises as to whether Howells was
among such Americans. In fact, though Howells balanced the
sarcasm of the phrase fine people by which he referred to
the aristocracy off against the unattractive term plebeian
as a description of actual American origins, he preferred
the concept of social equality to the idea of a class sys
tem structured around an aristocracy. By attributing the
American dream of mere social distinction to the influence
of bad books, for instance, Howells implied not only that
the books are bad partially because they teach such an
ideal but that the pursuit of an aristocratic ideal in
America is misguided. In other words, the pictures of the
joys and the values of an aristocratic life are untrue,
though most Americans who believe what they read think them
true. Howells made a still stronger statement of his
77
disdain for the concept of an aristocracy, however. On the
last page of Criticism and Fiction, he wrote: "The art
. . . which disdains the office of teacher is one of the
last refuges of the aristocratic spirit which is disappear
ing from politics and society, and is now seeking to shel
ter itself in aesthetics" (p. 187, italics added). Fur
thermore, he added, "Neither arts, nor letters, nor sci
ences, except they somehow, clearly or obscurely, tend to
make the race better and kinder, are to be regarded as seri
ous interests . . . for except they do this office they are
idle" (p. 188). He thus attributed such art as does not
"tend to make the race better and kinder" to the "aristo
cratic spirit." By implication, then, the "aristocratic
spirit" cherishes beauty without concern for good just as
do the proponents of "art for art's sake"; and just as
Howells felt art to be "idle" and useless that does not
convey the artist's concept of the "beautiful and good"
(p. 3, italics added), so, for similar reasons, did he con
sider the "aristocratic spirit" likewise idle and useless.
The idealization of this "spirit" is, by implication, as
foolish and imprudent as the idealizations of "love" and
'&uty"^
Since Howells believed that fiction should evaluate,
o o
See note on Walt Whitman above, p. 41, for Whitman's
similar view of art.
78
albeit indirectly, the society with which it deals, one
expects Howells' own fiction of the period to convey inter
pretations of American society similar to those he dis
closed in Criticism and Fiction. Accordingly, in Indian
Summer, The Minister's Charge, and April Hopes, one expects
to find themes related to the desire of Americans to
achieve social status, Since Howells felt that an ideali
zation of "love” and "duty” is contrary to human reason, he
can be expected to show in these novels how foolish such
idealization is. Finally, since Howells felt that a soci
ety in which men are socially equal is better than a soci
ety divided by distinct social classes, he will probably
demonstrate in these novels the damaging effects of the
desire by Americans for a life of social status and com
fortable leisure.
To demonstrate the presence and the effect of social
ambition, Howells could as a realist employ characters from
any area of American life which he sufficiently knew. By
showing ordinary Americans struggling to rise socially, he
could illustrate, for instance, what happens to such peo
ple; or he could show by an examination of the leisure
class itself how little such a class has to offer society
as a whole. Since in Criticism and Fiction Howells attri
buted unrealistic American attitudes toward "love," "duty,"
and "class distinction" to American reading habits, one can
expect Howells to show in his three novels the relationships
79
he believed to exist between American reading tastes and
such attitudes. However, since Howells must present his
views artistically in the three novels, he cannot express
them so explicitly there as he did in Criticism and Fic
tion.
One of Howells' techniques for unobtrusively communi
cating his meanings in these novels is that of employing
representative figures. In Criticism and Fiction Howells
argued that the responsible novelist provides a faithful
reflection of actual life by a presentation of tendencies
and characteristics in their "correct proportion" (p. 156).
As has been e s t a b l i s h e d , ^ this technique involves a use of
characters as types, as socially representative members of
the groups with which they are identified. Accordingly, a
correct reading of the novels published in 1886 and 1887
requires an analysis of the manner in which Howells employs
such characters to make social statements about groups in
American society. That critics in general have not con
sidered Howells' use of types in these novels as a clue to
his statement about American social conditions is a testi
monial to the subtlety of Howells' art. Since he wished to
create an illusion of actuality, Howells could not destroy
that illusion by pointing out that he was using his charac
ters as representative types. Because he wished to portray
23see above, pp. 50-54.
80
characters whose motives are ’ ’ probable" (Criticism and Fic
tion, p. 15) and who are representative of the groups with
which they are identified, Howells had the particularly
challenging task of insuring that these characters also
seemed to be individuals. If his novels are to reflect the
actuality of an America where, Howells said, "the differ
ences are not of classes, but of types, and not of types
either so much as of characters" (Criticism and Fiction,
p. 142), he must make his characters seem like individuals
as well as types. Prohibited by his principles of proba
bility and representative selection from using such overt
devices as an obvious exaggeration of traits or of obvi
ously eccentric behavior, Howells suggests individuality
by techniques that create a detailed illusion of particular
actuality; paradoxically, the greater his success in cre
ating such an illusion, the greater the reader's difficulty
in perceiving the underlying illusion of general actuality
which Howells also wishes to make his characters suggest
and by which he makes an intellectual and moral statement
about American society. In other words, an accumulation
of skillfully arranged details creates, along with its il
lusion of particular actuality, the impression that charac
ters are complex; and the more complex a particular charac
ter appears to be, the less likely is a reader to see him
as a representative figure. A failure to penetrate
Howells’ illusion of particular actuality is at the heart
81
of the usual misreadings of the novels of 1886 and 1887.
Furthermore, the experiences Howells depicts in these
novels do not seem typically American. For instance, rela
tively few Americans of Howells1 time lived in aristocratic
idleness in such European retreats as Florence as do the
middle-class characters in Indian Summer. Similarly, the
typical American did not spend his summers at Campobello or
Newport or Fortress Monroe in aristocratic comfort as do
the characters in April Hopes. And few awkward, incoherent
country boys who came to Boston managed to improve them
selves sufficiently in the course of two years to win the
attention and admiration of aristocratic Boston as Lemuel
Barker does in The Minister's Charge. An unsophisticated
reader might assume that Howells in these novels was merely
entertaining his readers with pictures of an earthly "para
dise" in which Americans had enough money to avoid work.
Even if the inhabitants of such a "paradise" have problems,
it is not immediately clear that such problems relate to
the rest of American society.
Nevertheless, if the reader knows that Howells be
lieved that the novel should be a faithful reflection of
actuality, he can find evidence within the novels alone,
without the help of Criticism and Fiction, that Howells
used his characters as types as well as individuals. If a
novel faithfully reflects actuality, for instance, its
characters act and feel and interpret what they see just as
82
people do in the real world. Accordingly, as part of the
real world, the readers of such a novel have qualities and
tendencies similar to those of the characters in the novel.
If a perceptive reader understands, then, that Howells at
tempts to reflect actuality in these three novels, such a
reader might also understand that Howells expects him to
see the reader himself as possessing the same qualities
and tendencies that are demonstrated in the characters
within the novels. If the reader does so, he might inter
pret a common tendency among Howells' characters to classi
fy other characters as types as a tendency Howells expects
his reader also to possess.
In fact, such a tendency to classify by types is com
mon among the characters in these three novels. In Indian
Summer, for instance, not only does Colville see Imogene
Graham as a typical young girl (p. 125), he imagines that
young women see him as a typical middle-aged man: "[They]
laugh at us; they think we are fat old fellows" (p. 180).
Colville's recognition that Effie Bowen will lack the free
dom of a typical American young girl (p. 18) depends not
upon his personal knowledge of Effie's mother, but upon his
knowledge of the type of American woman who goes to Europe
to educate her daughter (p. 15). Imogene Graham's great
interest in Colville comes not from a thorough knowledge of
him as a person but from the fact that she classifies him
as a disappointed lover (p. 53).
83
In The Minister's Charge, almost every character clas
sifies Lemuel as representing a type. The mere fact that
Lemuel comes from Willoughby Pastures is enough to convince
Statira Dudley that he is a suitable lover; Amanda Grier
says, for instance, that Statira "don’t believe't any harm
can come out of the town of Willoughby, anywheres" (p.
147). Jessie Carver falls in love with Lemuel when she
discovers he has been a sufferer; as Lemuel recounts his
Boston experiences to her, Howells writes, the "pity" "in
her eyes" changes "to admiration" (p. 401). Sibyl Vane
calls him a "servant" (p. 175). After the St. Albans fire
Miss Vane and Charles Bellingham see him as a hero. "How
nobly he behaved!" cries Miss Vane of Lemuel’s behavior
during the fire (p. 357) despite all evidence that Lemuel
did nothing extraordinary. Similarly Bellingham introduces
Lemuel as "his hero" to "his other guests" (p. 376).
Sewell sees Lemuel throughout simply as a country boy. In
turn, Lemuel classifies others. He aspires to publish his
poetry, for instance, not because Sewell the man praises it
but because Sewell the minister does. He falls in love
with Jessie Carver not because he sees her as an individual
but because he sees her as an ideal of womanhood (p. 395).
In April Hopes Howells shows the same tendency on the
part of the characters to classify each other as types.
Mrs. Saintsbury describes Dan Mavering as having the artis
tic type of temperament (p. 44). Mrs. Pasmer loses
84
interest in Boardman as a person when she learns that he is
from the West and has no money (p. 78). Julia Anderson
classifies Alice as of the "moybid" type in the old Puri
tan sense (p. 90). Mrs. Pasmer classifies Mrs. Brinkley
as a "satirical1 1 kind of person (p. 361). Dan Mavering
falls in love with Alice because she is a beautiful young
girl; he does not know her as a person at all. Alice
Pasmer even types herself— as a prospective nun (p. 126)
and as a romantic heroine (p. 375). In other words, How
ells depicts in these novels a virtually universal tendency
among his characters to typify--to supplement obvious facts
about a character not by observing details of behavior but
by drawing upon the already available details of a type
with which the character supposedly has such obvious facts
in common.
However, since Howells demonstrates in these novels a
general lack of sophistication on the part of characters
who typify each other, it is not immediately clear that a
greater sophistication might result in a correct generali
zation. Because most of these characters are usually
wrong about other characters, a reader might have diffi
culty perceiving that some characters, like Colville, for
instance, are usually right in their assessments. The ul
timate test of the correctness of a character's analysis
of another character depends upon what Howells reveals in
the novel about both the character under analysis and the
85
one making the analysis. Since Howells apparently attempts
to maintain the illusion of artistic distance from his ma
terial, it is not often easy to determine what his opinions
of his characters are. Because Howells also takes pains in
these novels to establish the impression that his charac
ters are individuals, the reader without foreknowledge of
Howells’ method is likely to take these characters at their
apparent value as unique individuals and not to consider
them as representing types at all.
In fact, when Howells shows that most of the charac
ters in these novels classify others erroneously, he ap
pears on the surface to argue against a classification of
persons according to types. However, since he insists in
Criticism and Fiction that the responsible novel reflects
actuality, Howells implies, when he illustrates a tendency
among all his characters to typify, that such a tendency
is universal. The persons who err in their classification
of others seem naive or foolish, not because they classify
according to types, but because they classify with insuf
ficient awareness of facts. Because Howells makes Col
ville conscious of a broader base of American life than
most of his other characters, Colville is accurate in his
assessment of Mrs. Bowen as a type. In other words, the
more conscious a character is of actuality the more capa
ble he is of making valid generalizations about it.
The careful reader of these novels perceives a
86
greater actuality than even such characters as Colville do.
If he recognises Colville's typification as sound, it is
because he sees that Colville's typification is valid in
view not only of the facts that Colville possesses but of
the totality of facts the reader perceives in the novel.
Similarly, if the reader considers other instances of typi
fication as invalid it is because these are not justified
by the totality of facts. Therefore, albeit unconsciously,
the reader places the characters in these novels in some
class. When he recognizes the failure of a character to
typify another correctly, he does so because he disagrees
with the typification. The reader shares, in other words,
the universal tendency to typify. In his own typification,
furthermore, the reader uses not only the obvious facts
Howells supplies but the facts implied by Howells' identi
fication of a character with a group. In other words,
whether he knows it or not, the reader supplements Howells'
supplied details of character with preconceived generaliza
tions about the group with which Howells identifies a char
acter. For instance, when Howells identifies Colville as
forty years of age, as an American, as a New Englander by
birth, as a fifteen-year resident of the Midwest, as a
journalist, and as a trained and talented architect, the
reader, whether he is conscious of the process or not,
draws upon what he already knows about each of these" cate
gories in working out Colville's character. In fact, the
87
reader employs such a process in understanding character
in any type of fiction he reads, whether the fiction is
realistic or otherwise. However, novelists do not always
expect their readers to reverse the process and use the
facts of character to arrive at the novelists 1 statements
about the groups with which they identify their characters.
Accordingly, if Howells' readers are unaware that Howells
expects them to do so, his readers are unlikely to see that
Howells deliberately employs his characters as socially
representative types through which he makes a statement
about American groups and American society.
However, one who knows that in Criticism and Fiction
Howells argued for a principle of representative selection
can use such knowledge to examine Howells' use of socially
representative types to define the American "social fab
ric." In doing so, such a reader perceives at once that
Howells' characters in these novels are for the most part
highly verbal representatives of the American middle class
and of the Boston aristocracy. Since Howells felt that the
novelist performs a responsible function if he explores
thoroughly any aspect of his society that he knows well
(pp. 143-144), the fact of Howells' restriction of his sub
ject matter largely to the behavior and attitudes of these
two classes (namely, the American middle class and the Bos
tonian aristocracy) does not in itself constitute a viola
tion of Howells' principle of representative selection.
88
On the contrary, insofar as these novels deal with the
straggle by Americans for some kind of class distinction--
a theme that Howells defined specifically in Criticism and
Fiction-"Howells can use the Boston aristocracy as the
manifestation in America of the aristocratic ideal toward
which middle-class Americans, that is, truly representative
Americans, hopefully lift their eyes.
In fact, the American types which Howells focuses upon
in these novels are those in which he does find manifesta
tions of the "aristocratic spirit" in American life. For
Howells, this "aristocratic spirit" seems most apparent in
the Bostonian aristocracy, the one American group whose way
of life seems to represent for most Americans the pinnacle
of social distinction. This class enjoys a reputation not
only for social and moral pre-eminence, but for intellectu
al pre-eminence as well, which Howells' narrative voice in
April Hopes says everyone tacitly recognizes (p. 441). In
other words, for most of the Americans Howells depicts in
these novels and implicitly for most Americans as Howells
perceives them in real life, Boston is the social, moral,
and intellectual center of the nation. Certainly no member
of the Boston aristocracy in these novels seems tempted to
give up the life of leisure and elegance he enjoys. All of
Mrs. Pasmer's efforts in April Hopes to marry her daughter
to a boy of acceptable Boston family reflect her desperate
desire to maintain her aristocratic way of life. But the
89
middle-class boarders of the St. Albans in The Minister's
Charge are also trying with their limited finances to live
the life of leisure and elegance that the Bostonian aris
tocracy is supposed to enjoy. The example of these merely
imitative aristocrats makes Lemuel Barker's "heart rise,"
after Lemuel returns from a visit home, at the sight of
"the steeples and chimneys" of Boston (p. 285). Because
the kind of life such people lead seems pleasant and at
tainable to him, Lemuel feels "equal to it [Boston], to
anything in it" (p. 285).
However, it is not the mere sensual excitement of Bos
ton that heartens Lemuel; he sees his Boston experience as
a morally valuable one. "if I were to do nothing but pass
along all the good that's been done me," he says later,
"I should be kept busy the rest of my life" (p. 450).
Lemuel is speaking of his experience not only with the Bos
ton middle class but with the aristocracy as well, and his
statement indicates that he is attracted by the apparent
moral "pre-eminence" of Boston society. Even the Ameri
cans living in Florence in Indian Summer are conscious of
Boston's reputed social pre-eminence. One of the pleasures
of life in Florence, for instance, comes from the fact that
there is social equality at a level of such eminence that,
as Colville observes, even Bostonians living in Florence do
not act superior to it (p. 70). Howells implies a con
scious imitation of Boston snobbishness on Mrs. Bowen's
90
part when he compares her snubbing of Imogene's New York
escorts to the characteristic air of social superiority of
a Boston dowager (p. 335). In fact, American life in
Florence, Howells implies, is quite similar to life in
aristocratic Boston; however, most of the Americans living
in Florence are not born aristocrats but members of the
middle class, who, for all their wealth, could not live the
same kind of life anywhere in America, even in Boston. But
these Americans in Florence are pursuing and consciously
imitating the aristocratic ideal which most Americans feel
is represented in America by Boston's idle rich. The
American awareness of Boston as an Intellectual center is
illustrated by a little joke Howells permits himself in
this novel. When one of the Inglehart boys describes
Imogene as "awfully intellectual," another asks whether she
is from Boston. When the first jokingly replies, "No,
Kalamazoo. The centre of culture is out there now" (p.
105), his response indicates that the question of whether
an "intellectual" girl is from Boston reflects a common
recognition by Americans of Boston's reputation for "in
tellectual pre-eminence." It is just such reputed "pre
eminence" that Howells attempts to explore in these three
novels not only in terms of its intellectual aspects but
in terms of its social and moral aspects as well.
If Howells1 intellectual intention in these three nov
els is to demonstrate by the use of representative
91
characters that most Americans pursue an aristocratic
ideal, his moral purpose is to question the validity of
that pursuit. One of Howells' specific moral intentions in
these novels is to show that an aristocratic ideal is dia
metrically opposed to the American principle of equality;
he demonstrates, in other words, that the ideal of an aris
tocracy, particularly one founded on wealth as the American
ideal is, encourages superficial class distinctions among
levels of society on grounds unrelated to an individual's
intellectual and moral qualities. Howells shows as he de
velops this point in all three novels that the Boston lei
sure class is not so distinct and superior as it is be
lieved to be; its members are affected romantically, for
instance, by the novels they read just as are Americans at
other levels of society, and they just as frequently ideal
ize love and duty as do other Americans. Howells also in
tends in these novels to demonstrate that an aristocratic
ideal encourages idleness and self-indulgence and that an
aristocratic way of life, however beautiful, is useless.
Since the Boston leisure class has a reputation for
"intellectual pre-eminence," Howells chooses as his "other"
Americans in these novels characters with sufficient cul
tivation or native intelligence to permit a comparison in
terms of intellect with members of the leisure class. Such
Americans, most of them women, read a great deal; the men
have aesthetic inclinations as do Colville and Barker, or
92
they are journalists like Colville, Evans, and Boardman, or
they are ministers like Waters and Sewell. Howells obvi
ously does not intend by such selections to suggest that
most American men are artists, journalists, and ministers,
as his principle of representative selection may seem to
imply. Nor does he even mean to say that most American men
have such sensibilities as the artists, journalists, and
ministers of these novels possess. Instead, he uses these
characters to represent specific American attitudes, val
ues, and capacities; since in these novels Howells is con
cerned with the question of social inequality in American
society, he focuses upon American artists, journalists, and
ministers in these novels because such persons are likely
to be more consciously concerned with American aspirations
and values and more capable of expressing themselves co
herently than less cultivated types of Americans. Howells
can use such characters better, in other words, to show
that Boston society is not "pre-eminent” culturally, in
tellectually, or morally.
Howells demonstrates in these three novels that the
ideal of an aristocracy is antithetical to the American
principle of equality because the distinctions fostered by
such an ideal have little to do with a person's individual
qualities. When Howells writes in Indian Summer, for in
stance, that Mrs. Bowen snubs Imogene's New York escorts
in the manner of a "Boston dowager" (p. 335), he implies
that Mrs. Bowen has as much justification for her manner as
the "Boston dowager" has for hers; on the basis of external
action and internal motivation, in other words, there is no
distinction between them. Yet Mrs. Bowen is in Florence
for a social climate parallelled in America only by the
social climate of Boston, in which she herself would be
similarly snubbed. Though Boardman in April Hopes shows
what Dan calls more "common-sense, more solid chunk-wisdom
than anybody I know" (p. 355), Mrs. Pasmer rejects him be
cause he is from the West and has no money (p. 78). In
The Minister's Charge, Lemuel Barker, whom Sewell at the
beginning of the novel calls a "simpleton" (p. 16), is suf
ficiently gifted to educate himself so that within the
space of two years he is the accepted equal and even lover
of Jessie Carver, whom Mrs. Sewell calls a "lady" (pp. 456-
457). Yet during the period the middle-class boarders at
the St. Albans hotel treat him with disdain because he
waits on tables (pp. 252-275). Though his bearing, his
supposed heroism at the St. Albans fire, and his increasing
quickness seem to impress the aristocrats Miss Vane, Bel
lingham, and Corey, the actual attitude of these aristo
crats is one of condescension toward him mixed with aston
ishment that a country boy possesses the qualities Lemuel
demonstrates. Despite their apparent kindness they do not
accept Lemuel as an equal; because he was born outside
their circle, he can never live anywhere in America the
94
life of the Bostonian aristocracy, which these aristocrats
have shown him at close hand.
In fact, Howells points out, the ultimate ideal of the
aristocratic spirit is not found in America at all. In
Indian Summer, for instance, Howells indicates in his nar
rative voice that Americans living in Florence desire more
to win "acceptance among the best English" residents than
to gain the approval of other Americans (p. 69). Similarly
the Bostonian Pasmers in April Hopes have discovered that
"their place in England was strictly inferior and must be"
because of their lack of titles (p. 62). In other words,
Americans, in their desire to be like "the fine people"
they read about in English novels (Criticism and Fiction,
pp. 79-80), are seeking a way of life opposed both histor
ically and ideologically to the American principle of
equality. Whether they idealize the Bostonian leisure
class or practice an aristocratic mode of life on foreign
soil, such Americans are not American in spirit so much as
English.
Once Howells succeeds in communicating his view that
the social discrimination fostered by an aristocratic
ideal is not based on individual merit and that for Ameri
cans the ultimate model of such an ideal is English, he can
to some extent depend upon the facts alone to convey his
moral statement. An American reader, at any rate, who
recognizes what Howells says in these novels about American
95
society will probably agree with Howells, without Howells'
having to press the point, that an aristocratic ideal as
Howells demonstrates it is incompatible with the professed
American spirit of independence and the professed American
concept of equality.
But not only does Howells indicate in these novels
that the ideal of an aristocracy is not an Americal ideal,
he attempts to show as well by a complex parallel of rep-
resentative attitudes from various levels of society that
the social group taken for an aristocracy in America is not
fundamentally superior to other, more obviously ordinary
Americans. By showing, for instance, that Americans of
superior ability are excluded from aristocratic ranks by
Bostonian aristocrats, Howells challenges the social pre
eminence of such a class. In other words, if intellect and
virtue cannot gain a person access to a social class, the
question arises as to whether there is anything in the
class to make it worthy of idealization. Furthermore, if
the privilege of condescension is considered evidence of a
class’s superiority, Howells shows that other Americans en
joy this privilege as well as does Boston's leisure class;
hence no particular group in America has an exclusive right
to superciliousness. But in addition to such implicit
questioning of the social pre-eminence of Boston's leisure
class, Howells attempts in these novels, by showing funda
mental similarities between this class and other capable
96
Americans, to demonstrate that the Boston aristocracy is
not morally or intellectually pre-eminent either.
When Howells stated in Criticism and Fiction that the
American reading public is learning through fiction to
"idolize" "Duty" and to oppose "duty . . . to prudence,
obedience, and reason" (pp. 96-97), he did not directly
associate such a tendency with any specific moral tradi
tion. In these three novels, however, he identifies this
tendency with the American Puritanic tradition. One his
torical fact that Howells could expect his readers to know
in this connection was that the attitude known as Puritan
ism began in America in the general area of Boston. A num
ber of characters mention this fact, as Howells has Brom-
field Corey do in The Minister's Charge when Corey says
that the Boston aristocracy has inherited an "ancestral
vein of Puritanism" (p. 387). Although Howells did not ex
plicitly define the term Puritanism in Criticism and Fic
tion, he did express in that work his abhorrence of Puri
tanism by calling it a "black tide" that "swept over men's
souls" in the seventeenth century (p. 173).
As a realist committed to a reflection in fiction of
conditions and attitudes in their "correct proportion,"
Howells was obligated to depict Puritanism in his novels to
the extent that he perceived it in American life. But if
Howells as author uses the label Puritanism to categorize a
specific action or attitude, he runs the risk of seeming to
97
intrude himself into his fiction; for in so labeling he
overtly indicates his own judgment either of the attitude
or action he comments upon or of Puritanism itself. How
ells therefore attempts to define Puritanism as he sees it
by having characters in each of these three novels partici
pate indirectly in the definition. Since according to
Howells' literary principles, the realist does not identify
with his characters, this task of defining Puritanism
through his characters is a complex one.
Howells has Mr. Waters in Indian Summer define Puri
tanism simply as the manifestation of a strong "conscience"
and sense of "individual accountability" (p. 122). Xt is
such a sense of "individual accountability" that torments
David Sewell in The Minister's Charge as he struggles with
his feeling of guilty responsibility for Lemuel Barker's
welfare. Sewell recognizes such a feeling of guilt "as a
phase of the religious insanity which," Howells says in a
narrative voice that abruptly seems to be his own, "we
have all inherited in some measure from Puritan times"
(p. 117). If Howells intrudes in this instance, he appears
to violate his principle of apparent objectivity on the
novelist's part; but so ambiguous is the authority for the
statement, whether, for instance, it is Howells who calls
Puritanism "religious insanity" or only Sewell, that one
can justifiably assign responsibility for the statement to
Howells only on the basis of his expression of a similar
98
abhorrence in Criticism and Fiction (p. 173). Howells'
evident concurrence with Sewell's appraisal of Puritanism
as a kind of "religious insanity" implies a similar con
currence with the definition implied by Dan Mavering's
father in April Hopes when the elder Mavering describes the
effect of Puritanism on Dan's mother. "Her inherited Puri
tanism," the older man says, "clouds her judgment, and
makes her see all faults as of one size and equally damn
ing" (p. 424). By implication, then, the person possessing
a Puritanic conscience is compulsively moved to do the du
tiful thing; in other words, he "idolizes" duty as some
thing superior to "prudence, obedience, reason" (Criticism
and Fiction, pp. 96-97); he is incapable of distinguishing
between degrees of duty and is moved by his feelings of
responsibility rather than by his judgment. His exaltation
of duty is often manifested by a desire for self-sacrifice
and expiation of real or imagined guilt. Often, as in the
case of Dan's mother, he is as rigidly critical of the be
havior and motives of others as he is hypercritically con
scious of his own. Since the Puritanic conscience as How
ells defines it in these instances is more a matter of
feeling than of reason and judgment, Howells' indication
that it is a common occurrence in Boston's aristocracy
raises a question about the "intellectual pre-eminence" as
well as the moral superiority of that class.
Howells shows in these three novels that members of
the Bostonian leisure class do indeed suffer from this
"ancestral" Puritanism. Miss Vane in The Minister's
Charge, for instance, suffers such remorse for discharging
Lemuel Barker after her niece quarrels with him over
Lemuel’s refusal to confide in the girl about his private
life that she tries to pay him more than he has earned
(pp. 177-179); she repeats her attempt at expiation by of
fering Lemuel lodging in her home when Sibyl goes "to New
York for a fortnight” (p. 353). She cannot define her duty
to the boy and attempts to soothe her conscience by impul
sive pretenses at magnanimity. A more intense Puritanism
is demonstrated by Sibyl Vane in the same novel. Assuming
that Lemuel has suffered because of Statira's charge that
he robbed her, Sibyl says that if she had falsely accused
Lemuel as Statira has, "I should never have forgiven my
self. I should have devoted my life to expiation. I
should have spent my life in going about the prisons, and
finding out persons who were unjustly accused" (pp. 172-
173). Howells ironically underscores the ridiculousness
of her declaration by having her make her statement when
she does; for far from suffering for Statira's accusation,
Lemuel has just come from a pleasant evening at Statira's
house with a kiss from Statira fresh on his lips. Similar
ly ridiculous is Sibyl Vane's work for the "flower mis
sion," as Miss Vane calls it. So unable is Sibyl to dis
tinguish between degrees of duty that she sincerely
100
believes that her giving flowers to the sick, the impris
oned, and the poor is a beneficent act rather than, as
Sewell and Miss Vane concur, "a sort of hideous mockery of
the good we ought to do one another" (p. 31).
But Alice Pasmer in April Hopes represents Howells1
most extensive treatment in these three novels of the Puri
tan spirit as it manifests itself in the Boston aristoc
racy. Julia Anderson classifies Alice as "moybid" in the
old "Puyitan spirit," as so rigidly demanding that "she
doesn't make allowance for human nature" (p. 90). Alice
tells Dan that she is selfish and that because she is so,
"It's best for me to be wretched, don't you see--to give
myself up entirely to doing good for others, and not expect
any one to do anything for me; then I can be of some use in
the world. That's why I should like to go into a sister
hood" (p. 126). The either-or alternative Alice gives her
self represents her refusal even to consider a rational
compromise between the demands of sense and the demands of
conscience. In other words, Alice's Puritan conscience
tells her that virtue and happiness are incompatible; she
chooses therefore the course that will make her unhappy,
assuming that because it will lead to her unhappiness it
must be the right course. She rejects, accordingly, even
moderate self-gratification as immoral. With a strong per
sonal conscience to dominate her reason, Alice Pasmer has
difficulty distinguishing degrees of duty. Of her love
101
affair with Dan, for instance, Alice declares that any
thing less than a continued self-sacrifice of one to the
other is "not worthy of the name of love” (p. 347). She
tells Dan that she will be glad to sacrifice all her pref
erences to him; "I expect to give up everything to you"
(p. 357). But she cannot meet her own exactions. She can
not, for instance, sacrifice her need for complete defer
ence on the part of Dan. Her mother tells her that in her
treatment of Dan Alice is a "cruel girl" who, as Julia
Anderson has said, makes "no allowance for human nature"
(p. 382). As Howells depicts it in all these instances,
Puritanism is so illogical and painful an ethical system
that if it were only the Boston leisure class in America
that was afflicted with it Howells might effectively use
such a fact alone to shatter Boston’s reputation for both
intellectual and moral "pre-eminence."
But manifestations of the Puritan spirit as Howells
defines it appear at other levels of American society. The
guilt feelings, for instance, of David Sewell, who stands
somewhere between the middle class of Boston and the Bos
ton aristocracy, constitute much of his motivation in The
Minister's Charge. Jessie Carver in this same novel is a
clearer example, however, of the Puritan spirit as Howells
demonstrates it to exist among members of the middle
class. Though she and Lemuel love each other, she sacri
fices Lemuel to Statira because of Statira's prior claim
102
and greater physical need, even though it is clear that
Lemuel will be miserable with the country girl. Jessie
Carver feels that such sacrifice is the "unselfish thing"
and ignores Sewell's pleas that she rationally determine
the "unselfish thing" before she acts (pp. 433-434). Mrs.
Bowen in Indian Summer dissimulates her love for Colville
because of a similar distorted sense of duty. She will
tell neither Colville nor Imogene that the engagement be
tween Colville and Imogene is a mistake. She later ex
plains that had she done so she would have appeared to be
speaking for herself and that she considered it highly im
proper to have spoken for herself under such circumstances
(p. 389). Though Colville is flattered at the thought of
a young girl's love, he is not so foolish as to feel that
marriage with Imogene will be trouble-free; his primary
reason for becoming engaged is an exaggeration, like Mrs.
Bowen's, of mere propriety into duty; he wishes to save
Imogene the embarrassment of discovering that she has mis
takenly assumed him to be her pursuer (pp. 364, 378).
Imogenefs fancied love for Colville is really a desire to
atone for the "sin" of the woman who rejected him twenty
years before. "I want you to feel," she says, "that I am
your youth--the youth you were robbed of--given back to
you" (p. 277).
The behavior of both Colville and Mrs. Bowen appears
on the surface merely to be good manners, an observation
103
of careful form. As such it might be ascribed to a desire
on their part to imitate the members of aristocratic
models, either Bostonian or English, rather than to an
American tendency toward Puritanism. However, the actions
of both are accompanied by such introspection, iself-
justification, and self-torture as one associates with mor
al rather than merely formal considerations. Furthermore,
Howells uses the minister Mr. Waters in the novel as a fre
quent reminder that all Americans, including the American
characters in Indian Summer, are more or less under the in
fluence of an "ancestral Puritanism" (p. 88). When Col
ville declares, for instance, that he used a young girl to
attempt to recapture his past (pp. 375-376), he blames him
self for the social motives which he says concealed from
him at first his own egotistical urges (p. 376). Mr.
Waters replies, "Your assertion is the hysterical excess
of Puritanism in all times and places" (p. 376). In other
words, the inability of Colville and Mrs. Bowen to dis
tinguish degrees of duty represents their share of the
Puritanism that Howells indicates "we have all inherited
in some measure." They share this inheritance with the
Boston aristocracy as one of what Mr. Waters calls the
"dreary and ugly" (p. 88) aspects of American life.
One of Howells1 points in these three novels is that
Puritanism, a moral concept identified generally with
Boston in the common American mind, is in practice an
104
irrational, intolerant, and often ridiculous moral system
of which no social class should be particularly proud. A
second point is that even if Puritanism were worthy of
pride, it so pervades American culture that no contemporary
city or region or class can properly lay sole claim to it.
In other words, Howells says in these three novels that
Boston's claim to moral "pre-eminence" is based on a false
assumption that its aristocracy is morally distinguishable
from other Americans. Since Howells does not use any of
his characters as spokesmen, his method of declaring that
Americans of other classes have similar moral attitudes to
those of Bostonians is subtle and complex. One must know
how Howells felt about Puritanism in order to assess prop
erly his attitudes toward the thought and speech of partic
ular characters as they consider the subject, and he must
know that Howells intends each of his characters who suffer
from an "excess of Puritanism" as a representative member
of his social class.
More obvious in these novels is Howells' attitude
toward the idealization of'love" by the young. The reader
does not need Howells 1 ridicule in Criticism and Fiction of
the kind of young lady who believes that "love" is "glorious
and beautiful," "worthy of every sacrifice" (p. 96) to per
ceive the ridiculousness of such young ladies of both the
leisure class and the middle-class in these three novels.
Imogene Graham in Indian Summer feels that her love for
105
Colville will make him forget the twenty years during which
she imagines him to have suffered a broken heart. This
love will also enable her, she believes, to bear nobly
whatever sacrifice she makes of herself for his happiness.
However, during their engagement she has doubts. To calm
her, Colville suggests that if they love each other their
love alone will suffice for their happiness; she accepts
"the platitude as if it were now uttered for the first
time" (p. 301). In The Minister’s Charge, Jessie Carver
feels that her love for Lemuel is nobler and more generous
if she renounces her claim to him than if she "selfishly"
accepts his love (p. 434). She believes, as does Imogene
Graham, that "love" ennobles, "love" strengthens, "love"
enables one to bear the pain of self-sacrifice heroically.
Howells does not imply, however, that members of the
middle-class alone so idealize the passion of love. No one
else in these novels idealizes "love" with the fervor of
the young aristocrat Alice Pasmer in April Hopes. She
tells Dan that their love should have an ideal so that the
two lovers can be "more and more to each other" (p. 352).
She says that she and Dan "ought to find out . . . the
most distasteful thing they could mutually require, and
then do it" (p. 347); as for her, "she only asked to ask
nothing of him" (p. 347). But she has frequent doubts
about their incompatible tastes and temperaments. Miss
Cotton reassures her: "But these very differences, these
106
antagonisms . . . aren't they just what will draw you to
gether more and more?" (p. 371). The platitude that
soothes Imogene Graham of Buffalo seems to soothe Alice
Pasmer of Boston as well. "Yes," she replies, "that's what
we are taught to believe" (p. 371).
The reason a casual reader can see at once the ridicu
lousness of the attitudes of young people like Imogene
Graham, Jessie Carver, and Alice Pasmer is that this reader
perceives that such characters exaggerate "love" as a
source of human happiness. But in moral terms, Howells is
chiefly concerned with why they expect more from "love"
than they reasonably should. Howells pointed out in Criti
cism and Fiction that what one really idealizes when he
idealizes "love" is a passion, an impulse of the senses
(p. 96). In a passage in his narrative voice in April
Hopes that Howells apparently intended as representing an
objective observation, not a subjective moral one, Howells
writes that youth is remote from "all verities except those
of sensation" (p. 305). In the same novel, Mrs. Brinkley
says that in the case of young love "the affections have it
their way" instead of submitting their case to the judgment
of reason (p. 173). Similarly Mr. Waters in Indian Summer
describes the years of youth as a "turmoil of ideas and
sensation" (p. 179). In advising Lemuel Barker about the
dangers of young love, Sewell tells Lemuel in The Minis
ter's Charge that in youth "the fancy becomes excited, and
107
some of the most important interests--the very most impor
tant interests--are committed to impulse" (p. 306). The
comments of all these characters imply that order and rea
son are more valuable guides than impulse or sensation.
In the novels themselves, Howells usually depends upon
the apparent wisdom of such statements, without necessarily
depending upon the characters as his spokesmen, to convey
his own view that the idealization of"love" is contrary to
common sense. In Criticism and Fiction Howells identifies
this view explicitly. It is not true, he indicates in that
work, that "love" is a "finer thing than prudence, obedi
ence, reason" (p. 96).
But as imprudent as the idealization of "love" is, the
significant social fact as Howells presents it in these
novels is that the young aristocratic lovers of April Hopes
are as susceptible to rule by the senses as are the young
middle-class people of the other two novels. If the young
are taught by their culture that their impulses are worthy
of idealization, "worthy of every sacrifice," their cul
ture, whether it is aristocratic or middle-class hardly
merits a reputation for "intellectual pre-eminence." To
the extent that such a culture does not teach a subordina
tion of such impulses to judgment and reason, the culture
lacks moral "pre-eminence" as well. Howells1 point is that
the idealization of "love" prevails at various social lev
els and that in intellectual and moral perceptions as
108
indicated by such attitudes toward "love,1 1 Americans are
equally susceptible to error.
Howells explains in April Hopes that when Alice says
"we are taught to believe" that "love" is sufficiently pow
erful to change character or attitudes she means that "we
are taught" so, says Howells, "by the novels, to which we
all trust our instruction in such matters" (p. 371). Alice
apparently intends the pronoun we to represent persons of
all classes who have had little experience with'lovd'and
who learn about it indirectly, mostly through their read
ing. Since novels are supposed to simulate human experi
ence, Alice is justified in looking in them for information
about human values; and Howells does not condemn her for
her reliance on fiction for her education in this area.
But the novels Alice has read have idealized the passion of
love as a character-forming force in human life. Howells
demonstrates in the other two novels that Americans from
other levels of society depend upon similar literature for
their "instruction in such matters."
Howells shows a parallel in reading tastes between
Alice and the middle-class girl Jessie Carver in The Minis
ter 1 s Charge, for instance, by depicting them both as deep
ly affected by George Eliot's Romola. In April Hopes,
Alice romantically imitates the character of Romola when
after a petty disagreement with Dan she dismisses him, as
Howells points out, with Romola's words to Tito: "You are
a faithless man" (p. 375). In The Minister!s Charge,
Jessie Carver tells "at length the plot of Romola. . . .
She said she did not see how any one could bear to be the
least selfish or untrue after reading it" (p. 294). How
ells 1 use of the term romance in April Hopes to categorize
Romola (p. 375) suggests, according to his use of the same
term in Criticism and Fiction (pp. 25, 95, 110), that he
considers Romola a distortion of actuality; and Howells
suggests through the obvious ridiculousness of Alice's and
Jessie Carver's whims that neither is discriminating in
literary taste. He also indicates by a subtle parallel
that the two have a literary taste similar to Imogene
Graham's of Indian Summer. Imogene tells Colville that
when Mr. Morton read Browning's "The Legend of Pornic"
aloud to her she considered the work "splendid" (pp. 101-
102). In April Hopes, when Dan Mavering recites the same
poem to Alice, she sighs her gratitude to him (p. 133).
Howells' point is that the young sentimentalists in all
three novels have the same tastes in literature and are all
deluded about life by what they read. Being an aristocrat,
in other words, does not protect Alice Pasmer from a common
girlhood experience.
Though Howells' young men in these novels lack the
constant intensity of his young women and seem, as Howells
says in his narrative voice in April Hopes, to have a
"thousand potentialities for loving" (pp. 445-446), their
1X0
literary tastes are often not particularly distinct from
those of the young women. When such young men do fall in
love, as do Lemuel Barker and Dan Mavering, they view their
passions in terms of novels they have read. In The Minis
ter's Charge Howells says of Lemuel when Lemuel daydreams
of Jessie Carver that "the fumes of the romances which he
had read mixed with the love-born delirium in his brain; he
was no longer low, but a hero of lofty line" (p. 395). Dan
Mavering, Howells says when Alice breaks her engagement
with him, "remembered the apostrophic close of a novel in
which the heroine dies after much emotional suffering.
’Quiet, quiet heart]’ he repeated to himself. Yes, he too
had died to hope, to love, to happiness" (p. 396). The
two characters use what they have read to ennoble them
selves vicariously, Lemuel in his dreams of happiness, Dan
in his of despair. Both have exaggerated the importance
and power of "love." Lemuel wants to be more noble than he
is and imagines that "love" can make him so; Dan believes
at the moment described that "love" is indelible and that
to have lost "love" is to have ended life. But the effect
of their attitude is a demonstration of Howells 1 point that
the young of both sexes, whatever their social status, have
been taught by the fiction they have read that "love" is
of great significance, that it will last, that it ennobles.
There are members of Boston's leisure class, however,
who are not deluded by fictions that exaggerate the
ennobling effects of "love." Mrs. Brinkley in April Hopes,
for instance, sees marriage as too important to entrust to
the immature judgment of the young who are moved by fancies
rather than by common sense (p. 171). She understands
Dan’s and Alice's infatuation. "I've no doubt their fancy
was caught by all the kinds of difference they find in each
other," she says; "that's just as natural as it is silly"
(p. 175). In other words, Mrs. Brinkley is not affected by
what Alice has been taught by novels. When Alice melodra
matically accuses Dan of lying to her about his plans, Mrs.
Pasmer similarly reveals her own realistic attitude by her
recognition of Alice's romanticism: "I don't know where
you got all those silly, romantic notions of yours about
these things. You certainly didn't get them from me."
Howells comments that Mrs. Pasmer speaks the last sentence
"with undeniable truth" (p. 382). She is aware of the lim
itations of "love" as her daughter is not. "Marriage means
happiness," she says, but she adds after a deliberate
pause, "--in a book" (p. 104). Like Mrs. Brinkley, Mrs.
Pasmer is too sophisticated in the ways of the world to be
taken in by the novels that falsely teach the young how
powerful "love" is.
But such common sense is not a privileged possession of
the leisure class. In April Hopes, for instance, Boardman,
a hard-working young journalist from the West, seems com
pletely level-headed about "love," He recognizes, for
112
instance, that Alice Pasmer's refusal of Dan's first offer
of marriage is merely a romantic gesture; he explains that
Alice would not have encouraged Dan's attentions as she did
if she had not liked them (pp. 192-193). When Dan swears
that Alice is the only woman he will ever love, Boardman
responds with good-humored irony that he believes Dan--
"Because people always marry their first and only loves.
Because people never marry twice for love" (p. 330).
Boardman also observes that the tragedy of Dan's broken
love affair is not the grand tragedy it would be in the
usual novel, because of "all sort of sordid details" con
nected with such an event in real life (p. 393). This com
ment by Boardman identifies him as a discriminating reader
who is not taken in by the fiction which Howells implies
often deludes the young. Similarly, Colville in Indian
Summer, also a journalist from the West, is capable of rec
ognizing responsible fiction. He shares with Mrs. Brinkley
and Mrs. Pasmer, for instance, a taste for the realism of
Turgenev, ^ whom in Criticism and Fiction Howells called
a great novelist (p. 141). Colville tells Imogene that the
novel should tell the truth about life even if that truth
is unpleasant (Indian Summer, p. 58). All these characters
--Boardman, Colville, Mrs. Pasmer, and Mrs. Brinkley--
Indian Summer, p. 58; April Hopes, pp. 102-103.
113
demonstrate that they apply to the fiction they read the
"standard of the arts" which Howells said in Criticism and
Fiction is "in every man's power" (p. 14), that is, the.
standard of observed actuality.
Insofar as he has shown that the Bostonian leisure
class and other Americans have similar tastes, similar
weaknesses, similar ideals, similar intellectual propensi
ties and attainments, and similar moral attitudes, Howells
has demonstrated in these three novels that there are no
valid class distinctions in America. He has done so pri
marily by depicting representative figures from the Boston
aristocracy and by portraying, either within the same novel
or in one of the other two novels, members of the American
middle-class who display the same characteristics and atti
tudes as the aristocrats. Howells is saying in effect that
no special class in itself is socially, morally, or intel
lectually superior in America, and that social pretenses
aside, Boardman from the West is the intellectual peer of
aristocrats like Mrs. Brinkley; and that Imogene Graham of
Buffalo is no more foolish and immature than Alice Pasmer
of Boston. In other words, the actuality in American soci
ety is social equality, not social distinction. An aristo
cratic ideal, Howells therefore implies, is not only extra-
American in origin and focus; it is also hypocritical in
its pretense that distinctions exist where they do not.
One of the reasons that the aristocratic ideal
114
persists in America despite the American tradition of
equality is that the aristocratic spirit is motivated,
Howells demonstrates in these novels, by an ideal of lei
sure, of idleness, of luxurious inactivity, or, at best, of
pleasurable activity directed toward a useless end. How
ells says in his narrative voice in The Minister’s Charge
that the wealthy are dependent, incapable of "mutual help,"
and, by implication, idle and useless (p. 381). Sibyl
Vane, the one Boston aristocrat in the three novels who
professes to perform a useful service, participates in
"the flower charity," which distributes flowers to pa
tients, prisoners, and the poor as acts of charity (p. 29).
But Miss Vane, Sibyl's aunt, says that "what Sibyl wants is
the sensation of doing good" (p. 30); and Howells ironical
ly comments upon the meaninglessness of such service by
showing her in the act of bestowing "a jacqueminot rosebud
on a Chinaman dying of cancer" (pp. 444-445).
Mrs. Brinkley expresses Howells' feelings when in
April Hopes she mocks the idleness of her own class by sug
gesting that the probable resentment of some hard-working
sailors at being asked by Bostonian picnickers to pose for
photographs is morally justified by the failure of the
wealthy to sacrifice their physical comfort (pp. 130-131).
Such people spend their winters in a continual round of
social activities in Boston and their summers at Campo-
bello, Newport, or Fortress Monroe in idleness and, as
115
Howells says, urban irresponsibility (p. 83). Though Mrs.
Mavering calls Mr. Pasmer "the worst of his breed" in hav
ing been "idle and useless all his days" (p. 271), Howells
demonstrates that Pasmer is representative of his class by
having Mrs. Brinkley point out to Bromfield Corey that Mr.
Corey,*Mr. Brinkley, and Mr. Pasmer--the only clearly de
fined Bostonian aristocrats in the novel--lead continually
idle lives (p. 313). Their lives, and the lives of all
Americans like them are idle; and as attractive as a life
of idleness may be, Howells wishes to illustrate by his
examples that idleness is self-indulgence, which, even when
it disguises itself in apparent acts of charity, as in
Sibyl Vane's case, is self-indulgence just the same.
The American middle class whose members long to be
like Boston's aristocrats imitate the aristocratic attitude
towards idleness. In The Minister's Charge, for instance,
Howells describes the middle-class women boarders at the
St. Albans as "idle, listless," as having "got rid of the
trouble of housekeeping, and of its dignity and usefulness"
(p. 203). He describes the men there as "wholly without
the domestic insight or consequence that belongs to men
living in their own houses" (pp. 204-205). They are, for
the most part, merely the "husbands or the fathers of the
women" (pp. 204-205). They are then largely idle, unpro
ductive members of society.
Similarly, “life in the Florence of Indian Summer
116
among the American middle-class exiles is without occupa
tion, without meaningful endeavor. But for the most part
such exiles have sufficient money to enliven their idleness
with continual rounds of teas, dances, and "at homes."
These persons are not "listless," as are their poorer coun
terparts at home, for their money buys the luxuries that
all who desire to achieve the "select circles" hope will
accompany the idleness. But they are idle. Colville's
statement that life in America is satisfactory if one has
something to do there (p. 371) does not mean that Colville
is happier in Florence because Florence gives him something
to do. It means that if an American like himself plans to
live a life of idleness, as Colville obviously plans to do,
he had better live it in Florence than in America. Howells
implies through Colville's statement that a middle-class
American who lives an idle life in America is frowned upon
by other Americans. That is, though Americans themselves
long for an aristocratic life, they do not appreciate their
middle-class neighbors' living one. Therefore, unless one
has the proper blood lines to live such a life in Boston,
the aristocratic life of leisure is out of place in
America.
In The Minister's Charge Howells demonstrates still a
third class of Americans who choose idleness as a way of
life. The police court which tries Lemuel is filled with
"sodden loafers" (p. 79), indigents, tramps, and idlers,
117
many of whom eat and sleep at the city's expense in the
Wayfarer’s Lodge, and, after watching the drama of the
Police Court in the morning "lay around all day" on the
Common (p. 106). It is a life of almost complete leisure.
Sewell thinks of it as a "dire life of idleness and depend
ence, partial or entire” which he has known "so many Ameri
cans even willing to lead" (p. 130). It is so attractive,
in fact, that Sewell fears that even one night in the Way
farer’s Lodge has "corrupted" Lemuel Barker, so "subtly
disastrous" is the "effect of bounty" (p. 129). Since he
is a minister, Sewell's position represents a moral con
demnation of idleness as a way of life; but the idleness he
condemns is the idleness of the lower classes, not the
idleness of his aristocratic parishioners Miss Vane,
Charles Bellingham, and Bromfield Corey. The dependence
that Sewell associates with idleness is, furthermore, the
dependence of the indigent upon the city of Boston, not
the incapacity of people of Corey's class for "mutual
help" (p. 381).
Though it seems a long way from the idleness of the
"sodden loafers" of the Police Court to the elegant leisure
of Bromfield Corey, Howells by depicting these two extreme
examples of idleness makes still a further commentary upon
idleness or leisure as an ideal. Many of the idlers in the
Police Court and in the Wayfarer's Lodge sporadically lead
lives of crime. Two female idlers on Boston Common are
118
convicted of streetwalking (pp. 78, 114). One of the
loungers that Lemuel notices in the Police Court has swin
dled Lemuel out of ten dollars (p. 80). Indigents on Bos
ton Common have robbed Lemuel of the rest of his money and
his extra clothing (p. 55). Williams, who guides Lemuel
through the Wayfarer's Lodge and boasts of his life of de
pendent leisure (p. 106), is also a confessed thief (p.
330). Though Howells does not imply that Bromfield Corey
is himself similarly a thief, he subtly raises the question
of the moral superiority of the leisure class. He implies
that an ideal of leisure or idleness is a false and useless
ideal, even a dangerous one. Pursued to its logical ex
treme, such an ideal is destructive of the moral fiber of
a society. Howells suggests that if work is undesirable
or shameful in a society, then a society is decadent re
gardless of features that seem charming and beautiful.
Howells uses still another kind of character to make
clear that the problem he is concerned with in America is
not that most Americans are idle but that they dream of
becoming aristocrats so that they may be idle. Middle-
class characters like Colville and Boardman and farm boys
like Lemuel Barker are obviously representative of a
greater number of Americans than are the aristocrats Corey,
Bellingham, Miss Vane, the Pasmers, and the Brinkleys.
Howells shows that until such middle-class characters are
deluded by the attractions of the aristocratic ideal these
119
characters work shamelessly and constructively at honest
and unpretentious toil. Colville in Indian Summer, for in
stance, has just completed fifteen productive years as a
journalist in Indiana without having been concerned with
the status or the comfort his work could earn him (p. 7) .
Before his arrival in Florence, Colville lived in conformi
ty with his creed "that an objectless life" is "disgraceful
to a man" (p. 8); and the "object" of his life was simply
"life, active life, life of his own day" (p. 89). Lemuel
Barker in The Minister's Charge has no disdain for any kind
of work when he first comes to Boston. He willingly washes
dishes (p. 109); Miss Vane asked him "to fetch and carry,"
and he does so she says, without seeming tired (p. 140).
When he goes to the St. Albans, he takes the first work
offered without question; and he willingly works as a head-
waiter (p. 222) until he learns that in Boston others look
down on him for doing "a servant's work" (p. 301). Board
man in April Hopes is a journalist who has no apparent am
bitions for a life of leisure, despite connections with the
wealthy Mavering family that might enable him to realize
such a life. Dan says that Boardman works out of "virtuous
poverty" (p. 124); Alice Pasmer envies him for being useful
in the world (p. 124). Since as workers these three char
acters have feelings of self-respect that grow out of their
independence and industry, Howells uses their experiences
with work not only as demonstrations of what American
120
actuality unadulterated by an aristocratic ideal is like
but as expressions of his own view that "honest work" adds
dignity and value to human life (Criticism and Fiction,
p. 129).
Howells does not mean to imply that all wealthy Ameri
cans avoid work. Dan Mavering's father in April Hopes, for
instance, has both the breeding (p. 57) and the money (p.
67) to live the life of leisure that Howells identifies
with the aristocratic ideal. As a manufacturer of wall
paper he is not at all in the aristocratic fashion (p. 57);
he is apparently interested more in being "useful" than in
being fashionable. He personally cultivates roses and
grapes in a greenhouse on his property (p. 289). He judges
others according to their usefulness. "You know how hard
father is upon people who haven't done anything," Dan says
to his mother. "It's a mania of his" (p. 271). In other
words, Mr. Mavering is proud of working; and Howells uses
him as an apparent deviation from the usual aristocratic
type in these novels in order to demonstrate that in con
flict with the idleness of the aristocratic ideal is an
American tradition of hard work. That is, Mr. Mavering
justifies his way of life by claiming it to be one of in
dustry-^ claim that in itself shows his recognition that
Americans consider work a value. However, Howells suggests
that Mr. Mavering's work may not be "honest work," that is,
work intended for such "usefulness" as Mr. Mavering
121
pretends it to be. Mr. Mavering does not need to work for
his livelihood, after all; and Howells subtly raises a
question whether greenhouse rose culture, the cultivation
of hothouse grapes, and even the manufacture of "aesthetic"
wallpaper (p. 57) are examples of much more than idle
dilettantism. In other words, Mr. Mavering works for the
private pleasure he gets from his work, and he is not in
terested in work as a "service to humanity." Because he
can call it work, however, he can convince himself and
other Americans of his own morality.
Howells1 point is that the American who achieves suf
ficient wealth to live an aristocratic life finds it neces
sary to justify that life; he is likely, therefore, like
Mr. Mavering, to feel guilty about idleness and to quiet
his conscience by work that pleases him regardless of
whether the work means anything. In other words, his
"measure" of Puritanism is likely to torment him in his
idleness into proclaiming as his duty some pleasurable
kind of activity that will pass for work. If such activi
ty has no meaning other than gratification of the self,
this activity itself represents a form of self-indulgent
idleness.
Howells1 disdain for idleness in Criticism and Fic
tion (p. 188) suggests that he intended in these novels to
identify idleness as a primary factor in his condemnation
of the aristocratic ideal in American life. In the novels
themselves Howells does not identify his moral position so
explicitly. Even in The Minister's Charge he seems merely
to demonstrate separately that the criminal element is
largely idle and that the aristocracy is idle instead of
making an explicit or pointed comparison between the atti
tudes of the two classes. Just as Sewell does not consider
the idleness of the poor and the idleness of the rich in
parallel lights when he worries about Lemuel's potential
corruption in the Wayfarer's Lodge (pp. 129-130), so is the
reader unlikely to recognize that Sewell's condemnation of
idleness as a curse of the poor is an ironic condemnation
of all idleness, including particularly, though Sewell is
unconscious of the fact, the idleness of the Boston leisure
class; particularly is such a recognition unlikely if the
reader assumes, as such critics as Firkins, Carter, and
Cady have assumed,^5 that Sewell is Howells' spokesman.
Howells undoubtedly depends in all three novels upon his
readers' seeing a "useful” life as more virtuous than an
"idle" one and upon their assessing the virtuous life as
the truly more desirable; if they do so, they should recog
nize that his depictions of manifestations of the aristo
cratic spirit in American society are condemnatory and not
laudatory.
25
See above, pp. 69-71.
123
Howells' overall purpose in focusing in these novels
upon the American middle class and the Bostonian aristoc
racy is to demonstrate that valid class distinctions do
not exist in America. He achieves this intention by show
ing that both classes contain types of Americans who act
like snobs; that both classes have representatives who
idealize "love1 1 and "duty" blindly and others who seem to
use common sense in appraising such idealization; that rep
resentative Americans from both classes instruct themselves
in "matters of the heart" by reading romantic fiction,
while other Americans from both groups understand and ap
preciate realistic fiction; and that representatives of
both classes, though desiring a life of luxury and leisure,
really feel that the valid life is a life of useful en
deavor, of work. Though "all, or nearly all" Americans are
struggling, according to Howells, to be like the "fine
people" that they think constitute Boston's aristocracy,
Howells points out in these novels by means of representa
tive selection that Americans are really equal and that the
so-called aristocracy of Boston is not socially, intellec
tually, or morally "pre-eminent." The aristocratic spirit
in America, then, is inspired by a social class which of
fers nothing of legitimate value to reasonable and respon
sible Americans.
Nevertheless, in order to depict the aristocratic
ideal honestly, Howells must present its superficial
124
attractions as well as its less obvious faults; according
ly, he balances against those qualities which he shows that
the leisure class shares with other Americans the fact that
some Americans indeed do live lives of material luxury and
elegance, the kind of life Americans in these novels en
vision when "all or nearly all" struggle toward the aristo
cratic ideal. Men like Bromfield Corey and Charles Bel
lingham lead lives of obvious comfort and material splen
dor. Such people have the leisure to enjoy romantic day
dreams or the sensation of performing charitable deeds or
the pleasure of "self-cultivation" through talking and
reading. Even though an aspirant to such a life might find
the doors to Boston society itself closed to him because of
inadequate blood lines, he can, if he has enough money and
enough cultivation and charm, enjoy a similar life in some
European city like Florence.
Howells does not pretend that Boston society or its
imitations in Europe do not have such charms. Furthermore,
when he shows such apparently conscientious and intelligent
persons as Colville and Sewell pursuing such a life, How
ells increases the likelihood that his readers will miss
his condemnation in these three novels of the aristocratic
ideal. For such reasons, the reader who expects to under
stand Howells' statement about American society must first
understand that when Howells creates an "illusion" of ob
jective actuality in which he reflects the attractions as
125
well as the faults of an aristocratic life in America he
is not himself necessarily succumbing to the attractions he
depicts. The reader needs to know, in other words, that
Howells' treatment is supposed to appear to be completely
objective; he also needs to know Howells1 subjective atti
tude towards the aristocratic ideal. It is difficult for
one to recognize these technical and thematic aspects by a
reading of the novels alone. In fact, unless the reader
recognizes Howells' literary principles and social themes
as Howells defined both in Criticism and Fiction, the read
er is likely to encounter difficulties in penetrating the
apparent objectivity with which Howells depicts the social
world of these novels.
In these novels, then, Howells uses what he considers
representative characters, exhibiting representative be
havior and attitudes to portray a social background against
which the action he focuses on can take place. Such a
background forms the "social fabric" to which the realistic
novelist, according to Howells' contention in Criticism and
Fiction, should be true (p. 94). Howells implies as a
realist that he considers this background to be faithful to
the "local color" that forms the settings of the novels,
t
such "local color," in other words, as Howells says the re
sponsible novelist must have "well-ascertained" (p. 100).
He testifies therefore, when he represents himself as a
realist, that he considers not only his characters to be
126
true to life but the society he reflects through them as
well. Just as he trusts the social truth of a realist's
picture of a society unfamiliar to him, 26 so Howells by im
plication expects his readers, on the basis of his apparent
fidelity to individual human nature, to trust his fidelity
to the "social fabric" of American life, too. In other
words, Howells does not expect his readers to know inti
mately the society he depicts in order to understand what
he considers characteristic of it.
In examining the way in which Howells used socially
representative selection to reflect the contemporary Ameri
can "social fabric," one considers only one aspect of the
technique by which Howells attempted in these three novels
to convey intellectual and moral interpretations of the
American experience. Unless Howells used a method of
assigning moral responsibility, too, to complement the one
by which he identified social conditions and attitudes, his
use of representation would provide by itself little more
than a statement that such conditions and attitudes as he
describes exist. Accordingly, he traces across the "social
fabric" that constitutes the background of these three nov
els three distinct stories of apparently particular charac
ters who are concerned with problems that, though also ap
parently particular, arise in great part from the nature of
26gee above, pp. 31-32.
the social environment in which the characters move. A
thorough understanding of Howells' method of communicating
his social themes in these novels involves, therefore, in
addition to a study of his method of selection, an examina
tion of the manner in which Howells presents such charac
ters and their experiences in terms of their social con
text.
CHAPTER IV
THE MEASURING OF CONSCIOUSNESS AGAINST ACTUALITY
FOR THE PURPOSE OF IRONIC SOCIAL COMMENTARY
It has been established that insofar as they reflect
the principles William Dean Howells defines in Criticism
and Fiction, the three novels published by Howells in 1886
and 1887^* should communicate intellectual and moral state
ments about Americans and their society.^ Howells insists,
however, that the realist should make such statements with
authorial detachment; by his own definition then, Howells
as a realist should maintain in these novels, even as he
conveys his meanings, an "illusion" of actuality that
faithfully reflects external actuality as he perceives it.
Such a specification means in the first place that when
^Indian Summer, (Boston, 1886); The Minister's Charge,
(Boston^ 1886); April Hopes, (New York, 1887).
^See above, pp. 22-63. According to Howells, the
realistic novelist makes two kinds of statements about man
and man's society. In one kind, the intellect is as nearly
detached from subjective judgment as possible, and the
statement ideally consists of an objective generalization
about what man and his society are like; the other kind of
statement consists of a moral evaluation of the attitudes
and conditions described by such an objective generaliza
tion. The terms intellectual and moral are used in the
present study to distinguish the two types.
128
129
Howells selects characters in his effort to make a state
ment about man and society he selects them in such a way as
to appear not to have selected them for a thematic purpose;
as has been demonstrated,^ Howells achieves this effect in
these novels by combining apparently individual traits in
each of his characters with traits that he considers char
acteristic of identifiable groups in society. In other
words, though these characters appear to be individuals
within the immediate context of the novels, Howells uses
the representative qualities of such characters to define
the social milieu in which they move. Obviously such an
achievement involves the presentation of his characters as
well as their selection. And the same artistic specifica
tion requires that Howells present his characters and
action in these novels in such a way that he does not ap
pear to interpose to guide his readers toward his meanings.
I. Howells1 "Dramatic" Method and the
Problem of Meaning
When Howells indicates in Criticism and Fiction that
the realistic novelist's general method of presentation is
"dramatic" rather than "analytical,"^ he means that the
3
See above, pp. 79-126.
^New York, 1891, p. 21.
130
realistic novelist does not step obviously into his scene
to express his personal views and sympathies. Howells'
statement seems to suggest that the technique of such a
novelist is like that of a dramatist who expects his audi
ence to surmise from observable speech and action alone
both the private motivations of his characters and his own
themes. To the extent that he is like such a dramatist,
the realistic novelist as Howells describes him is appar
ently supposed to convey his meanings solely through such
dialogue and incident as his readers might observe were
they in an audience viewing the novelist's scene on a
stage. In other words, if it is a true analogue of repre
sentational drama, the realistic novel supposedly repre
sents only such human behavior as in real life each separate
individual can observe in other separate individuals.
Only occasionally in the novels of 1886 and 1887, how
ever, does Howells himself employ just such a "pictorial"
type of "dramatic" presentation. His most extensive use of
it is in Indian Summer, in which Howells depicts almost ex
clusively in just such a strictly dramatic fashion those
scenes in which Colville is not present; such scenes in
volve dialogue among the female principals of the novel and
provide the reader with information about both Imogene and
Mrs. Bowen that Colville does not similarly possess. Un
like Colville, for instance, the reader knows that it is
not because she loves him that Imogene is fascinated with
131
Colville but because she pities him for his having been re
jected by another woman twenty years before; and although
Colville is unaware of Mrs. Bowen’s true feelings toward
him, the reader knows not only that she loves Colville but
that it costs her great mental suffering to keep her love
for him a complete secret.
Until Colville asks Mrs. Bowen to marry him, Howells
presents explicit information about the attitudes of Imo
gene and Mrs. Bowen by a strict dramatization of observable
speech and action. For instance, Howells establishes the
fact of Imogene's concern with Colville's past disappoint
ment in love by having Imogene express in frequent dialogue
with Mrs. Bowen her compassion for what she feels Colville
is still suffering because of his disappointment; later in
the novel Howells has her expressly acknowledge, by the act
of writing in her diary, that her engagement to Colville is
motivated by a secret desire to offer herself to Colville
as expiation for another woman's "cruelty" to him (pp. 261-
262). In similar "dramatic" fashion Howells shows Mrs.
Bowen's feelings for Colville indirectly by having her
anxiously question her daughter Effie about Colville's at
tentions to Imogene (p. 111). Later, when Imogene asks her
whether Colville might have "taken" the young girl to save
her "from the shame of knowing I had made a mistake" in
accusing Colville of pursuing her (p. 332), Mrs. Bowen re
fuses to answer "such a thing" (p. 332). Howells writes
132
that "in her own room," however, "sobs mingled with the
laughter which broke crazily from her lips" (p. 332).
Howells thus privately informs the reader that though Mrs.
Bowen loves Colville and suffers from the knowledge that
neither Colville nor Imogene loves the other, she will not
say a word about her feelings in order to alleviate her
suffering. Later, she tells Colville that she couldn't
have spoken without seeming selfish (pp. 388-389); and
though Colville thus learns why she was often cold toward
him when he was courting Imogene, he doesn't know the ex
tremity of her self-torture as the reader does.
Instead of restricting himself, however, to such a
limited "dramatic" technique, Howells presents most of the
scenes in Indian Summer through Colville's eyes; in fact,
by showing Colville's thoughts about what he sees and about
his own relevance to what he sees, Howells indicates that
his primary concern in this novel is with Colville's per
ceptivity. In this connection, Howells' use of a strictly
dramatic technique to present the feelings and attitudes
of the women--a technique that is necessary if Howells
wishes to insure his readers' seeing Colville's conscious
ness as the focus of the novel--serves the purpose of pro
viding an actuality whose details Colville does not know
but with which his welfare is deeply involved. If Colville
is to avoid the pitfalls of such an actuality he must sur
mise its nature on the basis of what limited knowledge he
133
does have; and the reader, possessing a broader picture
than Colville has, can gauge with some accuracy Colville's
capacity for comprehending the nature and the potential
consequences of a situation whose total meaning Colville
can only surmise on the basis of a vision whose limits the
reader can perceive.
Though some readers— particularly those accustomed to
the kind of novel that treats the protagonist in a love
triangle with sympathy--may interpret Colville's ultimate
analysis of his situation as a correct one, they should not
do so without considering the almost limitless possibilities
for irony that are available to the realist who measures a
character's perceptivity against the actualities the char
acter needs to understand. In fact, a novelist who pre
tends that a character is sufficiently superhuman to under
stand thoroughly all the aspects of his experience can
hardly claim to reflect probable actuality with accuracy.
For this reason, the realist as Howells describes him in
Criticism and Fiction is likely to present instead an iron
ic contrast between what the reader knows of the charac
ter's situation and what the character sees and understands
of it. By such a method as Howells uses in Indian Summer,
the novelist may demonstrate, for instance, that a charac
ter is obtuse or that for any number of other reasons he
completely misunderstands the actuality of a situation; or
the novelist may demonstrate that the character is betrayed
134
into an incorrect assessment of his situation by some sus
ceptibility of the senses or the ego; or he may demonstrate
that a character for his own personal advantage merely pre
tends to misunderstand much more than he really does mis
understand. In fact, the possibilities for irony are nu
merous; but since Colville seems such a pleasant and in
telligent person, the reader is likely to regard him un-
questioningly as a man who finally acts wisely and rightly
by giving up Imogene Graham and marrying Lina Bowen.^ But
the reader who is aware that in Criticism and Fiction
Howells argues consistently for a faithful reflection of
actuality and as a realist expresses disapproval of the
sympathetic depiction of character (p. 123), can hardly fail
to recognize that Howells1 method of dramatic presentation
as demonstrated in Indian Summer is used largely to examine
with apparent objectivity Colville's perceptions of his
world.
Howells' use of Colville's consciousness in Indian
Summer demonstrates clearly that by a "dramatic" presenta
tion of the material of fiction, Howells means more than
the mere "pictorial" presentation of observable speech and
action. He means as well the apparently objective depic
tion of a character's thoughts. Howells' "dramatic"
^As Cooke, Firkins, the Kirks, Carter, Cady and Car
rington all seem to do. See above, pp. 66-68.
135
technique as he employs it in the three novels of 1886 and
1887 involves a complex relationship between the reader and
the fiction, a relationship whose nature the reader must
comprehend for a valid reading of the novels. In Indian
Summer, for instance, the reader sees through his own eyes
the actuality that Colville does not see; this actuality
is openly dramatized for him. He also sees the objective
actuality that Colville does see; this actuality is like
wise dramatized for him and he and Colville are in effect
fellow members of an audience watching observable speech
and action. For the reader, Colville's external person is
part of that "pictorial" scene, too, and Colville's speech
and action are also dramatized. But whereas the reader can
disengage himself emotionally from the scene because he is
not personally involved in it, Colville cannot; Colville
has a vital interest in it and he is trying to comprehend
it and to work his way through it in a way that will result
in an outcome favorable to him. In order that the reader
can understand how Colville interprets what he sees, How
ells "dramatizes" for the reader Colville's conscious
thoughts. The reader can look at what Colville sees, then,
through two consciousnesses, his own and Colville's. But
Howells gives the reader the total picture as he does not
give it to Colville; since a part of that total picture is
Colville's consciousness, the reader can measure that con
sciousness in terms of its success or failure in
136
recognizing and solving the problems with which it is or
should be concerned.
Howells 1 "dramatic" method of presentation becomes
more complicated in the subsequent two novels of the peri
od- -Th£_Jfm]d^ and April Hopes. Whereas in
Indian Summer Howells is concerned with the perceptivity of
only one consciousness, that of Colville, he examines two
consciousnesses in The Minis ter1s Charge, that of the coun
try boy Lemuel Barker and that of the Boston minister David
Sewell. In April Hopes Howells increases the number of
consciousnesses he uses to three, that of the young lover
Dan Mavering and those of the Boston aristocrats Mrs. Pas-
mer and Mrs. Brinkley. As he expands his technique in
this manner, Howells increases also the number of possi
bilities for the use of irony. Not only does the reader
know more of what happens to Lemuel and Sewell in The
Minister's Charge, for instance, than either Lemuel or
Sewell knows, but the reader knows some things that exceed
the composite knowledge of the two and he knows the
thoughts of each as the other cannot know them. In other
words the reader apparently has a more complex total pic
ture in The Minister's Charge than he has in Indian Summer;
since Howells must maintain an apparent artistic distance
from his characters, the reader of this novel must expect
to gauge the perceptivity of the two characters solely on
the basis of their ability to appraise a complex total
137
picture from a much more limited viewpoint than he has.
Once Howells succeeds in establishing for his reader
the nature of the thoughts and attitudes of particular
characters by entering their consciousness, he can use the
speech and actions of these characters as an additional
means of expanding the reader's knowledge of the charac
ters’ perceptivity. If the reader knows how a character
thinks and what kind of thoughts a character has, he can
assess the character's speech or action in terms of its
relevance to the character’s true thoughts. There are
times, for instance, when two characters with whose con
sciousness Howells is concerned are present in the same
scene; when such a situation occurs, Howells controls the
scene by entering only one of the consciousnesses or by
completely dramatizing the scene without entering the con
sciousness of either. Whenever Sewell and Lemuel are in
the same scene, for example, Howells presents the scene
through Sewell’s consciousness; until the reader learns
something of the way Lemuel thinks, he has to wait for
Lemuel1s mental review of such a scene before he can know
what Lemuel thinks of it^; later he can judge Lemuel's
^See The Minis ter1s Charge, pp. 12-33. At his first
meeting with Sewell in Boston Lemuel hardly talks; and
while the two are together Howells presents only Sewell's
impressions of the scene. Only when Lemuel leaves does
Howells present the boy’s thoughts about the encounter
(see pp. 38-39).
138
attitudes from Lemuel's speech and action during such a
scene. At any rate, Howells is obviously concerned in
these three novels with depicting not only the external
appearances of the world in which his characters live, but
the degree of consciousness some of his characters possess
of that world.
Though an examination of Howells 1 use of individual
consciousness might provide considerable insight into the
psychology of apparently individual characters in these
novels, more important in a study of Howells' fiction of
the period from 1886 to 1891 for an identification of pos
sible changes in social themes is a consideration of his
use of such consciousness in conveying an intellectual and
moral statement about American society. In the first place,
it is through the consciousness Howells portrays in these
novels that the reader sees a great part of the American
"social fabric" pictured in them by Howells' use of repre
sentative selection.^ Yet if Howells is to make clear in
every case the distinction "between what is right and what
is wrong, what is noble and what is base, what is health
and what is perdition, in the actions and characters he
portrays,he needs to find a means of indicating whether
^See above, pp. 125-127.
^Criticism and Fiction. , pp. 98-99.
139
Americans act rightly or wrongly when they behave in a
specified way. Though one might identify Howells' moral
convictions by reading Criticism and Fiction, each novel,
if it is artistically valid, must convey its moral state
ment without dependence upon what Howells has said about
his own moral views in writings apart from the fiction it
self. Several apparent possibilities for achieving his
end are not as available to Howells as might at first ap
pear. For instance, he cannot, in order to demonstrate
that an action is a serious sin, mete out greater punish
ment than he believes such action would be met with in
actual American life; though such a device might help How
ells clarify his moral viewpoint by its implication that
such punishment as is given is merited, the use of it would
involve a distortion of actuality as well as authorial in
trusion, both of which Howells consistently disapproved of
in Criticism and Fiction. Furthermore, he cannot use a
character obviously as a consistent spokesman for himself.
To do so would involve an identification with the charac
ter, which Howells said the realist avoids (p. 123); such
a practice would also involve an obvious attempt to de
velop a thesis, whereas Howells felt a novelist's thesis
should be conveyed subtly through art (p. 82). In other
words, to the extent that Howells' practice reflects his
literary principles, he treats the characters whose con
sciousness he explores in these novels with as much
140
artistic objectivity as he treats those he does not ex
amine so deeply.
For this reason, the task of breaking through the
"illusion" of actuality that Howells achieves by his "dra
matic" technique and into the subjective moral statements
that Howells makes about American society is a complex one.
If the reader of these novels must use his own subjective
moral judgment to evaluate the wisdom of a character's
action, statement, or thought, he can understand Howell's
moral statements only if he has the same moral attitudes
as Howells. Therefore, if Howells indeed wishes to com
municate his own moral themes in these novels, he must
either identify a moral standard within each novel for his
reader to recognize, or provide a means within the novel
by which the reader can tell when a character is expressing
Howells' viewpoint, whether in action or dialogue— or
thought.
A study of Howells' technique of presentation in the
novels of 1886 and 1887, then, involves an investigation
specifically of the method by which Howells manages through
his characters to express his own moral statement about
American life. It also involves an attempt to answer the
question of whether Howells identifies a moral standard
within the novels or merely assumes one, or whether Howells
provides a subtle clue by which the reader can identify a
character who reflects Howells' viewpoint. At any rate,
141
since Howells seems profoundly concerned with the individu
al consciousness of some characters in all three of these
novels, an obvious consideration in a study of the rela
tionship between technique and theme in these novels is
Howells' use of individual consciousness.
One effect of Howells' use of individual consciousness
is an impression that his characters are individuals.9
Such an impression contributes to a tendency on the part of
readers to interpret the three novels only in terms of the
conscious and expressed concerns of the characters them
selves, without consideration of these concerns within the
total context of the novels. One of the reasons such crit
ics as Firkins, the Kirks, Cady, and Bennett see The Minis
ter ' s Charge as a social event^-O is that such characters as
Sewell and Evans talk about social problems and that Lemuel
experiences and observes certain social inequities. The
reason these critics see the theme of this novel as pri
marily the moral theme of "complicity" is that this theme
is what concerns Sewell himself in the novel. As a result
of this tendency, these critics do not examine the possi
bility that Howells intended the characters in The Minis
ter 's Charge to be actors in a drama whose meanings the
characters themselves cannot totally comprehend.
^See above, pp. 79-81.
lOSee above, pp. 70-72.
142
In the case of Indian Summer and April Hopes, the ef
fect of interpreting the characters' conscious concerns as
the primary concerns of the novels themselves is even more
misleading. The characters in these two novels seem pri
marily concerned with the love affairs going on in them.
Imogene Graham's characterization of Colville's conversa
tion in Indian Summer as "persiflage" (p. 280) is not an in
apt description of the way Colville speaks. Before his en
gagement with Imogene, Colville seems concerned chiefly
with flattering the women in the novel. When, for in
stance, he is introduced by Mrs. Bowen to Imogene Graham,
he exaggerates a few minutes' wait by saying to Imogene,
"She has kept me waiting from the beginning of time. So
that I have grown grey on my way up to you" (p. 40). Col
ville is alert for such opportunities. When Imogene
Graham says,'|l should like a gentleman to talk to me with
out a single word or look to show that he thought I was
good looking," Colville interposes brightly, "Ah, how could
he?” (p. 47).
With similar frivolity Colville seems merely to humor
Mr. Waters, who, though he does show a serious interest in
hypothetical social problems, cannot pursue one line of
thought with consistency. In one brief conversation with
Colville, Mr. Waters' thoughts wander, with some humorous
guidance by Colville, over nine separate social and moral
considerations (pp. 220-227). At the end of these various
143
cogitations, Colville jokingly says that Mr. Waters will
understand the power of evil when his "revelation" (p. 227)
of the "riddle of the painful earth" comes (p. 224). Such
apparent disorder in the minister's social comments and
such lightness in Colville's response to them suggest a
lack of conviction on their part about social concerns with
which the two characters are not personally involved. When
Colville becomes less casual in the seriousness of his en
tanglement with Imogene Graham, he is clearly occupied
with his love problems which he sees as intensely personal.
Similarly, most of the characters in April Hopes are
concerned, not with significant social problems, but with
the love affair between Dan Havering and Alice Pasmer.
This affair affects life in Boston, Campobello, Portland,
New York, Washington, Fortress Monroe, and the manufactur
ing village of Ponkwasset Falls. Even Bromfield Corey, who
is so old that Mrs. Brinkley thinks he should not be al
lowed to sit even on the sidelines of social affairs (p.
315), hears about it (p. 313). A reader of these two nov
els who is not aware of Howells' view that a realistic
novel about American life should make an intellectual and
moral statement about that life might understandably not
read these novels for significant social themes.
Howells' "illusion" of actuality depends indeed upon
his convincing his readers that they encounter individu
alized characters in his novels. But the attentive reader
of these three novels who sees the meaning of the novels
only in terms of the consciousness of particular characters
finds obstacles to a coherent interpretation of them. Col
ville, for instance, seems convinced that his marriage to
Lina Bowen is a wise conclusion to a period in his life in
which he almost married an immature young woman. Yet How
ells has shown that Lina Bowen is an extremely tormented
woman. Despite her knowledge that Colville has always
loved her, Mrs. Bowen has deliberately tortured herself by
a rule of proper behavior that has prevented her from
telling either him or Imogene Graham of what she knows for
fear that she will be interpreted by them as seeming self
ish (Indian Summer, p. 388). She has inflicted her agony
on her own child, who cries that the household is no longer
happy (p. 252). Mrs. Bowen has made Imogene's life with
her unbearable by her lack of enthusiasm and by her refusal
to say "anything about" Imogenefs affair (p. 297). And she
has treated Colville with an apparent "dislike" (p. 300).
Though it is true that by the novel's end Imogene's deci
sion to give Colville up has removed the immediate reason
for Mrs. Bowen's self-torture, there is a quality in her
character that Colville is unaware of in his ultimate
assessment of his relationship with Mrs. Bowen. Yet
another reading of Indian Summer would involve a considera
tion of Howells' intention in making so much of Mrs.
Bowen's self-torture as he does. Such consideration must
145
therefore go beyond Colville's final consciousness as a
character.
A similar difficulty arises in The Minister's Charge.
Though Sewell's view of "complicity" is apparently influ
enced by his experiences with Lemuel, his knowledge of
Lemuel's experiences in Boston and the boy's attitude
toward those experiences is incomplete in terms of his own
complicity in them. Sewell's feeling at the end of the
novel is one of relief, and he is convinced that getting
Lemuel back to the farm is a desirable end and that no
great harm has been done. Lemuel, on the other hand, feels
that his return to the country is a temporary pause in his
career, and he looks forward to an eventual return to Bos
ton. Unless the divergent consciousnesses of these two
characters are reconciled in terms of a single theme, the
novel seems to lack unity of focus as Bennett contends.^
Similarly if Howells' purpose in April Hopes is mere
ly to show ultimately how foolish the young lovers are in
hoping that their marriage will be less tempestuous than
their engagement has been, the question as to why Howells
presents much of the novel through the conscious thoughts
of Mrs. Pasmer and Mrs. Brinkley is not clearly answered.
Mrs. Pasmer, Alice's mother, is quite aware of Alice's
unreasonably demanding nature. She tells Alice, "You're
■^See above, pp. 70-72.
146
always fancying yourself doing something very devoted, but
I've never seen you ready to give up your own will, or your
own comfort even, in the slightest degree" (p. 383). "Your
church makes allowance for human nature," Mrs. Pasmer says,
"but you make none" (p. 382). Mrs. Pasmer loves her daugh
ter. "At the bottom of her heart," Howells writes, "her
daughter was all the world to her. She had made the girl
her idol" (p. 145). Mrs. Pasmer is also fond of Dan Mav-
ering. She explicitly tells Alice so (p. 382) and exclaims
indignantly after Alice breaks with Dan, "If you were not
my daughter I could be glad he had escaped you" (p. 382).
Yet is is apparent that she brings Alice to Fortress Monroe
with the hope that Dan will be there and that the young
couple can be reconciled (p. 463). Though she has reason
to doubt the likelihood of marital happiness on the part of
Dan and Alice, she encourages the romance. A thorough un
derstanding of the novel requires therefore a considera
tion of Mrs. Pasmer!s function in it. In a similar manner,
Mrs. Brinkley is conscious of the incompatibility of Dan
and Alice. She sees Alice as an extremely selfish girl,
"a solemn little unconscious egoist" (p. 482) and Dan as a
victim (p. 483). At the end of the novel, Mrs. Brinkley
still considers him "as unselfish and good as he was un
equal to her [Alice's] exactions" (p. 482). She sees Mrs.
Pasmer as a scheming woman: "I know the girl is just a
tool in the mother's hands" (p. 465). Mrs. Brinkley thinks
147
Dan has made "the most fortunate escape in the world" (p.
473) if he. remains out of the Pasmer clutches. Though she
has Dan’s confidence (p. 358) and though she resolves not
to let Alice and Mrs. Pasmer get their hands on him (p.
465), she fails, When she has the opportunity to act open
ly, to prevent the marriage (p. 480). Her failure and even
her involvement in the affair suggest that Howells' inten
tion in the novel was more than to recount the love story
of two incompatible young people. To read the novel as a
mere focus upon the conscious but absurd hope of two young
lovers that they can salvage marital bliss out of a tor
mented engagement is clearly not enough.
All three of these novels must finally be read with an
attempt to reconcile their total contexts with the con
sciousness of characters; such a reading, however, cannot
be achieved without a knowledge of Howells’ overall inten
tion and the techniques by which he reveals that intention.
In connection with the relationship between consciousness
and morality, Howells obviously believed that a person who
consciously commits what he considers a moral wrong per
forms an immoral act. In fact, such a view is essential to
any system that argues individual moral responsibility. To
the extent, then, that Howells meant by a sin "of sense"
(Criticism and Fiction, p. 95) a deliberate surrender of
the conscience to the urging of the senses, Howells indi
cates that anyone who does what he considers wrong merely
148
to gratify the senses commits a moral wrong. Although
Howells did not catalog the "sins of sense" which he be
lieved are "inexorably" punished in the real world (p. 95),
the desire for a life of idleness that an aristocratic
ideal seems to inspire can be as apparently a sin "of
sense” as is "guilty love," to which Howells elsewhere re
ferred (p. 157). If a person believes, for instance, that
it is better to be responsible than to be idle, and will
ingly submits, despite his convictions, to a life of pleas
ant idleness, he is morally wrong; he commits a sin "of
sense."
However, since Howells in these three novels contrasts
the consciousness of particular characters with an external
actuality of which such characters are not conscious, the
question arises as to whether Howells considered any person
responsible for unintentionally harmful actions, speech, or
attitudes. Clearly he does not consider the young, whose
characters, he says, are yet "unformed" (p. 94), completely
at fault because they respond to their senses rather than
to their reason in matters of love. If they falsely ideal
ize what is one passion among many in "the drama of life"
(p. 157), they have been taught to do so by persons who
"ought to know better" (p. 9). Though the young may suffer
for the mistakes they make, or cause suffering by them,
they are less culpable than those who commit wrong con
sciously.
149
However, because the young expect guidance from those
they think "ought to know," great social harm can result
when persons who ought to be conscious of moral responsi
bility fail to be so. A bad novel, Howells implies through
out Criticism and Fiction, does harm regardless of the au
thor's consciousness of wrong. "Arts," "letters," and
"sciences," Howells writes at the conclusion of Criticism
and Fiction, have a moral obligation; they must "tend to
make the race better and kinder" (p. 188). In other words,
artists, authors, and scientists, since people look to them
for guidance, have a moral responsibility to mankind, How
ells believed, whether they are aware of such responsibili
ty or not. If what they contribute does not "tend to make
the race better and kinder," they have done a great harm
whether they are conscious of their failure or not. Simi
larly, if a person of mature age idealizes the passion of
love or any other sensual appetite at the expense of common
sense, he teaches the young by his example, according to
Howells, and, in Howells' opinion, whether such a person is
conscious of his error or not, he causes harm. A minister
is by the same token assumed by his congregation to provide
moral leadership; in Howells' view, such a minister, wheth
er he knows what he is doing or not, commits a great harm
if he teaches false ideals. Finally, the influence of an
aristocratic class can be extremely damaging whatever the
moral intentions of its members; such a class is seen by
150
the people who idealize it to represent the best and the
most beautiful that their society has to offer; and though
this aristocracy may consider itself the highest achieve
ment of beauty and worth, if it teaches even by inadvertent
example that idleness, uselessness, and selfishness are
values, the harm is as sure as if the members were delib
erately immoral.
Since harm can be caused unconsciously and because one
can be misled "by some one who professes to know better"
(p. 9), the function of realistic fiction as Howells sees
it is to depict the truth so that those who look to litera
ture for truth about life will find responsible moral in
struction. In his attempt to make these novels fulfill
this function, Howells uses the consciousness of particu
lar characters in order to assess the success or failure
of "professed" moral leadership. The questions he attempts
to answer in them is whether persons whom others admire or
look to for guidance are suitable objects for admiration
or are valid guides--whether or not, for instance, Colville
finally does a wise thing in marrying Lina Bowen, or Sewell
is the exemplary moral guide he seems to be or thinks he
is, or the members of the Boston aristocracy in April
Hopes properly train their young for life in their world.
Since such characters have representative qualities as
well as individual ones, the traits Howells assigns them
as characters can in some measure be extended to the
151
groups they represent. Furthermore, though an understand
ing of Howells1 view of the social environment in which
these characters move depends much upon Howells 1 use of
types in all three novels taken together, Howells makes his
particular moral statement in each of the novels primarily
by focusing upon the consciousnesses of particular charac
ters. By such a complex use of consciousness as he employs
in these novels, Howells can weigh the guilt and innocence
of his focal characters and groups in the struggle of "all,
or nearly all" Americans to set themselves apart in "select
circles and upper classes" (Criticism and Fiction, p. 80).
Since Howells believed in an "illusion” of objectivi
ty, however, such a use of consciousness does not imply
that Howells intended the characters he focuses upon as
spokesmen of his own moral viewpoint. If the thinking of
such characters seems to resemble at times Howells1 moral
view of the world, one must remember that Howells does not,
according to his literary principles, intend to identify
with these characters. Ultimately a Howells character and
what he thinks, says, or does must be measured by the way
in which what the character thinks, says, or does affects
his pictured world.
II. Indian Summer and April Hopes:
The American "Aristocracy"
Howells deals more obviously with American social
152
themes in The Minister's Charge than he does in his other
two novels of the period. However, an examination of
Indian Summer and April Hopes in terms of the consciousness
of particular characters reveals that in these novels, too,
Howells discusses American social conditions and attitudes.
He also attempts to define American weaknesses and
strengths and wherever possible to assign responsibility
for them. His themes reflect his statement in Criticism
and Fiction that Americans are seeking to escape their com
mon equality and to pursue an aristocratic ideal. The
Americans depicted in both Indian Summer and April Hopes
appear to have obtained such an ideal; however, unlike the
Bostonian aristocrats of April Hopes, the characters of
Indian Summer are middle-class Americans who can afford to
live an aristocratic life in Europe. Both novels are os
tensibly love stories. According to his principles as he
defines them in Criticism and Fiction, however, Howells
must convey in these novels an intellectual and moral
statement about American society. Despite the fact, then,
that the consciousnesses of the characters in these two
novels are deeply absorbed at most times with love prob
lems, such absorption must be examined in terms of a total
"social fabric" of which the characters and their con
sciousnesses are only a part.
In Indian Summer Howells focuses almost completely
upon the consciousness of Colville. Though Howells departs
153
from Colville's consciousness at times to identify the at
titude of both Mrs. Bowen and Imogene Graham toward Col
ville, there is little question that Howells' primary con
cern in this novel is Colville's attitude toward his own
experiences. Though Colville cannot observe that Mrs.
Bowen tortures herself by self-denial because of her desire
to be proper and that Imogene Graham is willing to sac
rifice herself to him because of pity for what she supposes
he suffers rather than for love for him, he is sufficiently
intelligent to be conscious of some of the dangers of his
situation. He knows, for instance, that he is mistaken in
any attempt to recapture his youth by marriage with a beau
tiful young girl, though he admits that he was fleetingly
tempted by illusions of that possibility (pp. 375-376).
But he recognizes his susceptibility to this temptation in
time to resist; and, apparently, as the novel ends, Col
ville has nothing on his conscience to keep him from being
happy the rest of his life with the ladylike Mrs. Bowen.
But in the first part of Indian Summer, Colville is
ashamed at finding himself in Florence. Because of his
idleness in the Florentine atmosphere, he feels "in some
sort lost, and as it were, extinct" (p. 8). He tells him
self that he is in Florence for the purpose of "rubbing up
his former studies" in architecture (p. 7) with the ex
pectation of putting them "in practice at New York ulti
mately" (p. 7). But his shame is intensified when he hears
154
a story Illustrating the Italians' patriotic sense of re
sponsibility and considers in contrast the general unwor
thiness of Americans with their greater "resources and op
portunities" (p. 35). "Life, active life, life of his own
day, called to him; he had been one of its busiest chil
dren: could he turn his back on it for any charm or use
that was in the past? . . . It was the problems of the
vast, tumultuous American life, which he had turned his
back on, that really concerned him" (pp. 88-90). The same
thought weighs on his mind when he asks Mr. Waters, "You
have no reproach for feeble-spirited fellow citizens who
abandon their native climate and come to live in Italy?"
(p. 185). The proper place for Americans, Colville obvi
ously believes, is in America; and the proper activity for
Americans is meaningful work. Colville's statement that
he could not reconcile himself to dying outside America
(p. 176) is, despite its triteness, a tacit assertion that
America is the only fit home for Americans.
Nor is he deluded by the superficially authentic
American quality of the life of Americans in Florence. He
notices that American life in Florence is indeed limited
largely to associations with English-speaking people. But
the communities in which Americans live display blends of
English and American customs and characteristics. He
notices that every American in Florence has an American
doctor or apothecary and an American dentist, but an
155
English tailor and a church where English is spoken and
Americans attend with Englishmen (p. 117). But despite
such apparent democratization of English and American
"aristocrats,1' Colville recognizes that the American colony
in Florence is more English in spirit than American, even
to the vast amount of tea consumed at every gathering (p.
184). Though he begins to participate in this society, he
is under no illusion about the trivial life he is leading.
He is thoroughly conscious that such a life is not the
proper life of a responsible American.
Nor does the ladylike behavior of Mrs. Bowen deceive
him at the start into believing that her professed motive
for coming to Florence is a valid one. Colville recognizes
at once that Mrs. Bowen's decision to educate her child in
Europe rather than in America reflects an idealization of
aristocratic European standards at the cost of American
ones of equality and freedom.
. . . His heart goes out to the child: For her
there were to be no buggy rides, or concerts, or
dances at the invitation of young men; no picnics,
free and unchaperoned as the casing air; no sitting
on the steps at dusk with callers who never dreamed
of asking for her mother; no lingering at the gate
with her youthful escort home from the ball--nothing
of that wild, sweet liberty which once made American
girlhood a long sweet rapture. (pp. 18-19)
He is conscious of the future which Mrs. Bowen plans for
the child, and he foresees it with a considerable degree
of horror.
However, despite Colville's consciousness that life
156
away from America is wrong for an American and that a life
of idleness such as Florence offers is also wrong, Colville
is nearing forty and regrets the loss of his youth; his age
also makes him want to be comfortable, to enjoy the comfort
and leisure, for instance, of the society of such Americans
as Mrs. Bowen. Consequently, two illusions that Howells
finds prevalent in American society affect Colville: the
illusion that "love" works miracles, for instance, such as
making a forty-year-old man young; and the illusion that an
aristocratic life of comfort and leisure is a valid life.
Attracted by Imogene Graham, he believes, temporarily at
least, that the power of "love" can restore his youth.
Though his common sense prevents him from pursuing this il
lusion to disaster, he comes under the spell of Mrs. Bowen;
he chooses at last an aristocratic way of life, which he
will live on foreign soil in complete idleness with a woman
so tortured by a Puritanic conscience that she cannot dis-
1 n
tinguish propriety from morality. With her, Colville
will contribute to a refinement of Effie Bowen that will
remove from the child every vestige of the American spirit
of freedom and independence that he once strongly thought
was her birthright.
To the extent that he is conscious that his choice of
■^See above, pp. 102-103.
157
an aristocratic way of life violates his own convictions
regarding his responsibility as an American, Colville is
guilty, in Howells1 terms, of a sin "of sense" (Criticism
and Fiction, p. 95). But stimulated by Imogene Graham’s
youthful beauty and Mrs. Bowen's cultivated charm, Colville
apparently loses his awareness of any obligation to Ameri
can society. As the novel ends, Colville is hardly con
scious of America. In fact, only Lina Bowen seems to re
member their country. "I can’t believe it's right," she
says, "staying away from the country so long." Howells at
tests to her insincerity by commenting that "people often
say such things in Europe." "No, I don’t either,” Colville
agrees with Mrs. Bowen, but he adds to his agreement a con
dition he could not have conceived of when he first came to
Florence, "if you've got anything to do there." Mrs.
Bowen's response is merely conversational, "You can always
make something to do there.” And Colville's last remark on
the subject is a similarly disinterested "Oh yes" (p. 371).
He no longer considers with his original sense of urgency
"the vast, tumultuous American life that" once "really con
cerned him" (pp. 88-90). He has "turned his back on" that
life.
For the reader, whatever Colville's degree of aware
ness, Howells intends Colville's experience to illustrate
the common American susceptibility to the attractions of
an aristocratic life. Colville's experience also
158
constitutes a warning that the aristocratic ideal cannot
be obtained, at least by Americans who, like Colville, be
long to the middle class, except at the expense of life in
America. The aristocratic ideal, in other words, is not
American, either in spirit, or, except in "select" Ameri
can groups like Boston's leisure class, in practice. How
ells uses Colville, then, to make a moral statement about
American society. Whether Colville is immediately con
scious of moral failure or not as the novel ends, the fact
that he is sufficiently intelligent and knowledgeable to be
aware in conscious moments of what a responsible American
with his capacities should do in American society suggests
that Howells considers Colville morally responsible for his
ultimate surrender to the sensual appeal of a life of
beauty, comfort, and leisure. The fact that he was a
journalist before coming to Florence indicates that Howells
intends Colville's failure to represent a common failure of
American middle-class intellectual leadership to hold its
ground against the encroachment of the aristocratic spirit
on American life. If one like Colville succumbs to such a
false and un-American ideal, it is not likely that others
less capable can avoid the temptation.
Howells communicates his theme in Indian Summer by un
obtrusively depicting an apparent change in Colville's
attitude. This shift is accomplished so subtly, however,
that critics have not commonly noticed it. Their oversight
159
is due in part to Howells 1 successful efforts to reflect
the actual consciousness of a person in Colville's circum
stances. Colville thinks of his American responsibilities
when his mind is relatively free from emotional involve
ment. When, however, Colville becomes entangled with Imo
gene and Mrs. Bowen, the two demand all his conscious at
tention. Accordingly, he forgets everything else except
the problem of the moment. While thus absorbed, Colville
marries Mrs. Bowen under the impression that his only prior
concern was his involvement with Imogene. Since the novel
ends with a focus upon Colville1s and Mrs. Bowen1s apparent
happiness, it is understandable that the reader, like Col
ville, may forget that Colville once thought Florence an
improper place for an American to live.
Once a reader realizes that in Criticism and Fiction
Howells says he has committed himself to the treatment of
social themes in his novels, such a reader can easily rec
ognize that in April Hopes Howells examines not only the
experiences of two young lovers but the attitudes and
capacities of the Boston aristocracy as well. Unlike the
imitative middle-class "aristocrats" of Indian Summer who
can live their lives of luxurious self-indulgence only
upon foreign soil, the aristocrats of Boston are supposed
to represent the one authentic American realization of the
aristocratic ideal. In April Hopes Howells examines the
behavior and attitudes of these aristocrats in terms of
160
the validity of their reputation for intellectual and moral
leadership. If the Bostonian aristocracy is truly pre
eminent intellectually and morally, the lives of its mem
bers should provide meaningful examples for the "mass" of
Americans who are struggling to be like such people. The
behavior of these aristocrats should therefore reflect in
telligence, selflessness, and conscientious responsibility.
Furthermore, if such a class is truly pre-eminent intellec
tually and morally it should provide its young with superi
or education; such a class should teach its children to use
reason and common sense in dealing with problems of life;
it should teach them that the world is larger than they are
and that they have responsibilities beyond themselves; and
it should teach them that their passions are merely pas
sions and that to exalt them is to give the senses pre
eminence over the intellect. If, therefore, Howells can
demonstrate that Bostonians are no wiser and no better
morally than other Americans and that they educate their
children no better, he discredits not only the reputation
for intellectual and moral pre-eminence that the Bostonian
aristocracy enjoys, but also the validity of the American
pursuit of an aristocratic ideal.
In ironic contrast with what an intellectually and
morally pre-eminent social class ought to be, Howells dem
onstrates in April Hopes that most of Boston's aristocrats
have little on their minds except the subject of "love."
161
Though Dan Mavering and Alice Pasmer as young lovers are
understandably absorbed with the subject, their love affair
also affects most of Boston's "best" society. But the la
dies at Campobello, which include most of aristocratic Bos
ton's womanhood, talk of little else than Dan's and Alice's
love affair, and a year later they move their involvement
with the young couple's problem down the Seaboard to For
tress Monroe in Virginia. Aside from such concerns with
"love" and matchmaking, the women of this society are idle.
They attend social events in Boston throughout the winter,
and in their summer migrations they carry with them the
idle chatter and gossip that consumes their waking hours.
By demonstrating then that what Howells considered a sensu
al impulse--the "passion" of love— constitutes the supreme
interest of such women’s lives, Howells questions the in
tellectual pre-eminence as well as the moral superiority of
at least the women of Boston's leisure class.
Bromfield Corey seems to imply that men do not share
in the frivolous activities associated with an aristocratic
life. "You ladies," he says to Mrs. Brinkley, "who can lie
till noon next day, come to Jane's reception at eleven
o'clock, and you drag along with you a herd of us brokers,
bankers, merchants, lawyers, and doctors, who must be at
our offices and counting rooms before nine in the morning"
(p. 312). But Mrs. Brinkley reminds Corey that he and her
husband are continuously idle (p. 313). Corey admits to
162
the satirical nature of his comment by adding Mr. Pasmer to
himself and Brinkley as idle men (p. 313).
In fact the only aristocratic male in the novel who
professes to lead a useful life is Dan Mavering's father.
Mr. Mavering has forsworn the life of the Boston aristoc
racy as "useless" and, despite the fact that his wealth
would permit him to lead such a life, he manages a country
estate and manufactures wallpaper instead. Because of Mr.
Mavering*s apparent moral conviction and industry, Howells
obviously considers him an example of the best that the
aristocratic ideal has produced in America. Indeed the
father's attitude seems to justify the pursuit of an aris
tocratic ideal. Mr. Mavering has apparently used the kind
of wealth Americans dream of for moral rather than for idle
ends.
However, the reader who knows from a reading of Criti
cism and Fiction that Howells categorically opposes the
pursuit of an aristocratic ideal^-3 is likely to be skepti
cal of Howells' apparent approval of Mr. Mavering. Accord
ingly, he will examine the structure of the novel to dis
cover Howells' overall intent. As he examines the struc
ture, such a reader will also consider the relationship of
the consciousness of Dan Mavering to such an intent. As
Mr. Mavering's son, Dan should reflect in his behavior and
■^See above, pp. 76-78.
163
attitudes those values that his father has inculcated in
him. If Howells can show ultimately that Mr. Mavering has
failed in his responsibility to his son, he can question
the usefulness of the father's life. At the same time he
can question the validity of the pursuit of the aristo
cratic ideal even in its best manifestations.
A clue to an understanding of Howells1 purpose in
using Dan Mavering's consciousness as a focus in April
Hopes lies in Howells1 employment of the first seven chap
ters of the novel to present the Class Day celebrations
that mark Dan's graduation from Harvard. Dan is, in other
words, just finishing his education at the institution in
which young male aristocrats in Boston society seek their
preparation for life. Howells intends this beginning of
April Hopes, therefore, as a preparation for dealing with
the question of Dan Mavering's intellectual and moral
training. To make the question more meaningful, Howells
endows Dan with several superior attributes. He gives Dan
"charm" (p. 55), intelligence, and other qualities of so
cial "leadership" (p. 53). Not the least of Dan's advan
tages is the fact that he has not been brought up by such
frivolous aristocratic females as generally populate the
novel. He has instead been reared by a father who pro
fesses to believe in a meaningful, useful life, and who,
if he is a responsible father, has inculcated similar
values in his son.
164
Yet despite his advantages and despite his success at
Harvard (p. 56) and despite the common view as expressed by
Professor Saintsbury that "Harvard is just like the world"
(p. 54), Dan Mavering is unprepared to cope intelligently
or responsibly with the actualities of Boston life. His
relationship with Alice Pasmer is a constant turmoil be
cause, though he loves her, he cannot understand her whims„
He cannot understand her insistence, for instance, that he
do something for two women she believes he deserted for her
(pp. 232-233) or her vehement indignation when he obeys her
(p. 327). He cannot understand her displeasure when he
shows concern with the discomfort he causes a dancing part
ner with whom Alice herself has asked him to dance (p. 363).
When she recommends that they have "an ideal in their en
gagement," he doesn't know what she means (p. 352). Des
pite his own tendency to idealize his love for Alice, his
belief, for instance that his love is already "all ideal
through and through" (p. 353), he doesn't understand that
Alice wants with almost religious fervor to "consecrate her
happiness" (p. 369). As Dan explains to Alice's mother
after Alice has asked him to give up his friendship with
Mrs. Brinkley, can't tell where she's going to bring
up" (p. 360).
But though his Harvard education might be excused for
not preparing him to deal with such an unpredictable person
as Alice Pasmer, its greatest failure is that it has not
165
taught him sufficient common sense to appraise his own im
pulses. Each time Alice dismisses him, Dan soon forgets
her; after their last separation,”he feels "an obscure
sense of escape, of liberation" (p. 395) and he subsequent
ly finds in Julia Anderson a woman more suitable to his
temperament (p. 447). But every time he sees Alice, he
succumbs to his irrational "passion." In other words, he
believes that his love for Alice will resolve differences
of temperament that fender the two incompatible.
In fact, his Harvard education has contributed to his
idealization of his passion. In a brief passage early in
the novel, Mrs. Saintsbury indicates that Dan has shown an
interest in literature and that her husband, a Professor of
Comparative Literature, has encouraged him in this interest
(p. 34). By implication, Saintsbury as a representative of
Harvard has had a great deal to do with Dan's literary edu
cation. This education is reflected in subsequent applica
tions by Dan of his reading to his personal experiences.
After one of Alice's rejections, for instance, he thinks of
Dante’s Inferno. "He thought he would make his life--his
desolate, broken life--a perpetual exile, like Dante's"
(p. 181). After Alice breaks her engagement with Dan,
Howells writes, Dan "knew by all he had ever heard or read
of people in his position, that he ought to be altogether
miserable" (p. 396); he remembers specifically a "novel in
which the heroine dies after much emotional suffering"
166
(p. 396). Howells thus indicates by a subtle and complex
technique that the literature Dan learned to read at Har
vard was not about real life, that it has taught him false
ly to idealize "love" rather than to live sensibly and
responsibly in his world.
Not only, however, does Dan Mavering's intellectual
training prove inadequate for a sensible and responsible
life; his moral training is likewise deficient. In fact,
Dan seems conscienceless, unconcerned with moral responsi
bility. He is light and amiable as Mrs. Saintsbury and
Mrs. Pasmer agree (p. 53); "his first impulse," says Mrs.
Saintsbury, "is always generous and sweet" (p. 53). But
lightness and congeniality are superficial qualities, and,
though they reflect generous impulses, do not essentially
reflect a stable character. He apparently holds no con
victions; his intentions are to please; and the only thing
he feels intensely is his love for Alice Pasmer, though he
is not constant even in that feeling.
On the surface, Dan's apparent unconcern with moral
responsibility seems to be accounted for by what Mrs.
Saintsbury calls his "artistic temperament" (p. 52). Dan
has a "habit," she explains, "of leaving things vague and
undefined, and hoping they'll somehow come out as you want
them of themselves; that way of taking the line of beauty
to get at what you wish to do or say, and of being very
finicking \sicl about little things and lax about
167
essentials” (p. 52). When she makes this statement, Mrs.
Saintsbury is referring to Dan’s failure to make clear to
guests who accompany him to his room on Class Day that he
is in an urgent hurry. Instead, he lies to them: "No,
don't hurry; there's plenty of time" (p. 42). This kind of
tactful lie becomes more serious when he permits his mother
to believe that he and Alice will live in his mother’s home
after they are married while he simultaneously permits
Alice and her mother to believe that he will accompany the
Pasmers to Europe. There is thus a languor in his moral
attitude that prevents him from taking a firm direction.
The final expression of this quality appears in the lack of
moral courage he demonstrates in his letter to Julia Ander
son in which he cautiously hints that he might ask her to
marry him if she will indicate that she wants him to (p.
456). Her reaction to his failure to be direct questions
his whole moral character. Regretfully, she chooses
another lover, who, she tells herself, is "a man, anyway"
(p. 457). Dan, in other words, is not a formed character;
he does not know how a responsible man should behave. He
does not depend upon any moral values of his own for guid
ance .
However, Howells does not attribute such moral failure
to Dan's education at Harvard, but to his education at
home. The mother, because of her invalidism, has been un
able to give her son a moral training along the lines of
168
"her inherited Puritanism" (p. 424). The responsibility
for such training has therefore fallen to the father, who,
he tells Dan, has attempted to counter whatever influence
the Puritanic "insanity" of the mother might have had by
trying "to make you children see all your qualities in
their true proportion and relation" (p. 423). Though his
statement sounds reasonable, it constitutes part of an
apology by the father for his not having taught Dan that
there are times when one must choose a direction and not
leave things "to come out all right by themselves" (p.
423). What the statement means is that the father has
taught his children to be tolerant of their weaknesses. He
admits that he "may have gone too far" (pp. 423-424). How
ever, the son is not, the father says, to feel guilty for
any harm that he doesn't intend. As sensible as such a
point of view sounds, it ironically demonstrates Mr. Maver
ing 's moral failure in the education of his son. The valid
means of forestalling the "insanity" of "remorse" which Mr.
Mavering is fearful of for Dan is not by completely disre
garding conscience as Dan has done, but by the development
of moral consciousness. In other words, one never need
feel remorse if he knows how to behave in the first place.
Since Mr. Mavering has not helped his son to develop a
moral consciousness, he has failed in his paternal respon
sibilities .
This failure casts doubt on the validity of Mr.
169
Mavering*s claim that he leads a ’'useful" life because he
devotes himself to work. Though he feels morally superior
to Mr. Pasmer, who "has been absolutely idle and useless
all his days" (p. 271), Mr. Mavering is evidently more con
cerned with his own personal morality than with the moral
education of his children. In other words, by calling work
virtuous he can excuse himself for devoting his full atten
tion to it at the cost of other responsibilities. Since
work provides him with a rationalization for neglecting his
children’s moral training, Mr. Mavering's devotion to it
constitutes self-indulgence. Furthermore, by telling him
self that his own personal moral satisfaction in his work
is more important than the moral education of his son, he
demonstrates his own inability to distinguish degrees of
duty; he possesses, then, a measure of that "inherited
Puritanism" which he finds abhorrent in his wife.
But even though Mr. Mavering has inadequately prepared
his son for life in Bostonian society, he has nevertheless
cast Dan into that society. He expects Dan to obtain his
moral training from his experiences in such a world. "I
hope," he tells Dan, "you'll have seen something of the
world before you fall in love the next time." "Do you con
sider the world such a school of morals, then?" Dan asks
his father. "I supposed it was a very bad place." His
father replies with a reassurance that Howells intends as
ironic, "We seem to have been all born into it" (p. 425).
170
Howells indicates by this dialogue that Mr. Mavering, for
all his professed superiority, has left the moral training
of his son to the world. But it is a world that Mr. Maver
ing has personally renounced. Though he disdains the Bos
tonian aristocracy as largely idle and useless, his own
family has sprung from it; and he has sent his son to
Harvard, the institution for the training of male Bostonian
aristocrats. The world he finally leaves Dan's moral in
struction to is that of the Bostonian aristocracy itself.
Since of the aristocratic males that Howells presents
in April Hopes Mr. Mavering is exceptional in that he at
least pretends to lead a useful life, Howells' demonstra
tion that even Mr. Mavering fails in the matter of moral
responsibility makes the point that even at its best the
aristocratic spirit is characterized by self-indulgence and
irresponsibility. But by showing that Mr. Mavering's moral
direction is invalid, Howells implicitly demonstrates that
the Boston aristocracy is completely lacking in masculine
moral leadership, that it is in effect as Bromfield Corey
calls it a "female aristocracy" (p. 312). In other words
Dan must obtain his moral training, if he obtains it at
all, from women. By exploring the consciousness of the
two female aristocrats Mrs. Pasmer and Mrs. Brinkley,
Howells attempts to show that Dan can gain no moral guid
ance from the women of his society either.
Though Mrs. Pasmer, for instance, is sufficiently
171
knowledgeable to protect Dan from his ignorance of Boston
society, she subordinates all interest in him as a person
to her desire to secure him as a husband for her daughter.
Since in America, as Howells says, marriage must be treated
as a "romantic episode" rather than as an "advantageous"
chance for the family (p. 383), Mrs. Pasmer must keep the
love affair going between Dan and Alice if she wants the
advantageous marriage between the two to take place. This
fact renders her treatment of Dan suspect, though Dan does
not know it. Though "her daughter is all the world to her"
(p. 145) and though Mrs. Pasmer is aware of the serious
differences in temperament between Dan and Alice, the
mother's need to insure her family's aristocratic standing
makes her willing to sacrifice both Dan and Alice to that
need. Dan is deceived by her. "Mrs. Pasmer," he tells
her, "you and I are the only frank and open people I know"
(p. 361). But Howells has already said of her that "she
lived a thousand little lies every day, and taught her
daughter by precept and example to do the same" (p. 20).
She is superficially courteous, but inwardly selfish. By
his depiction of her hypocrisy, Howells raises a question
about even the attractiveness of the aristocratic ideal.
The trivial deceptions which Mrs. Pasmer must daily prac
tice to maintain her place in life appear shabby and sordid
rather than "noble" and beautiful. As a moral example she
will not strengthen Dan's character. The deception that
172
Dan begins his marriage with--"he resolved to tell Alice
about Julia Anderson at the right moment” (p. 484)--is
something he has learned to be necessary from his associa
tion with the Pasmers.
Mrs. Brinkley, on the other hand, is fond of Dan
Mavering. She understands Alice Pasmer as an "egotist
whose best impulses toward others had a final aim in her
self" (p. 473). "The more she saw of the girl the more she
was convinced that two such people could only make each
other unhappy" (p. 474). She also understands the mother's
motives: "I know the girl is just a tool in her mother's
hands" (p. 465). She also believes that because of her
knowledge it is her responsibility to protect Dan from the
two women. But she vacillates between emotion and what she
considers responsible decision. She wants "to tell Alice,"
for instance, "that [Alice] is an unconscious humbug . . .
indifferent to others"; at the same moment she cannot help
a "thrill of motherly tenderness" for the girl (p. 469).
Similarly, she wants to warn Dan of his danger. But when
he faces her, "the old sweetness came into his eyes . . .
and went to Mrs. Brinkley's heart" (p. 480). Suddenly, she
doesn't know whether to tell him the truth about the Pas
mers and thus protect him from a lifetime of unhappiness or
to keep silent and permit him to indulge the transitory
passion that will for a while prevent his seeing Alice's
true selfishness (p. 480). However, she does nothing.
173
Through her vacillation and indecision Howells makes a
final statement in the novel to the effect that the moral
leadership in Boston society is effeminate and essentially
effete. Those of the aristocracy who know what moral re
sponsibility should be indulge themselves in the luxury of
non-involvement. In other words, though Mrs. Brinkley
knows beyond a doubt that a young man whom she wishes "to
be happy1 1 and would do "anything" for (p. 480) is going to
be absolutely unhappy in a prospective marriage, she
chooses personal comfort over responsibility and remains
silent. Because she does not do what she believes she
should do, Mrs. Brinkley fails in her moral responsibility.
Thus in April Hopes Howells demonstrates by an exami
nation of the Boston aristocracy itself that the manhood of
such a society is either in vassalage to its womanhood or
in pursuit of self-gratifying goals. He also demonstrates
that the intellectual and moral instruction of its young is
inadequate. And he demonstrates that the beauty and the
wisdom and the goodness that one might expect in a pre
eminent social class are missing. In Howells' own words in
Criticism and Fiction, these aristocrats are "wasting their
lives in a fool's paradise of shows and semblances, with
nothing real but the misery that comes of insincerity and
selfishness" (p. 186). They are no wiser and no better
than the rest of American society, and in consequence no
more beautiful.
174
Neither April Hopes nor Indian Summer, then, is
merely a love story, despite the fact that both are com-
monly read as such. However, their obvious love in
trigues constitute essential facets of Howells1 overall
question regarding the validity of the pursuit of an aris
tocratic ideal in American life. If aristocrats are wiser
than other people, they should place the "passion" of love
in its proper perspective. If aristocrats are morally bet
ter than other people, they should not make a fetish of
duty out of an essentially sensual relationship. By show
ing in his "love stories" that aristocrats make the same
mistakes on both counts as most other people, Howells
demonstrates that aristocrats are not essentially better
than others. Though the love story in each of these novels
represents only one aspect of Howells' total social state
ment in each novel, it does provide a focus in each novel
around which Howells develops a unity that is independent
of the social themes. In other words, one can read with
some sense of satisfaction both April Hopes and Indian
Summer simply as love stories.
III. The Minister's Charge: The Subversion
of American Values
On the other hand, The Minister1s Charge does not
•^See above, pp. 66-68.
175
lend itself on any level to such a facile reading. Though
it is more obviously a social novel than the other two,
critics like Firkins and Bennett have encountered difficul
ty in establishing a key to its unity.^ In fact this nov
el has usually been read as a merely didactic novel.
Because of these obvious difficulties, The Minister1s
Charge, even more than the other two novels of the period,
demands a careful reading in the light of the literary
principles Howells defines in Criticism and Fiction. Fur
thermore, The Ministerfs Charge seems a more likely source
of information about his social views of the period. Un
like both Indian Summer and April Hopes, in which Howells
depicts homogeneous social groups, The Minister’s Charge
displays an extensive range of society. It provides a com
prehensive picture of Boston society, from the tramps that
sleep on the Common to the aristocracy itself. One might
suppose that in it Howells would make a comprehensive
statement about the influence of the aristocratic ideal
upon American life.
In social terms, The Minister^ Charge constitutes a
study of the effect of Boston as a cultural center upon
the mind and character of a country boy like Lemuel Barker.
■^See above, pp. 70-72.
16
See above, pp. 69-71.
176
The central social question in the novel is whether Boston
really benefits the American who considers Boston's culture
to be a source of intellectual and moral inspiration and
guidance. If this city and the aristocratic ideal identi
fied with it truly provide intellectual and moral leader
ship, Lemuel should, after his experience in Boston, be an
intellectually and morally improved person. He should have
a clearer and deeper perception of truth about human nature
and human experience--such truth, in other words, as How
ells insists throughout Criticism and Fiction is the high
est intellectual good; and he should be improved in such
universal human values as selflessness and tolerance
(Criticism and Fiction, p. 180). If instead of improving
in these areas he loses the capacity to perceive truth and
becomes more selfish and intolerant than he was when he
arrived, then his experience has corrupted him.
When Lemuel Barker comes to Boston he brings with him
a set of values and attitudes that are antithetical to the
aristocratic ideal which Howells in these novels identifies
with Boston. Lemuel believes, for instance, that no honest
endeavor can make one person inferior to another. In his
opinion, all men are equal, and since he recognizes as yet
no need to pretend to more social status than he actually
has, he considers no work beneath him. He suffers no em
barrassment whatever for washing dishes at the Wayfarer's
Lodge (p. 109); he does not object to manual, even servile
177
labor at Miss Vane's (pp. 139-140); he considers advanta
geous the possibility of working as a streetcar conductor
(p. 181); and he is willing to work at the St. Albans at
whatever task Mrs. Harmon sets for him. In fact, though he
has come to Boston with the expectation of being a poet, he
is only momentarily disappointed to discover that he cannot
be one, and immediately looks for some other kind of honest
work to do. Lemuel is unaware, in other words, of the
aristocratic spirit as a force in American society; it is
not yet a part of his consciousness.
In addition to his belief in the dignity of work,
Lemuel attaches great importance to the feeling of self-
respect that he identifies with economic independence.
When Lemuel is robbed on his first day in Boston, he needs
money so desperately that he considers asking Sewell for
help. "But he could not do it; he could more easily
starve" (p. 57). "The thought of going to Mr. Sewell was
. . . a pang so cruel to his pride that he recoiled from
it instantly" (p. 87). He refuses to accept from Miss
Vane more than he has actually earned even though she in
sists the excess is a Christmas present (p. 177). Simi
larly, Lemuel refuses a gratuity when he works as a waiter,
because he doesn't wish to be given money above what he has
been engaged for (pp. 227-228). This spirit of self-
reliance prevents Lemuel's understanding at first why
Corey uses him ajs his reader rather than one of his
178
daughters (p. 381).
Still another characteristic of Lemuel’s distinguishes
him from most Bostonians. Unlike most of the Bostonians
whose attitudes toward literature Howells demonstrates in
The Minister's Charge, Lemuel is intellectually indepen
dent. His intellectual outlook has not been moulded by
contemporary fiction that has distorted the picture of
actual life. Though he has reportedly "read everything he
could lay his hands on" (p. 34), including implicitly much
current literature, Lemuel has not made the mistake of de
pending heavily upon literature to teach him about life.
Consequently, he has managed to keep a critical perspec
tive toward what he reads. In the first place, Lemuel
does not habitually read novels (p. 225), to which, Howells
writes in April Hopes, "we all trust our instruction" in
matters of the heart (p. 371); in the second place, he has
an independent judgment about the novels he does read. He
considers the love story he is accused of stealing from
Statira as not "much of a book" (The Minister's Charge,
p. 62). He doesn't "see much sense" to a novel that Sibyl
Vane admires for its account of noble self-sacrifice and
expiation, though Sibyl praises it highly as being
"wrought up so that you hold your breath" (p. 173). One
reason that Lemuel's common sense is not affected by such
novels as Statira and Sibyl enjoy is that such novels de-
pict a world so removed from the kind of actuality he has
179
known that their pictures seem literally impossible to him.
In other words, Lemuel has heretofore lived a simple and
hard life, and he does not even imagine that stories glori
fying noble self-sacrifice and luxurious idleness could be
about real life. Similarly, since he has not experienced
the thrill of sexual passion, he cannot conceive of any
one 1s seriously believing that such a thrill can make a
person noble and thoroughly unselfish. In other words,
Lemuel is a realist in his view of the world in that he
judges life by his personal knowledge of it and not by the
distortions of it that he might find in much contemporary
fiction. His experiences have never taught him to pursue
unrealities; the distance between his experiences and the
untrue experiences depicted in popular novels available to
him is so great that he does not even imagine the experi
ences recounted in such fiction to be possibly true.
To Bostonians, however, Lemuel seems merely to be back
ward at first, and they see the apparent headway he makes
in Boston as an advancement. Lemuel does indeed appear to
progress; he smooths out his country ways and becomes, as
Sewell says, "not only well-dressed, but . . . well-spoken"
(p. 311). He is accepted by Jessie Carver as her lover,
even though, as Mrs. Sewell says, Jessie Carver is a "lady"
(p. 457). In fact, Lemuel himself believes he has gained
by his experience in Boston. He expects to pass on as much
as possible of the "enlightenment and elevation" that he.
180
has experienced in Boston (pp. 449-450). Sewell indicates
that he believes Lemuel has gained something: "If I
thought I could never do anything more for Barker, I should
be very unhappy" (p. 460, italics added).
Howells demonstrates, however, that all of Lemuel’s
values which are antithetical to the aristocratic ideal
weaken during the two-year.period of his "apprenticeship"
in Boston. Though Lemuel considers no work beneath him
when he first comes to Boston, for instance, he later tells
Statira that "he would not be a regular waiter for any
money: he would rather starve" (p. 258) . Not only does
Lemuel consider servants' work beneath him; he also begins
to feel that persons who perform tasks of servitude are in
ferior persons. Howells contrasts, for instance, Lemuel’s
attitude toward the love-making Lemuel sees on the Common
when the boy first comes to Boston with his attitude toward
persons making love on the Common after he has been in Bos
ton two years. In the first instance, Lemuel condemns the
behavior from moral revulsion at the sight of public shame
lessness (p. 54). Later he disdains the persons he sees
making love on the Common because the girls are "servant
girls" (p. 259). In other words, he has learned to dis
criminate between persons on the basis of class; no longer,
that is, does he consider all persons socially equal. Fur
thermore, work takes on a new meaning for Lemuel; whereas
when he first comes to Boston Lemuel sees work as a means
of survival that in itself bestows dignity upon the worker,
he later sees it as a means of obtaining such "great and
high objects of life" as Bromfield Corey has lived for
(p. 383). Not only does Lemuel fall "into the habit" of
the "comfortable beauty" of Corey's home, he daydreams of
a life of idle nobility such as he imagines the aristocracy
to live (p. 403). Lemuel feels that he could live such a
life with self-respect and dignity because he would have
worked for it and earned it without a loss of economic in
dependence; he is unaware, however, that his ambition
points him toward the same kind of dependence upon the
ministrations of others that puzzles him in the Coreys
(pp. 381-382) and that he could not have borne when he
first came to Boston in ignorance of the aristocratic priv
ilege of buying human service.
Lemuel's acquired tendency to dream of an aristocratic
way of life indicates that he has lost a large measure of
the common sense and intellectual perception that he pos
sessed when he first came to Boston. Howells demonstrates
this loss in other ways. Howells shows, for instance,
that though Lemuel doesn't "see much sense" to a romantic
story Sibyl Vane admires (p. 173), he later fails to per
ceive that Jessie Carver's tastes are similar to Sibyl's.
When Lemuel falls in love with Jessie Carver, he himself
is likewise stimulated with the "fumes of the romances" he
has read (p. 395). When his passion causes him to
182
idealize Jessie Carver and credit her with having made his
life "better and nobler from the first moment" they met
(p. 395), he forgets that for a long period in the recent
past her behavior had him thoroughly convinced that she
"regarded him as a servant and treated him as she would
treat a black man" (p. 285). Instead of seeing her clearly
for what she is as he earlier saw Sibyl Vane, Lemuel now
sees Jessie Carver through the "fumes" of "romance." He
is, in other words, no longer a realist; at least while he
is under the spell of his passion and his fascination with
the "comfortable beauty" of Bromfield Corey's home, he is
as much a romantic as either of the two women.
Howells demonstrates by subtle presentations of Lem
uel's consciousness that Lemuel's loss of intellectual in
dependence is not, however, merely a temporary loss induced
by sexual passion, but a fundamental, probably permanent
loss. On each of two widely separated occasions, for in
stance, Howells shows by presenting Lemuel's reactions to
Sewell's treatment of him that the pattern and the quality
of Lemuel's thoughts after two years in Boston are quite
different from what they were when he arrived. After Lem
uel leaves Sewell's house on his first day in Boston, for
example, Howells shows Lemuel thinking in the following
manner: "Mr. Sewell had talked to him as if he were a
baby, and did not know anything; and Barker was mad at him
self for having stayed half a minute after the minister had
183
owned up that he had got the letter he wrote him" (p. 39).
Howells' use of the word mad to suggest Lemuel's uncompli
cated indignation and the expression owned up to suggest a
childlike simplicity in the boy's thinking shows Lemuel's
intellectual capacity to bring his thoughts into a clear
focus;the content of the thoughts themselves reveals that
Lemuel has immediately recognized the condescension, the
dishonesty, and the irresponsibility with which Sewell has
treated him. Two years later when Sewell similarly fails
to help Lemuel once more, Howells again presents Lemuel's
thoughts: "Lemuel did not blame Sewell now, fiercely,
proudly, as he had once blamed him, but again he wandered
up and down the city streets, famished and outcast through
his defection" (p. 409). This sentence suggests that
Lemuel has learned to look at himself sentimentally and
somewhat melodramatically, rather than simply and honestly.
He seems to think in a more formalized manner; the coupling
of the adverbs fiercely and proudly, in contrast with the
prevalence of monosyllables in Lemuel's previous thought,
and the use of such literary words as famished and outcasts
and defection represent Howells' means of showing that
Lemuel has learned a new language and absorbed it into his
personality. This new language is not the natural language
of America, however, as that of his first thoughts was, but
a literary, pretentious, supposedly elevated, supposedly
aristocratic language that is not truly Lemuel's own.
184
With its artificiality comes not only a loss of naturalness
and simplicity but a loss of clarity and focus as well.
There is no clear reason, for instance, why Lemuel should
consider Sewell less culpable than before, particularly
when Lemuel now feels himself in "infinitely greater
stress" than before (p. 409).
Lemuel's values have been corrupted, then, by his ex
perience in Boston. He has become less independent, less
honest, less democratic, and therefore less moral than he
was when he first came. When he visits his mother at home,
for instance, he has "to keep from trying to look as if" he
is not with her but is "just out walking alone" (p. 282).
He becomes ashamed of his past and attempts to conceal it,
even to the point of lying about it (p. 333) . He is so
ashamed of the two country girls with whom he is entangled
that he cannot talk even to his mother about them (pp. 280-
281). Yet he lacks the moral courage to break his rela
tionship with Statira, which is serious only to the extent
that in Lemuel’s mind he is "as good as" engaged (p. 280).
Because of this lack of courage and an accompanying false
sense of commitment to Statira, Lemuel begins to live a
"strange double life" in which he courts both Statira
Dudley and Jessie Carver (p. 413).
Even his eventual sacrifice of his relationship with
Jessie Carver is an instance of the false idealization of
"duty" which Sewell, like Howells, abhors (p. 434) but
185
which Jessie Carver directly and Sewell indirectly and un
wittingly encourage. "There is only one thing to do when
we are in any doubt or perplexity," Sewell tells Jessie
Carver, "and that is the unselfish thing" (p. 433). Taking
this precept to heart, the girl and Lemuel give up each
other so that Lemuel can marry the ailing Statira. Without
knowing that he is speaking of Lemuel's case, Sewell later
condemns Jessie Carver's evident intentions, "if she has
forced some poor fellow into a marriage like this of
Barker's she's committed a deadly sin" (p. 456). But Lem
uel is not only Jessie Carver's victim, he has along with
her sacrificed himself in a manner that he did not "see
much sense in" (p. 173) when he first came to Boston.
Such an error is caused, as Sewell declares, by the "novel-
fed fancies" of people like Jessie Carver (p. 456) and by
the teaching of false values in contemporary fiction.
Howells' point in this case is that during a two-year
"apprenticeship" in a society noted for its intellectual
and moral pre-eminence, no one in that society has taught
Lemuel that self-sacrifice such as his is both unintelli
gent and immoral; indeed Lemuel has more reason to believe
the reverse to be true. By a parallel between Lemuel's
feeling toward Statira when his infatuation with her began
and the feeling that he later comes to have for Jessie
Carver, Howells shows that Lemuel's idealization of his
feeling for both girls is sensually inspired. Statira
186
inspired in him "such right and noble thoughts" as he had
never felt before (p. 219) and Jessie Carver makes him
imagine himself "no longer low, but a hero of lofty line"
(p. 395). Since Lemuel did not "see much sense" to fiction
that exalted "love" when he met Statira, Howells indicates
that Lemuel's senses, independent of outside intellectual
influences, make him see "love" as ennobling. But though
Lemuel's idealization of his love for Jessie Carver is sen
sually inspired, he considers her superior to him because
of his feelings for her and therefore submits to her in
tellectual and moral judgment. Since she has a taste for
fiction that glorifies "love" and the idealization of
"love" and "self-sacrifice" for the sake of "love," Lemuel
develops a taste for such fiction, too. As he does so,
Lemuel's idealization of the girl becomes more than a mat
ter of the senses. Always before he had recognized by the
application of common sense that there is not "much sense"
to such fiction; now he consciously accepts such literature
as a valid source of instruction in "matters of the heart."
As young lovers, however, he and Jessie Carver understand
ably tend to be guided by the affections rather than by the
judgment; and as unhappy as their foolish mistake may make
them, Howells does not blame them for trusting their in
struction in love to fiction that seems to echo the thrill
of their sexuality.
In fact, a member of the aristocracy itself first
187
makes Lemuel believe that there might indeed be some valid
ity in such fiction. Lemuel does not seriously read novels
until he becomes Bromfield Corey's reader. But with Corey
he reads "innumerable" novels selected at random by Corey
from works written in English (pp. 379-380). Specifically
these novels are books that depict an aristocratic way of
life and which, since Lemuel observes in Corey's mansion a
"luxury stranger to him than they read of in those innumer
able novels" (p. 380), seem to him for the first time in
his life possibly true. These novels are the "romances"
whose "fumes" cause him in his daydreams of Jessie Carver
to imagine himself a "hero of lofty line" (p. 395). Since
Corey represents for Lemuel the highest and best that life
has to offer (p. 383), Lemuel interprets Corey's selection
of the novels they read as a testimonial of their literary
value; Lemuel takes the luxury he sees in Corey's house as
evidence that such novels are faithful to external actual
ity. Therefore Lemuel believes that he has the authority
of responsible fiction for the "noble" self-sacrifice of
giving Jessie Carver up.
Corey, however, is only inadvertently responsible for
Lemuel's being misled by literature that falsifies life.
He chooses the novels Lemuel reads for himself, not for
Lemuel, and he pays the boy to read them. He has not, in
other words taken it upon himself to educate Lemuel. His
selfishness is so habitual that he indulges it without
188
thought. The major reason Lemuel assumes that the litera
ture he reads in Corey's house is morally responsible is
that he believes Corey to be morally responsible. The
reason he has such faith in Corey, on the other hand, is
that the Boston minister Sewell has introduced Lemuel to
Corey and endorsed the aristocrat as a good man. Corey is,
Sewell tells Lemuel, "one of the best of men," and Sewell
feels "very comfortable" about Lemuel's being under Corey's
guidance (p. 407). With such a recommendation added to the
"comfortable" elegance and refinement he sees in Corey's
home, Lemuel feels complete trust in Bromfield Corey's
taste and wisdom; he also feels that the ideal of "self-
sacrifice" taught him in the novels he reads is not only an
aspect of gracious, aristocratic living, but that it is en
dorsed by Boston's Christian leadership as well.
Lemuel does not know that Sewell himself abhors the
idea of self-sacrifice and blames "novel-fed fancies" and
the "crazy conscience" of the Puritanic tradition (p. 456)
for the prevalence of self-sacrifice as an ideal. Lemuel
only knows that Sewell admires Corey, and he accepts such
admiration as an unqualified recommendation of the old
aristocrat. Lemuel does not know that Corey selects what
the two read together only because of its availability,
not because he considers it good literature (p. 380); in
other words, Lemuel does not know that Corey is simply an
avid reader who reads "romantic" fiction only because it
189
is more accessible than any other kind. The fact is that
by the time he meets Corey, Lemuel has already learned to
distrust his own independent judgment; he has begun, as
Corey says, to "put on" Boston society, and he is in search
of the right mode of behavior, whether he seeks it in pre
cept or in model. Specifically, however, he looks for
guidance in the one direction from which he feels it ought
to come in a moral American society, its religious leader
ship. This leadership is personified for Lemuel in David
Sewell. Accordingly, since David Sewell recommends Brom
field Corey to him as a person, Lemuel believes that Brom
field Corey must be a good man; that his values must be
valid Christian values; and that his way of life, which
Lemuel's senses tell him is beautiful, is both "beautiful
and good." In other words, Sewell's recommendation of
Corey represents for Lemuel an unqualified endorsement of
the aristocratic ideal.
Yet Lemuel does not know that Sewell is primarily con
cerned with getting the boy off his hands. Lemuel has come
to Boston because Sewell's dishonest praise of Lemuel's
poetry has led the boy to believe that he can pursue a
career as a poet; because of his lie, Sewell feels guilt
for which the "religious insanity” he has "inherited . . .
from Puritan times" (p. 117) demands expiation. Coupled
with this strong guilt is an "aristocratic" love of com
fort. Howells demonstrates this characteristic of Sewell's
190
in one instance by showing that on the same day that Lemuel
saws half a cord of wood at five o'clock in the morning in
order to earn a breakfast of broth at the Wayfarer's Lodge,
Sewell arises at seven o'clock "as a sacrifice, not too
definite, to the lingering ideal of suffering. . . . He
could not work before breakfast--his delicate digestion
forbade that" (p. 110). In other words, despite his strong
conscience Sewell does not like to be inconvenienced. Be
cause it is "Saturday morning, when every minute [is] pre
cious to him" (p. 7), Sewell postpones his responsibility
of writing Lemuel a letter telling the boy not to come to
Boston. Because he does not want to interrupt a sermon he
is writing, Sewell later pretends to believe that Lemuel,
who has come to Sewell for help, is making a mere courtesy
call; he rushes the boy off without waiting for Lemuel to
explain his visit (pp. 406-408). At another time, Sewell
asks his wife to send Lemuel away: "Do get me off some
way" (p. 427). Still he feels a guilty responsibility for
Lemuel. "If I could only have got near the poor boy," he
exclaims in one outburst of self-accusation, "if I could
only have reached him where he lives" (p. 37). But though
Sewell realizes that he needs more knowledge of Lemuel than
he has, he does not wish to make the effort to "reach" Lem
uel where Lemuel "lives." Torn between the demands of his
"Puritanic" conscience and his "aristocratic" love of ease
and comfort, Sewell, since his conscience tells him he must
191
help Lemuel, chooses the easiest way available to him, an
appeal to his aristocratic friend Bromfield Corey.
Ironically, the main reason for Sewell's strong feel
ings of guilt for being the cause of Lemuel's coming to
Boston is the minister's fear that Lemuel will be corrupted
by the indigence and criminality the boy will find among
Boston's lower classes. When Sewell sees the notice of
Lemuel's arrest for theft, he assumes without reading the
notice through that Lemuel's moral corruption has already
begun. He expresses surprise when his wife points out that
the boy has been acquitted. "I supposed he was convicted,
of course," he tells her (p. 115). Even though the boy has
been acquitted, however, Sewell feels that his worst fears
that Lemuel would become involved with the wrong Bostonian
social element have been realized. "Boston [is] no place
for you," he tells Lemuel, "as you must know by this time"
(p. 122). Sewell feels that he can already see evidence
that Lemuel has succumbed to the "cosiness" of the easy
life of the Wayfarer's Lodge. "Sewell began to fear,"
Howells writes, "that his victim had been so far corrupted
by its comfort as to be unwilling to leave the Refuge"
(p. 129). "He saw [Lemuel] entered upon the dire life of
idleness and dependence . . . which he had known so many
Americans even willing to lead" (pp. 129-130).
What Sewell does not know is that Lemuel is not like
ly to be corrupted by such experiences as he first has in
192
Boston. Sewell does not know, for instance, that Lemuel
has a moral loathing of indigence. When a policeman
tells him to get out of Boston, that "it's a bad place"
(p. 88), Lemuel is resentful. He thinks "it hard to be
talked to . . . as if he wished to become a vagrant or a
beggar" (p. 89). Lemuel finds it particularly abhorrent
that he, "famed at home for the rectitude of his life and
the loftiness of his aims" is now "consorting with drunk
ards and thieves and tramps" (pp. 90-91). Unlike the regu
lar indigents at the Wayfarer's Lodge who depart in the
morning for a day of idleness, Lemuel seizes the opportuni
ty to earn money by washing dishes. He has come to Boston,
he explains to Sewell much later, not "just to be in the
city, but because I had to do something to help along at
home" (p. 303). He is brought to Boston, in other words,
by a sense of moral responsibility and is not even tempted
by the idleness and dependence he discovers among Boston's
lower classes. Unless Lemuel learns to believe that idle
ness and dependence are morally valid, he is not likely to
be corrupted by the examples he sees of them.
In fact, Lemuel possesses a strict moral conscience.
He believes specifically, like Howells, that "sins of
sense" are visited "in the real world" by "penalties" that
are "inexorably sure" (Criticism and Fiction, p. 95). In
line with this belief Lemuel considers himself rigorously
but justly punished for two "sins" that he accuses himself
193
of committing. When on his first day in Boston Lemuel ac
cepts an offer of fifty cents to change a ten-dollar bill,
"a voice in Lemuel's heart" warns him that "greed to anoth
er's hurt" is "sin" and that to take "too much for a thing
from a necessitous person" is to "oppress" and "rob" him
(p. 86). Afterwards he considers all the hardships of the
next few days--his extreme hunger, his humiliation by
street walkers and thieves, his arrest and trial on sus
picion of theft— as just punishment for the sin of taking
money to make change (p. 86). Similarly, because he com
mits the "sin" of kissing Statira Dudley, he views his
later harassment by Sibyl Vane and his consequent dismissal
by her aunt as "unimpeachably righteous as between him and
the moral frame of things" (p. 180). Lemuel is "still,"
Howells writes, "on those terms of personal understanding
with the eternal spirit of right whic h most of us lose
later in life, when we have so often seemed to see the ef
fect fail to follow the cause, both in the case of our own
misdeeds and the misdeeds of others" (p. 86). But Lemuel's
first few days' suffering in Boston seem to him very ex
treme. "if it was all a punishment," he thinks to. himself,
"it was pretty heavy punishment" (p. 91). Thus as Lemuel's
simple morality comes against the new and complex experi
ence of Boston, Lemuel looks for moral guidance in the per
son of David Sewell, whom he sees as the moral voice of his
new world.
Indeed the morality Sewell preaches is one of respon
sible Christianity. It lays "stress upon duties of all
sorts" and "little upon beliefs." People are supposed to
be good sometimes, he teaches, "for reasons not connected
with their present or future comfort" (p. 5). Sewell urges
an affectionate sincerity, an honesty between man and man
(p. 9). He denounces "mere remorse"; he teaches that "re
pentance is equally a mere corrosion of the spirit unless
some attempt at reparation"-goes with it (p. 132). He
maintains that though "some mischiefs--perhaps most mis
chiefs" are "irreparable as far as restoring the original
status"; "yet every mischief" is "reparable in the good
will and the good deed of its prepetrator [sic]" (pp. 132-
133). His sermon on complicity is an expansion of these
views into a declaration of "the spiritual unity of man,"
of the full responsibility of each man to every other man.
"Each," Howells summarizes Sewell as saying, "is bound to
the highest and the lowest by ties that" center "in the
hand of God" (p. 458). The morality Sewell preaches is
that of uncomfortable, unselfish moral responsibility. The
Puritanic "remorse" without "some attempt at reparatiofi"
and the concern with "present or future comfort" which
mostly guide Sewell's life contrast obviously with such
moral teaching.
But Lemuel does not see a contradiction between the
morality Sewell preaches and the morality he practices. He
195
attends all Sewell's sermons and considers him "a great
preacher" (p. 373). He thinks that when Sewell secures
positions for him with Miss Vane and with Bromfield Corey
the minister is living the morality of Christian charity
that the minister preaches in his sermons. Since Sewell
does not interrogate Lemuel to get at the facts of the
boy's circumstances, Lemuel has no way of knowing that
Sewell acts out of a special interest in him. Sewell's
acts of conscience seem therefore to the boy to be acts of
Christian generosity which Sewell practices with everyone
and which Lemuel comes to attribute to the moral superior
ity of Boston as a whole. When Sewell recommends Bromfield
Corey as a good man, then, Lemuel assumes that the aristo
crat is good and, in consequence, that Corey's way of life
is also good. What Lemuel has done, in effect, is to place
himself morally in Sewell's hands. He has done so, how
ever, not because he feels Sewell owes him anything, but
because he believes that Sewell as a minister is a respon
sible guardian of souls.
Since Sewell's very profession justifies Lemuel's
looking to him for guidance, Howells holds Sewell and the
moral leadership he represents ultimately responsible for
the corruption of the American tradition of democratic
equality through an idealization of the aristocratic spir
it. Because of the obvious moral responsibility of reli
gious leadership to a society, Howells implies that people
196
like Sewell commit grave wrong to the American public,
whether they are conscious of what they do or not.
Sewell is indeed conscious of certain moral weaknesses
on his part in his dealings with Lemuel. For instance, he
is conscious that he shouldn't have lied to Lemuel about
the boy's poetry and that he shouldn't have procrastinated
about telling the boy at the first opportunity that he had
lied. But these weaknesses are not at the heart of Sew
ell's moral failure with the country boy and merely serve
to demonstrate the minister's "Puritanic" inability to dis
tinguish degrees of duty. Sewell's real moral failure in
Lemuel's case is his implicit lie to the boy about the
validity of the Bostonian social structure.
Yet, in a discussion between Sewell and the editor
Evans about the "doctrine" of complicity, Howells shows
that Sewell is not unaware even of the unsoundness of this
structure. Evans argues that he and Sewell should "seek
out every weak spot, every sore spot in the whole social
constitution. . . . Just consider the infernal ease of mind
in which men remain concerning men's share in the social
evil--." But Sewell's congregation consists chiefly of
aristocrats, and he interrupts the editor: "Ah, my dear
friend, you can't expect me to consider that in my pulpit!"
(p. 237). Thus Howells demonstrates that in order to pro
tect the sensibilities of his public Sewell deliberately
accepts as practical realities the "social evils" inherent
197
in the inequalities of a society based on an aristocratic
ideal.
But Howells shows that the effect of Sewell's complic
ity in the corruption of traditional American values ex
tends farther than Boston. Lemuel's intelligence, evidenced
in the novel by the quickness with which Lemuel "puts on"
Boston society, provides Howells with a crowning irony for
the condemnation of the failure of Sewell's moral guidance.
Because of his intelligence, Lemuel has learned the lesson
of Boston well; he has been able to gain access to such
elegance and beauty as few others from the country can at
tain- -as Amanda Grier and Statira, for instance, can never
attain. So pleased is he with his acceptance and his rise
in Boston that upon his return to the country Lemuel an
nounces that he expects to be a teacher in Willoughby Pas
tures "with purposes of enlightenment and elevation" (p.
449) along the lines he has seen in Boston. What Howells
implies through Lemuel's statement is that Lemuel is, in
effect, Sewell’s disciple, and that the boy will carry
Sewell's "good work" back with him to the country. There,
by implication, the aristocratic spirit will pervade a
last refuge of American equalitarianism. Howells obviously
intends this implication as a heavy indictment of the fail
ure of the moral leadership in American society to recog
nize and condemn the immorality inherent in the pursuit of
the aristocratic ideal. Worse, such leadership is in
198
complicity with the aristocratic spirit and is, more than
any other element in American society, morally responsible
for the corruption of desirable American values.
The Minister's Charge, then, is essentially a social
novel, as most critics recognize-^; but, contrary to most
critic's opinions,^ its method is "dramatic" rather than
overtly didactic. Sewell does not serve as Howells'
spokesman, for instance, but as a "dramatically" presented
character who not only fails as a Boston minister but whose
failure is intended to represent the general failure of
moral leadership in an American society that is mistakenly
in pursuit of an aristocratic ideal. Therefore, Howells
does not use Sewell as a voice to express Howells' own per
sonal "doctrine of complicity." In fact, as Evans and Sew
ell define the term, "complicity" is simply the "professed"
Christian ethic of brotherly love. Howells uses Sewell as
a "professional" authority on this point when he has Sewell
tell Evans that the term complicity is merely "a new name"
for "one of the oldest principles in the moral world" (p.
241). In other words, the "doctrine of complicity” that
Evans and Sewell discuss is not a new ethical contribution;
it is the doctrine of human love that all moral leaders
■^See above, pp. 69-71.
1 £
See above, pp. 71-72.
199
professing the Christian faith ought to teach; accordingly,
Howells ought to have been able to expect his Christian
American readers to recognize it at once as the central
moral law of Christianity, One of Howells1 strongest
strokes of irony in this novel is therefore his depiction
of Evans and Sewell freshly discovering it.
An examination of The Minister's Charge as an ironic
novel reveals a unity of both theme and construction, des
pite the arguments of Firkins and Bennett that the novel
lacks unity.^ In other words, the reader must understand
that Sewell has not helped Lemuel1s moral development or
his own by any supposed good he has done the boy, though
Sewell believes he has done both; the reader must also un
derstand that Lemuel has not received any valid moral
guidance from Sewell and has not improved morally, though
Lemuel thinks he has done both. In fact, the novel's cen
tral point is that the acquaintanceship between Sewell and
Lemuel contributes to an expansion of the influence of the
aristocratic ideal at the expense of a more valid American
tradition of equality and independence. Howells' use of
the two consciousnesses of Lemuel and Sewell serves as a
successful means of contrasting what each believes with
the actuality that he cannot perceive.
See above, pp. 71-72.
200
IV. Howells as Realist and Moral Teacher
Thus a careful reading of these three novels in terms
of Howells' use of consciousness reveals that in them How
ells makes both intellectual and moral statements about
American society. In all three of the novels Howells dem
onstrates the "intellectual" point that American life of
his own day was becoming increasingly characterized by the
pursuit of an aristocratic ideal at the expense of the tra
ditional American values of equality and independence.
However, in each of the three novels he makes a subtle but
strong condemnation of that pursuit. By showing in Indian
Summer, for instance, that the American middle class in
Florence can live idle, self-indulgent, "aristocratic"
lives only outside America and that such people would have
to find something to do if they returned to America, How
ells indicates that the idea of an aristocracy, which in
spires the pursuit of an aristocratic ideal, is un-American.
In April Hopes Howells looks at the American model of an
aristocracy in Boston and demonstrates that despite their
reputed intellectual and moral "pre-eminence" Bostonian
aristocrats lead sterile, useless, and selfish lives, that
they do not exert a constructive intellectual or moral in
fluence, and that they teach their young little but fool
ishness and irresponsibility. In The Minister's Charge
Howells condemns even more strongly the pursuit of an
201
aristocratic ideal. By showing in Lemuel Barker the prompt
corruption under the influence of that ideal of such desir
able American values as equalitarianism and economic and
intellectual self-dependence, not only does Howells attest
to the powerful attraction of the aristocratic ideal in
American life, but he attests as well to the essential evil
of that ideal as a corruptive force. Since Howells demon
strates in all these novels that a basic selfishness char
acterizes all manifestations of the aristocratic spirit, he
presents a moral as well as an intellectual statement about
the effect of that spirit upon American life. In other
words, he does not merely explain what that spirit is doing
to American character; he insists as well that there is
something seriously wrong about what that spirit is doing.
In two of these novels Howells attempts by his use of
individual consciousness to pinpoint the responsibility
for the increasing pursuit of the aristocratic ideal in
American life. In Indian Summer, for instance, Howells
uses Colville as a person who, in the capacity of a news
paper editor, has in the past acted as an intellectual
voice in America. The fact that when he comes to Florence
Colville is thoroughly conscious of the importance of be
ing a responsible American suggests that in America he
considered himself a responsible intellectual voice, that,
in other words, he tried to contribute responsibly to the
instruction of his fellow Americans. Since according to
202
Howells' literary principles Colville is a representative
figure, Howells undoubtedly uses the character of Colville
as a comment on the failure of American middle-class in
tellectuals to resist responsibly the growing tendency in
America toward the pursuit of an aristocratic ideal. Simi
larly, in The Minister's Charge Howells uses the character
of Sewell as a means of charging the religious leadership
of American society with complicity in the destruction of
traditional American values by an acceptance of the aristo
cratic ideal as a valid Christian ideal.
However, in all three of these novels Howells intends
primarily to instruct rather than to assign responsibility.
He is not ultimately so concerned with accusing American
intellectual and moral leadership with failure as he is
with pointing out to American readers that the pursuit of
an aristocratic ideal is wrong regardless of what the in
tellectual and moral leadership of America does. This pur
pose is more apparent in April Hopes than in the other two
novels. In April Hopes Howells demonstrates the vacuity,
the foolishness, and the selfishness of an aristocratic
life; there is no intellectual and moral leadership at all
in such a society as that of April Hopes because such a
society is both intellectually sterile and amoral. In
Indian Summer, too, Howells wants his American readers to
see that the attractions of a life of luxury and idleness
can anesthetize the intellectual and moral consciousness.
203
And in The Minister's Charge, he hopes that his American
readers will avoid Lemuel Barker's mistake of confusing the
aristocratic ideal with valid Christianity. Howells hopes,
in other words, that readers will perceive the truths that
he communicates and will learn to think for themselves
rather than look trustingly for guidance to "some one who
professed to know better" (Criticism and Fiction, p. 9).
His intention is to make his readers "more and more con
scious," more able "to comprehend with more instinctive
certitude what is simple, natural, and honest" (p. 2).
In order to achieve his purpose, however, Howells must
communicate his ideas in these novels so that his readers
will be "conscious" of them. Indeed, when one understands
that Howells presents his ideas in these novels by using
an ironic contrast between the consciousness of particular
characters and a total actuality of which these characters
are only partly aware, one can identify the basic social
themes of these novels with little difficulty. Further
more, Howells identifies in each of the novels those neces
sary elements that guide the reader to a recognition of the
irony. The reader of Indian Summer, for instance, can,
without depending on anything outside the novel, see that
Colville stops thinking about responsibility and that the
wife Colville chooses is a tortured character; such a read
er should recognize an inconsistency in Colville's con
sciousness and should question that inconsistency; the same
204
reader should also question Colville's easy assumption that
he has chosen a valid life. Likewise the reader of April
Hopes should recognize educational themes in a novel whose
first seven chapters are devoted to the celebration of a
young man's graduation from Harvard and whose remaining
pages demonstrate the young man's intellectual and moral
incapacities; such a reader should also recognize that a
father who has been solely responsible for the boy's moral
training at home may have had something to do with his
son's moral failures. And the reader of The Minister * s
Charge should see that Lemuel Barker becomes increasingly
selfish and intellectually dependent and that Sewell does
not live the attractive morality he preaches. In other
words each of the three novels is independently sufficient
as a work of art for the communication of Howells' social
themes.
Yet readers have not usually recognized the social
themes of these three novels. Such readers have failed to
do so primarily because they have missed the irony that
lies at the heart of the novels' meanings. Before one can
thoroughly understand, then, the period from 1886 to 1891
in terms of changes in Howells' literary theory and prac
tice, he must understand the reason for Howells' failure
in these novels to communicate clearly the social themes
that indeed give the novels their basic structure.
CHAPTER V
THE USE OF AMBIGUOUS INTRUSION
TO EMPHASIZE SOCIAL THEMES
That the methods of William Dean Howells are immensely
complex has been adequately illustrated in the preceding
chapters; but once one understands Howells' view that the
responsible realist uses the same techniques to convey his
social themes as he uses to create his objective "illusion"
of actuality, one can see that essentially Howells presents
his American social themes by these techniques in the nov
els of 1886 and 1887. However, it is difficult for readers
to recognize such social themes without prior knowledge
either of Howells’ contemporary social views or of the
basic techniques by which Howells constructed these novels.
In these novels Howells does three things which interfere
with the communication of his American social themes. Not
only does he reflect an almost unqualified air of well
being and optimism among the American characters he por
trays; but he also focuses upon many apparently atypical
Americans in these novels, specifically Boston aristocrats
and wealthy middle-class Americans living like aristocrats
in Florence; and he frames the action of these novels--
205
206
even much of the action in The Minister’s Charge--within
love stories. If Howells wanted his readers to recognize
his American social themes in these novels, he needed to
convey such themes by a more obviously subjective technique
than an ostensibly objective "dramatic" presentation; for
he must convince his readers that, surface appearances to
the contrary, he does express in these novels serious res
ervations about the apparent benevolence of American life,
that, in fact, he subtly condemns the behavior and atti
tudes of the self-confident and blithely hopeful Americans
whom he portrays.
Though in making his social statements Howells shows
in each novel an ironic contrast between the conscious
nesses of particular characters and the total actuality of
the novel, he fails to give his irony sufficient dramatic
force in itself to alert readers to his ironic intentions.
In other words, Howells fails to make distinctly clear in
any one of these novels that his focal characters discover
either the error of their own pursuit of an aristocratic
ideal or the errors others make by engaging in such a pur
suit; consequently, he fails to bring his irony dramatical
ly to the surface so that his readers will be sure to see
it. In their optimism Howells' characters in these novels
do not even recognize a serious moral conflict in their
pursuit of an aristocratic ideal. Howells professed in
these novels to reflect the actuality of American life, and
207
by implication he could see in real life little evidence in
America of American awareness of such a moral conflict and
few immediately recognizable consequences of what he con
sidered a serious American error. Consequently, Howells
presents his social themes in these novels without a reso
lution of the moral conflicts such themes imply. Thus, he
makes it difficult for one to discover independently that
Howells employs dramatic irony in these novels unless one
knows in advance that Howells expresses his themes through
the total picture in each novel. To understand Howells1
statements about America even then, one needs to know that
Howells1 pictures are supposed to reflect with accuracy an
"average" contemporary American actuality. By using the
basic techniques Howells identified with realism, a novel
ist might successfully communicate disapproval of popular
social attitudes in novels wherein characters become con
scious of wrong or the novelist unequivocally demonstrates
the consequence of error; but these techniques cause diffi
culties for the novelist who, like Howells in the novels of
1886 and 1887, attempts to question the attitudes and be
havior of his attractive characters without either making
his characters aware of error or demonstrating with both
clarity and force that he himself is aware of error in
them.
Without referring to his own fiction, Howells in
Criticism and Fiction expressed an awareness that the
American realist of his time had difficulty in communicat
ing with contemporary American readers, American readers,
Howells explained, were sentimental and intellectually in
dolent. They preferred, he said, "an English novel, full
of titles and rank. . . . Their weak and childish imagina
tion is at home in such a novel's familiar environment;
they know what they are reading; the fact that it is hash
many times warmed over reassures them" (pp. 79-80). Such
a novel, Howells explained, "is more comfortable to the
ordinary American than an American [realistic] novel, which
deals at its worst with comparatively new interests and
motives. To adjust oneself to the enjoyment of these costs
an intellectual effort, and an intellectual effort is what
no ordinary person likes to make" (pp. 78-79). By thus
ascribing to their ignorance and intellectual indolence the
failure of American readers to understand realistic fiction,
Howells indirectly attested to his faith in the adequacy of
realism as a literary method. If American readers rejected
realism, they did so, Howells implied, not because the
principles and techniques of realism were unsound but be
cause American readers lacked the qualities and the in
clinations to read realistic fiction. Insomuch as he in
cluded himself in the category of realist, Howells undoubt
edly attributed any communicative difficulties in his own
fiction at least partially to the same American faults.
Part of the problem, Howells argued, was that
209
Americans themselves were only ordinary people who disliked
their own ordinariness. Since, he said, "all, or nearly
all are struggling to set themselves apart in select cir
cles and upper classes" they preferred reading about the
"fine people" they wanted to be like (p. 80) rather than
reading about people like themselves. When such Americans,
Howells said, read a novel about American characters, "they
do not feel it is good society; its characters, so like
their own, strike them as commonplace" (p. 80). As Howells
described them, American readers of the time looked only at
the obvious picture or story of a novel and perceived no
meanings that required independent effort on their part.
Thus though Howells said that American readers did not un
derstand realistic fiction, he also said that their express
reason for rejecting realistic novels was that they did not
enjoy such novels.
If Howells as a realist was to communicate with such
readers at all, he had to write novels that they would
read. Despite Howells' insistence in Criticism and Fiction
that the American realistic novelist portrayed "ordinary"
people, Howells found in apparently extraordinary Bostonian
aristocrats and their middle-class imitators an American
approximation of the "fine people" he thought Americans
preferred to read about. Since such "aristocrats" did rep
resent a portion of American actuality^ Howells as a real
ist could write about them and still be true to an American
210
"local color." By portraying Bostonian aristocrats and
American middle-class imitators of them, Howells could re
flect a local American actuality and still satisfy an Amer
ican appetite for novels about "fine people." However,
since one of his main purposes in the novels of 1886 and
1887 was to show that, intellectually and morally, American
"aristocrats" shared the ordinariness of all Americans,
Howells had the task, if he wanted to communicate this
view, of weakening in his American readers the admiration
he claimed they felt for such "fine people." By "dramatic"
presentation alone, Howells could hardly communicate to
such readers both the surface attractiveness of "aristo
cratic" life in America which he said appealed to Ameri
cans, and his subjective criticism of the pursuit of such
a life. Just as in Howells' view "all, or nearly all"
Americans--including Howells' American readers--admired and
imitated "aristocratic" behavior, so do "all, or nearly
all" of his characters in these novels. Howells needed,
therefore, more than a "dramatic" presentation of such be
havior if he was to convince his American readers that in
these novels he himself condemned the American pursuit of
an aristocratic ideal which they, like their counterparts
in the novels, considered valid.
Howells recognized also that contemporary Americans
wanted to read novels about "Love." A "love intrigue," he
declared in Criticism and Fiction, was "all but essential"
211
in America "to the popularity of any fiction" (p. 151).
Accordingly, despite his opinion that the passion of love
was treated in contemporary fiction out of proportion to
its significance in real life,l Howells included a "love
intrigue" in each of the novels of 1886 and 1887; in fact,
he framed Indian Summer and April Hopes conspicuously
around such "intrigues." Howells justified the apparent
inconsistency of his using "love intrigue" in novels of
realism about American life by his view in Criticism and
Fiction that Americans sentimentally exaggerated the rela
tive role of the "passion" of love in each person's total
life (p. 157). Americans, in Howells1 opinion, showed by
their reading tastes a considerable interest in social
manifestations of the "passion" of love; he reflects this
view of American actuality when he portrays in these novels
such "love intrigue" and such fascination among his char
acters with the subject as he does. Though Howells' main
thematic purpose in using "love intrigue" in the novels of
1886 and 1887 was to show that Americans who took popular
sentimental novels seriously as lessons about "love" pur
sued unrealistic and foolish lives, he nevertheless by the
use of such "intrigue" created the probability that his
readers would view these novels as mere love stories. In
other words, Howells' young lovers in these novels imitated
1-See above, pp. 20-21.
212
the characters of sentimental novels they had read and, by
Howells1 intention, resembled the "heroes and heroines"
Howells said American readers of his time admired in fic
tion. In order to see that Howells ridiculed such lovers,
Howells' readers— unless Howells helped them by emphasizing
his purpose in some way--had to make some "intellectual ef
fort" to perceive that Howells treated these characters
ironically. But contemporary American readers, Howells
said, were unlikely to make an "intellectual effort."
Therefore, the first step Howells made toward communi
cating with a contemporary American audience--writing an
approximation of what that audience wanted to read— com
plicated the problem of communicating his themes. If his
readers truly did avoid intellectual effort, as Howells
said contemporary American readers did, they would probably
read Howells' novels of 1886 and 1887--unless Howells found
some means of pointing up his social themes--simply as love
stories or as novels about "the fine people we have read
about." Equally significant is the evidence Howells thus
provides that he was indeed interested in the responses of
his reading public--sufficiently interested in fact to
stretch the limits of his literary theory to embrace in his
fiction material remarkably similar to that which he de
plored in sentimental English fiction of the time. Howells'
attempts with these novels to attract contemporary readers
contributed to the subsequent failure of twentieth-century
213
readers to perceive,through the love stories in these nov
els, Howells1 thematic statements about American life. Be
cause the characters Howells chose to picture in these nov
els seem to reflect for such readers not a typical actuali
ty but an atypical one of cultivation and comfortable ele
gance, twentieth-century American readers, like their coun
terparts in Howells' time, tend to misunderstand seemingly
that, despite appearances, Howells intended in these novels
to represent an average American actuality.
Some realists, such as Howells indicated Valera to be
(Criticism and Fiction, p. 82), might feel that the novel
ist should not concern himself with whether his readers
recognize or understand his themes, that by merely includ
ing intellectual and moral themes in his fiction, the real
ist fulfills his aesthetic and "ethical" obligations, and
that as an artist he has no responsibility for guiding his
readers to his meanings. Howells made clear in Criticism
and Fiction that he did not consider himself such a real
ist. The novelist, Howells said, must serve as a "teacher"
(p. 187). Howells held that art, like science, should make
men "more conscious," "more capable of living in the whole"
(p. 2). The responsible realist, Howells argued, strove to
communicate his view of "the idea that resides" in things
(p. 72) so that "the great mass of readers, now sunk in
the foolish joys of mere fable, shall be lifted to an in
terest in the meaning of things" (p. 186). Valid realistic
214
fiction, as Howells spoke of it in Criticism and Fiction,
had an educational function, the task of increasing the
consciousnesses of men and women, "it behooves us," How
ells wrote again in Criticism and Fiction, "to know and
understand" "human nature and the social fabric" in order
"that we may deal justly with ourselves and one another"
(pp. 94-95). The realistic novelist, Howells said, "by
contributing his share to a thorough knowledge of groups of
the human race" helped men "to know one another better" so
that they could "all be humbled and strengthened with a
sense of their fraternity" (p. 188). Thus, in Howells'
view, it was important for a realist to get his meanings
across to his readers. "Every true realist," Howells
wrote, "is careful of every fact, and feels bound to ex
press or to indicate its meaning at the risk of over-
moralizing" (p. 16).
Since Howells believed that by portrayals of "groups
of the human race” realistic fiction should "lift" the con
sciousnesses of "the great mass of readers" to an awareness
of human equality and fraternity, the question arises as to
whether Howells himself as an American novelist would com
promise his principles of realism in order to communicate
his American social themes to a mass of American readers
who he recognized did not understand the realistic method.
One wonders how much Howells was willing to distort his
"illusion" of objectivity or his reflection of an "average"
215
external actuality in order to ensure that his readers
grasped his themes. Obviously, Howells believed that his
contemporary American readers failed to understand realis
tic novels because of these readers' own limitations and
not because of flaws in the realistic method itself. Nev
ertheless, he saw that American realists had difficulties
communicating with such readers; and he could also see that
if he as a realist was to "life" the consciousnesses of
such American readers at all, he had to communicate his
themes so that these readers, despite their limitations,
could identify these themes. Although in Criticism and
Fiction Howells provided clues to the reading of his novels
of 1886 and 1887, he could not, as an artist, depend upon
clues outside his fiction to guide his readers to meanings
within it. He must instead employ some technique for iden
tifying, within the framework of the novels themselves,
either his general fictive purpose or his particular sub
jective views.
In Criticism and Fiction. Howells indicated that the
realist who used a "dramatic" method of presenting his
material communicated his moral judgments by demonstrating
the consequences of attitudes and behavior. But to the
extent that Howells wished to picture in the novels of
1886 and 1887 the socially representative actuality of
American life that he described in Criticism and Fiction,
he could hardly convey his themes by this means in these
novels. Had he in Indian Summer shown tragic consequences
for Colville's renunciation of life in America, Howells
would have gone beyond the scope of the apparently benevo
lent actuality that in Criticism and Fiction he identified
as typical of American life; Howells implies in this novel
that Colville will probably fail to see in a whole lifetime
that his surrender to an aristocratic ideal has cost him
anything. Similarly, David Sewell and Lemuel Barker of
The Minister's Charge will probably fail to recognize any
unfavorable consequences of Lemuel's experience in Boston.
One of Howells' points in this novel is that the kind of
experience Lemuel has in Boston corrupts subtly rather than
obviously; had Howells dramatized obvious consequences of
such corruption he would have destroyed the impression of
subtlety that he wished to convey. If Criticism and Fic
tion truly represented Howells' view of American life dur
ing the period from 1886 to 1890, Howells saw little con
crete evidence of immediate tragic consequences of the
pursuit in America of an aristocratic ideal; to reflect
what he considered an "average" external actuality, Howells
must refrain from indicating in the novel that he saw con
sequences that in real life he did not see. Though in
April Hopes Howells does attribute much of Dan's personal
instability to the failure of Dan's father as a parent,
Howells does so in such a manner as to veil any tragic con
sequences of that failure. Dan does win the girl he wanted
217
after all, and he and Alice Pasmer hope with youthful op
timism that they can be happy; if they are ultimately un
happy, they will attribute their unhappiness to personal
incompatibility rather than to the weaknesses in their
aristocratic social system that Howells uses Mr. Mavering's
character to illustrate. The reader is likely to see Dan's
and Alice's difficulties as representative of the difficul
ties young lovers often face in various times and places
rather than as the results of improper training by a par
ticular and supposedly admirable class of aristocratic
Americans.
Thus Howells' contemporary view that the realistic
novel should faithfully reflect an "average" external actu
ality required that Howells avoid techniques that might
have helped him effectively to communicate such American
themes as he presents in the novels of 1886 and 1887. Had
he been willing to reflect in these novels what he con
sidered nonrepresentative instances in contemporary society
or to imagine a chain of symbolic coincidence, he might
have sufficiently dramatized his themes to alert his read
ers to them. Or had he been willing to telescope time in
the novels in order to present, as if they were current ex
amples, his surmises of future consequences, he might have
put his point across. But Howells did not even employ
characters who clearly agreed with his interpretation of
American life; had he done so Howells could have clarified
218
his moral position, but he would also have suggested there
by that he considered his subjective view itself represent
ative; and such a suggestion would have weakened his point
that contemporary Americans were generally unconscious of
any unfavorable moral implications in their aspirations and
struggles to rise socially. Howells indicated in Criticism
and Fiction that he had committed himself to the faithful
reflection in fiction of an observable American social
actuality whose "average” was one of "smiling aspects" and
"shining possibilities"; when he wrote the novels of 1886
and 1887, he obviously considered this commitment stronger
than his need to communicate explicitly his views of the
dangers in such an actuality. Even to insure a clear com
munication of his warnings about such dangers, Howells did
not bring himself in these novels to a distortion of what
he felt to be visible "aspects" of contemporary American
life.
Still another artistic consideration prohibited How
ells from obviously intruding himself into his fiction to
direct his readers explicitly to his subjective statements.
Howells felt that obvious intrusion destroyed the "illu
sion" of objectivity which in Criticism and Fiction he
declared essential to good art. His objection to such in
trusion restrained him in the novels of 1886 and 1887 from
obviously ridiculing as unwise and selfish the behavior of
characters who, however foolish and selfish Howells himself
219
considered them, appear in their own eyes and the eyes of
one another to be intelligent, cultivated, and kind. When
ever in these novels Howells presents behavior that he him
self considered foolish and selfish Howells characteris
tically depends for the communication of his view upon his
readers * own recognitions of such foolishness and selfish
ness rather than upon any overt signal of his own.
In Criticism and Fiction Howells held that the respon
sible novelist made intellectual and moral statements about
man in society and that realists should take pains in their
fiction to make such statements clear. Accordingly, as a
responsible realist himself Howells needed a means of em
phasizing his subjective social themes in novels in which
he simultaneously strove for the "illusion1 1 of objectivity
which he argued that the techniques he specifically identi
fied with realistic fiction were calculated to achieve.
Despite the dangers toward which he felt Americans were
tempted by the opulence and optimism he portrayed in his
novels of 1886 and 1887, Howells was so "objective" a
realist when he wrote these novels that in large measure
he subtilized his social themes in them beneath a deceptive
air of detachment and unconcern. Readers who have found in
Criticism and Fiction some of Howells1 subjective views of
this "objective" actuality can see that in the novels of
1886 and 1887 Howells does express such views through the
techniques of realism which he identified in Criticism and
220
Fiction. But the obvious difficulties in communicating
through techniques designed for artistic "objectivity" such
social themes as Howells includes in the novels of 1886 and
1887 lead one to doubt that Howells was satisfied with the
use of such techniques alone; and one expects to discover,
upon close analysis, that Howells, who himself was aware of
a realist's problems in communicating with contemporary
Americans, attempted in these novels to point up his sub
jective views in some way so that, by looking into the nov
els alone, his readers, even those unacquainted with either
Howells' literary theory or his social views, might inde
pendently identify his themes. But when Howells committed
himself as a realist to communicating his social themes
without distorting either his picture of external actuality
or his "illusion" of objectivity, he greatly restricted his
choice of techniques for emphasizing his themes.
When, therefore, despite his arguments in Criticism
and Fiction against authorial intrusion into fiction, How
ells intrudes himself into his own novels of 1886 and 1887,
he does so with a subtlety which for the most part dis
guises the fact that he is indeed intruding. Though How
ells definitely marks most of these intrusions by shifting
from the past tense, in which he narrates his stories, to
the present tense, in which he makes generalizations about
human nature and the societies he portrays, he usually
makes such a shift within the structure of a sentence; in
221
order to recognize that Howells has deliberately intruded
himself into what appears to be an uninterrupted sentence
flow, the reader must be alert to such intrusion. Because
each intrusion, particularly in Indian Summer and The
Minister's Charge, is short, rarely extending beyond a
single clause or phrase, the reader is likely to pass over
it in following the prevailing narrative line. Since How
ells customarily subordinates the structure in which his
"authorial" comment occurs to the structure of a main
clause, he also seems to subordinate the generalization he
makes in such an intrusion to the narrative statement of
the main clause; by structurally subordinating these au
thorial intrusions, Howells implies that the statements he
makes in them are of secondary or only incidental impor
tance. Even if the casual reader notices them, he is like
ly to see Howells' "authorial" intrusion as incidentally
informative rather than thematic.
Most readers have understandably missed any thematic
relevance in Howells' ambiguous intrusion of himself into
these novels; so subtle is Howells' characteristic use of
this device that one must read these novels carefully in
order to perceive many of the instances in which Howells
intrudes himself into them; so infrequently does Howells
intrude himself into Indian Summer and The Minister's
Charge that, were these intrusions as inconsequential to
the social themes of these novels as on the surface they
222
often appear to be, one might contend, with some justifica
tion, that in these particular novels even Howells himself
was unaware of his intrusion.
Nevertheless, the reader who closely examines Howells1
"authorial" intrusions in the three novels of 1886 and 1887
can identify a complex relationship in each novel between
the statements Howells makes in such intrusions and the
social statement he makes in the novel as a whole. How
ever, though Howells adjusts his technique of intrusion to
his particular intention in each of his novels, he achieves
by the device itself certain general effects which are com
mon to all three novels. When Howells uses the present
tense for generalizations about contemporary American life
in novels which he otherwise narrates in the past tense,
he subtly creates the impression that author and reader are
both contemporaneous with the characters in the novels; he
implies through this impression that he intends any mean
ings he gives to the material in these novels to apply to
life in his own time. At first glance, Howells appears to
have intended most of his intrusions of himself into these
novels as simple assertions that the facts of the narrative
he interrupts by such intrusions can be verified in actu
ality; however, he implies by such assertions that he
either assumes or pretends to assume that to his readers
the facts he thus asserts to be true will seem unfamiliar
or improbable. By thus seeming to anticipate that his
223
readers will question the verisimilitude of his story,
Howells subtly satirizes some of the people he thinks will
read that story.
For instance, by implying through an "authorial" com
ment that his readers are unfamiliar with a "fact" about
America which his comment asserts to be commonly known in
America, Howells also implies that he does not see his
readers as Americans. Certainly many of his contemporary
readers were citizens of other countries and therefore
"literally" not Americans; and Howells undoubtedly saw as
part of his literary responsibility the explaining of
American life to the rest of the world. But as an American
realist concerned with awakening the consciousnesses of
American readers to the dangers of their course, Howells
wrote the novels with an American audience particularly in
mind. Whenever Howells intrudes himself into these novels
to verify "facts" about American life which his contem
porary American readers obviously already knew, or, as
Americans, ought by implication to have known, Howells
subtly implies that these American readers either had for
gotten these truths or behaved as if they did not know
them; Howells suggests by this implication that such Ameri
can readers were themselves, in a "figurative" sense, not
really Americans.
Though the readers Howells particularly wanted to
reach in these novels were American readers of his own
time, Howells employed considerable indirection to prevent
his attempts to reach them by authorial intrusion from
seeming "obvious." As an essential part of his attempt at
both communication and ambiguity, Howells endowed his con
temporary American readers with mock identities through
which he could speak obliquely to them about themselves.
The apparently informational tone of Howells 1 usual in
trusions in these novels is deceptive; and a close in
spection of these intrusions will reveal that Howells' com
ments in them point directly toward his American social
themes.
In Indian Summer Howells appears to intrude himself
merely in order to acquaint American readers at home with
the habits of wealthy Americans living in Florence. When
he interposes to comment that "acceptance among the best
English residents" seems "to constitute the social am
bition of Americans living in Italian cities" (p. 69), he
appears to do so merely to provide a kind of statistical
evidence that his own picture of such American behavior in
Florence is accurate. He implies at the same time that he
believes his readers, presumably Americans themselves, will
find such behavior on the part of Americans in Italy suf
ficiently strange to warrant his commenting upon it. Sim
ilarly, when Howells comments of several Americans in
Florence that "they began talking freely and audibly, as
English-speaking people incorrigibly do in Italy, where
225
their tongue is all but the language of the country” (p.
146), he likewise seems to say that such behavior is un
familiar to Americans at home and is peculiarly character
istic of English-speaking people in Italy. Howells pre
tends by these comments that to his knowledge typical
Americans who will read his book do not behave like the
English and are unaware that Americans anywhere admire and
imitate the English; he poses by these comments as a stu
dent of strange customs who merely remarks for his Ameri
can readers the "curious" tendency of Americans living
abroad to act like the English.
Though Howells intends by such comments to indicate
that his Americans in Florence are really like Americans
at home, he does not direct his readers specifically in
these particular comments to this satirical intention.
Howells makes this intention specific only when he in
trudes again to say of Mrs. Bowen, one of these Americans
in Italy, that in her treatment of one of Imogene's es
corts from New York Mrs. Bowen "could not have shown a
greater tolerance of his second-rate New Yorkiness if she
had been a Boston dowager offering him the scrupulous hos
pitality of her city" (p. 355). Howells professes by this
statement to assume that his readers will understand Mrs.
Bowen's behavior if he compares that behavior to a kind of
behavior they already know--the behavior of a Boston dow
ager. Indirectly Howells thus informs his readers that
226
Mrs. Bowen imitates the Boston aristocracy.
Since Howells has already identified her with the
Americans in Italy who emulate the English, he implies that
Mrs. Bowen and other Americans abroad simultaneously imi
tate both the British and Bostonian aristocracies without
specifically distinguishing them; he indicates thereby that
he considers the two "aristocracies" identical. He means
that anyone who idealizes the Bostonian "aristocracy" in
fact idealizes a tradition that is English. If his Ameri
can readers, Howells thus subtly declares, pursue an aris
tocratic ideal whose model in their opinion is Bostonian,
they are misled by what is really an American manifestation
of a tradition that is not American at all.
By his explicit comparison of Mrs. Bowen's behavior
with that of a Boston dowager, Howells identifies Mrs.
Bowen with Americans anywhere who pursue an aristocratic
ideal whose model is Bostonian. When Mrs. Bowen later says
that she feels concerned about "staying away from" America
so long and Howells comments, without even identifying her
as an American, that "people often say such things in
Europe" (p. 371), he subtly applies that comment to all
American pursuers of the aristocratic ideal. By such an
apparently purely informative remark, Howells implies that
not only Mrs. Bowen but all Americans who, like Mrs. Bowen,
flee social responsibility to pursue an "aristocratic" goal
of leisure and comfortable elegance are, figuratively
227
speaking, "in Europe" and that they are not, in the strict
est sense, Americans. They are also, despite their ambi
tions, merely "people," characterized by the commonness
which the term people implies and to which, in their strug
gle "to set themselves apart in select circles and upper
classes," they have tried to convince themselves and others
that they are superior.
Even in those instances in which Howells in Indian
Summer uses his authorial voice to make key social state
ments, he affects ambiguity either in the point of view
through which he makes these statements or in the words he
uses to communicate them. Despite his intrusion to comment
on Mrs. Bowen's response to Imogene's New York escort,
Howells does not make his own feelings explicit regarding
Mrs. Bowen's view that the New Yorker's qualities are
"second-rate." On one level, when he takes Mrs. Bowen's
fastidious reaction to the young man and compares this re
action to that of a typical Boston dowager in similar cir
cumstances, Howells seems to chuckle indulgently at the
"typically" feminine conflict in Mrs. Bowen between feel
ings of social distaste and a compulsion to be socially
proper. After all, good manners apparently do triumph over
the social prejudice in her mind; and when Mrs. Bowen, as
Howells says, "tolerates" the young man with "scrupulous
hospitality," she seems to have committed no great social
harm by her momentary struggle. The reader who sees this
228
authorial comment as merely a good-humored sally at the
foibles of class-conscious American women is likely to
identify Mrs. Bowen's feminine snobbishness as part of the
charm that attracted Colville to her and is not likely to
condemn her for what appears to be a harmless feminine
scruple.
On the other hand, Howells' statement does testify to
Mrs. Bowen's condescension. She refuses to see the New
Yorker as a social equal and her attitude toward him is
one of "scrupulous" tolerance; her behavior with him is in
sincere and reflects only the form of courtesy. Howells'
statement, when carefully considered, reminds the reader
of the irony of Mrs. Bowen's situation: Florence is not
Mrs. Bowen's city--nor is Boston--nor is any place either
in Europe or in America; the "scrupulous hospitality" she
deigns to offer therefore lacks substance; and by the Bos
tonian aristocrats with whom Howells compares her, Mrs.
Bowen would herself be tolerated with a similar "scrupulous
hospitality" as "second-rate." Ironically, Mrs. Bowen, in
looking to a European past for roots in an aristocratic
tradition has in effect deracinated herself. Thus, Howells
seems to have deliberately intended the ambivalence of his
attitude toward Mrs. Bowen as he reveals it in this par
ticular comment. By the consequent ambiguity, Howells,
without heavily imposing himself upon his material, com
ments ironically not only upon the contrast between the
229
apparent benevolence and the concealed selfishness in Mrs.
Bowen's behavior but upon that between the "smiling as
pects" of contemporary American life and the selfish Ameri
can tendencies he saw beneath them. Mrs. Bowen, Howells
demonstrates by the total "dramatic" picture of the novel,
is only a superficially beautiful and good woman, and is
interested ultimately, despite her continuous concern with
propriety, only in herself; by a few subtle intrusions
Howells says so specifically. Furthermore, Colville has
given up life in America for what Mrs. Bowen represents.
And Howells' few intrusions of himself into this novel add
emphasis to the irony of Colville's mistake. But because
Howells makes these intrusions seem merely factual or am
biguous in tone, understanding them requires no less an
"intellectual effort" than understanding the total picture
without them.
Whereas in Indian Summer Howells used his authorial
comments ostensibly to acquaint American readers with the
strangeness of life among American residents in Florence,
he appears to use such comments in The Minister's Charge
mostly to familiarize his audience with what he seemingly
believes this audience will consider unusual in the atti
tudes and behavior of the country boy Lemuel Barker. When
Howells says of Lemuel's willingness to wash dishes at the
Wayfarer's Lodge, for instance, that "nothing more dis
tinctly marks the rustic New England civilization than the
230
taming of its men to the performance of certain duties
elsewhere held dishonourably womanish" (p. 109), he appears
on the surface to be merely asserting the truth of his ac
count of Lemuel's behavior. But by making the statement at
all, Howells professes to believe that his readers are un
familiar with behavior like Lemuel's and that they there
fore need Howells' explanation of Lemuel's behavior before
they can believe such a character possible. In other
words, Howells addresses a mock audience which disdains
certain kinds of work and which in so doing has already
discarded some equalitarian practices in its pursuit of an
aristocratic ideal.
When near the end of Lemuel's employment at the St.
Albans hotel Howells writes of the boy's self-attained but
extensive knowledge of "public" Boston, that Lemuel never
theless "knew nothing of the social intricacies of which
Boston seems solely to consist for so many of us" (p. 249),
Howells appears to identify his audience specifically as
socially sophisticated Bostonians with whom he is sharing
the story of a social curiosity, i.e., Lemuel. The in
formation Howells emphasizes by this comment seems to be
that Lemuel is ignorant of Boston's "social intricacies"
rather than that many Bostonians are absorbed with such
"intricacies"; and though Howells does supply here what ap
pears to be incidental information about Boston's social
activities, he implies by the structure of his statement
231
that his readers themselves are acquainted with Boston
society already and are unfamiliar with Americans like
Lemuel. To such "Bostonians," Howells implies, the idea
that someone exists who is self-reliant and unashamed of
work and who can become extensively acquainted with their
culture without-learning anything of the social life which
for them comprises their culture is a new and remarkable
idea. Aside from his implication that such people lack
Lemuel’s independence and unpretentiousness, Howells sug
gests by this comment that his readers are themselves in
sular and inexperienced and as limited in their knowledge
of other worlds than their own as Lemuel is limited in
his „
Obviously, however, Howells did not write The Minis
ter's Charge for Bostonian readers only, and although the
us he names in this comment seems specifically Bostonian,
Howells doubtlessly hoped that most American readers would
see themselves reflected in the word; if so, this generic
us represents "all, or nearly all” Americans who Howells
believed strove to set themselves apart in socially "select
circles" as he indicated the Bostonian aristocracy already
had done. Since Howells in this comment does not directly
inform his readers about Boston manners but only obliquely
identifies an almost universal Bostonian absorption with
"social intricacies," he professes to assume that his
American readers everywhere understood Boston interests and
232
attitudes better than they did those which, like Lemuel's,
were more consonant with the American tradition of equality
and individual independence. By using the word us to apply
specifically to Bostonians and generically to socially
aspiring Americans everywhere, Howells ironically comments
that if they share the absorptions with "social intrica
cies" that he says characterize this us, his readers reside
in an insular and idle Boston--in spirit if not in geo
graphic fact e
In another instance, when Sewell recognizes that the
compulsive guilt he feels for Barker's supposed suffering
has its source in the "religious insanity" of Puritanism,
Howells interposes, as author to comment that "we have all
inherited [this insanity] in some measure from Puritan
times" (p. 117). By this intrusion, Howells ostensibly in
tends to make Sewell's actions and attitudes seem plausible.
But the statement is about we as well as Sewell and by it
Howells subtly suggests that whatever "insanity" Sewell's
thoughts and behavior demonstrate, Howells believed that
his American readers, whom the word we presumably includes,
shared that "insanity" "in some measure„" Furthermore,
Howells shows that Sewell recognizes in himself this Puri
tan tendency toward excessive feelings of guilt; Howells'
authorial comment, then, ironically informs his readers
that, despite their supposed smugness as they witness Sew
ell's subsequent irrationalities, the difference between
Sewell and them is simply that Sewell knows that there is
a conflict between reason and his Puritan conscience and
Howells 1 readers do not recognize such a conflict in them
selves . A complex implication of this comment is that
Sewell’s behavior is representative of the behavior of
Howells1 readers. Howells seems to have intended the com
ment to encourage readers not only to question the wisdom
of Sewell's subsequent attitudes and actions but also to
see themselves as thinking and behaving under the same com
pulsions and with the same presuppositions as Sewell. If
they had read the novel in this way and had ultimately
seen Sewell's role as Howells demonstrates it in the total
picture of the novel, they might have' seen that Howells
indicted them as accomplices in the corruption of tradi
tional values. But the likelihood that those for whom
Howells intended the satire could perceive it is small.
Howells satirizes the attitudes of his readers with a
still more complex ambiguity when he intrudes himself
again into this novel for the ostensible purpose of ex
plaining Lemuel's surprise at discovering that Bromfield
Corey has hired Lemuel to read for him despite the fact
that Corey has daughters who could do the task. Lemuel,
Howells explains, does not know the "disability for mutual
help that riches bring" (p. 381). By the matter-of-fact
tone of this comment, Howells seems to have intruded him
self here merely to explain a surprise on Lemuel's part
that Howells felt his readers would not otherwise under
stand. Without considering the satirical implications at
all, the alert reader can see that Howells uses this in
trusion economically, to indicate that at this point in his
career Lemuel is not yet thoroughly corrupted by the soft
attractions of an aristocratic ideal, that the boy still
believes individual independence to be a value; at the same
time, Howells1 matter-of-fact tone helps him to announce as
if it were an unquestioned truism the idea that "riches" do
corrupt the spirit of individual independence. By thus im
plying that what he thinks surprises his readers in this
instance is the information that Lemuel is ignorant of the
"disability for mutual help that riches bring," Howells
suggests that his readers know and accept the truism that
riches make people dependent.
However, the phrase "disability for mutual help" ex
pressed in another tone than the matter-of-fact one that
Howells often uses represents clearly a devastating testi
monial to Howells' view that the aristocratic ideal of
"idleness" and dependency is destructive of the moral fi
ber. The word disability suggests physical incapacity--an
incapacity associated often with illness and deformity--and
is not a word that the wealthy would apply regarding their
own use of personal attendants. The phrase mutual help
echoes not only the democratic concept of fraternity but
the Christian ideals of charity and brotherhood. The
235
ideals which "riches" foster, Howells thus suggests, are
undemocratic and un-Christian. By using a matter-of-fact
tone Howells seems merely to say that those who are rich
do not work for each other because they can afford the
services of others who are not rich. But the tone only
disguises the impact of the words. Howells implies by
the casualness with which he makes this statement that in
his opinion most Americans who struggled and longed for
"riches" and the "aristocratic" life did not mind the
prospect of what Howells satirically calls the "disability
for mutual help" and felt little if any moral compunction
about their attitude.2 If Howells appraised his contem
porary American readers correctly, most of them probably
failed to perceive the satire intended in the ironic con
trast between the wording and the tone. It is the tone
of this intrusion that prevents it from being obvious in
its subjectivity; this tone ultimately suggests that even
Howells did not consider distasteful such "disability for
o
Howells may have also intended this statement as
an ironic echo of I Timothy vi.10: "For the love of
money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted
after, they have erred from the faith." Historically
this teaching has not deterred Christians from seeking
money; similarly Howells implies that knowledge of the
truth in his assertion about "riches" does not prevent
Americans from pursuing riches.
236
mutual help.
Though Howells uses authorial intrusion infrequently
in the first two novels of 1886 and 1887, one can see that
the effect of the device is to reinforce an ironic affirma
tion of his thematic intention in each novel. For the most
part, therefore, such intrusion alone will not guide gen
eral readers to Howells' meanings in these two novels.
Occasionally, as when Howells defines Puritanism in his own
voice as "religious insanity," Howells uses such intrusion
to identify a subjective view of his own that he could not
identify by purely "dramatic" means.^ But for the most
part a reader can understand the ironic implications of a
statement Howells makes in an intrusion of himself into one
of these novels only if this reader already understands the
basic statement of the novel in which the intrusion ap
pears. Yet one can hardly fail to observe that by using
this device of authorial intrusion Howells departs from
^Howells1 attitude was apparently mixed. In a letter
of February 2, 1890, to William Cooper Howells, Howells
wrote that he and Twain were "theoretical socialists, and
practical aristocrats. But it is a comfort to be right
theoretically, and to be ashamed of one's self practical
ly ?" See Mildred Howells, Life in Letters of William Dean
Howells (New York, 1928), XI, 1. Howells knew, by this
statement, that the aristocratic ideal was wrong; he pre
tends to be ambiguous in The Minis ter1s Charge whether or
not other Americans were likewise conscious of its dan
gers .
^See above, pp. 96-98.
237
the basic "dramatic” presentation which he said in Criti
cism and Fiction characterized the realist1s method of
presenting material. To the extent that Howells deliber
ately but stealthily intruded himself into these novels in
order to emphasize his social themes, he demonstrated a
willingness for the sake of communication to compromise
his principles of realism as he defined them in Criticism
and Fiction. Such intrusion, whenever his readers see it,
weakens the "illusion" of objectivity which Howells said
the realist should maintain.
Howells employs authorial intrusion so often in April
Hopes and with such consistent application to American so
cial customs and attitudes that readers, once aware of such
intrusion, can hardly doubt that Howells used it deliber
ately in this novel to encourage his readers to look for
American social themes. Ostensibly Howells uses such in
trusion to acquaint unknowledgeable readers with typical
American mores, and in so doing suggests that his mock
audience for this novel is not an American one. Ironical
ly, the particular Americans whom he declares to be typi
cal represent the apparently atypical Bostonian aristoc
racy. For the actual American readers to whom he directs
the novel, then, Howells points out by his authorial com
ments that "exclusive" Bostonians and other Americans who
want to be like them are already much alike in behavior
and attitudes. When he pretends in this novel that his
238
American readers are not Americans, Howells' real purpose
is to imply that these readers for the most part do not
understand America, that in pursuing an aristocratic ideal
they ignorantly pursue something which has no real basis in
American experience. When Howells comments authorially
about the behavior of Bostonian aristocrats, he simultane
ously makes a statement about American society as a whole.
At one level, the tone of Howells1 comments in April
Hopes suggests a sylvan, idyllic American society in which
there seem to be two roads to bliss--one road through
"love" and one through the luxury enjoyed by members of
the leisure class. Americans have a simple faith, Howells
says, in the passion of "love" as a source of happiness.
Americans, he asserts, expect such "love" and the happiness
it will bring to fall "as from heaven." "in this," he adds,
"we are a republic of shepherds and shepherdesses, and we
live in a golden age" (p. 64). Americans in this "golden
age" also believe that they will find happiness in the
aristocratic life which they hope they can ultimately at
tain. Howells implies that just as persons who anticipate
falling in love envision the prospect as only a happy one,
so persons who long for aristocratic luxury and elegance
envision the lives of aristocrats to be composed of un
mixed beauty. On the surface, Howells explains, American
"aristocrats" do appear to enjoy beautiful lives. Howells
says of the festivities arranged by young aristocrats for
239
Harvard Class Day that "the academic fete . . . had that
charm, at once sylvan and elegant, which enraptures in the
pictured fables of the Renaissance" (p. 30). And he says
of "the cultivated and agreeable people" who spend their
summers in Campobello that they have "perhaps" come so far
away to "achieve a sort of sylvan urbanity without respon
sibility" (p. 83). Though Howells here intimates with sly
irony the improbability that such people have meaningful
responsibilities throughout the rest of the year, he also
suggests that one of the attractions of the aristocratic
ideal is the prospective absence of responsibility. The
America Howells thus describes on this level is one of
"smiling aspects" and "shining possibilities," an Arcadia,
that is, in which Americans can blithely anticipate the
happiness they suppose will come with falling in love and
becoming rich.
Howells shows, however, that he considers such a view
of American life to be naively superficial. He does so by
tempering his descriptions of an American Arcadia with
touches of irony. He uses such irony to ridicule the im-
practicality of a sentimental faith in the power of "love"
when he declares that Americans are "material and practical
in other things" (p. 64). Some Americans, he says again,
see the error of such faith when, presumably after mar
riage, their "golden age" seems to become "an age of incon
vertible paper" (p. 64). Similarly he darkens the "sylvan
240
and elegant "charm" of the "Academic fete" by declaring
it "the prettiest flower of our old Puritanic stem" (p. 30,
italics added). Howells thus implies that this tradition
springs not from a Renaissance Arcadia, which it super
ficially resembles, but from a somber religious heritage.
He also implies that the apparently unrestrained gayety of
the occasion conceals an undercurrent of Puritanic restric
tion and self-denial. But what Howells calls the "pretti
est flower" of the "Puritanic stem" is really the festival
celebrating the completion of a young aristocrat's educa
tion. By thus associating the Puritanic tradition with
the American "aristocracy" in the context of an "Academic”
education, Howells hints at two sets of apparently ir
reconcilable paradoxes. One of these is the conflict be
tween the aristocratic ideals of comfort and luxury and the
Puritanic emphasis on conscience, duty, and self-sacrifice.
The other is the conflict between the intellectual virtues
of common sense and reason which an academic education is
supposed to develop and the irrational compulsiveness of
the Puritanic conscience. Howells thus subtly raises the
question whether Americans, who he says in The Minister's
Charge all possess this kind of conscience "in some meas
ure" (p. 117), can possibly enjoy happiness through the
aristocratic life they long for.
Howells apparently depended upon his American read
ers' "Puritanic" attitudes toward "duty" for their
241
understanding of the irony by which he expresses doubt that
the "sylvan urbanity" which he says Bostonian aristocrats
seek in Campobello will bring happiness. Such "urbanity,"
he says, is "without responsibility"; though the idea of
carefree euphoria suggested by the phrase "without respon
sibility" seems pleasant, the word responsibility has a
moral connotation that Howells undoubtedly hoped would not
be lost on his contemporary American readers. The "cul
tivated and agreeable people" at Campobello have, Howells
says, left their responsibilities at home. It is by their
desertion of responsibility that these Americans, Howells
comments ironically, have "perhaps" expressed "the love of
independence which is notable in us" (April Hopes, p. 83)„
Such Americans seek freedom from responsibility, Howells
thus implies, as do all Americans who strive to be like
them. Such American behavior, Howells also implies, not
only runs crosscurrent to the Puritanic concept of duty
which Howells felt pervaded the American character; it also
represents a travesty upon the professed American "love of
independence." Howells undoubtedly expected his American
readers to realize that Americans who seek "independence"
from responsibility are far removed from the conceptual
American who manifests his 'independence" by self-reliance
and individual responsibility.
Howells indicates by these comments that, despite the
apparent possibilities for happiness in America through
242
the attainments of "love" and wealth and social status,
anxiety courses through an American culture that idealizes
such attainments. Howells points out specifically that
members of the leisure class in Boston are not immune to
feelings of anxiety. Of the conversation at a social gath
ering at Jane Bellingham's Howells writes, "It was self-
interested, eager, anxious; and was probably not different
from the voice of good society anywhere" (p. 315). Fur
thermore, Howells explains, Americans cannot relieve this
anxiety by flight to Europe. "In Europe everywhere," he
says, Americans must live "upon the edges and surfaces of
things" (p. 61).
Only in Washington, where Howells shows Americans of
all regions and classes mingling in the democratic process,
does Howells seem to consider the anxiety less pronounced.
"There was," says Howells in describing the social atmos
phere of Washington, "the same unconstraint, the same ab
sence of provincial anxiety which makes Washington a light
er and friendlier London" (p. 439). Howells' intention
here in comparing the two capitals is to suggest indirectly
that in the equalitarian and practical form in which it is
found in Washington, American democracy reveals a greater
human warmth than does English culture. He implies at the
same time that the prospect of happiness in America lies
in such democratic equality and in cultural independence,
which, in Howells' own words, is characterized by the
243
"absence of provincial anxiety." Howells means by this
statement that Washington resembles London not because it
imitates London but because, like^London, it imitates no
other culture at all.
By an even more complex indirection, Howells in the
same statement identifies the anxiety he attests to in
other Americans and particularly in Boston society as in
deed "provincial anxiety." Insomuch as these Americans
aspire more to the aristocratic culture for which London
is a figurative center than to a democratic colture whose
figurative center is Washington, Howells classifies such
Americans as English provincials rather than American
ones.
When one realizes that Howells identifies Boston as
"provincial," one can recognize the derisive irony with
which Howells underscores several authorial comments in
which he describes the social snobbishness of Boston so
ciety. When Howells says that at Campobello Bostonians
"settle in daring little colonies, whose self-reliance
will enlis t the admiration of the sympathetic observer"
(pp. 82-83), he really attests to their insularity. Their
"self-reliance" represents a kind of group snobbishness
rather than the American ideal of individual independence
which Howells undoubtedly expected his American readers
244
to associate with the term self-reliance^ as they read
the passage. What Howells really meant by using the term
was that the society in these little colonies was self-
perpetuating and closed to outsiders. The society of these
"little colonies," Howells explains, is "self-reliant" in
being "repellent of strangers," in being "less hospitable
and more self-satisfied than societies" that are "unin
formed and new and restless," and in having "a sense of
merit founded upon historical documents" (p. 83). This
society, Howells says, "need no longer go outside of it
self for comparisons of any sort, knowing that if it seeks
anything better it will probably be disappointed" (p. 83).
But Howells achieves irony in this passage by more
than his ironic distortion of the traditional American con
cept of "self-reliance." By calling these groups "little
colonies," he suggests the opposite of "self-reliance."
But the behavior he describes to illustrate "self-reliance"
is Bostonian behavior; therefore, he indirectly suggests
that Boston is a little "colony," too. Accordingly, the
smugness of Boston society, Howells implies, is based on
^See Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" in
The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, II (Boston,
1903), 43-90. Howells does not depend upon his readers1
understanding of Emerson's definition for a recognition
that Howells is using the term "self-reliance" ironically.
The "little colonies" are obviously not self-reliant by
any logical definition of the term.
245
misconceptions of its own uniqueness and of its own su
periority. A "colony" is imitative and dependent and has
hardly reasonable grounds for smugness about either self-
sufficiency or social superiority.
Nevertheless, Howells says, Americans in general see
Boston as a cultural center. Howells describes a Washing
ton hostess as greeting a group of Bostonians "with the
irony, more or less friendly, which everybody uses in
speaking of Boston, or recognising the intellectual pre
eminence of its people" (p. 441). Howells does not make
clear what he means by the "more or less friendly" "irony"
with which he says "everybody" recognizes the "intellectual
pre-eminence" of Bostonians, but he does attest in this
intrusion to Boston's reputation for "intellectual pre
eminence." But he does not intend to say that Boston is
indeed intellectually pre-eminent. Elsewhere, in authorial
intrusions in which he examines Bostonian attitudes toward
"love" and Bostonian reading tastes, Howells questions
Boston's reputation for such pre-eminence.
Howells speaks of Americans as a whole when he com
ments that "it is the rule that Americans marry for love,
and the very rare exception that they marry for anything
else"*(p. 63). This custom proves to be an obstacle, how
ever, to the Bostonian Mrs. Pasmer's desires to marry her
daughter to a young man rich enough to sustain the Pasmer
family's "aristocratic" status. When Alice Pasmer breaks
246
her engagement with the wealthy Dan Mavering, Mrs. Pasmer
cannot in the face of this custom argue the impracticality
of her daughter's action. Howells intrudes himself into
the novel to say of the mother's dilemma that "it is so
wholly our tradition to^treat the important business of
marriage as a romantic episode that even she could not
bring herself to insist that her daughter should not throw
away a chance so advantageous from every worldly point of
view" (p. 383)„
By other authorial intrusions, Howells questions
whether, aside from such purely "business" considerations,
the passion of love that draws young people to each other
is likely to lead to happiness for the young people them
selves. "if our divorce courts are so busy" in spite of
the fact that Americans marry for "love," "it is perhaps
because the Americans un-marry for love, or perhaps love
is not so self-sufficient in matters of the heart" as
Americans assume (p. 63). Howells questions specifically
the capacities of young lovers for making sensible deci
sions relating to marriage. When Howells says that Dan
Mavering "was like all young men, with a thousand poten
tialities of loving" (p. 445), Howells implies that with
all these "potentialities" a young man could make a bad
choice as well as a good one. Howells similarly argues
that young girls are equally unlikely to choose well.
Alice Pasmer, he writes, is like all girls, for whom
247
"girlhood is often a turmoil of wild impulses, ignorant
exaltations, mistaken ideals, which really represent no
intelligent purpose, and come from disordered nerves, ill-
advised reading, and the erroneous perspective of experi
ence" (p. 333). Howells says in another instance that
youth feels a remoteness from "all verities except those
of sensation" (p. 305). Howells thus suggests that it is
highly unlikely that young people can on the basis of
"love" apply reason and common sense in the choice of life
time mates.
In such intrusions of himself into April Hopes Howells
declares that the subjection of the young to their senses
is a universal human characteristic. And he indicates that
the custom of submitting the question of marital choice to
the feelings of young people is a custom that pervades
American society at all levels. However, in April Hopes,
he uses the experiences of Bostonian aristocrats to demon
strate both the prevalence and the error of this custom in
American life. By doing so, he indicates that even in
Boston society, whose "intellectual pre-eminence" "every
body" seems ironically to recognize, "the important busi
ness of marriage" is seen as a "romantic episode" and is
left in the hands of young people whose judgments are
erratically influenced by the senses0 Howells means that,
despite its vaunted and reputed superiority, Boston's
leisure class resembles the rest of the country in its
248
unquestioning and foolish acceptance of "love” as the ul
timate arbiter in "matters of the heart."
Howells attributes this error to a common failure by
Americans, including Bostonians, to appraise intelligently
the literature they read. In their attitudes toward "love"
all Americans, writes Howells, "are the children of the
poets, the devotees of the romancers" (p. 64). Speaking
of these same Americans, he says in another instance that
"we all tpust our instruction" in matters of "love" to
"the novels" (p. 371). But Howells questions whether the
poets, the "romancers," and the novelists have provided
reliable instruction in the subject. He expresses doubt
that "love," which Americans have such faith in, is "so
sufficient in matters of the heart as has been represented
in the literature of people who have not been able to give
it so fair a trial" (p. 63) as people in real life do.
The poets and novelists lie about life, Howells indicates,
when they pretend that a young man who he says has a
"thousand potentialities of loving" can become hopelessly,
irretrievably in love with one woman (p. 445). Howells
says that popular literature tells lies about life in gen
eral and that readers believe such lies. Despite each
person’s knowledge that his own nature is "mixed and con
tradictory," novels teach, says Howells, that people act
according to a "logical consistency which we never find in
any one outside the novels" (p. 466), And Americans "pay—
249
and [American] women like to pay--" "allegiance" "to the
tradition of the playwrights and the novelists, that social
results of all kinds are work of deep, and more or less
darkling, design on the part of other women" (p. 466) „ By
suggesting in such authorial comments that Bostonians are
like all Americans in their faith in what he considers mis
representations in sentimental literature of the truth of
human experience, Howells questions the "intellectual pre
eminence" of Boston society.
When thus separated from the text and arranged in a
coherent pattern, Howells1 authorial comments in April
Hopes seem to reduce the love story, which readers have
commonly seen as paramount, to the mere function of demon
strating the foolishness of the idealism that he thinks
Bostonians as well as other Americans have imbibed from
their reading. The profusion of such comments in this nov
el and the fact that one can arrange them to express a co
herent statement about American society leaves little
doubt that Howells used them deliberately to help him com
municate his social views.
. So profuse are such authorial comments in this novel
that one who once perceives them can hardly see how readers
can have failed to discuss them as clues to Howells1 Ameri
can social themes. Yet these comments have not generally
contributed to an understanding of this novel. Even
Edwin H. Cady, who, unlike most other critics, notices that
250
Howells permits the "storyteller's voice" in April Hopes
to "editorialize and deliver small asides"^ does not exam
ine these "asides" as clues to the novel's basic meanings.
Had Howells expressed in the form of an expository
essay the ideas of his authorial comments in April Hopes,
readers would have little difficulty in recognizing the
social themes of this novel. But as a novelist Howells
was concerned with the basic texture of April Hopes as a
novel--with the "dramatic" presentation of the thoughts,
dialogue, and actions of characters. Even though Howells
injects his comments profusely into this texture he does
so in such a way that he does not alter it. For one thing,
Howells -neither obviously points up his comments in the
novel nor arranges them himself in any coherent pattern.
Furthermore, by ostensibly focusing on the story of the
two lovers, he can pass off his comments as informational
"asides," whose purpose, for the most part, seems to be to
explain for non-Bostonians the unfamiliar behavior of Bos
tonians rather than to show that Bostonians and other
Americans are alike in their foolishness. Finally, he
frequently uses a moral or social truism to achieve
through indirection or complex ambiguity a subtle and in
voluted irony.
One of Howells' most complex uses of authorial
^The Realist at War (Syracuse, 1958), p. 60.
intrusion in this novel occurs when Howells intrudes him
self in an apparent defense of the Bostonian aristocrat
Mrs. Brinkley’s desire to meddle at a critical moment in
Dan Mavering's love affair. "It has been the experience
of every one," Howells reminds his readers, "to have some
alien concern come into his life and torment him with more
anxiety than any affair of his own" (pp. 475-476). Though
it seems simply to be a defense of Mrs. Brinkley's interest
in another's business, the statement is significant in that
Mrs. Brinkley is only one of many characters in this novel
who show an "alien concern" in someone else's love affair--
in fact, the novel portrays a society that responds to
every incident in the very love affair with which Howells
here says Mrs. Brinkley feels an "alien concern." By dis
tinctly singling out Mrs. Brinkley to explain her feeling
as recognizably human, Howells suggests that he expects
his readers to see either that something in her attitude
distinguishes it from the attitudes of the others or that
despite the apparent uniqueness these readers have ob
served in Mrs. Brinkley she ultimately feels and behaves
like everyone else in the novel.
Howells demonstrates throughout April Hopes that most
members of the society he portrays are absorbed with the
love affair in the novel because they are sentimental and
seek the vicarious sensations that appeal to a common
human interest in "love intrigue." Howells implies by
252
singling Mrs. Brinkley out as he does that Mrs. Brinkley
is either sincere in her concern with Dan Mavering's prob
lems or, like all the rest, unexpectedly indulges herself
sentimentally. Since Mrs. Brinkley has demonstrated in
the past a commonsense approach to "love" and has refused
to sentimentalize it as the others do, Howells implies by
his intrusion that on one level Mrs. Brinkley's interest
in Dan's problem is sincere. Howells seems even to com
mend her attitude by adding a comment that apparently
assigns this attitude great moral significance: "This
[kind of feeling] is, perhaps, a hint from the infinite
sympathy which feels for us all that none of us can hope
to free himself from the troubles of others, that we are
bound to each other by ties which, for the most part, we
cannot perceive, but which, at the moment their stress
comes we cannot break" (p. 476). By thus giving her
"alien concern" moral significance, Howells suggests that
consistently with her previously developed character, Mrs.
Brinkley is sincere in her sympathy for Dan's welfare. In
this sincerity she is unlike the rest of the aristocratic
characters in the novel who are not so much interested in
the persons in the love affair as they are in the idea of
the love affair.
However, Howells in this additional statement implies
that the sincere "concern" Mrs. Brinkley feels is a signal
to action. • The feeling is merely a "hint" of mutual
253
dependency on the part of mankind; the feeling is not the
end in itself. If sympathy does not express itself in
overt action, it remains within the person feeling it and
is in the end no more than sensation. Harboring such sym
pathy resembles the idle self-indulgence of all who vicari
ously exercise themselves in the affairs of others. How
ells' comment here then assigns to Mrs. Brinkley a moral
responsibility--she must act. If she does not, she is
little different from the other characters in the novel
who indulge themselves in vicarious sensation.
The ultimate irony in this entire passage is that Mrs.
Brinkley does not effectively act. On the basis of her
frequently expressed belief that matchmaking should not be
left to the whim of young love, on the basis of her con
viction that Dan Mavering and Alice Pasmer are unsuited to
each other, on the basis of her intimate friendship with
Dan Mavering, on the basis of the Christian charity that
Howells says her "alien concern" hints of, on the basis of
her constantly telling herself that she should interfere,
Mrs. Brinkley should act to protect Dan from an unhappy
marriage. But she ultimately does not act. Her failure
to do so identifies her feeling with the self-indulgent
sentimentalism that other members of the society demon
strate. Her "alien concern” with someone else's "affair"
becomes, without action to give it value, no more than an
idle indulgence in matters which are, as the word alien
254
suggests, none of her business. All she recognizes from
the feeling is a wasted "hint" that she can not free her
self "from the troubles of others." By implication,
Howells says that her failure to act does not free her,
either, that her responsibility still remains.
By this passage, Howells seriously indicts the behav
ior of Mrs. Brinkley. However, he accuses her not for her
failure to help Dan Mavering but for her failure to act in
the.light of her own charitable impulses. Mrs. Brinkley,
as the most intelligent and honest character in the aristo
cratic society that Howells portrays in April Hopes, ought
to behave responsibly if anyone in the society does so.
Howells uses her experience and attitude largely to demon
strate his view that the intellectual leadership of that
society is ineffectually effeminate.
But it is doubtful that a reader who did not already
understand Howells 1 "dramatic" technique or his thematic
statement in April Hopes could work out the complex in
tention of this authorial intrusion by which Howells
points up the flaw in Mrs. Brinkley's character. In the
first place, when Howells explains her impulse in moral
tones, Howells seems to sympathize with Mrs. Brinkley.
But as he dramatizes the subsequent action, Howells makes
clear that it is Mrs. Brinkley's failure to act and not
her concern with Dan's "affair" that affects the outcome--
that her sympathy is not an example of human charity but
255
only an ineffectual hint of the importance of such charity.
One can read the passage correctly if he recognizes that
though Mrs. Brinkley's "concern" with someone else's love
affair seems on the face of it little out of the ordinary
and though this "concern" is not transformed into meaning
ful action in the course of the novel, Howells nevertheless
spends considerable time talking about it. If one explores
the implications of this fact, he can discover that though
Howells pretends his statements here to be mere truisms,
he uses them to point to qualities in Mrs. Brinkley's char
acter and, through these qualities in Mrs. Brinkley, to
flaws in the aristocratic ideal itself. Even so, to do all
this, one must understand Howells' use of "dramatic" pres
entation and socially representative types.
Even in authorial intrusions which function in less
complex manners than his "defense" of Mrs. Brinkley's
"alien concern," Howells uses such subtle ambiguity that
the reader has to understand Howells' overall purpose in
the novel in order to perceive his specific intentions.
For instance, in an apparent attempt to excuse Bostonian
snobbishness, Howells explains that all societies are ex
clusive of others. "Those who accuse the coldness of the
Bostonians," he writes, "accuse not only civilisation but
nature itself" (p. 83). However, in the very act of ex
cusing Bostonians for their "coldness" he also accuses them
of "coldness" by recognizing that others accuse them of it.
256
At the same time, he subtly lowers Bostonians to the level
of all the rest of mankind. Thus the statement identifies
the premise of the entire novel, that for all their pre
sumed "pre-eminence1 1 Bostonians share the fundamental prob
lems of all humanity and try to solve these problems in the
same groping manner as do all other humans. More specifi
cally, he declares indirectly by this statement that there
is no true aristocracy in America and therefore no logical
basis for the pursuit in America of an aristocratic ideal.
Howells1 use of ambiguity and irony in his authorial
comments in all three of these novels reflects, in keeping
with his insistence in Criticism and Fiction that the nov
elist should maintain an objective distance from his art,
a conscious attempt on his part not to seem overtly to
intrude himself into his fiction. Though each such in
trusion is demonstrably pertinent to the American social
themes of the novel in which it appears, the difficulty of
establishing the relevance of most such intrusions raises
a question about Howells’ purpose in using them. Though
Howells obviously wrote them with a careful eye to their
relevance to his themes, he apparently did not intend them
v
merely to explicate such themes. Instead, he undoubtedly
used them to alert his readers to the fact that there were
themes in these novels--significant statements which as a
realist he presented by the basic method of realism which
was "dramatic" rather than "analytical.1 1 Though Howells
257
seemed willing enough to tell his readers in his novels
that they should engage in an "intellectual efforts" he
was not willing to do their work for them.
Howells’ use of authorial intrusion also represents an
attempt to reconcile those principles of his art which de
mand the "illusion" of objective actuality with the need
to communicate meaning. The responsible realist, Howells
said in Criticism and Fiction, "is very careful of every
fact and feels himself bound to express or to indicate its
meaning at the risk of over-moralizing" (p. 16). But How
ells also believed that the responsible realist is obli
gated to communicate such meaning through art, and must not
violate his "illusion" of authorial distance for the sake
of such communication. Howells’ increased use of authorial
intrusion in April Hopes after a mere token use of it in
the two preceding novels suggests that Howells felt a grow
ing need to get his meanings across to his readers. If he
failed to do so by his use of authorial comment, he failed
because he was not yet ready to discard his principle of
"objectivity" in fiction for the sake of conveying meaning.
Even when he wrote the novels of 1886 and 1887, then,
novels which in basic method reflect the principles of
realism as Howells defined them in Criticism and Fiction,
Howells demonstrated that in order to communicate his
themes he was willing to employ techniques that exceeded
the limitations of those principles. Though he said
258
specifically that the realist used the technique of
"dramatic" presentation, Howells' use of authorial intru
sion represents a departure from such presentation, however
subtly he employed it. To the extent that he used such in
trusion for the mere purpose of substantiating his facts,
he showed thereby that he was arguing that his facts were
accurate. However, he intruded himself into these novels
for a more fundamental reason— he believed that his "dra
matic" presentation alone would not communicate his themes
for him, at least to readers in his own time.
Howells recognized that whatever he was doing in
these novels he did not make his meanings clear to his con
temporary readers. In a letter to Mark Twain in which he
spoke of Indian Summer. Howells complained that "what
people cannot see is that I analyze as little as possible,
but [they] go on talking about the analytical school which
I am supposed to belong to."^ Of readers1 reactions to
The Minister’s Charge, he wrote to Henry James that "of
course, they entirely miss the very simple purpose of the
book."8 And of April Hopes Howells wrote in response to a
question by Hamlin Garland about the novel's meaning that
^Mildred Howells, Life in Letters I, 370-371. (Letter
from Howells to Clemens, August 9, 1885).
^Ibid., p. 387. (Howells to James, December 25,
1886).
259
Howells "supposed" that "the social intent of the book [by
which Howells apparently meant the moral intent]--the
teaching that love is not enough in love affairs, but that
there must be parity of ideal, training, and disposition,
in order to insure happiness--was only too obvious."9
Though Howells does not identify the American social state
ment that he labored hard in this novel to communicate to
his readers and which he needed to communicate to them if
they were to apply Howells' moral intent to themselves, he
does indicate by this comment that his readers did not com
prehend the novel. "People take me so viciously awry," he
wrote Edmund Clarence Stedman in 1888, soon after April
Hopes was published, "and think (or say) that I have no
serious meaning when my whole trouble has been to sugar-
coat my medicinal qualities. "1-0 In the light of such ex
pressions of disappointment with public response to these
three novels, one wonders whether Howells might be willing
to depart even more radically from the principles of real
ism that he defined in Criticism and Fiction than he did
in these novels.
^Ibid., p. 410. (Howells to Garland, March 11,
1888).
7 n
Ibid., p. 409. (Howells to Stedman, February 4,
1888).
CHAPTER VI
THE VALUE OF CRITICISM AND FICTION
Howells evidently intended Criticism and Fiction in
part as a basic guidebook to the method of realism--a
guidebook which identified the basic techniques by which a
realist achieved an "illusion1 1 of objective actuality.
Yet even in the novels of 1886 and 1887--novels in which
Howells applied the "objective" techniques of realism he
identified in Criticism and Fiction so successfully that
most readers have missed or misunderstood his social in
tentions --Howells obviously did not feel bound by his own
specification that the novelist maintain an artistic dis
tance from his fiction. His use of authorial intrusion in
these novels, particularly his increased use of it in April
Hopes, suggests that Howells as a novelist was concerned
with communicating subjective social themes as well as with
maintaining an "illusion" of actuality.
Howells’ more immediately practical purpose in Criti
cism and Fiction, however, appears to have been to present
a case for realism to the American reading public. This
purpose accounts for Howells' devotion of a large portion
of Criticism and Fiction to a discussion of contemporary
260
261
American criticism (pp. 29-57), which, Howells said, was
modeled on the methods of English critics (pp. 32-33) and
did not "inquire whether a work is true to life" (p. 47).
In other words, Howells attempted in Criticism and Fiction
to balance the account against a preponderance of American
critics who he felt did not give works of realism a fair
reading. Therefore, Howells used Criticism and Fiction to
define the "fundamentals" of a kind of realism which, in
its ideal form in fiction, conveyed a recognizably faith
ful reflection of an average external actuality and at the
same time communicated, by means of an ostensibly objective
technique, intellectual and moral statements about man and
society.
However, Howells as a theorist in Criticism and Fic
tion seemed naively to assume that realists whom he admired
were indeed objective and honest in their selection of the
"average" for portraits of their own society.-*- Howells
could not, of course, be certain— though he implied that
he was— that such a "realist" as Dostoievsky had been ob
jective and honest in the selection of material for the
picture of Russian life in Crime and Punishment (p. 128).
But Howells professed to believe that he had the practice
of other realists like that of Dostoievsky to justify him
in his assumption. Therefore his own artistic standard
-*-See above, pp. 31-32.
262
was in theory one of strict impartiality; he failed in
Criticism and Fiction to recognize the subjectivity even
of his own moral p r i n c i p l e s .^ Since the "standard of the
arts" "is in every man's power," he argued, the realistic
novelist must be faithful in his picture and in his ethical
intention to the truth of the actual world. However seri
ously Howells believed this argument himself, a practical
intention in his using it was to awaken American readers to
a confidence in their own capacities for making honest and
independent appraisals of such fiction as was "true to
life."
In view of such an intention, the American social
themes Howells identified in Criticism and Fiction seem in
cidental; however, since he was attempting in effect to
"sell" realism to American readers, he had to explain to
these readers what realists were saying in those American
novels which such readers were not willing to make "an in
tellectual effort" to understand. Obviously those American
realistic novels which he knew best were his own, and his
own novels were among those which readers frequently mis
understood; it is not surprising then that he included in
Criticism and Fiction American social themes which he had
presented in those novels which, though reflecting Howells'
principles of realism, did not obviously communicate
2
See above, p. 44.
263
meaningful American social themes— the novels of 1886 and
1887.
Howells implied when he included such themes, however,
that he had presented these themes in all the novels of the
period from 1886 to 1891, including the novels of 1888 and
1889 as well as the earlier ones. Whether or not the im
plication is valid is irrelevant, in the final analysis,
to Howells' definition of realism, which he considered a
matter of technique rather than of material. Nevertheless,
one who knows that in Criticism and Fiction Howells ex
pressly identified these themes--that is, themes related
to the subtle corruption of American values by the naive
O
pursuit of an aristocratic ideal--J can use such themes to
reconstruct what Howells professed to be his image of con
temporary American actuality throughout the period. One
can then test the pictures of American life in all five of
the novels Howells published during the period against the
picture implied in Criticism and Fiction. As has been
^See Kermit Vanderbilt, The Achievement of William
Dean Howells (Princeton, 1968), p. 194. On the basis of an
examination of four novels of the 1880's--The Undiscovered
Country (1880), A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas
Lapham (1884), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889)--Vander
bilt concludes that in this decade Howells was writing from
"a sensitized concern over fragmented values in [American]
religious, social, and esthetic life." The present study
thus identifies Criticism and Fiction and the novels of
1886 and 1887 with social concerns similar to those
Vanderbilt finds in the four novels he examines.
264
demonstrated, one can read the novels of 1886 and 1887 with
a knowledge of the social themes defined in Criticism and
Fiction and appreciate Howells' efforts in these novels to
avoid a distortion of what he professed to consider an
average external actuality. By including these themes in
Criticism and Fiction in 1891, Howells implied that his
view of American life had undergone little change since
1886; therefore one should be able to compare Howells' two
novels of 1888 and 1889--Annie Kilburn and A Hazard of New
Fortunes— with the novels of 1886 and 1887 by measuring the
pictures of American life in these later novels against the
same view of American actuality represented in the earlier
novels. In other words, if Howells' view of America did
not change between 1886 and 1891, one should find themes
in the two novels of 1888 and 1889 which correspond to the
themes in the earlier novels. He should find similar pic
tures of a predominantly optimistic America whose tradition
of equality and individual independence is being corrupted
by a foolish and selfish pursuit of an aristocratic ideal.
Whatever the themes of Annie Kilburn and A Hazard of
New Fortunes, however, one who wishes to find what Howells'
picture of American society really was in these two novels
must examine the novels in the light of the fundamental
principles Howells defined in Criticism and Fiction. In
doing so, such a reader must ask whether in Annie Kilburn
the Reverend Peck, who preaches that "equality is the
265
perfect work, the evolution of liberty" and who means and
practices this precept in economic terms (pp. 239-240) is
a socially representative American,, Such a reader must
also ask whether Howells intended the tragic accident that
causes Peck's death to be a faithful representation of the
"probable" in American life or whether Howells used Peck's
character and experience as a distortion of external actu
ality for the purpose of driving home a moral theme. Simi
larly this reader must question whether in A Hazard of New
Fortunes Howells intended the Christ-like Conrad and the
one-armed, bitter anarchist Lindau as socially representa
tive characters, and whether he intended their deaths as
"statistically" probable or whether he intended to use
their characters and their tragedies purely for thematic em
phasis. Such a reader must also define the relationship to
a "probable" actuality of Howells' symbolic use of the in
taglio ring as a means of implying the complicity of
Fulkerson, Beaton, Christine Dryfoos, and Mr. Dryfoos all
in Conrad Dryfoos' death„^ In other words, the question
that must be considered in reading the novels in terms of
Howells' literary theory is whether Howells saw a change in
^For discussions of the intaglio ring as a symbol, see
Everett Carter, Howells and the Age of Realism (Philadel
phia, 1950), pp. 214-215; George N. Bennett, William Dean
Howells: The Development of a Realist (Norman” 1959), pp.
i'9>'7-19&; and George C. Carrington, Jr., The Immense Complex
Drama (Columbus, 1966), p. 94.
American actuality during the five-year period and re
flected such change in the novels of 1888 and 1889, or
whether he did not see a substantial change but felt that
in these later novels he must distort his image of American
actuality in order to reveal the undercurrents which he
perceived that the ’’smiling aspects" of American life con
cealed .
Ultimately one may assess change during the entire
period from 1886 to 1891 by examining all five novels as
well as Criticism and Fiction against the background of the
"Editor’s Study" essays. Howells seems to have intended
Criticism and Fiction to account in some way for his prac
tice during the whole period; therefore-one should, before
considering the "Editor’s Study" essays, first examine all
the novels of the period, including Annie Kilburn and
A Hazard of New Fortunes, in the light of Howells 1 state
ments in Criticism and Fiction alone.
It is doubtful, finally, whether Howells ever changed
his literary theory. He evidently felt when he published
Criticism and Fiction in 1909 that Criticism and Fiction
adequately described that theory. But he obviously did not
consider himself rigidly committed to its practice. In
1893, he reportedly told James Realf, Jr., that "I preach
Realism, but I catch myself sinning constantly. In the
5james Realf, Jr., "Men of Letters," The Californian,
III (February 1893), 309.
267
novels of 1886 and 1887 Howells "sinned" specifically by
intruding himself, albeit subtly, into his fiction in order
to alert readers to his social themes. However, what he
did not yet do in these three novels was to alter the vi
sion of American actuality that he professed in Criticism
and Fiction. The price he paid for such tenacity to his
principle of fidelity to "objective" actuality was a fail
ure at the time to communicate his American social themes
effectively. Howells1 extensive use of authorial intrusion
in April Hopes illustrates the lengths in that direction to
which Howells would go to communicate such themes.
In fact, Howells actually declared he could go no
farther. He said to Hamlin Garland about the public's
misreading of April Hopes that "to infuse, or to declare
more of my personality in a story would be a mistake to my
thinking: it should rather be the novelist's business to
keep out of the way. . . . I can't do more."^
One direction for Howells to take in subsequent nov
els, if he wished to communicate his social themes without
an increasingly overt authorial intrusion, would involve
his distorting his picture of external actuality--exagger
ating, that is, the evils of American life and their
^Mildred Howells, Life in Letters of William Dean
Howells (New York, 1928), I, 410. (Letter from Howells
to Garland, March 11, 1888).
268
consequences. Such a distortion would, according to How
ells, constitute a change in technique, not in subject mat
ter, and would, in the strictest sense of his definition
in Criticism and Fiction, involve a deviation from "the
truthful treatment of material" and therefore a violation
of the tenets of realism.
That Howells was already in a sense "sinning" against
realism in the novels of 1886 and 1887 leads one to con
clude that Howells would be likely also to deviate from a
strictly realistic technique in the novels of 1888 and 1889
and that he would do so with the specific intention of more
effectively communicating his American social themes.
At any rate, one cannot "invalidate" Criticism and
Fiction as the expression of Howells' literary principles
on the ground that it does not account precisely for How
ells ' literary practice in the novels of 1888 and 1889.7
As the study of these three earlier novels has shown, How
ells did not see the principle of authorial "objectivity,"
for which he argued in Criticism and Fiction, as prohibi
tive of his own use of authorial intrusion in these novels.
Readers of any of Howells' novels must not, without
risking disappointment, expect Howells to adhere rigidly
to the doctrine he preached. Howells' letter of
^As Everett Carter and Edwin H. Cady attempt to do.
(See above, pp. 8-9).
269
September 25, 1890, to Henry James might serve as a warning
against assumptions that Howells' theories in Criticism and
Fiction and his practice in his novels are invariably iden
tical: "The novel is such a free fight," Howells wrote,
"you don't want ever afterwards to be tied up to any
Queensberry rules.Nevertheless, Howells in Criticism
and Fiction identified a basic principle of objective and
representative realism upon which one can expect Howells'
fictive expression to pivot; and one who understands that
basic principle can understand better not only what Howells
does at those times that he is a representational and ob
jective realist but what his artistic and ethical inten
tions are when he deviates from that principle.
^Mildred Howells, Life in Letters, II, 6
LIST OF WORKS CITED
LIST OF WORKS CITED
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uw.----------
Boyd, Ernest. "Readers and Writers," Independent, CXIV
(January 3, 1925), 20.
Brooks, Van Wyck. Letters and Leadership. New York:
B. W. Huebsch, l9l8.
Burroughs, John. "Mr. Howells' Agreements with Walt Whit
man, Critic, XVIIns (February 6, 1892), 85.
Cady, Edwin H. "Howells Revival: Rounds Two and Three,"
New England Quarterly, XXXII (Summer 1959), 201-207.
_____________. "A Note on Howells and 'the Smiling Aspects
of Life,'" American Literature, XVII (May 1945), 175-
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__________ . The Realist at War. Syracuse: Syracuse
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_____________. The Road to Realism. Syracuse: Syracuse
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Calverton, V. F. The Liberation of American Literature.
New York: Charles Scribner 1s Sons, 1932.
Carrington, George C., Jr. The Immense Complex Drama.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 196 b.
Carter, Everett. Howells and the Age of Realism. Phila
delphia : J. B. Lippincott (Jompany, 1950.
The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 12 vols. Bos-
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Cooke, Delmar Gross. William Dean Howells. New York:
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271
272
Cowie, Alexander. The Rise of the American Novel. New
York: The American Book Company, 1948.
Firkins, Oscar W. William Dean Howells. Cambridge: Har
vard University Press, 1924.
Gibson, William M., and George Arms. A Bibliography of
William Dean Howells. New York: New' York Public
Library, 1948.
Hartwick, Harry. The Foreground of American Fiction. New
York: The American Book Company, T9b4.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables. Bos
ton: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851.
Hicks, Granville. The Great Tradition. New York: Bible
and Tannen, 1933.
Howells, Mildred, ed. Life in Letters of William Dean How
ells . 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers, 192b.
Howells, William Dean. Annie Kilbum. New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1888.
. April Hopes. New York: Harper and Broth-
ers, 1887.
_____________. Criticism and Fiction. New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1891.
_____________. Criticism and Fiction. New York; Harper
and Brothers, 1909.
_____________. "Editor's Study," Harper's New Monthly
Magazine, LXIII (September l&bb), 639-64b.
_____________. A Hazard of New Fortunes. New York: Harper
and Brothers, 1889.
. Indian Summer. Boston: Ticknor and Com-
pany, 1886.
The Minister's Charge. Boston: Ticknor
and Company^ 1886.
_____________. A Modern Instance. Boston: Ticknor and
Company, 1882.
The Rise of Silas Lapham. Boston: Ticknor
and Company^ 1884.
273
Kirk, Clara Marburg, and Rudolf Kirk, eds. Howells:
Criticism and Fiction. New York: New York University
Press, 1959.
______ ______. William Dean Howells: Representative Selec-
tions. New York: The American Book Company, 1950.
Matthews, Brander. "Recent Essays in Criticism," The Cos
mopolitan, XII (November, 1891), 124-126.
Michaud, Regis. The American Novel Today. Boston:
Little, Brown, and Company, 1928.
Parks, E. W. "Realist Avoids Reality: W. D. Howells and
the Civil War Years," South Atlantic Quarterly, LII
(January 1953), 93-97.
Parrington, Vernon Louis. Main Currents in American
Thought. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,
193o7
Pizer, Donald. "The Evolutionary Foundation of W. D. How
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XI (January 1961), 2 9 6 -3 0 4 . -------------------------
Realf, James, Jr. "Men of Letters," The Californian, III
(February 1893), 307-310.
Rubin, Louis D., Jr., and John Rees More, eds. The Idea
of an American Novel. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell
Company, 1961.
Smith, Bernard. "Howells, the Genteel Radical," The Satur
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Smith, Henry Nash, and William M. Gibson. Mark TwajLn-
Howells Letters. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard Univer
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Company, 19487
Taylor, Walter F. The Economic Novel in America. Chapel
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. "William Dean Howells and the Economic
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Trilling, Lionel. The Opposing Self. New York: The
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274
Vanderbilt, Kermit. The Achievement of William Dean How
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Creator Fox, Harold Dee (author)

Core Title William Dean Howells: The Literary Theories In "Criticism And Fiction." Their Application In The Novels Of 1886 And 1887

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Metzger, Charles R. (committee chair), Kooker, Arthur R. (committee member), Nichol, John W. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-700585

Unique identifier UC11361958

Identifier 6916549.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-700585 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6916549.pdf

Dmrecord 700585

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Fox, Harold Dee

Type texts

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Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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