Literatura de los Estados Unidos de 1850 a 1900

** Individualism:

- The Great Awakening

- Romanticism

Two parallel movements:

1. Industrialization and prosperity

2. The need of the individual to be an individual (they need to feel that they’re
individuals)

The Post War Era

Human Rights:
Natural rights of human kind. Attitude towards slavery (Lincoln). The voter was a
property owner, or at least a man who paid taxes. The Great Awakening
contributed to a wider sense of democracy. If a man is converted, he reaches the
Spririt and is able to know politics or any other thing.
The society goal was to be prosperous, the industrialization.
The individual goal was the dignity.
Clash between the social role of the citizens (as a part of the sistem) So, where is
the individual?
Pursuit of happiness. So what happens with slavery then? They are not equal,
Lincoln will fight for this right. Fighting for equal rights, in the South the economy
(tobacco, cotton) needed hands for free. This is when it begins the inestability.
Jonathan Edwards.
People stopped working with the Great Awakening (they were obsessed if they felt
God inside themselves). People took notice of their own, and it was a tremendous
change. When people felt converted somehow they felt at peace (romantic attitude,
the concern of the individual, the dignity). You become somehow higher, it’s a way
of transcend, example, you see a tree as a perfect attitude of the self)
In the Romanticism each individual comes to life with a sense of justice and you
have to cultivate to yourself not to the society. Romanticism is focused on the ego.
Optimistic attitude  Transcendentalism. If you feel converted then you feel
strong. When you see the world you see it in an optimistic way.

Economy:
- The machine. Development of industry. Proletariat living on daily wages emerges
(People moved to the city and they worked for somebody elses (wages))
- By 1860s one third of the population were supported directly or indirectly by
manufacture. The value of city property together with industrial plants is superior
to agriculture.
- With the machine the conflict between the North and the South increases. The
Mexican War is directly influential on the Civil War. The South was going to expand
with new territories for slavery. [The South was agricultural (free hands)]
Attitude of the people:
- By 1840s many people were aware of the injustice of industrialization in America
(this idea of the individual, Romanticism had already emerged)
If your aims in life were different from society it was the beginning of “what am I
doing here”… Religion plays an important role, concentrating on themselves, how
they feel.
The prosperity and the attitude of the people in order to become rich  so they
are going to abuse the inferior?
The inwardness of the age. The demon machinery anihilates the human soul.
*Demon associated to imitation in Romanticism. It played a social role, because the
aims of the society are not the same of the people.
Man reduced to a function, an instrument, a tool.
Monotony, uniformity. The aim of the Romantics is how to restore man to his unity
of being and a right relation to nature and the other human beings. * There is a
damage of the individual (Romanticism criticizes this)

In the beginning the individual had his own land, work his own land, he was his
master.. but now this was completely different.

The goal of the society  Industry

Brook Farm, from 1840 to 1847, a comunal movement. Aims to create an ideal
society away from the industry. Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance is based on the
experience, even though it proved ineffectual.
- Unitarianism is a more tolerant version of Puritanism, it involves Deism [the idea
that Romantics took], everything is part of the order of the universe, for the simple
fact that you have been born (we’re born with a sense of justice). You have to
cultivate what makes you important and everything is God (Godlike, energía vital,
existencia) because you’re part of life.
Liberals in favor of it. In the end it will derive in social conformity. It denies the
depth of experience, what Margaret Fuller had claimed, intuition rather than
reason, and implied a touch of mysticism.
*Change in religion has more to do with Deism.
*Owners of industry were not concerned with individuality, there were going to be
hands that were going to create a finished product.
- Plato: The world as an expression of the spirit (idea of deism, he influences the
Romantics but the one who influences the most is Kant  They are not born
equals, there are different substances in each individual, the degree of
individuality. This was concentrated in cultivating yourself.
- Kant and the Romantics: the primacy of the individual consciousness. Influence
from the Great Awakening.
- For the Romantics pure intellect (scientific knowledge and technique) is pure
devil.
- All knowledge develops from sensation. Against Locke and Hume’s idea that man
is a tabula rasa (knowledge from experience)
- Theodore Parker: Moral values already inherent in human beings through
intuition [distinct from other people intuition). The cry of the soul must be
recognized and accepted as the supreme form of justice.
- In order to achieve this interior knowledge, the Romantics urge humanity to
cultivate the self by reading and caring from an elegance of the soul (Whitman),
which suggests the only posible refinement (perfeccionamiento, educació n)
[To look inside yourself, romantics but in the middle of Industrialism you worked
in an industry but what happens with the individual? The Romantics claim for the
caring of yourself (Whitman claims elegance of the soul) You obey yourself not
the outside. This was a way of behaviour that has to do with what you are. So, we
are not the same but the sistem wants us to be the same. The only thing that
society concerns of is to be efficient in your work, the piece of work that has to be
finished, sold it and obtain benefits from it (society empirical)

Romantics, it’s not conventional perfection which we have been taught/cultivating

yourself, your way of acting and also this includes trangression. The way to
increase your dignity. [responder a ti mismo aunque transgredas.] [In
Romanticism it is considered essential the person and the intuition, “I deserve
consideration and I need to develop myself and find this elegance of the soul”.
Internal obedience to yourself  I exert my freedom, by cultivating myself. This is
a social attitude, common to anyone. It suggests that we are the same but we have
equal rights for freedom (obey your internal self) and happiness.]

- Inner finneza versus social refinement. It involves living in contact with Nature,
learning from Nature, from the primitive way of things, as in Thoreau’s Walden.
[For the mere of existence we deserve consideration as individuals, if we are born
is because we are important, we have something that is special. Society needs you
to be social, like anybody else, be efficient but not particular (you would threaten
society). Transcendence as an individual, cultivating yourself, the acknowledgment
of this is what makes you unique, and because of that you can grow (way of
succeeding but for yourself  Private demand]

- Nature is a metaphor of the human mind. And it is discovered through intuition,

not by learning.
- Emerson suggests in Nature: “Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and by
the very knowledge of functions and processes to bereasse the student of the
manly contemplation of the whole” Social role of the society, they are taught to
know how to function and they forget the intuition, the real knowledge (informal
convention) of the world, claim for the individual to be particular not common.

- Emerson: “These are the voices which we hear in solitude (people tend to be
isolated because staying in groups mean being social) but they grow faint and
inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against
the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which
the members agree for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to
surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is
conformity (you’re supposed to do what the society wants you to do). Self-reliance
is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”
“… a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather inmortal palms must not
be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing
is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you
shall have the suffrage of the world”.

TRANSCENDENTALISM A philosophy which holds that basic truths can be reached through
intuition rather than through reason. To arrive at such truths, according to transcendentalist
philosophy, people must go beyond, or transcend, what their reason and their senses tell them.
Whitman follows Emerson ways of thinking.
It’s a positive movement, reaching self-reliance (cultivate yourself through
intuition) and oversoul; perfection and good side.
The Romanticism is the acknowledgement that human beings have a good part
and an evil part.
- “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you on your private
heart is true for all men, that is genius.”
- “Speak your latent conviction and it shall be universal sense; for always the
inmost becomes the outmost, and our first though is rendered back to us by the
trumpets of the Last Judgement.”
- “A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across
his mind from within..Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is
his.”
- “…imitation is suicide..” (you’re making an effort to imitate the fashions of the
society)
- “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of
us represents.”
- “What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule,
equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction
between greatness and meanness.”
- “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion, it is easy in solitude to live
after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with
perfect sweetness the Independence of solitude.”
- “Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us
to abide by our spontaneous impression with good humored inflexibility then most
when the whole cry of voices is on the other side.”

Social Reality:

- Slavery is soon forgotten, and negroes become unprotected. The North was
against slavery (romantic idea) and the South had a system of implantation of
slaves.
- The compromise between the North and the South in 1877 is at reconciliation
and reconstruction of the South. This involves money and money making.
- People start to enjoy legends of the plantation and the Old South.
- Millionaires are the true heroes of the post-war era. Before the Civil War: 100.
Fifteen years after the war: more than 1000.
- The true virtues of the age are to work hard and efficiently in order to be an
“exemplary millionaire”. Vagrancy and idleness are reproved as vices. Weak people
are deficient on skills to become the strongest  Desprecio, that’s how society
loses its humanity  the other part of the Romanticism.
- In Europe business was degrading and not something proper of a true gentleman.
In the America of 1876, business meant prestige.
- The real heroes to be imitated, and be faithful to one: William H. Vanderbilt, Jim
Fisk, Andrew Carnegie, Drew (who never went to school). The Gilded Age (because
there was a lot of money).
- In order to prevail and keep their privileges they suborn officials and buy
Congressman. The lobbies. It derives in attempts to ameliorate the aspiration of
labor.
- They take Emerson’s words literally and out of context, and it becomes their flag,
as when Emerson says (figuratively): “Let man stand erect, go forth and possess
the universe” They took it literally.
- Spencer Theory
The values are established from a naturalistic perspective: If the law of nature
makes the strong prevail over the weak, how are we going to go against nature? As
creatures of nature, they claim their right to exert freedom. And they put it into
practice, they possesed physically and not spiritually as Emerson claimed.
- Philantropy is their privilege. Ex: There was a Carnegie library in almost every
city. Rockfeller’s University of Chicago.
In its radical version, charity becomes a destructive force for the balance of the
Universe (Darwin 1859, The Origin of the Species)

5/03/14

Walt Whitman [always thinking about the unborn, the children who would
read his works]

What is the role of the poet for Whitman? Quote

What is Whitman definition of freedom? Quote
How far do you think Whitman has influenced contemporary society? Examples

1. Role of the poet.

 Witness of reality (a referee): his attitude is generous towards the world/ a

generous mood towards diversity. “He is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the
key.”

LOVE

PASSION: he appreciates and values what is genuine,

He doesn’t feel authenticity in what is uniform and lineal. You die when you become
like all the others. He likes peculiarities.

OVERSOUL
 An interpretor of the world
 He suggests certain values
 A creator in the sense that he has a further vision of reality. And this is said in a
set of values:

Positive values:

- Ordinary people (common people, 1004). It is seen as a symptom of freshness,

purity because is natural and natural means to be authentic; not affected.
Affected is very social, society wants to unify you, in society people become types
where you cannot express yourself.
“But always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships –the
freshness and candor of their physiognomy –the picturesque looseness of their
carriage…their deathless attachment to freedom –their aversion to anything
indecorous or soft or mean.”
- To be faithful to yourself, not to obey  casual inward doctrine. “Obedience does
not master him, he masters it.”

Negative values:

- Complaint, jealousy, envy (social issues caused by being too implied in society). It
is considered an abuse towards people.
“Now he has passed that way see after him! there is no left any vestige of despair
or misanthropy or cunning or exclusiveness or the ignominy of a nativity or color
or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell… and no man thenceforward shall be
degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin.” What he condemns is abuse.

- Monotonous

They are negative because it’s part of death, not of life; you’re not affirming your
peculiarity.

11-03-14

Joan Manuel Serrat Video, from Walt Whitman Song of Myself (31)

Song to humanity, Whitman sings to evereything because he loves everything.

His voice is  love, exuberance, spontaneity and celebration of life.

Walt Whitman is always celebration, poetry is a form which is free, poetry should
not be constrained because life should be lived without…

His poem should be heard, read aloud and meant to encourage the universe in an
impulse of vitality. He has a humble voice and he sings everything that exists
because it exists and since it exists is worth it and deserves consideration.

“And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery”  Romantic,
rejection of machinery and everything it implies (abuse)
Machinery  Middle-class

Whitman concern is also with the body (physical and spiritual). It was argued that
this love for the body and love for the spiritual was a contradiction but it is not; he
loved both of them.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

- A la pregunta de un estudioso, Symonds (autor de Walt Whitman: A Study, 1893),

sobre las tendencias sexuales de Whitman, el escritor responde:
“Though unmarried I have had six children, two are dead, one living southern
grandchild, fire boy, writes to me occasionally circumstances (connected with their
fortune and benefit) have separated me from intimate relations.”

- Edward Carpenter (autor de Days with Walt Whitman, with some notes on his life
and works, 1906) concluye:
“It’s clear that throughout his life his intimacies with men were close and ardent,
and it seems possible that thses, in the later period, to some extent, supplied the
deficiency on the other side.”

La biografia mas
Reader’s Guide to Walt Whitman (1970)
CPG: La voz profética que inspirase la nueva democracia…inspirador.

“hace de la vida un himno triunfal” (115)

*He was patriarch because he understood everything.

“Rompe con los posibles temores puritanos”

*His voice is totally free

- Father, farmer in Long Island. Father moves to Brooklyn in 1823, works as a

carpenter. He is a follower of Thomas Payne but he is paradoxical and narrow-
minded.
- Mother, quaker and dutch origin, Whitman’s practical and transcendental attitude
in life comes from mother’s descent.
- Brother: Syphilis, died insane asylum. Another brother drunkard, married
prostitute. Another brother was a handicapped child. Sister suffers from incurable
melancholy.
- Leaves school at 11. Works as an office boy in a law firm. Works for a doctor. At
12 he works in the printing office newspaper.
- Assistant printer to the Brooklyn Eagle and Editor (1846-48). Dismissed for his
abolitionist arguments.
- Journey South West as far down as to New Orleans. Experience of America as an
entity. He feels himself a unity of that entity, and he is everyman. Cfr: Thoreau
(experience to get to know), A Week on the Concorde and Merrimark River.
- Editor of the Freeman Brooklyn (1849-50). He had to resign when he started
writing against the Slavery Fugitives Law.
- When he is 15, he is on his own. Family moves back to Long Island.
- Contributes conventional poems to The Mirror.
- When he is 17, he goes back to his family as two great fires porallize the printing
industry. He refuses to work in the farm with father. Back to family in 1850s,
ignores regular time-tables.
- In 1838 he has his own newspaper.
- When he’s 20-21 back to Manhattan. Works for New World (weekly). At 22 editor
to the Aurora, as? Manhattan daily. Dismissed for laziness.
- 1845 he goes to Brooklyn. Contributes to the Long Island Star. Writes on
Manhattan events, also theatre performances.
- Brief trip to New Orleans. Trip to the West later in life.
- He uses his passes as a journalist for the theater and the Opera. He comes as far as
to say that without the rises and falls, the rapsodic nature of the opera, he would
not have been able to write Leaves of Grass.
- As a journalist very good in reporting the details as he perceives them. Conexion
with his poetry, he sings to every detail of humanity worthly. The epic hero.
Existence is worthly to be pointed out.
His friends are rough people, drivers of buses pulled by horses, and also the
Bohemean circle. Influence of the Brooklyn artists through 1840s. Visits to prison.
Visits to sick stage-drivers. At the Civil War attendant at hospital, visits to sick
soldiers, maybe because of his hox. Visits his brother self wounded at war. Drum-
taps is a collection of poems (1865) on the experience of war. Leaves of Grass
includes Drum-taps in 1867 ed.
- He is a democrat and a free thinker. Free views on slavery, women rights.
Struggle for social justice, against the brutal materialism of the country. There are
the reasons that he was fired from the Brooklyn Eagle.
The families of Emerson and Thoreau..refuse to have him inhited?
at Concord.
- In his poetry he yuxtaposes the lowliest and the mightiest in American society.
For example: the prostitute, and the President.
- He enjoys sports, walking, swimming.
- Interested in Astronomy, he believes in Pantheism.
- He changes newspaper job for carpentry.
- 1855, print: Leaves of Grass (father has recently died)
Tenderness towards all the people in the poem.
Intense, explicit sexuality.
For the equality of sex. Against slavery.
Miscellaneous journalism for a weekly magazine: Life illustrated. Love for another
man, 12 poem: Live Oak, with Moss.
1860
Calamus Poems.
Children of Adam

Quotes from Song of Myself (1855)

- Pantheism: a feeling of belonging to one unity, the self and the world. It is mainly
a spiritual experience. Satisfaction, transcendent celebration./ It suggests being
alife, being able to breathe, you are part of the Spirit.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
MEANING: “Assume” could refer to assuming a certain idea or perspective. It could
also refer to a position. To tell the reader “what I assume you shall assume”
requires courage and perhaps signals a certain dominance. The speaker’s keen on
emphasizing that we’re all a part of the same universe, the same existence, the
same experience — regardless of time and space.

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe of the vegetation.
MEANING: The grass can be understood as a child if observed with the rest of the
universe in mind; the universe has existed for millions of years, and grass is
probably a younger and smaller aspect of it. Referring to the grass as a child is a
return to the theme of childhood in Romantic poetry. Although Whitman is
considered a transcendentalist, he still has roots in Romanticism.The terms
“produced” and “Vegetation” are interesting in this line, especially since the
capitalization of the word “vegetation” is suggestive that it is a Godlike being
because it creates. “Produced” is a reminder how everything in the world is created
in nature, whether it is seed that grows into grass, or the union of sperm and egg
that creates a child.

- Recognition of nature and the natural way in life

…I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.
MEANING: Original in that it is natural, unique, the real thing, and also back to
basics, as if he’s returning poetry to its origins.
Whitman was a Transcendentalist. The members of this literary movement,
launched by Ralph Waldo Emerson, believed that both people and nature are
inherently good—that people are real at and at their best once removed from
institutions, such as religion and political parties.

- Nature and the human body is natural

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air
through my lungs,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting
the sun.

….always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life. MEANING: This
“procreant urge,” is highlighted here as the ultimate first cause, what makes us tick
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical…
…and go bathe and admire myself.

- Natural versus Domesticity (Constraint)

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is

odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the Wood and become undisguished and naked.
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
MEANING: Here Whitman notes that he’s not going to allow artificial fragrances to
“intoxicate” him, however pleasing they may be to the senses. Why go in for
something manufactured when “the real thing” (the atmosphere) is right outside
your door? Hence the comparison between perfumes and atmosphere becomes a
question of authenticity, a comparison between the unreal and the real, which he is
“in love with.” Walt is saying that he wants to return to nature in a spiritual sense
through a physical means. To Walt, clothes are a disguise of who people really are
in their natural, unadorned state. He’s going down to the river and getting naked so
he can go for a swim, because he longs to be completely submerged in nature.

- Conventional knowledge versus wisdom and the growth of a self-made man

through poetry:

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all
poems,
You shall posses the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of
suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. (Romantic attitude,
formal education  loss of intuition and instinct)
MEANING: Whitman implies that it is no great thing to be able to read, nor to
interpret poetry through the second- and third-hand works of other scholars. He
derides these scholars as “spectres in books,” or to use the parlance of second- and
third-wave feminism, “dead white males.”
But he is not critical only of the critics of ages past, but even of his own words: “you
shall not… take things from me.” Instead, Whitman wants his reader to get to the
numinous heart of life: his use of night and day, earth and sun, suggests the cyclical
nature of life which never changes (there are still millions of suns). Spiritual
enlightenment is the root of, and the key to understanding, all poetry. As a national
poet, he calls for his readers/listeners to break with such traditions and experience
the world anew and first-hand.
- Alternative way of regarding good and evil
* He doesn’t accept artificiality, he admits good and evil because evil is part of
nature but not if this evil is created by the artificial machinery.

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
MEANING: Whitman is saying that everything that already is (meaning all the
things that have been created) are the things that always will be. New things will
not be created. Everything that has existed, has always existed and will always
exist.
The old phrase “history repeats itself” can be applied to what Whitman is saying.
As time goes on, things are not going to become better or worse, people will not
become wholly different people, and the good and bad things in the world will not
become more or less plentiful. Things will change but not in their amount or in
their true nature.
The moral to draw from this quatrain is that waiting for things to get better or
waiting for better things to come along is a foolish way to live life. Waiting for
things to come to fruition is foolish because all things already are. Whitman is
saying that you should seek out the things you need, be proactive in your personal
betterment rather than waiting for time to improve things.

Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, MEANING: Throughout the poem,
Whitman states that the body and soul are equal. Embracing every part of the body
and soul, be it vile or beautiful, is essential to knowing one’s self.

And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,
And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

- Mysticism, exaltation in action

* Priviledge voice that makes him witness of reality.

I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;

MEANING: Although Whitman is thought of as a transcendentalist, he is also
considered to be a poet of romanticism. Romanticism was a movement that was
concerned with the individual. Whitman embodies all around him: women, men,
the poor, and even the runaway slave. Celebrating the self is celebrating all
mankind.

- Action and the West

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt, Wandering amazed at my own lightness
and glee, In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night, Kindling a fire
and broiling the fresh-kill'd game,
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west, the bride was a red
girl, Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had
moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders,
(He celebrates the marriage)

- Action and apprentices

..I follow their movements..

Overhand the hammers swing
I am enamour’d of growing outdoors,
of men…week out
* Wherever there is activity, he is enamoured.

- Slaves

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,

I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy
And weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured
Him,
And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and
Bruis’d feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave
Him some coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and
Ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and
Pass’d north,
I had him sit next to me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the
Corner. MEANING: Here, Whitman is showing empathy towards a runaway slave.
Although this was written during the time of the fugitive slave law, in which a slave
should be returned if caught, Whitman is saying he would defy this law. Whitman
is showing his humility by helping the injured slave; even bathing him. In these
lines, Whitman is not only helping the slave, but providing an example for others.
They, too, should help those in need, for we are all made up of the same matter.
Therefore, we are all the same. These lines could have a dual meaning. Either
Whitman is protecting the slave from being caught and sent back south, or the gun
is for Whitman’s protection against the slave.

The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses..

The sun falls on his crispy…I go with the team also

- Social and the self

… city I
live in, or the nation
The latest dates, discoveries, interventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues [I’m the city]

Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,

the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself [exhaulted attitude towards existence (they are not
natural within humanity)]

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,

Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle,
Unitary,

I believe in you my soul . . . . the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other. [I must not be overtaken by society
(my intuition..)]

The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb,

The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous'd mobs,

The flap of the curtain'd litter, a sick man inside borne to
the hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the police man with his star quickly
working his passage to the center of the crowd, MEANING: This is a poem of
people banded together tightly. Whitman avoids subordinate clauses, as though a
grammatical hierarchy would be antidemocratic. Instead he just lists — all is equal,
and it is left to the reader to organize. The broad cross-section of types and images
gives a sense of disorder and democracy.

Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made,

acceptances, rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show and resonance of them-I come
and I depart.

- Social conventions:

The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock
moves slowly;
The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just-open’d lips;

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

- Born in Amherst (Massachusetts).

- Parents: Edward Dickinson, Emily Norcross.
- Father, higher education at Yale, co-founder Amherst Academy. A very religious
and rigorous man, obliges to the community. A well respected citizen. Member of
the Senate. [Many of her ideas of inmortality, death comes from her father that told
her, what she writes is in her brain]
- She spent all her life in the family home [She lived all the time there, happy
human being taking loneliness as a conviction that took her free; there she
cultivated her mind, her main concern was with herself. Her attitude to life is
transcendentalist. She was Romantic in the sense of caring about the individual,
cultivating the self and Transcendentalist in the sense of being part of the spirit, of
the whole]
- She held seven years educational training. She attended Amherst Academy and
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.
- Studied Latin, Literature, Piano, she cultivated her voice. [Education  maturity,
you grow by learning. She outgrew by reading and the develop of her brain is
important as a human being]
- The longest she travelled was to Springfield, and she went to Boston twice. She
spent 3 weeks in Washington and 2 weeks in Philadelphia.
- Linked to her sister Lavinia. Lavinia once planned to marry Joseph Lyman, a
companion to their brother Austin, but her suitor moved to New Orleans. Austin
married Susan, brilliant cultivated, a social success but envious to Emily. [love was
impossible to fulfil, was all in her brain]
- Friend to:
- Samuel Bowles, editor to the Springfield Republican. She turned him down after
her requirement. He once called her “rascal”, and asked her to behave.
- Reverend Charles Wadsworth, Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. She visits and
hears him with Lavinia. Exchange correspondence. [She was humble, very intimate,
totally unpretentious, the best way to communicate is by correspondence  more
authenticity] She became passionately in love with him. He was sixteen years older
than her, happily married and with children. He leaves in 1862 to accept a post as
rector in Cavalry Church, in San Francisco, a tragedy to Emily. Most of his poetry
was written after that, and certainly most of his highest quality verses. [Tragedy,
he was her passionate love, higher qualities verses after this]
- Thomas Wentworth Higginson was the man she started correspondence with,
after Wadsworth departed. He was her literary confident, and asked him: “Are you
too deeply occupied to see if my verse is alive?... [does it make you feel when you
read my verses?] Should you think it breathed, and had you leisure to tell me, I
should feel quick gratitude.” Higginson had published an interesting article at the
Atlantic Monthly. He belonged to Harvard, he became pastor for a Unitarian
Church, but he mostly occupied himself in the abolitionist cause, in favor of
negroes. He represented contemporary criticism, [reason why he was able to
understand her as a woman] and failed to see the high quality of her verses. [He
was a fatherly figure for her because she was a woman]
- Otis Philips Lord. She fell in love with him at about fifty. He was an outstanding
lawyer, a member of Massachusetts legislature. He had become a widower, and
they seem to be in love with each other. She did not accept to marry him. He died in
1884, and she died two years later. [love was something unattainable, that could
not be gratifying. She was not able to fulfil this necessity of love]

Thomas H.Johnson: “Wadsworth as muse made her a poet”. [influence of love in

her poetry]

Allen Tate:“All pity for Miss Dickinson’s “starved life” is misdirected. Her life was
one of the richest and deepest ever lived on this continent”.
- Influenced by Emerson, Whitman and Jonathan Edwards (ecstasy, interior joy) [in
the sense of conversion, she was aware of the “ecstasy that she achieved by
reading. Her only goal was to read and write intensely. She searches for real joy
(by reading, writing); she was not a religious woman. Her attitude was directed by
the brain. She is not a rigorous prayer. When she talks about God is not a puritan
God what she is referring to but of the awareness that we are all going to die. Dios
es una persona para ella; actually, she rebels against that God when her father died
(“eres un ladró n que me has dejado sola otra vez”)
She is not a fervient religious person because of this education from her father]
- ED.: “I find ecstasy in living the mere sense of living is joy enough” [Whitman and
transcendentalism, ecstasy; while Whitman is patriotic, her poem is very intimate
to be read in solytude not in public (related to the brain but not metrical,
hyperbole in order to show the real feeling).
She highlightes the importance of some nouns by capital letters. She uses dashes to
come closer to the reader (she finds intimacy with the things that matter: God,
nature, mortality.. and normal speech). She’s all the time caring about the reader
(in Whitman also happens)

Poetry: 1800 poems.

Self and nature. Search for identity. Transcend. Death, eternity.

Details observed transformed into epic. Full of deep meaning.

Intellectual wit (personifying God, death is much of the religious belief)

Ambiguity
Paradox ( she is very much herself, individual not religious)
Imperfect rhyme
Irony
Metaphors (of death, God to be, how death comes, approaches)
Intimacy, associated with spiritual life, there is no physical life.

Technical inventions. Not regularly Christian, though she refers to religion for her
own purpose. She substitutes concrete for abstract terms, she converts nouns into
adjectives.
[When she speaks about God she goes beyond, though we’re not believers, we’re
aware of death (spiritual reality): “even if we don’t believe, we have a sense of
what is to die”
--------------------------------------------------------------------

She is very simple but that simplicity transcends because of the words that she
chooses. Simple life but transcendent.
She lived with death, in the single act of living she is thinking about death.
Personifica la figura de Dios, diciendo que despues de la muerte un amigo le va a
llevar a la inmortalidad.
18- 03-14

Presentation Walt Whitman.

- Introduction
- Individuality
- Equality
- Nature
- Slavery
- Romantic Love

Introduction (Biography)

- Born in the period of the Industrial Revolution and Civil War.

- Difficult family life
- Influenced by Thoreau (Walking) and Emerson (Transcendentalism)
- Worked in a newspaper as journalist.
- Visits wounded Civil War soldiers at hospital.

Introduction (Song of Myself)

- Part of Leaves of Grass

- Concerned with the journey through the poetry.
- The reader should see a self formed through the words and themes of the book.
- A celebration of the individual.
- Does not talk about religious methods or traditional institutions to create his
“self”.
- Exemplary modern man created through nature and created through his own
journey of self discovery.
Simple and colloquial language.
Whitman's poetry is significant because it is an artistic embodiment of the ideals of
democracy, freedom, and revolution; the ideals on which the United States was
founded and for which it fought during the Civil War.
His attempt to make himself heard.

It’s a song to humanity; love for humanity. The sound is full of love

Individuality

- Belief in oneself as an individual

‘ There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me. ’ Section 50,
line 1308
ONE’S SELF” (machinery)
o This is not only Whitman's self, though he certainly identifies himself
as the hero of the epic, but it is also the reader's self as well as a
more encompassing democratic self. The subject, then, is Whitman,
the reader, and the nation.
Whitman understands himself. He does not have to explain his inconsistencies. Those
are only to be accepted. All pleasure and all pain are found within his own self.

- Man vs Machinery

He feels respect for everything just for being alive. Respect for humanity. The machine
is restrictive. Machinery is abuse
- He celebrates the potential of each person..
- Self-awareness and confidence that everyone has to be oneself/ to have in
himself.
There is again the Romantic’s emblem: ‘Be yourself’ and the source of the ‘self-
made man’.

- Self creation vs formal education

Without the influence of society

- Recognition of the imperfection. Section 15, lines 273-281

Whitman praised the individual
Repeatedly the speaker of this poem exclaims that he contains everything and
everyone, which is a way for Whitman to reimagine the boundary between the self
and the world.

Recognition of the imperfection of the characteristics of humanity. This

conforms the Romantic perfection since every one of us is different/has his own
peculiarities. Alternative way of thinking and regarding good and evil acceptance
of things in life without categorization.

“The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm’d case,

(He will never sleep anymore as he did in the cot in his mother’s
bedroom;)
The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the manuscript;
The malform’s limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table,
What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the
bar-room stove,
The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the
gate-keeper marks who pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I do not
know him;)

- Acceptance of good and evil. Section 19, lines 372-377

“It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointments
with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall no be difference between them and the rest.” MEANING: Whitman is
stressing the notion of equality by using the concept of death. No one shall be
denied the experience of death and therefore we are all on an equal playing field.
The meal represents a sort of last supper in which every human being will partake
in, just as Jesus Christ did before he was crucified. Whitman provides a colorful
guest list of those who are invited to this said meal. He does not disappoint in
shocking us with the crowd that he considers his equals. The well groomed white
woman is no better than the slave who serves her her meal. Even someone who is
diseased will not be turned away. Whitman is showing extreme compassion
amongst those who would be considered the lowest breed. Every human being
deserves the same opportunity set by life because every human being will
eventually die.

- Duality of physical and spiritual self: body and soul. Section 21, line 422
The poet attempts to relate the body to the soul, and the physical world to the
spiritual.
Religious conception of the soul that approaches mysticism.

“The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,”

- Individuality versus collectivity

He acknowledges that he contradicts himself. The reason, he says, is that "I contain
multitudes." Whitman's work embodies two ideals which seem to oppose each
other: the first is his notion of the self, the second is his idea of the tribal , or
collective, spirit of America. Whitman sings odes to the individual, and lifts up self-
discovery as the highest ideal of the individual. But the self, inconsistent on its
own, must also battle with the needs of society. It is both physical and spiritual and
Whitman attempts to reconcile these differences

Equality
- He celebrates everything in life, in nature
- All humanity is part of the universe.
He exists and you exist because all the humanity is part of the universe. And the
entire universe shares the same composition of atoms:
‘For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you’.

I will not have a single person slighted or left away,

The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall no be difference between them and the rest.

- Everyone is worthwhile: democracy. Section 15, lines 279-284

Walt Whitman considers that everybody is equal, highlighting from his point of
view, the values of the democracy. He accepts all of them without categorization.

The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the
gate-keeper marks who pass,
The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I do not
know him;)
The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,
The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their
rifles, some sit on logs,

Nature

- Influence of Transcendentalism (Emerson)

Whitman insists in several moments that he prefers the knowledge acquired from
his own experience instead of books imposed by institutions. This is a
Transcendentalist feature.
He learns through experience. All his experiences and journey made him realize
that we are all part of this spirit.

- Pantheism. Section 5, lines 92-98

“And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my
sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little Wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, Elder, mullein and
poke-weed.”

- Relationship between man and nature. Section 13, lines 243-244

He compares nature and its existence with humanity; we are all part of the spirit.
He compares nature with the human body, which is all natural. Human beings as
naturals.

“And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well
to me,”

Section 32, lines 684-685

“I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain’d,” MEANING: With the omission of “awhile” and “sometimes half the
day long” a greater sense of permanence and intention becomes apparent.

- Death as part of life. Humble attitude, humble parts (particles) of the

process and when one particle finishes, another starts. Section 6, lines 126-
128
“They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, anddoes not wait at the end to
arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d” MEANING: The grass is proof that death is
not an end, but a continuation of life. Death allows life to spring forth.

Section 7, lines 131-132

“Has any supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform hi mor her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.” MEANING: We
are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to
die because they are never going to be born.

Slavery

- Against slavery
Whitman sees the promise of democracy as yet unfulfilled, chiefly because of the
injustice of slavery and the inability of America's population to achieve its hope of
individuality.
- Understands the need of freedom. Section 33, lines 838-843
“I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the ooze of
my skin,
I fall on theweeds and stones,
The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close,
Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.”
Helps them when needed

Romantic love and sexuality

For Whitman, sex can be understood as both a physical and spiritual love. It is not
just a physical act, but a spiritual awakening. This sexuality can be both
heterosexual and homosexual.
- Intense explicit sexuality. Section 5, lines 87-90 (exhaulted sexuality)
“I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon
me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to
my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.”

- Tolerant love. Section 6, lines 112-113

“Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them.”
MEANING: Whitman tenderly holds a spear of summer grass as if it were a lover’s
lock of hair. The grass is being used and appreciated so the lives of the dead still
hold significance. Whitman is further building on the idea of grass/death being an
equalizer. It does not matter whether the grass grows from a young man, an
elderly individual, or a child, because the grass grows from them no matter what.

Section 3, line 60 Homosexuality

“As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night,
and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,” MEANING: Although not
specified, one may read that the writer’s bed-fellow is a man. This companion must
sneak away to avoid the stigma of having a relationship with the same sex. While
Whitman is being his usual defiant self by writing about such taboo subjects such
as sex, politics, and the church, he still keeps his own sexuality hidden.
- Homoeroticism as natural and thus should be respected. Section 11, lines
199-201, 210-216
“Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.”

“The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their long
hair,
Little streams pass’d over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,

It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their White bellies bulge to the sun,
they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who pufs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.”

THE WEST

- Occupied and exploited. Optimism [ if you are poor or have a promise to fulfil
there is a prospect ahead of something positive, the land]. Redemption [religious
sense: idea of people actions transcend their actual reach because is part of the
mission to conquer America]
- Resources (Economic reasons)
- Minerals and raw materials from the West and South were taken to the North
East of the country for their only benefit with little or no profit for the regions from
where they were extracted. Iron, coal [sold in East with a very high price and get
money]
- 1861 beginning of expansion and progress. New scientific advances and
technology.
- 1862: the Homestead Act allows for extensive property of the land [facilities are
given to the expansion of the West]
Design of the transcontinental railroad. It helped to transportation of soldiers for
the war. Ex: the victory at Gettysburg.
- Military persecution of native Americans [pushing them to Oklahoma]
- Armies become engrossed with inmigrants from Europe. Ex: 100.000 men from
Ireland.

- The war means extension of territory. Kansas, West Virginia, Nevada become
states. Dakota, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, Montana become under control.[To
understand the West  mobility for economic reasons, resources]
- The war means inventiveness, development, stimulus for technological advances.
Industry [positive things] Systematic organization comes from the necessity to get
organized in war time. This includes discipline.
- Gold moves East: 50 million dollars a day, in wartime [exploiting resources
without restriction, that’s why they were interested in the West.]
- Powerful men soon become millionaire: Commodore Vanderbilt, Diamond J.
Brady, Jim Brisk.
- 1862-67 the Indians become under dominion. General Sheridan: “the only good
Indian is a dead Indian”.
Historian Driver:
Origin of the colonies: 4.000.000 native Americans.
1900: 200.000 native American population.
- Buffaloes will become almost extinct. Some were killed for their tongue. Cowboys
give way to farmers and barbed wire.
1830: 75.000.000 buffaloes
1885: almost extinct.
- The Old West becomes a myth: the dime novel [coin, realize what is good and
evil]. Wild West shows: Buffalo Bill. There remains as a memory the episode of
Sitting Bull overcoming general Custer at the Little Big Horn. Jeronimo, the leader
of the Apaches ended at Fort Still, an old man who finally joined the Dutch
Reformed Church.
- Horatio Alger myth: a promise to become rich [the West becomes nostalgia,
populated and sophisticated as the East]
- The rise of the cities: by 1861 America was mainly farms, villages and a few cities.
By 1900 less than 40% of the population remained in farms.
New York City, 1861: 600.000 inhabitants. 1900: 3.000.000 population.
Chicago, 1861: 30.000 citizens. 1900: 1.000.0000 population.

- Industrial cities: Pittsburgh, Cleveland.

- INMIGRANTS: 1861-1900: 23.000.000
- Inmigration cities and industry: Irish, Poles, Italians, Jews, Greeks.
- West coast: Chinese and Japanese.
- Middle West: Germans and Scandinavians.

Leo Marx. The Machine in the Garden. [The machine has polluted the garden;
through this essay it is explained the attitude towards the West]

Garden:

- It is an agricultural society. Their belief is the myth of the garden. The pastoral
hope is a self-sufficient farm. The garden before the machine took over:
“Americans will subordinate their burning desire for knowledge, wealth, and
power to the pursuit of rural happiness.” [But in the end is transformed into
machinery  industrialized West.]

Machine:
- The machines become associated with the idea of unlimited possibility, when the
West is open to massive setting and the possibility comes with the railroads
[responsable for people going west]
- Machine associated to intellect and fire, for Hawthorne it distorts the equilibrium
between intellect and heart. It is the root of sin.
- Enlightment means knowledge as an end in itself.
The unpardonable sin is the desire of knowledge as an end in itself. Demon in
humanity, become marble like, no feelings.
- Garden is associated to the heart (feelings), Paradise for Hawthorne, the pastoral,
the sun.

In Melville’s hero the thrust of Western man for ultimate knowledge and power is
sinewed with hatred.
Savagery is attractive but menacing, “the hero’s dream of felicity.. But the Typees
are in fact cannibals.”

- Nature is associated to Art:

“the psychosomatic consequence of the retreat into nature is to accentuate his
need for the healing power of art”.
Moby Dick as an exploration of the nature of nature.
Ship means technology, organization, complex society. [the possibility to explore,
experience through nature but when nature is demolished we don’t need
experience]
Idyllic green land “Are the green fields gone?

- Mark Twain. [vivir una vida rural] Huck’s experience is American vocation
learned through no books. Only experience. [crecer como individuo, machinery is
engancharse a algo ajeno a ti, te separas de la naturaleza]. This unique point of
view is associated with the American experience at the frontier.
Novelas que hay que leer, expresan la nostalgia por lo que pierden (el oeste)

- Technology takes over. Frank Norris. The Octopus. End of the century. Census.
- On Charles Sheeler (1930) “American Landscape”:
“By superimposing order, peace, and harmony upon our modern chaos, Sheeler
represents the anomalous blend of illusion and reality in the American
consciousness”.

- Conclusion: “…the machine’s increasing domination of the visible world. The

bearing of public events upon private lives”.
- A system that makes men a tool of their tools.
- Leo Marx’s conclusion is that Politics must solve the problem.
- Viaje como iniciador de la experiencia. La acció n.

* Dime novel: Typical Western stories with action, entertaining, uncomplicated,

with common characters [typical heroes who were free, cowboys, solitary men]
good and bad people (heroes and villains). That’s what young people wanted to
read and they gave them that. It encouraged the way of behaviour, dressing…

FRONTIER

- Frontier does not necessarily means West. It is a frontier with the unexplored and
unknown. [West is a concept rather than a physical frontier. It was a frontier that
was unknown, uncivilised. This implies to dream about freedom, to enter this
wilderness. The idea of frontier is the opposition to be free, in contact with nature
though it’s a risk.]
- Frontier implies movement, rapid change, national expansion, continuous
arrivals and departures. In literature permanent values versus change, subject to
change, to be modified, put into question, since things are movable. [It never was
expansion, it was a conquest. It implies a mood, in literature  subject to change.
In my brain as an American things can be changed, my social status can change
because I have a land. Danger but also possibility and the change is in the other
frontier. Women started to realize that they were equal and useful. Whenever
there is a change they didn’t want to go back.]

In literature, conflict of the values of domesticity were typically of the East;

unconstrained masculine way of life, not talking too much..of the West.
- Conflict between: values of domesticity (marriage, family, social respectability,
security) and the ideal of a free, unconstrained, masculine way of life.

* Detective stories, liberal attitude. Tienen sus logros, lo que ha sido capaz de
lograr, he doesn’t follow leyes externas sino valores intrínsecos. Americans have
had the opportunity to have contact with the land, cosa que perdieron los del Este.
In the West you obey yourself; in the East, you obey external rules, so you imitate.
Achievements are done in the West, providing ethical values.

Americans are sure that the true life was the Western one because of the
civilization. When the oil is conquered, there is no more to conquer so  end of
civilization, end of hope. They moved to the cities and get jobs.
- Isolation [nostalgic because is the end of the West], it increases individuality
[ mature through experiences in the wilderness, facing danger; danger is needed to
know how to react], due to poor comunications.

- Contact with the wild. Simplicity as an alternative to the civilization of the East.
Paradox. [ if living in a natural way is better than being educated in the East/ if
you are a hardworker you can move social status in the Western but not in the
East] Democratizing force. Social equality. James Fenimore Cooper: The
Leatherstocking Series. Natty Bumppo.

- Inmigration from Europe, even in the East makes it difficult to maintain hierarchy
and aristocracy.
- Attacks from the Indians. Bureaucracy and regulations from the Federal
Government difficult to reach those isolated places.
- A unique experience: Frederick Jackson Turner wrote The Significance of the
Frontier in American History. He considers that the frontier defines the character of
the Americans with vitality and endless energy [esperanza de que haya otro trozo
de tierra que te haga empezar de nuevo]. Some say that the exact conventions of
the East, British at root, were impossible to reproduce exactly, and this is why
America became something so different and unique.
- Final triumph of civilization and technology [ In the end el Oeste se hace Este
because of the civilization and technology]
- By 1840s USA has two frontier lines. Oregon was colonized in 1846, California in
1848, they took for gold. The frontier line is behold: towards the East and towards
the West, then they populate the land in between.
- End of the frontier. Census 1890.
- Fear of isolation. Economic expansion. Communications. Increase of population.
- By 1821, 4.000 miles of new turnpikes were completed, although interest was
turning Canals and the possibility of the steam-boat.

The Bride comes to Yellow Sky (1898) Stephen Crane

Romanticized view of the West as depicted in dime novels popular at the time
and he treats the end of the West comically.
- West-Garden: West unknown land and idillycall.
Section 1 line 4. “Vast flats of Green grass, dull-hued spaces of mesquit and
cactus, little groups of frame houses, woods of light and tender trees, all were
sweeping into the east, sweeping over the horizon, a precipice.”

Section 2 Page 294 Nostalgia and imitation

“The California express on the Southern Railway was due at Yellow Sky in twenty-
one minutes.”
- Machinery “The great Pullman was whirling onward with such dignity of motion
that a glance from the window seemed simply to prove that the plains of Texas
were pouring eastward.”
- Unconditional Love 291 “He, the town marshal of Yellow Sky, a man known, liked,
and feared in his corner, a prominent person, had gone to San Antonio to meet a
girl he believed he loved, and there, after the usual prayers, had actually induced
her to marry him, without consulting Yellow Sky for any part of the transaction.”

290 line 19 “To evince surprise at her husband’s statement was part of her wifely
amiability.” DOMESTICITY, she is what marriage represents; conquer of
domesticity over the wilderness. The end of things as they used to be before. She is
the typical woman to fulfil tasks related to conservative ways of life.

- Good and Evil Page 300 Paragraph 4 line 1

“But still there was no offer of fight. The name of Jack Potter, his ancient
antagonist, entered his mind, and he concluded that it would be a glad thing if he
should go to Potter’s house, and by bombardment induce him to come out and
fight.”

Page 298 line 1

Villain  “You see,” he whispered, “this here Scratchy Wilson is a wonder with a
gun –a perfet wonder; and when he goes on the war-trail, we hunt our holes –
naturally. He’s about the last one of the old gang that used to hang out along the
river here.

“Foreign condition”  Not part of the West, people become foreigners in their own
territory because of domesticity and technology.

He’s a terror when he’s drunk.”

Railway = Machinery, vehicle, garden ends.
He loses his natural way of life.
Domesticity implies security.
25/ 3/ 14

Powerpoint

About Jack London.(1876-1916)

- Born on January 12, 1876 in San Francisco, California.

- Son of Flora Wellman, an unwed mother, and William Chaney, an attorney and
journalist. His father was never part of his life, and his mother ended up marrying
John London, a Civil War veteran.

- Jack London grew up working-class. He worked on sealing ships in the Pacific and
shoveled coal.

- His life as a writer didn’t begin until 1893, when he was 17. His mother saw an
announcement in one of the local papers for a writing contest, she pushed her son
to write down and submit his story: London captured the $25 first prize.

- For London, the contest was an eye-opening experience, and he decided to

dedicate his file to writing short stories. He briefly enrolled at the University of
California at Berkeley, before heading north to Canada to seek at least a small
fortune in the gold rush happening in the Yukon.

- His experience in the Yukon had convinced him he had stories he could tell. In
addition, his own poverty and that of the struggling men and women he
encountered pushed him to embrace socialism, which he stayed committed to all
his life.

- He published more than 50 books over the last 16 years of his life.

- In 1900 London married Bess Maddern. The couple had two daughters together,
Joan and Bess. Their relationship was constructed less around love and more
around the idea that they could have strong, healthy children together. Their
marriage lasted just a few years. In 1905, following his divorce from Bess, London
married Charmian Kittredge, whom he would be with for the rest of his life.

- London faced a number of health issues, much of which were developed in the
Yukon. This included kidney disease, which ended up taking his life. He died at his
California rancho n November 22, 1916.

The Law of Life

- Published in March of 1901. London was 25 years old.

- The short story is about a man named Koskooh’s final hours of life as him and his
indigenous tribe search for food and shelter in the Klondike. He is then abandoned
and left to die by the tribe and even his son because of his old age and his inability
to see properly.
- Koskooh does not feel bad about this because he accepts it as the circle of life and
that everyone must die.

- Major themes are Naturalism and the fact that you can not escape your destiny.
Relates majorly to the experiences London encountered in the Yukon.
the principle that all information and events embody natural laws. Human will has little role against the forces of nature and
environment. It is a key component of naturalist writing.
Quotes from The Law of Life

- “It is well with you?” he asked. And the old man answered, “It is well.” (pp.5)

- “It is well. I am as a last year’s leaf, clinging lightly to the stem. The first breath
that blows, and I fall. My voice is become like an old woman’s. My eyes no longer
show me the way of my feet, and my feet are heavy, and I am tired. It is well.
(pp.10)

* The old man calmly accepts his fate and knows that death is just part of the circle
of life. He cannot fight the natural forces working against him any longer.

- “Nature was not kindly to the flesh. She had no concern for that concrete thing
called the individual.” (pp.12)

- “The tribe of Koskoosh was very old. The old men he had known when a boy, had
known old men before them. Therefore it was true that the tribe lived, that it stood
for the obedience of all its members, way down into the forgotten past, whose very
resting-places were unremembered. They did not count; they were episodes. They
had passed away like clouds from a summer sky. He was also an episode, and
would pass away.” (pp.12)

* Naturalistic. Shows that no matter how much we try to leave an impact on this
earth, it won’t really matter. That we will die anyways and there will be little we
can do after we leave.

- “Nature did not care. To life she set one task, gave one law. To perpetuate was the
task of life, its law was death.” (pp.12)

* The law of all life is death. There is no escaping or changing that fact. When
London was in the Yukon, he saw death everywhere and realized he could not
change his or anyone else’s destiny. There is no hope- we are all going to die.

- “He remembered how he had abandoned his own father on an upper reach of the
Klondike one Winter, the winter before the missionary came with his talk-books
and his box of medicines.” (pp. 12)

* Accepts his fate of death because when he was younger he even abandoned his
own father when it was his time to die. It was normal to do since it is all a part of
the circle of life.
- “There was the time of the Great Famine, when the old men crouched empty-
bellied to the fire, and let fall from their lips dim traditions of the ancient day when
the Yukon ran wide open for three winters, and then lay frozen for three summers.
He had lost his mother in that famine.” (pp. 13)

* Starts to visualize the events of his past. The images of great famine comes to his
mind. As an experienced person he contemplates nature and ultimately accepts its
superiority over an individual.

- “Why should he cling to life? he asked, and dropped the blazing stick into the
snow. It sizzled and went out. The circle grunted uneasily, but held its own. Again
he saw the last stand of the old bull moose, and Koskoosh dropped his head
wearily upon his knees. What did it matter after all? Was it not the law of life?”
(last paragraph)

* He recalled a time when he watched wolves attack an old moose, which was too
old to keep up with the herd. Here at the end of the story the same situation occurs.
He is left with no more wood to keep up the fire and the wolves are already
roaming around his secluded place. Against the forces of an indifferent nature, man
must accept “the law of life” and face death when he does not have the power to
overcome these adversarial forces.

To Build a Fire

- Published in August of 1908.

- To Build a Fire is about a man and a dog on their journey on the Yukon Trail. The
man’s goal for traveling is to meet the man’s friends at the end of the trail.

- Takes place in -75 ºF weather, which causes them to struggle throughout their
journey.

- This reflects many themes. These include: The end of hope, man vs nature,
naturalism, pride, and instinct vs. intellect/judgment.

- The following quote is in reference to the man’s thoughts about the weather: “He
was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the
significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd dregrees of frost. Such
fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not
lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperatura, and upon man’s
frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold;
and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of inmortality and
man’s place in the universe.” (pp. 3)

* This begins to show how prideful the man is, he knows how cold it is, but it is
only a fact to him. He doesn’t stop to think that it may actually be dangerous for
him.
- In the following quote, “it” is referring to the wolf-dog: “It hung back until the
man shoved it forward, and then it went quickly across the White, unbroken
surface. Suddenly it broke through, floundered to one side, and got away to firmer
footing. It had wet its forefeet and legs, and almost immediately the water that
clung to it turned to ice. It made quick efforts to lick the ice off its legs, the dropped
down in the snow and began to bite out the ice that had formed between the toes.
This was a matter of instinct. To permit the ice to remain would mean sore feet. It
did not know this. It merely obeyed the mysterious prompting that arose from the
deep crypts of its being.” (pp. 12)

* This shows that the wolf-dog bases his actions on instinct and not on
intellect/judgment like the man. The dog does not stop to think about what
happened. He immediately begins to bite off the ice, and act from his instincts.

- More quotes throughout the story further confirm how the dog’s actions are
dictated by its instincts:

“Possibly all the generations of his ancestry had been ignorant of cold, of real cold,
of cold one hundred and seven degrees below freezing-point. But the dog knew; all
its ancestry knew, and it had inherited the knowledge. And it knew that it was not
good to walk abroad in such fearful cold.” (pp. 15)

“So the dog made no effort to communicate its apprehension to the man. It was not
concerned in the welfare of the man; it was for its own sake that it yearned back
toward the fire.” (pp.15)

* This quote proves that the dog by instinct was only concerned with its own
health.

“Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment.”
(pp.16)

* This quote refers to the man’s death at the end of the story, and shows that the
dog instincts were more beneficial than the man’s judgment.

- The following quotes refer to the man’s pride and the struggle between man
vs. nature:

“ The old-timer on Sulphur Creek had told him about it the previous fall, and now
he was appreciating the advice.” (pp.19)

* This is the beginning of the struggle with nature and the cold. He starts to wish he
had listened to the “old-timer’s” advice.

“ The fire was a success. He was safe. He remembered the advice of the old-timer
on Sulphur Creek, and smiled. The old-timer had been very serious in laying down
the law that no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below. Well, here
he was; he had had the accident; he was alone; and he had saved himself. Those
old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought.” (pp. 20)
* The man’s pride starts to take over when he thinks he has overcome the struggle
between nature and man. He discounts the old man’s advice.

“ ‘You were right, old hoss; you were right,’ the man mumbled to the old-timer of
Sulphur Creek.” (pp.38)

* When the man is dying at the end of the story, he realices his pride and intellect
took over instead of trusting his instincts and listening to the old man’s advice.
This is the true struggle between his pride and his instincts.

- “ The cold of space smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that
unprotected tip, received the full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled
before it. The blood was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wanted to hide away
and cover itself up from the fearful cold.” (pp. 19)

* This quote begins to show how nature is becoming more powerful than man. The
man’s instincts want to curl up and stay out of the cold.

- “ The man was shocked. It was as though he had just heard his own sentence of
death. For a moment he sat and stared at the spot where the fire had been. Then he
grew very calm. Perhaps the old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right.” (pp. 23)
* The theme depicted in this quote is the end of hope. The man realices he has done
all that he can, and all he has left is death. This is truly the end of hope for him,
because he has used all of his matches, and there is no one around to help him.

- “ A certain fear of death, dull and oppressive, came to him. This fear quickly
became poignant as he realized that it was no longer a mere matter of freezing his
fingers and toes, or of losing his hands and feet, but that it was a matter of life and
death with the chances against him.” (pp. 33)

* This is a perfect example of naturalism and the fact that you cannot avoid death.
He realizes that there is nothing you can do, and death is unavoidable. The matter
of death being unavoidable in this part of the story perfectly depicts naturalism.

- “ Well, he was bound to freeze anyway, and he might as well take it decently.” (pp.
36)

* Once again, death is unavoidable. He realizes that there is nothing he can do, and
decides to accept this fact.

Conclusion

- All humans can relate to its most important topic: death is unavoidable.

- It is apparent in that we still rely on nature for survival.

- Today there are still ethical questions of “abandoning” the elderly both physically
(as in The Law of Life) or symbolically (as our society has in many ways).
- A man’s pride can hinder his battle in man vs. nature.

- The end of hope is apparent in both stories.

Questions:

- What prevails in humanity knowledge or instinct? (1 story)

The man is not following his instinct (he’s being arrogant, “I can do it on my way”).
But human beings fight for survival so we’ll follow our instincts.

- These memories frustrates his survival?

He is helping to destroy himself.

Teacher’s question: What have we learned about the West?

The capacity to measure the dangers, the necessity to measure the risks without
any idealism because when you think you can, nature shows you that is not with
you, it’s indifferent. If you don’t calculate your risks, it’s not possible to obtain your
aims.
Through Jack London we learn experience because it’s man facing nature and how
he reacts.
People do things to survive. But men facing nature are not the protagonists.
Point of view of humanity: Man is nothing. (un hombre no es nada).

The Luck of Roaring Camp by Bret Harte (1836-1902) (1868)

Dime novel: Good and evil; full of action. If the people are ready to buy action, they
buy action.
Bret Harte is reinventing the myth, making a parody of the West, using the scenery
of the West and making a Christianity parody.

Kind of people who live in the camp (Page 327):

“ The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of theses were
actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless. Physically
they exhibited no indication of their past lives and character. The greatest scamp
had a Raphael face, with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the
melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet” They are not bad people at
all, Harte rewrites the myth, they resemble human beings, these outcasts have
some ingredients that make them good people.

“The camp rose to its feet as one man” They agree, they are moved (some
ingredient of spirituality can be saved in humanity). They are all together in order
to produce something good because they are moved by the birth of the baby.
“It was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder, but, in consideration of the situation of the mother, better counsels
prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged; for, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other
reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast.”
Rest of the line. Some tenderness. The West is not any longer a story of heroes…
people outlost that have some tenderness inside so there is a possibility of
renewal.

* Harte mira a la humanidad desde mas cerca y no diciendo si es malo o bueno.

Parodia del mito y de la purificació n.
-----------------------
The baby born is adored. What they gave to him (Page 328):

“The contributions were as characteristic: A silver tobacco box; a doubloon; a navy

revolver, silver mounted; a gold specimen; a very beautifully embroidered lady’s
handkerchief (from Oakhurst the gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring
(suggested by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he “saw that pin and
went two diamonds better”); a slung-shot; a Bible (contributor not detected); a
Golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the initials: I regret to a say, were not the giver’s); a
pair of surgeon’s shears; a lancet; Bank of England note for 5; and about 200 in
loose gold and silver coin”.

* Bible: There is irony, alguien le dio una Biblia, no sabemos quien, pero alguien se
la dio.

Parody of Nativity but in the West.

The mother of the child dies, so they need a woman for the child (Page 329):

“The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection. It was
argued that no decent woman could be prevailed to accept Roaring Camp as her
home, and the speaker urged that “they didn’t want any more of the other kind.”
This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may seem, was the first
spasm of propriety, -the first symptom of the camp’s regeneration”.

The term “regeneration” is repeated along the text, the story is about purifying
because a child has been born. He’s called: Luck. When something good happens is
because of a stroke of luck (Harte makes a parody of the Scriptures).

“By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name became
apparent. He had generally been known as “The Kid,” “Stumpy’s Boy,” “The
Coyote”…and Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had brought “the luck” to
Roaring Camp. It was certain that of late they had been succesful. “Luck” was the
name agreed upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater convenience.

There is a regeneration, people become better (Page 330):

“And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost imperceptibly a

change cameo ver the settlement. The cabin assigned to “Tommy Luck” –or “The
Luck,” as he was more frequently called –first showed signs of improvement. It was
kept scrupulously clean and whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed, and
papered. The rosewood cradle, packed eighty miles by mule, had, in Stumpy’s way
of putting it, “sorter killed the rest of the furniture.” So the rehabilitation of the
cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit of lounging in at
Stumpy’s to see “how The Luck got on” seemed to appreciate the change, and in
self-defense the rival establishment of “Turtle’s grocery” bestirred itself and
imported a carpet and mirrors. The duce stricter habits of personal cleanliness”.

Rehabilitation, improvement (words used). This shows the good intentions of the
people in contact with a child that has been born.

Page 331

“ On the long summer…became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and

strenghtened”  While earlier it wasn’t, now any element in nature is now
worthwhile because of this present.

* En el Oeste ya no hay buenos o malos.

Page 332

“Such was the…”

“With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement. It was
proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite one or two decent
families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who might perhaps profit by
female companionship. The sacrifice that this concession to the sex cost these men,
who were fiercely skeptical in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only
be accounted for by their affection for Tommy”.

They progress; they want to build a hotel, to bring civilisation.

But when they bring civilisation.. EAST. But what they are bringing to the West is
the manners of the East (domesticity..) so all the possibility of the West is gone.
THUS, the born of Luck is the death of luck, there are no more possibilities to
prosper. That’s what Harte is showing in the story, that there are no more
possibilities.

The Outcast of Poker Flat by Bret Harte (1869)

Parody of Paradise.
Idea of regeneration. They want perfection and in terms of religion they have to
expell people who are typically wrong (prostitutes..). They are expelled and there
is regeneration (improvement) because they are in contact with innocent people.

Page 12

“Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope’s ingenious
translation of the Iliad. He now proposed ton arrate the principal incidents of that
poem –having thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words-
in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the
Homeric demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in
the winds, and the great pines in the cañ on seemed to bow to the wrath of the son
of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he
interested in the fate of “Ash-heels,” as the Innocent persisted in denominating the
“Swift-footed Achilles.”

In contact with the innocent they read books. (Example of regeneration).

Page 13

“Only Mother Shipton –once the strongest of the party- seemed to sicken and fade.
At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. “I’m going,” she said,
in a voice of querulous weakness, “but don’t say anything about it. Don’t waken the
kids. Take the bundle from under my head, and open it.” Mr. Oakhurst did so. It
contained Mother Shipton’s rations for the last week, untouched. “Give ‘em to the
child,” she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. “You’ve starved yourself,” said the
gambler. “That’s what they call it,” said the woman querulously, as she lay down
again, and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away”.

She died for the sake of innocent people (another example of regeneration).
*Mueren todos por el stroke of bad luck.
Page 14

“They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and
footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed the
snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that
dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat
recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other’s arms.”

No se podía saber quienes eran los buenos y los malos.

The story speaks of luck (good and bad luck), it comes but then it goes.

1-04-14

Jack London: He believes that things happen because they have to happen,
believes in luck, chance, possibility. He thinks also that even when they discover in
the wilderness that society is understood in strokes of luck. There’s a possibility to
arise through learning  Determinism.

From What Life Means to Me

Being in a working class requires muscle (labour), you cannot use the brain. Pero
los musculos se terminan desgastando.

Low class  die, no time to fulfil the expectations of the spirit.

He’s not an intellectual, is a man who lived, his writing is very straightforward, he
uses simple words.
He realices early in his life that if he studies he can climb in the society, he learns
through education. “Above me towered the colosal edifice of society, and to my
mind the only way out was up. Into this edifice I early resolved to climb. Up above,
men wore black clothes and boiled shirts, and women dressed in beautiful gowns.
Also, there were good things toe at, and there was plenty toe at. This much for the
flesh. Then there were the things of the spirit. Up above me, I knew, were
unselfishness of the spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living.”

There is an upper class, where men and women look perfect (world of
appearances), he’s conscious that there’s beauty in this upper class, that’s why he
wants to climb. If you study you change the destiny. There is honor and dignity in
the upperclass, that’s why he wants to climb.

Low class  Jack London had to do everything, he had to survive.

“I was a sailor before the mast, a longshoreman, a roustabout; I worked in
canneries, and factories, and laundries; I mowed lawns, and cleaned carpets, and
washed windows.”

“But I did not resent this. It was all in the game. They were the strong
(determinism). Very well, I was strong. I would carve my way to a place amongst
them and make money out of the muscles of other men. I was not afraid of work. I
loved hard work. I would pitch in and work harder than ever and eventually
become a pillar of society.” With his effort he could change his social class.

“The two men I had displaced had received forty dollars each per month; I was
doing the work of both for thirty dollars per month.” Example of the second half of
the 18th century.

“I was down in the cellar of society, down in the subterranean depths of misery
about which it is neither nice nor proper to speak. I was in the pit, the abyss, the
human cesspool, the shambles and the charnel-house of our civilization. This is the
part of the edifice of society that society chooses to ignore. Lack of space compels
me here to ignore it, and I shall say only that the things I there saw gave me a
terrible scare.” ABUSE, he knows where he is, he is still tired and knows he is in the
same class (low class).

“The merchant sold shoes, the politician sold his manhood, and the representative
of the people, with exceptions, of course, sold his trust; while nearly all sold their
honor.” Todos rendían su honor. “ Women, too, whether on the street or in the
holy bond of wedlock, were prone to sell their flesh.” Even in marriage.

IMPORTANT:

“All things were commodities, all bought and sold. The one commodity that
labor had to sell was muscle. The honor of labor had no price in the market-
place. Labor had muscle, and muscle alone, to sell.” You sell what you have and
people from low beginnings sell their muscles, but their muscles “se desgastan”:
“Muscle, on the other hand, did not renew.” Scientifical point of view, there is no
God, but life goes on (the law of life).

They sold their muscles, se desgastan, they stopped and that’s it, they keep in their
low class.
Jack London gives importance to intellectual matters, he chooses to become
educated.

How Mus.. determinism can be overcame, possibility to fight.. (possibilities), his

experiences of the West (To Build a Fire) vitality to write in a very clear way,
simple (not like the others writers of the time). This determinism comes from the
West. What he has learned is because he had these experiences there.

To Build a Fire

The dimension of things that he cannot calculate (he’s not so educated)/ The man
thinks in a primitive way.

Dog  Instinct, he fights for survival, he knows that moving is too dangerous.
Man  Is primitive, not being educated and he has no instinct; he’s less than the
dog.
The dog knows that they cannot continue, the man continues and then he dies.
We learn from this that we cannot evaluate the risk in every situation.

We’re not practical, we’re believers (we think we can do it), the man thought he
could do it himself.
We measure our life by achievements.

Conclusion: Reality, experience through learning.

Questions:

Considering free will: do you think that our decisions are determined by
external forces or not?

Being proud, the stuborness..etc makes us don’t measure the circumstances.

Which are those skills that help somebody to survive in their life?

Intuition, common sense.

In your opinion, would you describe his death as pathetic?

Yes, because of his stuborness he didn’t measure the risk. He didn’s listen to
someone else’s advise.

2-04-14

Powerpoint The Octopus by Frank Norris (1870-1902) (1901)

The scene takes place in the San Joaquin Valley in California just at the end of the
West frontier.
The plot includes the struggle between the ranchers and the railroad. Based in part
on real facts that had happened in 1880
The novel depicts the change of the West from “the garden” to a new life in the
industrial era. The transition is painful and social problems arise. Norris’ work is
realistic and includes his idea of why change happens.

NOSTALGIA

The new epic topic is The Wheat. Romance and reality are mingled

“It was the season after the harvest, and the great earth, the mother, after its period
of reproduction, its pains of labour, delivered of the fruit of its loins, slept the sleep of
exhaustion, the infinite repose of the colossus, benignant, eternal, strong, the
nourisher of nations, the feeder of an entire world. Ha! there it was, his epic, his
inspiration, his West,…”

West is the true life. Education, which excludes Nature, is not complete

“Ah, to get back to that first clear-eyed view of things, to see as Homer saw, as
Beowulf saw, as the Nibelungen poets saw. The life is here, the same as then; the
Poem is here; my West is here; the primeval, epic life is here, here under our hands, in
the desert, in the mountain, on the ranch, all over here, from Winnipeg to Guadalupe.
It is the man who is lacking, the poet; we have been educated away from it all. We are
out of touch. We are out of tune.”

The Spanish-Mexicans are included in the West

“These Spanish-Mexicans, decayed, picturesque, vicious, and romantic, never failed to

interest Presley.”

The reproduction of the different ways of speaking are characteristic of

Realism

“Sieben yahr; yais sir, sieben yahr I hef benn on dis rench. Git oop, you mule you,
hoop!”

The writer admires pioneer’s traits

“Presley was determined that his poem should be of the West, that world’s frontier of
romance, where a new race, a new people-hardy, brave and passionate-were building
an empire…their stoicism under stress, their adventures, their treasures found in a
day and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty,
their heroism and bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and
obscenity—a true and fearless setting forth of a passing phase of history,”
The romance of the pioneer and the West frontier is disappearing

“…these eternal fierce bickerings between the farmers of the San Joaquin and the
Pacific and South-western Railroad irritated him and wearied him,… these
dissensions made the one note of harsh colour that refused to enter into the great
scheme of harmony. It was material, sordid, deadly commonplace…’’

Technical advances are not respectful to Nature

“It was a slaughter, a massacre of innocents. The iron monster had charged full into
the midst, merciless, inexorable. To the right and left, all the width of the right of way,
the little bodies had been flung; backs were snapped against the fence posts; brains
knocked out. Caught in the barbs of the wire, wedged in, the bodies hung suspended.
Under foot it was terrible. The black blood, winking in the star-light, seeped down
into the clinkers between the ties with a pro-longed sucking murmur.”

A NEW ERA

A new era appears and totally changes the life of ordinary people, who lose
freedom and a natural way of life
“I can see the outcome. The Railroad will prevail. The Trust will overpower us. Here
in this corner of a great nation, here, on the edge of the continent, here, in this valley
of the West, far from the great centres, isolated, remote, lost, the great iron hand
crushes life from us, crushes liberty and the pursuit of happiness from us…”

The railroad changes ordinary people’s life for worse. Innocent girls become
destitute who need help. The poet stands by ordinary people

“Well, but—but how are you getting on?” he demanded. Minna laughed scornfully.
“I?” she cried. “Oh, I’ve gone to hell. It was either that or starvation.” Presley regained
his room at the club, white and trembling. Worse than the worst he had feared had
happened. He had not been soon enough to help… Where was that spot to which the
tentacle of the monster could not reach?”

Ordinary people suffer injustice in the new industrial era. The novel
denounces capitalist abuse
“They own us, these task-masters of ours; they own our homes, they own our
legislatures. We cannot escape from them. There is no redress. We are told we can
defeat them by the ballot-box. They own the ballot-box. We are told that we must
look to the courts for redress; they own the courts. We know them for what they are,
—ruffians in politics, ruffians in finance, ruffians in law, ruffians in trade, bribers,
swindlers, and tricksters.”

Existence is driven by forces. Economic theories are introduced

“Men was naught, death was naught, life was naught; force only existed—force that
brought men into the world, force that crowded them out of it to make way for the
succeeding generation, force that made the wheat grow,…”
 “You are dealing with forces, young man, when you speak of Wheat and the
Railroads, not with men. There is the Wheat, the supply. It must be carried to feed the
People. There is the demand. The Wheat is one force, the Railroad, another, and there
is the law that governs them—supply and demand.”

Instinct of Nature, the renewal, remains

“What remains? Men perish, men are corrupted, hearts are rent asunder, but what
remains untouched, unassailable, undefiled?”

“But the wheat remained. Untouched, unassailable, undefiled, that mighty world-
force, that nourisher of nations…indifferent to the human swarm, gigantic, resistless”

Despite the change there is hope on the power of renewal:

“Evil is short-lived. Never judge of the whole round of life by the mere segment you
can see. The whole is, in the end, perfect.”

“…and all things, surely, inevitably, restlessly work together for good.”
last page last lines

CONCLUSIONS

- The novel begins worshipping the myth of the West. The ‘garden’ is over.
Machines are a menace for Nature. San Joaquin Valley symbolizes the garden and
the railroad the serpent.
- Negative social consequences of the new life are underlined.
- Capitalist abuse is evident. Poets stand by the weak.
- Forces govern our existence and its changes.
- The end of the novel is optimistic.
- There are characteristics of Realism and Naturalism. Economic theories are
introduced.

Questions:

1. The end of the novel is optimistic. Do you think that Norris proposes to
adequate the ideal of the West to the new era?

That’s something that was going to happen, we can’t fight against it.
Determinism is shortened. It’s not that Nature is over, the Wheet is always going to
be there, it’s going to form this determinism. The subject matter of the story is the
octopus (nature is so powerful that can be renewed). Determinism includes the
energy of nature, the essence has not been consumed at all, though human lifes
have been destroyed (dead). The railroad means that the crops go East, before they
sold the products in the local market but now there is no local market anymore, so
they moved East. Then, the agriculture is over. Though capitalism and technology
overcome there’s still hope.
2. Do you think that Norris’s intention is just to write a historical novel or
does he also include a social intention and that he is demanding justice for
the weak?

Very poetic, not a historical novel, it’s objective, accurate, people working in the
railroad, the poet…
The story is looking for the truth, the 19th stories were recorded by writers who
wanted to tell the truth, writing was done to give a scientific account of reality.
Reality meant using the microscopic side to it, adding information. Thus, it’s not
historical, it adds poetic dimension, to be perceptive, to tell the truth, there is
nostalgia, hope and abuse of the system implied, (gigantic octopus who has
destroyed cemetery of the natives…) There is a lot of emotional features.

3. What are the consequences of the destruction of the garden by the

machinery?

The city is portrayed very sordidly, people depending on the harvest, having a life
that made sense..but when they go to the city they have to look for a life, there are
starving situations, prostitution..
The big octopus (symbol of the Railroad) destroys a way of life that made sense.

Biography Mark Twain, His amazing adventures [VIDEO]

8-04-14

Realism Close to Naturalism until the first Civil War. Realism changed into
something else. There was not a Realism in context, it was more imagistic. The end
of Realism was in 1910.

- It covers up the period between after the American Civil War and the end of the
century.
- It responds to economic, social and political changes: end of slavery, industrial
revolution, mass production, wide inmigration, increased urbanization, increased
poverty. Social middle class needed expression, so Realism gave them that
opportunity. They were abused by Robert Byron (millionaire) who took advantage
of industrial and technological advances.
- Everyday life of ordinary Americans and relationship between the individual and
society.
- Typically local at a time when traditional ways were dissapearing in the presence
of rapid technological changes and modernization.
- Depiction of contemporary life and society as it was, depiction of everyday
current activities and experiences, instead of heroic figures of romance.

- Aims at verosimilitude and being faithful to reality. The world of fiction has to be
recognized as plausible. It involves a particular subject matter, especially the
representation of average people, often typified.
- It includes the study of documentary history.
- It is the expression of materialist philosophy. The writer has to interpret the
world objectively, not idealized.
- Writers about experience, typical versus extraordinary or exotic.
- William Harmon and Hugh Holman, A Handbbok to Literature: “Where
romanticists transcend the immediate to find the ideal, and naturalists plumb the
actual or superficial to find the scientific laws that control its actions, realists
center their attention to a remarkable degree on the immediate, the here and now,
the specific action, and the verifiable consequence.”
- Donald Pizer: Realism and Naturalism. In Naturalism: deterministic philosophy,
and the drama lived at the lowest classes.
- Everyday situations, unlike former romance which used to rely on the
extraordinary, the mysterious and the past.
- The use of accurate details of everyday life in order to convey authenticity like in
induction, scientific method.
- Characters are more relevant than action and plot. Individual and its relation to
Nature, social class, his/her past. Ethical choices as subject matter, derives in
psychological realism (Henry James, Edith Wharton).
- It obeys the interests of the rising middle class (Ian Watt: The Rise of the Novel)
- Amy Kaplan: regards realism as a “strategy for imagining and managing the
threats of social change.”
- Events have to be possible, it may happen in real life. In contrast with the drama
of naturalistic novels and romance.
- Language is vernacular, local-colour, the use of dialects (Mark Twain, Huck Finn)
- Objectivity, less explanations are given as the gender develops.
- Kenneth Warren makes the distinction between Realism and Sentimentalism.
Both are encounters of the individual with the world around but since in Realism
the individual’s redemption lay within the social world, in sentimental fiction “the
redemption of the social world lay with the individual.”
- William Dean Howells and the Genteel Tradition. Danger of being didactic.

9-04-14

Mark Twain POWERPOINT Elena y Maria mandado y el de la inglesa pasado aqui

Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Beliefs and Superstitions
- A recurring motif in Huckleberry Finn (and in some other Twain stories) is
the superstition and spiritual tradition of African Americans in the Southern
United States. Twain paints here a culture of witchcraft-based religions
surrounding the “slave” culture, and he uses this in juxtaposition to the
Christian based society of the Southern whites. / It’s their mutual belief in
certain superstitions that originally draws Huck and Jim together. Neither has
a strong religious faith, and their belief in certain superstitions help both Jim
and Huck explain things that they cannot otherwise explain. It is possible that
the novel parodies religion by comparing it to mere superstition, since some
characters take advantage of both belief systems to manipulate and deceive.
Often, superstitions are used as attempts to explain why bad things happen.
When a character gets rewarded, or when something good happens, most
would like to take credit for that positive outcome. But when someone is
punished, or something terrible happens...well, it’s a lot more comforting to
blame that on plain old rotten luck.

“…I seen somebody’s tracks. It was very curious, somehow, I was going to follow
around, but I stopped down to look at the tracks first, I didn’t notice anything at
first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to
keep the devil.” Pap Finn

“Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for
a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn’t touch it, because the devil had
had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on
account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.”

Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was
a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure
anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something
to it; he never told what it was he said to it.

Lies and Deceit

When is a lie just a lie, and when it is a con? Thirteen-year-old narrator Huck
Finn can hardly open his mouth without an untruth spilling out, but his lies are
all for a good cause: getting Jim to safety. Conmen like the Duke and King,
however, are just bilking innocent townspeople of their money. Their reward?
A quick trip to the tar-and-feather brigade. So, where does The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn draw the line? Which lies are harmless (or even benevolent)
untruths—and which ones are morally bankrupt deceptions?

“… Here’s the law, a-standing ready to take a man’s son away from him-a man’s
own son, which he has had all of the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense
of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last and ready to go to
work and begin to do suthin’ for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for
him” – Pap Finn Pap wants all of the rights of fatherhood (having a son to look
after him in his old age) without any of the responsibilities (actually caring for
and educating that son). But we really can't imagine that Pap went to too much
anxiety and expense to raise Huck.

“It’s a dead man. Yes, indeedy; naked, too. He’s ben shot in de back. I reck’n he’s
ben dead two er three days. Come in, Huck, but doan’ look at his face – It’s too
gashly” –Jim. Jim knows that this is Huck's dad, but he doesn't want Huck to see
—so he lies. Is it right for Jim to lie? Or should he have told Huck?

“What was the use to tell Jim these warn’t real kings and dukes? It wouldn’t a done
no good; and, besides, it was just as I said; you couldn’t tell them from the real kind
Morality and Ethics [CONSCIENCE]

“I said I wouldn’t, and I’ll stick to it…People would call me a low-down abolitionist
and despise me keeping mum-but that don’t make no difference. I ain’t going to
tell.” Huck

“ I begun to get it through my head that he was most free-and who was to blame
for it? Why me..I tried to make out to myself that I warn’t to blame…conscience up
and says, every time. “But you knowed he was running for his freedom, and you
could a paddle ashore and told somebody”…Conscience says to me.
Talk about moral crisis. Huck realizes that, according to the laws of the land,
he's the wrongdoer, because he's helped Jim escape. And Huck may be a liar
and a runaway, but he's not sure he should be breaking any laws. His internal
system of morality is in head-on conflict with the external system of laws that
he's learned from the widow. Which one's going to win?
“…What did that poor old woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? she
tried to be good to you every way she knowed how. That’s hat she done.”

Friendship 2
Huck takes friendship so seriously that he's willing to swear blood oaths on it.
Worse, he's willing to risk eternal damnation—because that's what he thinks
awaits him for helping Jim escape. But, once he realizes that Jim is his friend,
he can't do anything else. Huck values loyalty more than anything else, so he
sticks with Jim to the end.

“It was fifteen minutes before I could work up to go and humble myself to a nigger,
but I done it, and I warn’t every sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no
more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d knowed it would make him
feel that way.” Huck isn't happy about having to apologize to a black man, but
he does it. It's super impressive for the time and place that he ends up
apologizing, but we can see that he's still, well, racist—he's just less racist than
everyone else. Is Twain holding him up as an example, or does Twain want us
to do better?

Relationships: Jim and Huck

Jim-Huck: “Jim knowed all kinds of signs. He said he knowed most everything, I
said it looked to me like all the signs was about luck, and so I asked him if there
warn’t any good-luck signs.”

Seen Jim on the island showed the good character of Huck not immediately having
a negative reaction.

Jim uses superstition to deceive Huck. He is Huck’s main source of superstitious

beliefs.

Relationships-Tom and Huck

Where Tom is basically a good-hearted kid who's oblivious to moral issues,
Huck is a boy on the verge of becoming a man by grappling with some really
important questions.And Huck definitely has a little bit of a man-crush on Tom.
Huck wishes he could come up with a story as good as Tom's, or come up with a
plan as good as Tom's. Why? Maybe because Huck seems that Tom has all the
things he doesn't. So, respectability, a good upbringing, character, intelligence,
kindness: we'll admit it, that's pretty impressive. But it's not everything. In the
end, Tom lacks the most important thing: moral rightness.

Tom-Huck: “Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go buy this thing?... I wish
Tom Sawyer was here..Tom Sawyer wouldn’t back out now so I won’t either. I’m a
going to see what’s going on here.”

“Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most astounding speech I
ever heard and I’m bound tos ay Tom Sawyer fell considerable in my estimation.
Only I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a nigger-stealer.”

Apuntes powerpoint Elena y Maria

Paradox  South is not freedom, is more captivity, but Huck wants to go South,
where the institutions are held more forcibly.
What he wanted to do was going deeper to the institutions and think about them,
this way they could fight it and go to freedom.

This is the way a lot of people did because principles are learnt in books. Tom
Sawyer is very much like us, the values of society depended on what we read in
books (what attracted us*).

* We were attracted by the hero; if you feel attracted to superman, you want to be
like him or if you feel attracted to the ones that are in a low level you are going to
be frustrated all your life, so be careful!

What Twain is criticizing is romance and the transcendental?(”disantrescental”),

he wants more rationality and common ways and this have to do with realism. But
this story is both, romanticism and realism.
Huck  criticizing romance books (focusing on extraordinary). Tom is a contrasting character (a foil) to Huck, despite their
obvious bond and friendship. Tom is a romantic, insensitive representative of the society Huck dislikes. His tendency is to
take control, romanticize, and exaggerate all situations. Tom bases his expertise in adventures on the many pirate and
robber books he has read. His humorous exaggerations symbolize Twain's dislike of popular and glorified romantic novels.
The book is meant for people, not children, it’s more than what it appears.
Introduction  he’s been cautious. “Bildungsroman”  Something that you build
withing yourself. 2Twain warns, should not be analyzed for "motive" or "moral" or "plot" or punishment will
follow. the warning is a convenient method by which to ward off literary critics who might be eager to dissect Twain's
work. Twain recognizes, no doubt, that his novel will incite controversy.

Huck is relaying on his own feelings.

Slavery was considered a property. Education meant slavery, abuse.

*Mark Twain does not talk on behalf Tom Sawyer. La intenció n del autor esta en el
personaje que no esta equivocado, Tom Sawyer esta equivocado, si estuviera en el
no equivocado seria Huckleberry.
Huck Finn relies on common sense, intuition and he learns at the very end but he
learns.

A very important theme is conscience. Huck has problems of conscience. Keeping

a slave is keeping property and being friend of Jim is going against what is
established (he has grown mature “I’m not going to follow the institutions, it’s
myself”). This captivity is the captivity of mind, in the beginning he didn’t know
what to do but in the end he grows mature and he knows what to do. (Chapter 16,
Paragraph 4) “Conscience says to me..”

2. If you want to be free you have to face reality, follow your intuitions, Huck is able
to face danger, American ridiculizes the King, the Dukes, the democracy, he ‘s
criticizing and learning. Intuition and common sense, that’s why he becomes a
hero.
To contrast, Sawyer was a person who had studied (the wrong thing). Huck had
not been educated but he learns more with life, though it’s dangerous so he’s
becoming brave and mature.

Pregunta Americana. Which theme do you think embodies the way the book played
out and ended?
Freedom.
Slavery (law) is a part of what has been instituted as good. So, can I go against the
law? Is this the only way to be a free man?

22-4-14 Powerpoint Jesus y Maribel

The Storm and Chikamagua  Objective realities, determinism.

16th century  Period of revolts

The Storm Kate Chopin (1850-1904) (1898)

Question 1.
Nature rules, it’s uncontrollable, in Romanticism the weather was obedient to the
mood of the characters but in Realism Nature rules, it’s the other way around.
What happens is natural, if the situation that happened is avoided it would set
more unsettlement. The characters are happy, but the readers not, “they cannot be
happy.” But what Naturalism does is to offer things as they are. Writers in
Naturalism observe and say what is going on, they do not judge as the readers do.
“As she stepped outside, Alcée Laballiére rode in at the gate.”  Chivalry,
gentleman that appears before the storm, it portrays a mocking side to it. Absolute
love, true romance, a way of rewriting romance in a fashionable/natural way.
Romance is made natural. It’s retaking the idea of romance, chivalry. Romance
derives into a natural perspective of life because she is happy because she has been
natural, it doesn’t matter the future, what happens next, the problem would have
been not do what she did.
Absolute love has been reduced to natural, (that means true.) how the human
beings act in nature. Contrast between Romance  splendor and fall, and
Naturalism  here there is no tragedy.

Romance would be absolute love, involving a fall but it is cut short and put in
another perspective, natural, deprived of other things such as chivalry.

Why the names in French? Luisiana was bought from France.

Question 3.

Social Classes. West, breaks the social classes, freedom, assertion of individuality
vs domesticity. Sexual intercourse  happier than ever, so even the story is
written from a detached point of view, the important things are the details (hidden
information).
Repetition of the word “mud”. In Realism when details are repeated it amounts
more meaning, to reinforce more meaning  it has an extra meaning.

Bibi  child, represents the innocence. The word repeated “mud”. In Realist
stories, when something is going wrong the baby died.
“Sinister” from the West. Bibi  wise child. First sentence of the story, we have the
conflict.
“The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain. BobinÔ t, who
was accustomed to converse on terms of perfect equality with his little son, called
the child’s attention to certain clouds that were rolling with sinister intention from
the west, accompanied by a sullen, threatening roar.”
The beginning is threatening the content, but the point of view is traditional,
domesticity.
Traditional man of the South and the attitude towards something coming from the
West. Bobinot points of view represents tradition.
Kind of husband that has respect for his child (things happening the way they are).
Chopin observes and doesn’t explain it in terms of right or wrong. It portrays the
situation, in an impressionist way  the here and now, it’s like this. He is what he
is, she is what she is..the characters are close to nature (are part of nature). It is
empirical information, what is reality about?

Point of view of the character: “Sinister” corresponds to Bobinot

Point of view of the narrator: Narrative objective, the writer is quite scientific and
do not judge; is portraying the situation.

“Bobinot [traditional, domesticity from the South] was the embodiment of serious
solicitude as he strove to remove from his own person and his son’s the signs of
their tramp over heavy roads and through wet fields. He scraped the mud off Bibi’s
bare legs and feet with a stick and carefully removed all traces from his heavy
brogans. Then, prepared for the worst –the meeting with an over-scrupulous
housewife, they entered cautiously at the back door.”

So, it’s not a matter of right and wrong, it’s a matter of paradox, in which nature is
full of details.
Paradox: Calixta (last page): “Oh, Bobinot! You back! My! but I was uneasy. W’ere
you been during the rain? An’ Bibi? he ain’t wet? he ain’t hurt?” The innocence
remains, connection about innocence and herself.
“..as Calixta felt him to see if he were dry, and seemed to exppress nothing but
satisfaction at their safe return.” Seemed is ambiguous, this is the typical attitude
of the Realism, AMBIGUITY is the response.
So, we learned from human activities, and the only approach we have to the world
is to observe.
The aim of the narrator is to know the quality of humanity, the nature of humanity.
What are humanity desires? Readers think about right or wrong and we missed the
point, we have to pay attention to the equality.
Has Calixta been redeemed? She is happy, she is saved because of the world. She
has taken the risk, acting like nature and the reason is..can you stop the storm? The
same happens with the woman, she can’t stop. This is the reason why that woman
feels what she feels and acts like that.

Domesticity vs Natural Response

Tension de America cuando la domestican.

Quality of humanity and domesticity vs tension

Esa tension no esta resuelta y eso es lo que nos hace rebelarnos.

Clarisse is happy because is not with her husband, show what humans girls are 
free.

2 Powerpoint.

Natural world is unbalanced. The unbalanced would have been better if she hadn’t
aknowledged the fact of her own nature. ¿?

The perspective is always natural, no judgement, but devoid of chivalry,

romanticism.

Enlightment, strongest acknowledgement is passion, dealing with the senses,

touching. There is nothing like that. Being part of the natural world.

*Details  general ideas that the author has.

Nature is the main point but the problem is “what prevails?”, it would be the
strongest, and the weakest had in Naturalism, Determinism and lack of good
perception.

Perspective of the gentle having power over the middle-classes. (Alcée over
Calixta)

If the perspective is nature, then marriage is a problem in itself.

1. What kind of relationship do you think Bobinot and Calixta have? Do you
think that they are happy?
There is some truth in this relationship.

2.

Basics of Naturalism:
- Literary use of Scientific Determinism
 All that happens is determined by natural forces
 One thing happens, causing another thing, causing the next thing to
happen . . .
 There is no free will; we cannot choose; we just react to natural
forces and events.

Naturalism's Determinism:
- People's actions are determined by
 Physical, mechanical forces
 Biological forces
 Economic and social forces
 Subconscious (psychological) forces
 Environmental forces

Sex in this story is a force as strong, inevitable, and natural as the Louisiana storm
which ignites it." The conclusion of the story, Seyersted adds, is ambiguous,
because Chopin "covers only one day and one storm and does not exclude the
possibility of later misery. The emphasis is on the momentary joy of the amoral
cosmic force."

In this story, Seyersted says, Kate Chopin "was not interested in the immoral in
itself, but in life as it comes, in what she saw as natural--or certainly inevitable--
expressions of universal Eros, inside or outside of marriage. She focuses here on
sexuality as such, and to her, it is neither frantic nor base, but as 'healthy' and
beautiful as life itself."

Chickamauga, Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) (1891)

The themes of local color, Realism and Determinism are deprived of Idealism, the
meaning of war is no heroes…everything is a response to Romanticism, there is no
honor in the war, there is just blood and war becomes a failure instead of glory.
War becomes demystified.
Hawthorne, Rappacini’s Daughter  Romanticism
Chopin, The Storm  Nature

Naturalist way of portray reality (scatological) it’s typically one of the features of
Naturalism. They want to be so precise (evolution of the Enlightenment) that they
put everything, so you do not miss the point. Though it’s a disgusting way of
portraying reality.
Demystify –KEY WORD. Idealism, America is romantic by nature but has evolved
into this.

1. Another way of demystifying the war, by insensitivity. When the soldiers didn’t
notice about the child. The child seemed invisible.

ONE SUNNY AUTUMN AFTERNOON a child strayed away from its rude home in a
small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of
freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure (it
reminds of America); for this child's spirit, in bodies of its ancestors (historia
America), had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of
discovery and conquest (history)--victories in battles whose critical moments
were centuries, whose victors' camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of
its race (child associated with the race (America)) it had conquered its way
through two continents and passing a great sea had penetrated a third, there to be
born to war and dominion as a heritage.
The child was a boy aged about six years, the son of a poor planter. In his younger
manhood the father had been a soldier, had fought against naked savages
(history of America) and followed the flag of his country into the capital of a
civilized race (the child is America itself) to the far South.

The child is deaf-mute, this is said at the end, why? Because Americans realised at
the end this chaos.
The child represents America (romantic by nature, absolute war, absolute love), so
the image of the child is that the child is not perceiving the things as they are. The
child reflects America distorted by his own ilusions (made of dreams, related to the
past Romanticism).
The point of reality is that the perspective of the boy is narrow-minded (deaf-
mute). It’s always playing with the idealistic mind, seeing reality through his
dreams and he cannot perceive reality, is very far away from him.
“It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure; for his child
´s spirit, in the bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and
conquest” Page 366, line 2.
In this quotation we can perceive the innocence of the child. He was happy because he was experimenting freedom, which is
part of the transition of innocence to maturity. With these new experiences, he is losing his innocence. The loss of innocence
of the child is comparable with how America loses the innocence too. At the beginning it was a perfect and peaceful place, as
the child when he plays, but through the war people destroy that innocence.
He’s defeated with reality. “The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures.
He uttered a series of inarticulate or indescribable cries-something between the chattering of an
ape and the globbing of a turkey-a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The
child was a deaf mute. Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the
wreck.”
29-4-14

Naturalism (1880s-1940s)

- Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. As in Nature, only the very fittest and
strongest survive. It implies social struggle and competition, typically hopeless.
[The people who are in poor conditions are always the weakest and they can’t go
anywhere, nature is like this. In order to know writers observe reality, seeing that
only the strongest that can adapt to society are the ones who survive. The whole
life is a matter of survival.]
- É mile Zola: “human beasts”, characters can be studied through their relationships
to their surroundings. Zola’s 1880 description of this method in Le roman
experimental (The Experimental Novel, 1880) follows Claude Bernard’s medical
model and the historian Hippolyte Taine’s when he says: “virtue and vice are
products like vitriol and sugar.”
* It links to the Puritan origin, the conviction that we’ve been expelled from
Paradise and our doom is failure.
- Human beings are analyzed as “products”, and should be studied impartially,
without moralizing about their natures. [You study humanity as another animal
and the important thing is “how they are”, not “why they are.”]
- Herbert Spencer and Joseph LeConte.
-Donald Pizer’s Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction
(1984):

“The naturalistic novel usually contains two tensions or contradictions, and . . . the
two in conjunction comprise both an interpretation of experience and a particular
aesthetic recreation of experience. In other words, the two constitute the theme
and form of the naturalistic novel.
* 1. Humanity depends on hereditary factors, you’re not capable of scaping your
environmental context  FATE
2. Spirit, this force you to jump out of this situation.

The first tension is that between the subject matter of the naturalistic novel and
the concept of man which emerges from this subject matter. The naturalist
populates his novel primarily from the lower middle class or the lower class. . . . His
fictional world is that of the commonplace and unheroic *(characters of Maggie)
in which life would seem to be chiefly the dull round of daily existence, as we
ourselves usually conceive of our lives. But the naturalist discovers in this world
those qualities of man usually associated with the heroic or adventurous, such as
acts of violence and passion which involve sexual adventure or bodily strength and
which culminate in desperate moments and violent death. A naturalistic novel is
thus an extension of realism only in the sense that both modes often deal with the
local and contemporary. The naturalist, however, discovers in this material the
extraordinary and excessive in human nature.
The second tension involves the theme of the naturalistic novel. The naturalist
often describes his characters as though they are conditioned and controlled by
environment, heredity, instinct, or chance. But he also suggests a compensating
humanistic value in his characters or their fates which affirms the significance of
the individual and of his life. The tension here is that between the naturalist's
desire to represent in fiction the new, discomfiting truths which he has found
in the ideas and life of his late nineteenth-century world, and also his desire
to find some meaning in experience which reasserts the validity of the
human enterprise.” (10-11)

* Jimmie wants to be a survivor, Jimmie knows that only the strongest survive, he
learns this in the middle of the street, he hits because he knows he’s going to be hit
back. If he doesn’t fight he will not survive(that is the only important thing).
Maggie struggles trying to have a job, being a regular child, not to depend on the
family life  Can the very poor scape their destiny? Spiritually is much more
relevant than the others, but circumstances rule.

Realism  deals with the average people

Naturalism  Low scale. Los naturalistas se concentran en lo exagerado (violence,
passion..). Naturalistic novels  low classes (bad/hostile situation) so no te
permite salir and you know something more about human conditions, even in
Realistic they are doomed.

- Inductive, documentary. Details. [Inductive  scientific, the writer looks society

with a microscope, from details reproduced in fiction to the given of a message
(We cannot overcome violence); Documentary  Observations, dialogues.]

- Objective reproduction of reality. Scientific.

- Believable reality versus the symbolism and idealism of Romanticism.
- Detachment [you are bound to observe reality in an objective way, verlo desde
una determinada distancia]
- Main focus on Nature or fate (no God is implied)
- Nature is indifferent to human crises.
- Environmental factors. Character cannot do anything to modify their character.
Predeterminism. Pessimism.
- While Realism object of observation is middle class typified reality, Naturalism
object of observation are the very poor.
- It includes overt, sex and violence. Racism, prejudice, disease, poverty,
corruption, prostitution, filth. The errands of the Earth, vagrancy. The focus is on
human vice and misery.
- The individual cannot escape hereditary factors and the social forces of the
context where he/she belongs.
- They guide themselves by forces of heredity, passions and instinct. It is depicted
what is excessive.

30-04-14

Maggie is defeated by the circumstances, Nelly is smart, from the dominant class,
so she can’t do nothing, this is a tragedy. She wants to have a life, rise her spirit.

Part of the Realism  Language-education

Speaking the language of the low class you will understand this reality as truth.

The characters feel trapped in this situation. Maggie as Jimmie.

They use religion as customary (what they have learned rudimentarily, right or
wrong) but she (the mother) cannot have a good behaviour (she’s a drunker), she
only pretends what’s right or wrong.

The only thing they know is fight because is survival, this is for being from a low
beginning.
She and Jimmie survived. The flower that Maggie takes is very tender, that’s the
only thing they know is to steal, to fight. Tommie that was the little child is the
weakest and he dies.

Pete  Pretender, liar, he belongs to a low class, but he pretends to be in a higher

class, he wants Daisy to admire him, he pretends he is a gentleman.

1. Maggie appreciates the good things at society. But the conditions are aggressive.

Is in the essence or in the Capitalism this act of cheating, stealing…?

SHEET Maggie, A Girl of the Streets

Naturalism, Provide definitions of the main points, and one example of each:

Objectivity: Scientific perception on the surface reality, like a scientific looking

with a microscope, no digressions, no conscience, no comments, no judgements, no
morality but a reproduction of details. The text develops in terms of probability,
the very poor ends in death (they die). Example: Page 959 Chapt 2, “ Withered
persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in
obscure corners. A thousand odors of cooking food came forth the street.”

Excessive: Hiperrealistic way which includes every detail of violence, violence is

described in excess. This is done to impress the reader. Example: Page 957, “A
stone has smashed into Jimmie’s mouth. Blood was bubbling over his chin and
down upon his ragged shirt.”

The very poor: -Uneducated people show the essence of humanity. Maggie has
dignity and wants to be something else, she works, but the others, Jimmie, the
mother..are mean people, fighting for survival, they don’t think at all). Example:
Violence, what they do when they struggle in order to survive. In an industrial
society is not probable to develop your own dignity. Pete and Jimmie dispute

Those who survive:

Nelly  He feels superior in the world of appearances.
Jimmie  He feels superior giving violence
Mother  Drunk person

The only one who dies:

Daisy: She is not able to survive because of her feelings, she becomes vulnerable.
She feels admiration of Nelly, and this kind of admiration made her weaker.

Inductive: Observation of reality and takes details of reality, which are included in
the fictional world and he develops a theory  You cannot overcome the
constraints of the society, human essence is survival and if you want to be better
with feelings you’ll die.

Environmental factors: Family, friends..constrains your behaviour hasta el punto

de morir.
Materialist: Jimmie, Nelly survived for the world of appearances.
Idealist: Maggie, she feels much more.

Hereditary tendencies: You are going to inherit the tendencies of your family.

Powerpoint Maggie, a Girl of the Streets

Written by Stephen Crane under the pseudonym of Johnston Smith.

Who is Maggie? Brief Summary of the story

Historic Context
- Industrialization
- Naturalism

Slums life: human behavior determined by environment

Industrial revolution demands work, thus, a capitalist society exploited the lower
class people. Moreover, the new economic system let to the growth of slum in
American society in the nineteenth century. Economic and social forces determine the
human being (victims of society).

Determinism
“Maggie always departed with raised spirits from the showing places of the
melodrama. She rejoiced at the way in which the poor and virtuous eventually
surmounted the wealthy and wicked. The theatre made her think. She wondered if
the culture and refinement she had seen imitated, perhaps grotesquely, by the
heroine on the stage, could be acquired by a girl who lived in a tenement house and
worked in a shirt factory.”

Darwinism (survival of the strongest)

Concept of the one who surives is the powerful and the strongest one. Human beings
are forced and controlled by the social environment. The pessimistic version
maintains that people are what they are conditioned to be. Animal’s features to
human beings. Alpha male concept.

Survival of the strongest

- Tommie’s death (the weakest die)

“The babe, Tommie, died. He went away in a white, insignificant coffin, his small
waxen hand clutching a flower that the girl, Maggie, had stolen from an Italian. She
and Jimmie lived.”

- Jimmie’s gang
“He strode over to the cursing circle, swinging his shoulders in a manner which
denoted that he held victory in his fists. He approached at the back of one of the
most deeply engaged of the Devil's Row children.”

-Pete: a protector
“Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a world full of fists.
Here was one who had contempt for brass- clothed power; one whose knuckles
could defiantly ring against the granite of law. He was a knight.”

Violence (as a way of survival)

The theme of survival, or struggle to live, is the origin of violence. Crane shows that
slum life is the same as the life in the jungle, where there are no rules. The
character has to fight in order to survive.

- Parents abuses due to Alcoholism

"Eh, what? Been fightin' agin, by Gawd!" She threw herself upon Jimmie. The urchin
tried to dart behind the others and in the scuffle the babe, Tommie, was knocked
down. He protested with his usual vehemence, because they had bruised his tender
shins against a table leg. The mother's massive shoulders heaved with anger.
Grasping the urchin by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he rattled. She
dragged him to an unholy sink, and, soaking a rag in water, began to scrub his
lacerated face with it. Jimmie screamed in pain and tried to twist his shoulders out
of the clasp of the huge arms.”

- Jimmie and Pete’s dispute

“The allied two jostled the bartender's elbows, glaring at him with feverish eyes
and forcing him toward the wall.
Suddenly Pete swore redly. The flash of action gleamed from his eyes. He threw
back his arm and aimed a tremendous, lightning- like blow at Jimmie's face. His
foot swung a step forward and the weight of his body was behind his fist. Jimmie
ducked his head, Bowery-like, with the quickness of a cat. The fierce, answering
blows of him and his ally crushed on Pete's bowed head.”

Struggle between morals and social conventions

Maggie resistance to sin is vanished and her miserable experience pushes her to
get into the world of viciousness, her only way is death.

Moral hypocrisy

- Rejection of Maggie (Pete)

“The girl seemed to have a struggle with herself. She was apparently bewildered
and could not find speech. Finally she asked in a low voice: "But where kin I go?"
The question exasperated Pete beyond the powers of endurance. It was a direct
attempt to give him some responsibility in a matter that did not concern him. In his
indignation he volunteered information.
"Oh, go teh hell," cried he. He slammed the door furiously and returned, with an air
of relief, to his respectability.”

- Sudden forgiveness from everybody

"Yer poor misguided chil' is gone now, Mary, an' let us hope it's fer deh bes'. Yeh'll
fergive her now, Mary, won't yehs, dear, all her disobed'ence? All her t'ankless
behavior to her mudder an' all her badness? She's gone where her ter'ble sins will
be judged."

Working class and slang

Crane’s language mirrors the reality of the Bowery. The language of Crane’s
characters is an accurate reproduction of the language spoken by the people of the
Bowery in the 19th . Character’s language is cruel and harsh due to their bad
surroundings that affected their personality.

- Pete’s slang
"Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating Rum Alley child.
"Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can't make me run."

- Difference of classes
“She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory. It began to appear to her mind as a
dreary place of endless grinding. Pete's elegant occupation brought him, no doubt,
into contact with people who had money and manners. it was probable that he had
a large acquaintance of pretty girls. He must have great sums of money to spend.”

Innocence

-Grown-woman on the outside, naïve girl on the inside. Maggie is very easy to
impress, at the beginning she was innocent and romantic, and she saw Pete as a
gentleman, as a knight. She is very innocent on the inside although on the outside
she is mature, a woman. This could be related to the rough and tough life in which
a child could not be happy. All the circumstances she saw a chance to be happy and
thought that maybe that could be her only chance to take in order to be happy and
leave that terrible life aside. Maggie thought that as long as she was with Pete,
everything will be alright and she will be protected.

“There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said: "Dat
Johnson goil is a puty good looker." About this period her brother remarked to her:
"Mag, I'll tell yeh dis! See? Yeh've edder got teh go teh hell or go teh work!"
Whereupon she went to work, having the feminine aversion of going to hell.”

- Drastic change: socially-rejected prostitute. There is a transition throughout the

whole novel in which you can see how Maggie, a naïve girl, loses her innocence when
she becomes a prostitute. This shows the vision that she has lost her individuality as a
human by becoming “A girl of the streets”, as the title suggests.
“The girl went into gloomy districts near the river, where the tallblack factories
shut in the street and only occasional broad beams oflight fell across the
pavements from saloons. In front of one of theseplaces, from whence came the
sound of a violin vigorously scraped, thepatter of feet on boards and the ring of
loud laughter, there stood aman with blotched features."Ah, there," said the girl.
"I've got a date," said the man.”
SOCIAL FAILURES

Alcoholism
Patriarchy
Social classes
Hopeless
Violence: There are several violent scenes during the whole story. It is described
explicitly given that the aim of the author is not pleasing the reader, but telling the
reality. Thus, blood and mistreating are dealt as something natural. Also death.
Cruelty.
Apuntes Daisy Miller

The characters in the novel are not to be trusted, the only way to know if we can
trust them is to see how they are desccribed.
It’s a psychological story, it relies on perception, the only judgement that we can
trust is the one from Mr. Winterbourne.
Realism focuses on the surface of the people, no introspection, no insight, is just a
psychological account but regarding perfection. The rest remains secret for the
reader to find out. The figures are stereotyped.
The characters from Europe, Mrs. Costello, Mrs. Walker…are like puppets, talking
with the mood of Europe, they are Europe in themselves.
Winterbourne struggles between following the rules of Europe or the common
sense that America represents., people tendencies are to be natural.
Is America natural or sin escrupulos?
Mrs. Costello point of view of Daisy is that she’s uncultivated, out of rule, she has
no doubt.
Winterbourne is using common sense to understand Daisy, there is hope in him.
Does Daisy lack experience? The conclusion could be that if you don’t adapt you’ll
perish, if you do it you’ll survive.

The term mistake was used in different ways.

- Mrs. Costello “I haven’t the least idea what such young ladies expect a man to
do. But I really think that you had better not meddle with little American girls that are uncultivated,
as you call them. You have lived too long out of the country. You will be sure to make some great
mistake. You are too innocent.”
- Mr. Winterbourne, not to have helped Daisy, he should have broken the rules.
Winterbourne offered no answer to this question; but he presently said, “You were right
in that remark that you made last summer. I was booked to make a mistake. I have lived
too long in foreign parts.”
Italy (Giovanelli) is mentioned for a purpose, it is much more free than England
because of religion.
The characters are chosen to exemplify the contrast of the different nations
regarding America. Mrs. Costello, Mrs. Walker…are hypocrites, hypocrisy is their
strong strategy, to protect themselves from being victims. It’s a tool for survival. If
they adapt they’ll survive, so hypocrisy is conviction for them, they are pretty
aware that only the strongest survive (Darwinism).

Daisy (margarita)  vulnerable, little organism. The example of America, typically

West, by being natural, unsophisticated.
Winterbourne  cold, the end of life (he’s so stiff)
The Age of Innocence TEXT

Page 70

The aim of the book  Paralysis of society.

She seemed surprised. "You know about my husband — my life with him?"
He made a sign of assent.
"Well — then — what more is there? In this country are such things tolerated? I'm a
Protestant — our church does not forbid divorce in such cases."
"Certainly not."

We can see that with the book we can go deeper. We know that the protestants
allowed divorce, so why in the film that thought didn’t appear? Because the
director wanted to show aesthetics rather than moralities, is the aesthetic that
counts.

Aesthetics  The whole conventions of the society, the surface of reality which is
calm, it doesn’t matter what you feel, it doesn’t happen too much..the thing is
common, there are no differences, they had to do what society tells them to and
this has to do with industrialization (efficient workers), where singularity can’t be
allowed because it will stop the process, the manufacture. This moment is the one
when America forgets the singularities, preserves the standards of
industrialization.

May  Slowly allow you to follow the rules, to count as regardless what is singular.

Determinism  If you divorce people would not regard you in the same way, men
could not be allowed to go to certain jobs, such as politics. There are many rules
that are reproduced by hereditary factors.

Paralysis in Minimalism, emotions are restricted, talk and feelings hidden.

Is the book so conservative?

Newland  America, there is irony. America lost the West and turned into a more
conventional country than Britain. Aesthetics counts more than ethics, is what
Scorsese shows us, they want to maintain the beauty, the monotonous rythm.

Age of Innocence – Quotes and Explanations

Struggle Between the Individual and the Group

 Hypocrisy
 Social Code

“Singly they betrayed their inferiority; but grouped together they represented "New
York," and the habit of masculine solidarity made him accept their doctrine on all the
issues called moral. He instinctively felt that in this respect it would be troublesome—
and also rather bad form—to strike out for himself.”
Part 1. Chapter 1. Page Six.

Newland Archer upon entering the Opera box with his colleagues.
In this quote we can see how Archer has been raised in a world where manner and
a moral and social code dictate how the individual will act. Archer is expected to
sacrifice his opinions and desires just to go along with the group and society in
order to not upset the order of things. Why? Because the eyes of society are
everywhere. An example is how people in New York society go to the Opera House
to not actually see the opera, but to see everyone else in the society. If you break
this code, you become the center of attention but obviously not in a good way.
There is also the sub-theme of hypocrisy, because there are loopholes in this social
code. The character of Lawrence Lefferts is the perfect example for this, because he
has numerous affairs yet he extolls Christian values and snubs Ellen for leaving her
husband. Still, society puts up with this behavior because he is discreet in his
affairs, is of old wealth and he is a man in a male dominated society.

“It was not the custom in New York drawing-rooms for a lady to get up and walk
away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of another. Etiquette
required that she should wait, immovable as an idol, while the men who wished to
converse with her succeeded each other at her side. But the Countess was apparently
unaware of having broken any rule; she sat at perfect ease in a corner of the sofa
beside Archer, and looked at him with the kindest eyes.”
Part 1. Chapter 8. Page 43.

In this quote we can see the contrast between women who grew
up in New York society and women who didn't. Countess Ollenska, not being raised
in New York society, was not aware of the social conduct she must portray, this
straying away from the group and the social code. This is why she is criticized so
heavily in society, because this also adds up to her reputation of being an adulterer.

[Newland Archer] “It’s not fashionable.”

[Countess Ellen Olenska] “Fashionable! Do you all think so much of that? Why not
make one’s own fashions? But I suppose I’ve lived too independently; at any rate, I
want to do what you all do-I want to feel cared for and safe.”
Part 1. Chapter 9. Page 50.

Here we can see the moment when Archer visits the Countess in her new house
and he says that the neighborhood it’s not fashionable and she seems mad and
impressed y this comment. By her words we can see that she is in a struggle with
herself because at first she suggest that one should design it’s own life, but at the
end she says that she wants to do as everybody else, feel cared for and safe, this
attitude is a little bit contradictory but it reflects the struggle inside Ellen. She’s
torn between being what she wants and pleasing her family and society.

“She [Countess Ellen] shook her head and sighed. “Oh, I know-I know! But on
condition that they [her family] don’t hear anything unpleasant. Aunt Welland put it
in those very words when I tried… . Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr.
Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to
pretend!” She lifted her hands to her face, and he saw her thin shoulders shaken by a
sob.”
Part 1. Chapter 9. Page 53.

This quote shows, once again, how Ellen really feels. She knows her family cares
about her but she also knows they care a lot about the rules of society. She’s
questioning New York’s high society and the fact that they only pretend and want
everybody else to pretend. At the end she begins to cry, this shows how the social
pressure has affected her. This pressure doesn’t let her get past her internal
struggle and decide for herself.

Duty to the Family and Society

 Appearances & Reality

“This seemed as natural to Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his
life was molded: such as the duty of using two brushes with his monogram in blue
enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a flower
(preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole.”
Part 1. Chapter 1. Page 4.

This is the scene where Archer is talking about and describing the
people at the Opera House. It describes how rigid the New York society is and how
simple the things like parting his hair or wearing a flower clearly show how one
must present oneself to society. Because the acts of the individual reflect on the
group, Archer is in a way a representation of his family in society, that's why he
must always present himself in a correct way according to society's standards.
Aesthetics count more than any other thing, as long as he appears to be well,
society will not view him as a problem.

“Archer entirely approved of family solidarity, and one of the qualities he most
admired in the Mingotts was their resolute championship of the few black sheep that
their blameless stock had produced”
Part 1. Chapter 2. Page 9.

“Suddenly Newland Archer felt himself impelled to decisive action. The desire to be
the first man to enter Mrs. Mingott's box, to proclaim to the waiting world his
engagement to May Welland, and to see her through whatever difficulties her
cousin's anomalous situation might involve her in; this impulse had abruptly
overruled all scruples and hesitations, and sent him hurrying through the red
corridors to the farther side of the house.”
Part 1. Chapter 2. Page 12.

In these two quotes, we can see how solidarious the family must be in the presence
of society. Archer is reflecting on that even though Ellen is in the eye of the public
and that her bad reputation precedes her, her family is still willing to stand by her
publicly. We see here how appearances and reality differ, because Archer too must
stand by Ellen Ollenska's side because of her connection to May, even though he
does not want her reputation to be associated with him. He must once again
sacrifice his desires and opinions for the good of his family but more importantly,
for May's family.

“He [Newland Archer] reviewed his friends’ marriages- the supposedly happy ones-
and saw none that answered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender
comradeship which he pictured as his permanent relation with May Welland. He
perceived that such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the versatility,
the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully trained not to possess; and
with a shiver of foreboding he saw his marriage becoming what most of the other
marriages about him were: a dull association of material and social interests held
together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.”
Part 1. Chapter 6. Page 30.

This part of the book shows how the pressure of society and the duty to the family
can make people decide to do certain things they don’t necessarily wish to do. At
the end of the quote it says “a dull association of material and social interest held
together by ignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.” This clearly
shows how some people got married in that time for vain interests. It also shows
how far hypocrisy can go when one has the pressure of pleasing everybody else
but oneself.

“Theoretically, the idea of divorce was almost as distasteful to him [Newland Archer]
as to his mother…”
Part 1. Chapter 10. Page 63.

“Instead, he [Newland Archer] answered, in a voice that sounded in his ears like Mr.
Letterblair’s: ‘New York society is a very small world compared with the one you’ve
lived in. And it’s ruled, in spite of appearances, by a few people with-well rather old-
fashioned ideas.
She [Countess Ellen] said nothing, and he continued: ‘Our ideas about marriage and
divorce are particularly old-fashioned. Our legislation favours divorce- our social
customs don’t.’ ”
Part 1. Chapter 12. Page 75.

On this quotes the author is referring to divorce. On the first one we get to see
Newland Archers vision towards divorce. He doesn’t like the idea of divorce but we
could say is because of how society has made him see it. On the second quote we
find Archer and Ellen talking. He’s trying to convince her not to get a divorce. He
finds himself talking like his boss. He says to Ellen that New York is really different
to what she’s used to and he’s basically telling her that she should follow the social
rules of New York’s high class. At the end of the quote Newland says that
“legislation favours divorce- our social customs don’t. This shows a contradiction,
because written law can state something but people care more about unwritten
social rules.

Struggle for Personal Freedom

“ ‘You, you, YOU!’ she [Countess Ellen] cried, her lip trembling like a child’s on the
verge of tears. ‘Isn’t it you who made me give up divorcing-give it up because you
showed me how selfish and wicked it was, how one must sacrifice one’s self to
preserve the dignity of marriage…and to spare one’s family the publicity, the scandal?
And because my family was going to be your family-for May’s sake and for yours- I
did what you told me, what you proved to me that I ought to do…’ ”
Part 1. Chapter 18. Page 113.

On this quote we can see the desire Ellen has to be free. She’s telling Archer that he
was the one to convince her of not getting a divorce and that he only did it for
society and family. In a way she’s trying to fight the social rules but still she does
what is expected. The interesting thing is the fact that she knows that her family
and the people of her class care a lot about the scandals and the image.

Personal freedom is sacrificed. The price of personal freedom is being ostracized

by society. Examples of it being sacrificed are how Newland cannot follow his
passion with Ellen because he must do his duty to his family and society and marry
May. Ellen cannot consummate her affair with Archer because it would hurt the
family too much, not emotionally but socially, because in this society there is a
paralysis of emotions.

Innocence

“But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought
that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product. Untrained
human nature was not frank and innocent; it was full of the twists and defenses of an
instinctive guile. And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious purity, so
cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts and grandmothers
and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to be what he wanted, what he
had a right to, in order that he might exercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like
an image made of snow.”
Part 1. Chapter 6. Page 31.

Archer is getting frustrated with the fictitious idea of innocence, because it is not
pure. This innocence is instilled on the women of New York society since they are
little, to never criticize or question anything, accept everything passively and be
what men are supposed to want.

“Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals
the mind against imagination and the heart against experience”
Part 1. Chapter 16. Page 98.

Archer is angry that May has these qualities and unconsciously compares her to
Countess Ellen Ollenska

“And she had died thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious
households like her own."

We see how the author ironically criticizes May, saying that she died the same way
as she lived, not aware of anything outside of her bubble in New York society. We
can also see this when she goes on her honeymoon to Europe, how she criticizes
the culture and the way they dress simply because it is no the same as New York.

*May Welland is the perfect embodiment of that child-raising principle. Kept

innocent and naïve, she has never known passion — nor is she supposed to know it
until her husband introduces her to it. She has been taught to remain innocent and
avoid life's difficulties; throughout her marriage she pretends not to know about
Newland's passion for Ellen. Even on her honeymoon, her attitude toward all
things European is to ignore, be critical, or avoid them. "Her incapacity to
recognize change made her children conceal their views from her . . . a kind of
innocent family hypocrisy." Her photo on Newland's desk following her death
reflects the carefully groomed ignorance criticized by Wharton.

CONCLUSION

- Innocence

May is the embodiment of what innocence is. May was pretending.*

Newland, while seemingly in charge of his world as well as the narrative, is
actually one of the more naïve characters in the story. He never realizes until the
end that his wife has known about his sacrifice all along; even after her death he
has cultivated the viewpoint that she was ignorant of real life from beginning to
end. Until Ellen's farewell dinner, he does not even know that his entire family has
plotted and planned without him, leaving him intentionally ignorant of their
machinations. Despite his supposedly cosmopolitan attitudes, he believes that a
love affair with Ellen would be tolerated, an attitude showing his lack of realism.
By the end of the novel, everyone has outflanked him, especially the women in his
life who have used his innocence well.
Ellen  Ellen begins the novel naïvely, thinking that New Yorkers will welcome
her and seeing them as the harmless, innocent youngsters of her childhood.
Quickly, because she has lived in a less dissembling culture, she learns that beneath
the surface are cruelty, judgment, and hypocrisy. Not having been taught the rules
of the game, she stretches the tolerance of New Yorkers, eventually forcing her
exit.

- Author  Very aware of how women are arise in New York.

By the time Edith Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence, she had seen World War I
destroy much of the world as she knew it. She looked back on her early years in
New York as a time of social continuity, and felt that the passing of values from
parent to child had a civilizing influence. However, she also saw the hypocrisy and
cruelty practiced by individuals who wore the veneer of respectability. Both of
these ideas are seen throughout The Age of Innocence, making it a timeless novel of
both the Gilded Age and of social change.

- New York  Superficiality. Even New York City in the 1870s is a society of
innocence. It worries about its social code — wedding details, the season, rituals,
and rules — passing its time in total ignorance of what is to come. The supreme
example of this is the farewell dinner for the Countess, a dinner that seems
innocently gracious and honorable on the surface but which hides rigid
assertiveness in enforcing the social order. This is an age of innocence for a society
— existing in its own niggling concerns — that cannot conceive of the devastating
war that will change all life and history, and sweep away this innocence forever.

Question 2

They were family and they couldn’t do that. The important thing is the family and
the harmony. And that could have broken that harmony.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archer loves May because is appropriate, that he’s going to teach her about
books..he’s very conservative but he also loves Ellen because she’s what books
represents, she’s like an icon of what freedom is.
He admires May because of her behaviours, he’s being as faithful to society as May
because he has chosen to stay and May marry. They recognized each other at the
end. Society changes on its own

May told Newland that the secretary is very common. Common-lower class, meant
vulgarity, he doesn’t belong to New York society and you can’t invite him because it
goes against the family.

*Vulgar  Common, la singularidad (to assert your singularity)

3.
He needs to be faithful to May when he discovers that she knew everything about
the affair.

Ellen was singular, May never revolted

Ellen didn’t do much for Newland; knew she was incapable of changing.

Powerpoint

Reality, face problems

[Olenska]"Oh, my dear--where is that country? Have you ever been there?" she
asked; and as he remained sullenly dumb she went on: "I know so many who've
tried to find it; and, believe me, they all got out by mistake at wayside stations: at
places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte Carlo--and it wasn't at all different from the
old world they'd left, but only rather smaller and dingier and more promiscuous."

Hypocrisy

“In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world,

where the real thing was never said or done or even
thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary
signs..”
Sacrifice

She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because
once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted."
Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyes remained
unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the window. At length he
said in a low voice: "She never asked me."

In this period men were unfaithful but Archer is different, his morality and family
is superior to the love that he feels (this is a paradox).

America has lost its true identity because of the industrialization, now there’s no
individual, the group prevails. America becomes sophisticated.
PLOT

The story is set in the upper-class New York in 1870s. It centers on an upper-class
couple impending marriage, and the introduction of a woman whose presence
threatens their happiness.

TEACHER’S NOTES

Silence  Deriving in paralysis which is a key word.

Psychological Realism  By saying less is to give the perfect framework to this

society where they cannot express themselves, only saying things that are proper.
The evolution of this society is to minimalism because they are forced to say less,
they are not free.
Freedom in the West (having common sense) has been lost, the land is conquered,
there is no more freedom, the industrialization wants you to work, you’re just an
instrument.

Newland is a gentleman so he has to behave properly, in New York society is

representing the group, his family (no individuality). Ellen has read books, what
she represents is intelectual aims. Newland likes her because she’s fond of books,
he can talk about them with her and he finds in her singularity. She has a house on
her own, a singular house, she dresses in red..that’s what he likes, she’s different.

May’s language is reduced (minimalism) because she’s proper. The less you speak
the most suitability for this high class. This is done because in society they only
care about propriety, not emotions. So, we have to think what really May thinks
because she only says what is proper. May is society in itself by saying one thing
and meaning another. The only important thing she cared about was the family (to
perpetuate this society), to fill the standards of the NY society; she’s not interested
in feelings, emotions, only behaving properly because as we have said before, in
the society emotions are not important.

May’s dignity is acting as a function in the family and the group, not as an
individual. That’s what she means when she said to Newland that she saw a
difference in him, that was the worst thing that she could say to him, “you’re not
meant to be different”  She’s reminding him that he has to fulfill a function. This
is the reality of society, what society cares for. La dignidad de la tradició n, de la
familia; and May was very convinced that she was right by behaving in this way.
Consequently, marriage is a duty. Dignity is not something personal, is to behave
properly.

The novel is deterministic, he cannot avoid belonging to this group, so we have a

conservative attitude, there’s no possibility of change because he wouldn’t be
happy in any way.

His duty is this dignity

So, can you change the way you are? Or are you oppressed to the society that
without it we couldn’t be happy? Can you be happy by choosing?

VIDEO

To what social group Edith belonged?

She had a mother who behaved properly, they had two houses but they had to sell
them because they didn’t have enough money to maintain them. They went to
Europe where she was not allowed to read fiction, only history because fiction may
have changed her life and that was not a proper way of behaving. Paradox because
she then became a writer of fiction.
She was not beautiful following the stereotypes. She fell in love with a boy who had
a lower background (but with money). The mother didn’t like him, she considered
him and his family vulgar. Meanwhile, the mother of the boy did whatever she
liked. She entertained visitors on Sundays (they had money).
In the end they break the engagement because her mother didn’t like him but then,
they got married and then, divorced. During this, she met Walter Berry, who was
everything Edith had dreamt of. They had a good time but he didn’t want to marry;
he was the only person to talk with, readings. Her intelectual expectations were
fulfilled with him; though we have this determinism, this intellectual love seemed
to not be fulfilled, the men she loved, Walter Berry and Morton Fullerton were
never truly attainable. He died.
Then, she married with Teddy Wharton, he was not intellectual, in fact he was very
easy-going. In the end they divorced. She moved to France where she wrote The
Age of Innocence after the World War.
The memories of the past prevented her to be happy.
NY  drinking tea and gossiping
We can see determinism in her behaviour.
She believed that you cannot share a house if you don’t communicate in a deeper
way (intellectually). Paralisys and the anecdotical way of living life  role. Is
marriage a role or communication?

Berry could be Newland, he was fond of books.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint
Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. The
necessary number of states ratified it by December 6, 1865. The 13th amendment to the United
States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
In 1863 President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring “all persons held as
slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion
against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Nonetheless, the
Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation. Lincoln recognized that the
Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to
guarantee the abolishment of slavery.
The 13th amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War before the Southern states had been
restored to the Union and should have easily passed the Congress. Although the Senate passed it in
April 1864, the House did not. At that point, Lincoln took an active role to ensure passage through
congress. He insisted that passage of the 13th amendment be added to the Republican Party
platform for the upcoming Presidential elections. His efforts met with success when the House
passed the bill in January 1865 with a vote of 119–56.
With the adoption of the 13th amendment, the United States found a final constitutional solution to
the issue of slavery. The 13th amendment, along with the 14th and 15th, is one of the trio of Civil
War amendments that greatly expanded the civil rights of Americans.