Emergence and Development
9
They also expanded the range of subject matter available to short story treatment by
introducing new forms and genres. As a short story writer, Hawthorne ’ s current repu-
tation rests almost entirely on the great historical tales of the New England Puritans
that he produced in the 1830s at the start of his long literary career, but these rep-
resent only a relatively small part of his work in short fi ction. The achievement of
these historical tales is, of course, enormous. At a time when the literary treatment
of American history was inclined largely to patriotic fervor, Hawthorne daringly
introduced stories of guilt, repression, cruelty, and injustice and detailed the psycho-
logical turmoil that ensued. His most famous story,
“
Young Goodman Brown
”
(1835), begins with a young man leaving his wife to go into the forest – basically the
same starting point as Irving ’ s “ Rip Van Winkle. ” Yet, by the time Brown wakes up
from the nightmare he has experienced in the moral wilderness that he has entered,
Hawthorne has taken us into a symbolic realm that challenges almost all the conven-
tional boundaries: we have been moved from the world of historical fact into a psy-
chological landscape fi lled with surrealistic imagery that compels us to question the
most fundamental issues of both ontology and epistemology. The most powerful of
the great historical tales – “ Roger Malvin ’ s Burial ” (1832), “ The Gentle Boy ” (1832),
“ My Kinsman, Major Molineaux ” (1832) – are deeply unsettling, because they insist
on raising troubling questions about both the American past and the human psyche.
Hawthorne ’ s fascination with how individuals perceive a complex reality – with how
perception can create reality – is also the focus of his short story masterpiece, “ The
Minister ’ s Black Veil ” (1836), and an important element in his fi nest novel, The Scarlet
Letter (1850).
Yet, in his own time, Hawthorne was best known and most widely praised as the
writer of genial sketches and gentle allegories. In fact, he was most often compared
to the British essayist, Charles Lamb, and sometimes even called the American Elia.
We have lost the taste for works like “ Little Annie ’ s Rambles ” (1835), “ A Rill from
the Town - Pump ” (1835), and “ Sights from a Steeple ” (1831), but the contemporary
reviews suggest that these works defi ned Hawthorne for much of his own audience.
In fact, he was a writer who experimented with a wide variety of forms and themes
throughout his career. He always maintained an interest in the fi ctional possibilities
of allegory and in the 1840s probably even considered creating a series of parables to
be called “ Allegories of the Heart. ” This allegorical impulse resulted in numerous
works, including his brilliant satire of his own times,
“
The Celestial Rail
-
road
”
(1843). In the 1840s, Hawthorne also helped to create the genre now known as science
fi ction. He produced stories about the end of the world, such as “ The New Adam and
Eve ” (1843) and “ Earth ’ s Holocaust ” (1844), and a number of tales focusing on sci-
entists who end up destroying those they love, most notably “ The Birth - mark ” (1843)
and
“
Rappaccini
’
s Daughter
”
(1844). These works refl ect the author
’
s distrust of
disembodied thought and his rejection of the nineteenth century ’ s commitment to
technology and belief in unlimited progress. His tales of scientists are often linked to
his study of artists, particularly in “ The Artist of the Beautiful ” (1844), but a focus
on the power and limitations of the artist in a materialistic world shapes his entire
10
Alfred Bendixen
career. Hawthorne was also one of the fi rst major American authors to devote himself
to the creation of stories expressly designed for children. The skillful refashioning of
Greek myths for children in A Wonder - Book for Girls and Boys (1851) and Tanglewood
Tales (1853) are signifi cant achievements in this mode. In fact, Hawthorne ’ s “ The
Golden Touch ” was responsible for the version of the King Midas story in which
Midas mistakenly turns his own daughter into gold; in earlier versions, the King ’ s
repentance stemmed solely from his inability to eat normal food. He also produced
a series of historical stories for children,
The Whole History of Grandfather
’ s Chair
(1820 – 41), that traced the key events of New England history up to the time of the
American Revolution.
The only writer who did as much to make the American romantic tale into a sig-
nifi cant literary achievement was Edgar Allan Poe, who began by writing satires and
hoaxes and ended up transforming the tale of terror into a serious literary form and
inventing the detective story. In his critical writings, Poe emphasized the importance
of a single effect to which every element of the short story must contribute. He also
continually affi rmed the artistic superiority of works that were long enough for full
development and short enough to be read in a single sitting, and was one of the very
few critical voices in the nineteenth century to argue that the tale was therefore supe-
rior to the novel. Poe was the master of a wide range of fi ctional forms. Although his
comic pieces rarely receive the same critical attention as his darker, more pessimistic
works, there is no better way to discover the conventions of the nineteenth - century
Gothic tale than his brilliant parody, “ How to Write a Blackwood ’ s Article ” (1838)
and its accompanying example, “ A Predicament ” (1838). He also created some of our
earliest stories of science fi ction with “ The Balloon - Hoax ” (1844) and “ The Facts in
the Case of M. Valdemar ” (1845). The diversity of Poe ’ s achievement is perhaps best
represented by his ability to both invent the detective story, which depends upon a
faith in analytic reasoning and the capacity of the rational mind to detect the perpe-
trators of crime and reestablish justice and order, and also become the great acknowl-
edged master of the horror tale, which seems to rely on opposing values, on a
fascination with the irrational and the aberrational, with cruelty and pain and suffer-
ing, and with bizarre acts of violent revenge. The best of the works that he called his
“ tales of ratiocination ” – “ The Murders in the Rue Morgue ” (1841), “ The Gold Bug ”
(1843), and “ The Purloined Letter ” (1845) – established most of the conventions on
which detective fi ction still rests, including the narrative strategies for presenting an
extraordinarily penetrating mind which is able to perceive and fi nally explain the
truth that lies hidden within a great mystery that puzzles everyone else.
If the detective stories seem to affi rm the power of human reason and an underlying
faith in justice, Poe ’ s horror tales often seem founded on acts of senseless violence
which almost always turn out to be
self - destructive, and on a very different view of
human nature. In “ The Black Cat ” (1843), the narrator blames his own actions on the
“ spirit of PERVERSENESS, ” which he insists is “ one of the primitive impulses of the
human heart ” and describes as “ an unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself – to
offer violence to its own nature – to do wrong for wrong ’ s sake ” (Poe, Tales 599). Of
Emergence and Development
11
course, we must remember that axe murderers do not make reliable narrators. Poe ’ s
mad narrators never understand their own actions or the underlying causes of their
strange compulsions, which usually include a need to verbally reenact their crimes by
narrating them. Ultimately, the source of terror in Poe ’ s greatest stories stems from
the inability of their narrators to understand the worlds they inhabit and the reasons
for their own actions. In these tales, it is the failure to understand the self that leads
to acts of mutilation that divide the physical body and shatter the spiritual nature,
or to characters being buried alive, which presents an almost perfect metaphor for the
psychological idea of repression. In some of these tales, perhaps most notably “ Ligeia ”
and “ The Black Cat, ” the inability of the male narrator to accept the reality of sexual-
ity and the female body seems to be the chief motivating factor. In almost all of Poe ’ s
major tales of horror, however, the single great metaphor is the divided self and the
over - arching theme points to the inability of an individual to come to terms with a
double or some fi gure that represents an aspect of the narrator ’ s own personality. In
“ The Fall of the House of Usher ” (1839), “ The Tell - Tale Heart ” (1843), and “ The
Cask of Amontillado ” (1846), the chief source of terror is ultimately the inability of
the self to understand itself.
Poe brought a level of craftsmanship and psychological insight to the horror tale
that exceeded anything that had been done before and most of what has been done
since. In addition to his frequent use of unreliable and sometimes mad narrators, he
brought a unity of tone, mood, and atmosphere to the development of American
fi ction. Although his critical writings emphasize the single effect to which everything
in a short work must lead, he also recognized that strong writing would have what
he (and his times) called “ suggestiveness, ” a broad term implying that great works of
art carry with them multiple layers of meanings that invite thought and analysis. In
short, his works lend themselves to symbolic interpretation on multiple levels. The
romantic tale, particularly as mastered by Hawthorne and Poe, heavily favors the use
of symbolic language, but has very little interest in the accurate rendition of normal
human speech; there is an artifi cial and sometimes heavily Latinate quality to both
the narrative language and the treatment of dialogue. At this point, it is important
to distinguish between the romantic tale and the realistic short story. Although some
writers and critics use the terms “ tale ” and “ story ” indiscriminately, those who dis-
tinguish between the two view the story as chiefl y concerned with the presentation
of character, usually within a realistic context that is established by a reasonably
accurate portrayal of a recognizable place in either the present or the recent past. In
contrast, the tale suggests a focus on action, adventure, and plot; a bold development
of larger than life characters who move through unusual or exotic landscapes that
often seem to be symbolic projections of some psychological state; and a setting that
usually shuns the here and now in favor of the distant past, foreign realms, natural
scenes of awe - inspiring danger, or some world outside of normal time and space. Sug-
gestions of the supernatural are often deeply interwoven into the basic texture of the
romantic tale. These points of shared values should not obscure the very real differ-
ences among authors of romantic fi ction; for instance, Hawthorne often indulges in
12
Alfred Bendixen
moralizing while Poe clearly rejects didacticism and Melville emphasizes a multiplic-
ity of possible interpretation that seems to completely redefi ne the genre and expand
the idea of moral interpretation.
Melville ’ s experiments with short fi ction did not attract much attention in his own
time, but twentieth - century scholars established him as one of our fi nest, most subtle
masters of short fi ction. Of his short works, the most romantic in tone and texture is
certainly the long story “ Benito Cereno ” (1856), with its portrayal of violent adventure
and unending mystery, its heightened contrast of characters appearing to represent
American innocence and European corruption, and its insistence on probing the issues
of slavery and racism from multiple perspectives. On the other hand, Melville ’ s most
studied story, “ Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street ” (1853), appears to be
moving towards a kind of realism in its critique of the deadening effects of meaning-
less labor in a commercial society, but this story demands to be read and reread on
multiple levels.
“
Bartleby
”
focuses on both its purported subject, a copyist who
engages in a passive - aggressive rejection of trivial and debasing work, and its very
unreliable narrator, an apparently genial man in fl ight from any confrontation with
the reality he has helped to create. Both narrator and protagonist are isolated individu-
als who are marked by a failure of vision in a narrative fi lled with symbolism empha-
sizing the blank walls, spiritual hunger, and fragmentation of this alienating world.
Like the best of Melville ’ s short fi ction, the story is complex, subtle, and even devious
– at times giving the impression that its author is engaged in constructing an elabo-
rate joke on a reading public incapable of appreciating real artistry. This devious
complexity is clearest in the stunning sexual comedy that underlies some of Melville ’ s
other short stories, perhaps most notably “ Cock a Doodle Doo! ” (1853), “ I and my
Chimney ” (1856), and “ The Apple - Tree Table ” (1856). In his best works, Melville
insists on asking us to view the world on multiple levels, suggesting to us that
the human experience is simultaneously a rich source of philosophical inquiry and a
dirty joke.
The romantic tale continued to attract talented adherents even in the late 1850s,
most notably Fitz - James O ’ Brien and Harriet Prescott Spofford. O ’ Brien ’ s best tales
remain surprisingly neglected by contemporary critics even though Jessica Amanda
Salmonson provided important new revelations in her introduction to her
1988
edition of his stories, most notably the fact that he was gay. Read through the lens
of queer theory, his fi nest stories take on new and intriguing dimensions. For example,
his famous ghost story, “ What Was It? ” (1859), is about the threat posed by an invis-
ible man in the bedroom. “ The Diamond Lens ” (1858), his best work of science fi ction,
focuses on a man unable to come to terms with sexuality,
his own desires, and his
own small perception of the world. His fi nest work of fi ction, “ The Lost Room ”
(1858), depicts a man who loses his place in the world, or more precisely, discovers
that his room has disappeared after he has been told by a strange being that he lives
in a “ queer ” house (Salmonson, I. 7). In short, O ’ Brien ’ s best stories are built on anxi-
eties and issues that would have a special resonance for homosexuals in a repressive
society.
Emergence and Development
13
Harriet Prescott Spofford brought a feminine and sometime feminist dimension to
the romantic tale with her best works of short fi ction. She fi rst gained attention with
the publication of “ In the Cellar ” (1859), a lavishly detailed story of Parisian intrigue
and one of our fi rst important detective stories by an American woman. “ Circum-
stance ” (1860), her tale of a pioneer woman who keeps a menacing panther at bay by
singing songs throughout a long night, drew immense attention and apparently even
gave Emily Dickinson nightmares. Her long and diffi cult masterpiece, “ The Amber
Gods ” (1860), offers one of the most remarkable and luxuriantly poetic monologues
in American fi ction and features a heroine whose self - indulgence seems to transcend
even death. Her fi nest work of short fi ction is probably “ Her Story ” (1872), which
provides a treatment of madness and marriage that prefi gures Gilman ’ s “ The Yellow
Wallpaper ” (1891). During a long and prolifi c writing career that lasted almost until
her death in 1921, Spofford found herself forced to surrender to the demands of the
marketplace and shifted to realistic fi ction, where she occasionally produced able work
but never matched the distinction of her best romantic tales. Her early work represents
the fi nal fl ourish of New England romanticism and provides the most signifi cant and
most daring treatment of the devices of the romantic tale by an American woman
writer.
Important new markets for American short stories appeared in the middle of the
nineteenth century, most notably the advent in 1857 of the Atlantic Monthly , which
included three stories in each of its early issues, attracted signifi cant talent, and paid
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 4