ancient “ fl yting, ” that escalating verbal confl ict between two heroes (backwoods or
otherwise) that often leads to a frontier fi ght, complete with half - horse, half - alligator
eye - gouging and other elements of Southwestern fun. In classic Twain fashion the
rhetoric keeps escalating on each side. The form is in place. Important differences also
appear, however, and the “ action ” of the story takes the comedy in another direction.
Instead of challenging each other, both parties are seeking to cooperate and resolve
the differences that disrupt communication. It might be that Scotty is a disrupter and
vulgarian, but he is not attacking authority, and the parson, laboring under his own
language burden, does not take it so. No one has to back down or fi ght. The language
is interpretative, not boastful, and, if anything, is deferential. Finally, the colorful
backwoods fi gure successfully breaks through the barriers and is welcomed into the
formal religious authority with his frontier characteristics intact and welcome . Twain has
created an elastic world that is neither static nor hostile and has populated it with
men of good will who are still uniquely regional or representative of differing social
castes. The comedy is intellectual rather than physical, although the status of the
corpse is a physical complexity. Twain is writing more in a Northeastern mode, but
with Southwestern materials, describing a Western experience in language that is
vulgar and dialectal, representing both region and class differences.
Twain has rounded up the strengths of all the conventions and brought them to a
higher form. These stories have permanence; they deal in universals; their metaphors
for democracy and greed are elaborated through local characters and language, yet
they represent the broadest lines of human experience … and they are funny. It is
hard to imagine a higher fusion of elements than Twain has accomplished in these
stories and in a handful of others, but Twain may achieve it in the character of “ Aunt
Rachel, ” the fi ctional persona playing against “ Misto ’ C ” in “ A True Story, ” one of a
handful of outstanding American short stories encompassing Hawthorne ’ s “ Young
Goodman Brown, ” Poe ’ s “ The Fall of the House of Usher, ” Melville ’ s “ Billy Budd, ”
Irving ’ s “ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, ” and Thorpe ’ s “ The Big Bear of Arkansas, ”
and “ The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. ”
“ A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It ” belongs in the top rank
of stories written in a uniquely American voice – or any voice, for that matter. The
narrator of the frame story appears only in a couple of lines, but they are crucial in
making an American social statement. “ Misto ’ C ” says he thought the storyteller of
the inside story had never experienced grief. “ Aunt Rachel, ” the colored servant, based
on the real servant of the Cranes at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York, Mary Ann
Cord, reveals that she was “ bawn down ‘ mongst de slaves ” and responds to the sup-
posedly off - hand remark with her story, enriched by her dialect and her personal
Mark
Twain
89
identifying phrase, “ I wa ’ n ’ t bawn in de mash to be fool ’ by trash! I ’ s one o ’ de ole
Blue Hen ’ s Chickens, I is. ” Twain worked hard on the dialect, and the important
phrase triggers the climax of the interior story, so its employment is powerful. Aunt
Rachel unwinds her tale of slave abuse and Civil War loss: her husband and seven
children are sold away from her. She will only see one of her children, Henry, again.
The “ Blue Hen ’ s Chickens ” phrase is comic linguistic differentiation of style and local
personality, which also represents a majestic philosophical position in the story
’
s
climax, for her son Henry, a grown man, recognizes her, bringing her the most
supreme moment of joy in her life. She concludes, “ Oh, no, Misto C — , I hain ’ t had
no trouble. An no joy! ” The revelation of character fulfi lls every defi nition of greatness
at all levels, from Miss Mitford ’ s regard for incident and unique language and setting
to our own recognition of heroic character displayed in the American historical
context. Twain revealed to his friend William Dean Howells, who published the story
in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly magazine, that he had reordered the story and
altered many dialectal variants. Twain told Howells that the story was a little out of
his line, but Howells responded that he would gladly publish many more like it. The
American comic story had reached its fi nest and most characteristic expression.
Although Twain represents the high - water mark of the comic short story tradition,
other writers made major contributions in their own styles, and the writing goes on.
William Faulkner proved adept at modernizing the Southwestern tradition. The wits
at the Algonquin “ Round Table ” formed a coterie producing humor in a unique New
Yorker
style that bears its own special cachet. Woody Allen and Kurt Vonnegut
immediately come to mind as contemporary practitioners. The local color movement
of the 1870 – 90 period is largely composed of stories conforming to this tradition.
The opinion of many analysts seems to be that the present time is one where mechani-
cal media create homogeneity. For a tradition with such clear roots in unique local
traits, so clearly identifi ed by both foreign and native critics in language, setting, and
action, the American comic short story might seem to have come to its highest point
with Mark Twain ’ s “ A True Story. ” The stories of Garrison Keillor, however, suggest
that reports of the death of the tradition may be greatly exaggerated.
References and Further Reading
Blair , Walter. Native American Humor . New York :
1890, 1891 – 1910 . 2 vols. Ed. Louis J. Budd .
Chandler/Harper & Row , 1960 .
New York : Library of America , 1992 .
Branch , Edgar M. “ ‘ My Voice is Still for Setchell ’ :
Cohen , Hennig , and William Dillingham , eds. The
A Background Study of ‘ Jim Smiley and His
Humor of the Old Southwest, Third Edition . Athens :
Jumping Frog. ’ ” Rpt. from PMLA in Sloane,
University of Georgia Press , 1994 .
ed. Mark Twain ’ s Humor , 3 – 29 .
Haliburton , Thomas Chandler , ed. Traits of Ameri-
Burton , William E. The Cyclopedia of Wit and
can Humour/ by Native Authors . London : Hurst &
Humor . 1858. New York : D. Appleton , 1875 .
Blackett , 1852 .
Clemens , Samuel L. [Mark Twain]. Mark Twain/
Howells , William Dean. My Mark Twain . New
Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays/1852 –
York : Harper , 1910 .
90
David E. E. Sloane
Mitford , Mary Russell , ed. Stories of American Life;
— — — . The Literary Humor of the Urban Northeast,
by American Writers
. 3 vols.
London
:
Henry
1830 – 1890 . Baton Rouge : Louisiana State
Colburn & Richard Bently , 1830 .
Universit
y Press
,
1982
. (Cited in the text as
Neal , Joseph C. Charcoal Sketches; or, Scenes in the
LHUNE .)
Metropolus . Philadelphia : E. L. Carey & A. Hart ,
— — — . Mark Twain ’ s Humor: Critical Essays . New
1838 .
York : Garland , 1993 . (Cited in the text as MTH .)
Sloane , David E. E. American Humor Magazines Smith , Henry Nash . Mark Twain: The Development
and Comic Periodicals . Westport, CT : Greenwood
of a Writer . Cambridge, MA : Harvard Univer-
Press , 1987 .
sity Press , 1962 .
7
New England Local - Color
Literature: A Colonial Formation
Josephine Donovan
On April 3, 1834, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 – 96) published “ A New England
Sketch ” in Western Monthly , thus inaugurating the New England – indeed, the Ameri-
can – local - color tradition. The story was later retitled “ Uncle Tim ” in Stowe ’ s pioneer-
ing local - color collection, The Mayfl ower; Or, Sketches of Scenes and Characters among the
Descendants of the Pilgrims (1834). The story, conveniently, presents a paradigm of the
classic local - color work, which, by defi nition, is characterized by its realistic focus upon
a particular geographical locale, its native customs, its physical and cultural environ-
ment, and its regional dialect. As in much local - color fi ction, Stowe ’ s story portrays
the local region positively, set in counterposition against threatening infl uences of
modernity. The clash between the older vernacular culture and the modern is repre-
sented in this story by a confl ict between Uncle Lot Griswold, who speaks in dialect
and exhibits extensive knowledge of local customs and ways – m ē tis – and, on the other
hand, a young educated “ modern ” fi gure James Benton, who speaks in standard English
and is headed for college, a formative institution of modernity. As James is courting
Uncle Lot ’ s daughter, he has to overcome the older man ’ s skepticism about his cocky
confi dence and claims to authority. In the process, however, it is James who comes to
appreciate the wisdom of the native, “ who had the strong - grained practical sense, the
calculating worldly wisdom of his class of people in New England ” (Stowe 36).
In addition to The Mayfl ower , Stowe, who is best known for Uncle Tom ’ s Cabin
(1852), published several local - color novels, most notably The Minister ’ s Wooing (1859),
The Pearl of Orr ’ s Island (1862), and Oldtown Folks (1869). Her successors in the New
England local - color school included Rose Terry Cooke (1827 – 92), whose stories, like
Stowe ’ s, are set principally in Connecticut; Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 – 1909), a Maine
writer considered the greatest of the local colorists; and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
(1852 – 1930), whose works are set in Vermont and Massachusetts. Also important
were Annie Trumbull Slosson (1838 – 1926), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward (1844 –
1911), Rowland Robinson (1833 – 1900), Alice Brown (1857 – 1948), and Celia Thaxter
(1835 – 94), though the last was primarily a poet and essay writer.
92
Josephine Donovan
Probably the best of the local - color stories are to be found in Cooke ’ s Somebody ’ s
Neighbors (1881) and Huckleberries Gathered from New England Hills (1891); Freeman ’ s
A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887) , and A New England Nun and Other Stories
(1891) ; and Sarah Orne Jewett ’ s Deephaven (1877), The Country of the Pointed Firs
(1896), and several of her story collections, including Old Friends and New (1879),
Country By - Ways (1881), and A White Heron and Other Stories (1886).
The New England local - color school produced several stories that may indeed be
considered masterpieces of the genre, such as Cooke ’ s “ Alcedama Sparks; Or, Old and
New ” (1859), “ Miss Lucinda ” (1861), “ Freedom Wheeler ’ s Controversy with Provi-
dence ” (1877), “ Mrs. Flint ’ s Married Experience ” (1880), “ Clary ’ s Trial ” (1880),
“ Some Account of Thomas Tucker ” (1882), and “ How Celia Changed Her Mind ”
(1891); Freeman ’ s “ A Wayfaring Couple ” (1885), “ A New England Nun ” (1887),
“ Sister Liddy ” (1891), “ Christmas Jenny ” (1891), “ A Poetess ” (1891), and “ Old
Woman Magoun ” (1905). In addition to The Country of the Pointed Firs , which Willa
Cather designated one of three American works destined for immortality (the others
being A Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn ), Jewett ’ s master stories include “ A White
Heron ” (1886) – probably the most famous of the American local - color stories – “ The
Courting of Sister Wisby ” (1887), “ Miss Tempy ’ s Watchers ” (1888), “ The Flight of
Betsey Lane ” (1893), “ The Only Rose ” (1894), “ Martha ’ s Lady ” (1897), and “ The
Foreigner ” (1900).
The heyday of the local
-
color movement was the latter half of the nineteenth
century, a period during which Jackson Lears notes the United States underwent a
“ second industrial revolution ” (in No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transforma-
tion of American Culture, 1880 – 1920 [1981] ), entailing the rise of “ organized corporate
capitalism ” and a concomitant “ rationalization of economic life, ” and the imposition
of Enlightenment modes of “ technical ‘ rationality ’ ” on much that had been unregu-
lated theretofore. “ The process of rationalization ” ushered in by modernity “ did more
than transform the structure of economic life, ” Lears asserts, “ it also affected the
structure of thought and feeling ” (Lears 9 – 10). It was this ideological colonization
that the local colorists wrote against and/or in negotiation with, often affi rming
instead the value of non - standardized, idiosyncratic, local tradition.
Sarah Orne Jewett ’ s story “ The Flight of Betsey Lane ” (1893), an acknowledged
locus classicus of her work, encapsulates the confl ict between the modern and the pre-
modern in nearly allegorical form. It is set at the time of the 1876 Centennial (of the
Declaration of Independence) Exposition in Philadelphia, which showcased the latest
technological innovations, signifying the ascendancy of capitalist modernity and the
ideological colonizations it imposed upon premodern rural life - worlds. The epony-
mous protagonist is an elderly woman who lives in a “ poor - house ” in rural New
England. She conceives a desire to visit the Centennial and, thanks to a fi nancial
windfall, is able to make what is in effect a pilgrimage to the exposition. Betsey is
enlightened and excited by the new inventions she sees there, but the author also
points up the urban anomie that has accompanied modernity by remarking how an
animated Betsey stood out against the “ indifferent, stupid crowd that drifted along
New England Local-Color Literature
93
… seeing … nothing ” (Jewett, Pointed Firs 188). In the end, Betsey returns to her
rural community – where “ people knew each other well ” (183) – to live out her life
with her friends. The story affi rms, therefore, the virtues of rural Gemeinschaft even
while acknowledg
ing the positive aspects of modernity, in particular, the liberties it
affords women, for, in making the trip by herself Betsey is, in effect, rehearsing her
own “ declaration of independence. ”
Local - color literature emerged in Ireland – then a British colony – in the early
1800s as a colonial literature, Maria Edgeworth ’ s Castle Rackrent being acknowledged
as the founding work in the genre. Like other colonial literatures, local - color literature
“ emerged … out of the experience of colonization and asserted [itself] by foreground-
ing the tension with the colonial power, and emphasizing … differences from the
assumptions of the imperial center ” (Ashcroft et al. 2). More often than not, coloniza-
tion of non - Western countries by Western powers entailed – indeed was ideologically
justifi ed by – the imposition of modernity upon colonized natives (the “ white man ’ s
burden ” ). Most of the native cultures in Africa and Asia seized and colonized by the
imperial Western powers in the nineteenth century were premodern, oral cultures
deemed by the colonizers to be inferior to Western modes of modernity. Similarly,
in the construction of modern nation - states, regions within states were culturally
colonized, that is, held up as inferior to externally imposed cultural standards of
modernity, to which regional natives were urged instead to conform.
With the imperial power representing and enforcing modernity, the indigenous
author, writing from the standpoint of the colonized, Edward Said notes, often
expressed a “ negative apprehension … of ‘ civilized ’ modernity, ” celebrating instead
premodern traditions (Said 81). Such was the case with regionalist writers within
states, the local colorists; schooled in the perspectives of modernity by virtue of educa-
tion or class background, they were also knowledgeable about native local culture,
which as a rule they affi rmed in opposition to modernity. In their case the opposition
was more cultural than overtly political in nature, as the bearers of modernity to US
regions, for example, were not (except in the case of the South) conquering armies
but rather the ideological instruments of the modern nation - state in alliance with
capitalist industrialism. Local - color writers thus evince the “ double vision ” that Bill
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 21