A Companion to the American Short Story

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A Companion to the American Short Story Page 30

by Alfred Bendixen


  witchcraft explanation is ultimately as unsatisfying as the original indeterminate

  ending that refuses to explain the events, which is perhaps Wharton ’ s point. “ All

  Souls ” illustrates the factors that Wharton considered the necessary conditions for the

  ghost story: an absence of “ the wireless and the cinema ” that might cause the “ ghost

  instinct ” ( Ghost Stories 8) to atrophy; a presumably English - descended pair of charac-

  ters, for ghosts appear to those who hear the “ hoarse music of the northern Urwald ”

  (8) and not the “ Latin ” peoples who see ghosts; and “ two conditions abhorrent to the

  modern mind: silence and continuity ” (9), in which the sparse and ambiguous super-

  natural events can multiply and do their work of “ send[ing] a cold shiver down one ’ s

  spine ” (11). For Wharton, as for the modernists, less is more, ambiguity is more potent

  than an accumulation of details, and an “ economy of material ” produces the greatest

  effect, principles nowhere more evident than in her ghost stories.

  Considered as a whole, Edith Wharton ’ s short stories constitute a body of work as

  varied and complex as that of her novels. Although a few of the stories, such as “ Per-

  manent Wave ” or “ The Introducers, ” seem more like pat “ magazine stories ” than

  thorough explorations of character or theme, most have a subtlety of approach and a

  quality of insight that place them among her best work. In addition, some stories are

  sketches for or companion pieces to the novels, as “ Autre Temps … ” anticipates the

  situation in The Mother ’ s Recompense , “ The Lamp of Psyche ” provides an early version

  of characters in The Old Maid , and “ Souls Belated ” elaborates on a concept later alluded

  to in The Age of Innocence. Although she did not write linked stories in the manner of

  Sarah Orne Jewett ’ s Dunnet Landing stories or Margaret Deland ’ s tales of Old Chester,

  Edith

  Wharton

  131

  Wharton returned several times to the same themes and situations, among them

  fathers and daughters, mothers and sons ( “ The Pelican, ” “ Her Son ” ), artistic and intel-

  lectual integrity, the inescapability of the past, which appears in ghost stories like

  “ Pomegranate Seed ” as well as in “ Confession, ” and the struggle of primitive emotions

  with the civilized veneer necessary to modern life. If the stories meet Wharton ’ s cri-

  terion of having a subject that “ contain[s] in itself something that sheds a light on

  our moral experience ” ( The Writing 24), through her treatment of the material, they

  also capture something of the tempo of modern life, with its uncanny, disorienting,

  and sometimes violent dislocations of human beings from their surroundings, from

  their comforting conceptions of themselves, and from each other.

  Notes

  1

  Apparently omitting “ Les Metteurs en Sc è ne, ”

  2

  For Wharton ’ s correspondence with her pub-

  the “ slightly improved French version ” of “ The

  lishers about The Writing of Fiction , see Freder-

  Introducers ” (White 77), Barbara White puts

  ick Wegener, “ Edith Wharton and the Diffi cult

  Wharton

  ’

  s

  total number of short stories at

  Writing of

  The Writing of Fiction ” ( Modern

  eighty -

  fi ve: twenty

  -

  four in the early period,

  Language Studies 25.2 [1995]: 60 – 79).

  thirty - fi ve in the middle period, and twenty -

  3

  “ The Fullness of Life ” in The Collected Short

  six in the late period (xv – xvi). In his Collected

  Stories of Edith Wharton

  I. 12

  –

  20, at p. 14.

  Short Stories of Edith Wharton , R. W. B. Lewis

  Subsequent references are to this two - volume

  apparently includes “ Les Metteurs en Sc è ne ” in

  edition and will be cited in the text.

  giving the total number as eighty

  -

  six (vii). 4

  Blake Nevius uses this term in describing

  Neither counts “ Bunner Sisters, ” a long short

  Ethan Frome in Edith Wharton, a Study of Her

  story or novella written in the 1890s but fi rst

  Fiction

  (Berkeley: University of California

  published in Xingu (1916).

  Press, 1953), 126.

  References and Further Reading

  Balestra , Gianfranca . “ ‘ For the Use of the Maga-

  Dyman , Jenni . Lurking Feminism: The Ghost

  zine Morons ’ : Edith Wharton Rewrites the Tale

  Stories of Edith Wharton . New York : Peter Lang ,

  of the Fantastic . ” Studies in Short Fiction 33.1

  1996 .

  ( 1996 ): 13 – 24 .

  Fedorko , Kathy A . Gender and the Gothic in the

  Beer , Janet . Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, and Char-

  Fiction of Edith Wharton . Tuscaloosa : University

  lotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction . New

  of Alabama Press , 1995 .

  York : St. Martin ’ s Press , 1997 .

  Hemingway , Ernest . Death in the Afternoon . New

  Beer , Janet , and Avril Horner . “ ‘ This Isn ’ t Exactly

  York : Scribner , 1960 .

  a Ghost Story

  ’

  : Edith Wharton and Parodic Jacobsen , Karen J . “ Economic Hauntings: Wealth

  Gothic . ” Journal of American Studies 37 ( 2003 ):

  and Class in Edith Wharton ’ s Ghost Stories . ”

  269 – 85 .

  College Literature 35.1 ( 2008 ): 100 – 27 .

  Bendixen , Alfred . Haunted Women: The Best Super-

  James , Henry . “ The New Novel . ” Henry James: Lit-

  natural Tales by American Women Writers . New

  erary Criticism. 1914 . Ed. Leon Edel . New York :

  York : Ungar , 1985 .

  Literary Classics of the United States

  ,

  1984

  .

  Bowlby , Rachel . “ ‘ I Had Barbara ’ : Women ’ s Ties

  124 – 59 .

  and Wharton ’ s “ Roman Fever. ’ ” differences 17.3

  McDowell , Margaret B . Edith Wharton . Boston :

  ( 2006 ): 37 – 51 .

  Twayne , 1990 .

  132

  Donna Campbell

  Nettels , Elsa . “ Gender and First - Person Narration

  Wharton , Edith . A Backward Glance: Novellas and

  in Edith Wharton ’ s Short Fiction . ” Edith

  Other Writings . Ed. Cynthia Griffi n Wolff . New

  Wharton: New Critical Essays . Eds. Alfred

  York

  :

  Literary Classics of the United States

  ,

  Bendixen and Annette Zilversmit . Garland

  1990 . 767 – 1068 .

  Reference Library of the Humanities, 914. New

  — — — . The Age of Innocence: Authoritative Text,

  York : Garland , 1992 . 245 – 60 .

  Background and Contexts, Sources, Criticism . Ed.

  Petry , Alice Hall . “ A Twist of Crimson Silk: Edith

  Candace Waid . New York : W. W. Norton , 2003 .

  Wharton ’ s ‘ Roman Fever. ’ ” Studies in Short — — — . The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton .

  Fiction 24.2 ( 1987 ): 163 �
�� 6 .

  Ed. R. W. B. Lewis . 2 vols. New York : Scribner ,

  Totten , Gary . “ Critical Reception and Cultural

  1968 .

  Capital: Edith Wharton as a Short Story Writer . ”

  — — — . The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton . New

  Pedagogy 8.1 ( 2008 ): 115 – 33 .

  York : Simon & Schuster , 1997 .

  Vita - Finzi , Penelope . Edith Wharton and the — — — . The Letters of Edith Wharton . Eds. R. W.

  Art of Fiction . New York : St. Martin ’ s Press ,

  B. Lewis and Nancy Lewis . New York : Collier

  1990 .

  Books , 1989 .

  Wegener , Frederick . “ Charlotte Perkins Gilman,

  — — — . The Writing of Fiction . 1st Touchstone

  Edith Wharton, and the Divided Heritage of

  edn. New York : Simon & Schuster , 1997 .

  American Literary Feminism . ” The Mixed Legacy

  White , Barbara A . Edith Wharton: A Study of the

  of Charlotte Perkins Gilman . Eds. Catherine J.

  Short Fiction . Twayne ’ s Studies in Short Fiction,

  Golden and Joanna Schneider Zangrando .

  30. New York : Twayne , 1991 .

  Newark

  :

  University of Delaware Press

  – Zilversmit , Annette . “ ‘ All Souls ’ : Wharton ’ s Last

  Associated University Press , 2000 . 135 – 59 .

  Haunted House and Future Directions for Criti-

  — — — . Edith Wharton: The Uncollected Critical

  cism . ” Edith Wharton: New Critical Essays . Eds.

  Writings . Princeton : Princeton University Press ,

  Alfred Bendixen and Annette Zilversmit . New

  1996 .

  York : Garland , 1992 . 315 – 29 .

  Part II

  The Transition into

  the New Century

  10

  The Short Stories of Stephen Crane

  Paul Sorrentino

  Though Stephen Crane is best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage

  (1895), he was a prolifi c writer who wrote three novels, half of another, three novel-

  las, two collections of poetry, and more than 100 short stories and sketches within

  about ten years. Arguably the most important American writer during the 1890s,

  he experimented with various narrative techniques and created a truly distinctive

  style marked by irony, impressionistic responses to reality, and characters with

  limited perspectives, their “ own little cylinder of vision ” ( Tales, Sketches, and Reports

  683), 1 through which to interpret reality. Whether he was writing about the impact

  of immigration and urbanization on New York City, the disappearance of the fron-

  tier in the West, confl ict during recent or imaginary wars, or the absurdity of life

  – whether in a city, on the battlefi eld, or in the wilderness on land or at sea – Crane ’ s

  short stories refl ect major forces that transformed American culture in the last part

  of the nineteenth century.

  Part of his attraction to writing short stories was fi nancial. Constantly in debt, he

  received payment for a story much more quickly than he did for a novel, and the

  increasing number of magazines in the 1890s created a steady market for stories. He

  had a good sense of what was marketable. For example, he wanted to publish “ An

  Ominous Baby ” during the economic depression of 1893 because “ the present time

  – during these labor troubles – is the best possible time to dispose of it ” (Wertheim

  and Sorrentino, Correspondence I. 56; subsequent references to this edition are cited as

  Correspondence ), and he wrote “ A Grey Sleeve ” to capitalize on the popularity of sen-

  timental war stories. As Willa Cather recalled after meeting Crane in 1895, “ [h]e

  gave me to understand that he led a double literary life; writing in the fi rst place the

  matter that pleased himself, and doing it very slowly; in the second place, any sort

  of stuff that would sell ” (Cather 15). 2

  Deciding what to include in a discussion of his stories is diffi cult, however, because

  he used the terms tale , sketch , and short story interchangeably. A “ sketch ” is typically

  a brief composition focusing on a single scene or incident with little, if any,

  136

  Paul Sorrentino

  development of character or plot; like an artist ’ s sketch, it can be a rough draft for a

  more fi nished product. A “ tale ” is a short narrative with simple development, but

  both terms have been used loosely, as in the titles of Dickens ’ s elaborate novel, A Tale

  of Two Cities , or Washington Irving ’ s collection of essays and tales, The Sketch Book .

  Similarly, when writing about New York City in 1894, Crane mentioned to Hamlin

  Garland that he had “ fi fteen short stories in my head and out of it ” that could “ make

  a book ” ( Correspondence I. 65); but two years later in a letter to his brother William,

  he announced the proposed title of the book as “ ‘ Midnight Sketches ’ ” and described

  its contents as “ stories, ” “ short things, ” and “ some fi fteen or twenty short sketches of

  New York street life and so on ” (I. 265, 266). 3 Crane ’ s looseness in terminology was

  not simply carelessness, for he blurred the traditional distinction between the factual

  reporting of journalism and the imaginative recreation of reality in fi ction. Though

  he worked as a journalist, he was, as Amy Lowell observed, “ the last man in this world

  who should have attempted newspaper writing

  ”

  (Lowell xx), for he questioned a

  writer ’ s ability simply to report objectively. Assigned to cover a newsworthy incident,

  he had little interest in reporting facts and preferred to record impressionistically his

  response to them. Although Crane professed “ that the most artistic and the most

  enduring literature was that which refl ected life accurately ” ( Correspondence I. 230), his

  reliance on disjointed plots, shifting perspectives, and limited points of view implies

  epistemological uncertainty and the existence of multiple realities. 4 The typical length

  of a tale, sketch, or short story made these literary forms attractive to a writer for

  whom brief glimpses of life refl ected a philosophical perception of reality as frag-

  mented, disconnected, and ephemeral. Even in his longer work – e.g., The Red Badge

  of Courage , Maggie: A Girl of the Streets , or “ The Monster ” (1898) – short chapters

  function as fl ashing glimpses of an ever - changing reality. 5

  His earliest known short story, written when he was 13 or 14, is “ Uncle Jake and

  the Bell - Handle, ” a slight piece about na ï ve country folk who come to the city to sell

  turnips and buy farm supplies. Its focus on irony, self - deception, and appearance vs.

  reality foreshadows distinctive traits in Crane ’ s major work. Crane ’ s fi rst important

  venture into prose fi ction grew out of camping trips near Port Jervis in Sullivan

  County, New York, that he and friends took in summer 1891. With titles such as

  “ A Ghoul ’ s Accountant ” and “ An Explosion of Seven Babies, ” the Sullivan County

  stories (1892) are at times surrealistic and often rely on slapstick, tall tales, or the

  macabre for effect. The stories focus primarily on the “ little man, ” who travels around

  the countryside vainly making pompous proclamations and assaulting n
ormal occur-

  rences of nature that he misreads as being variously animistic, hostile, or tranquil. In

  “ Four Men in a Cave ” he explores a cave “ because its black mouth gaped at him, ”

  when in reality the threatening “ mouth ” is merely “ a little tilted hole ” ( Prose and

  Poetry 489); in “ The Mesmeric Mountain, ” he thinks he must conquer a mountain

  with glaring eyes and “ red wrath ” (515) that is supposedly chasing him, but in reality

  it is merely a mountain; and in “ The Black Dog: A Night of Spectral Terror, ” he

  confronts the “ sperrit ” (502) that howls when someone is near death, though the spirit

  is only a hungry, mangy dog that smells food cooking. Throughout, the little man is

  Stephen

  Crane

  137

  a blustering, egotistical character whose self

  -

  righteous poses belie his vanity and

  whose puffed - up ego repeatedly gets defl ated.

  Crane characterized the Sullivan County pieces as “ little grotesque tales of the

  woods which I wrote when I was clever ” ( Correspondence I. 111), but he soon “ renounced

  the clever school in literature ” in order to develop a more truthful “ little creed of art ”

  that “ was identical with the one of Howells and Garland ” (I. 63). Though minor,

  these fi ctional pieces typify Crane ’ s later treatment of irony, nature, and humanity.

  One need merely think of Henry Fleming ’ s arrogance in The Red Badge of Courage , the

  harrowing experience of four men struggling to survive in a hostile universe in “ The

  Open Boat, ” or the irony that exists in practically all of his fi ction, to realize that

  Crane was developing his major themes in these stories. 6 Of particular note, however,

  is Crane ’ s concern with what will become a hallmark of his writing: a blurring of

  lines between fact and fi ction as he incorporated fact, folklore, and legend into his

  narrative. In “ Not Much of a Hero, ” for example, he juxtaposes three contradictory

  interpretations of a famous Indian fi ghter ’ s life in order to raise questions about the

  nature of biographical evidence; and in “ Sullivan County Bears, ” he concludes that

  “ it is diffi cult to reconcile the bear of fi ction with the bear of reality ” ( Tales, Sketches,

  and Reports 219).. In “ The Way in Sullivan County: A Study in the Evolution of the

  Hunting Yarn, ” Crane consciously draws attention to himself as an artist and as an

 

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