death ” (278).
Kate Chopin (198 – 9). Toth also observes that
7
Seyersted, in Kate Chopin
, states that the
“
The Going Away of Liza
”
was rejected
theory that Chopin loved her husband yet
twelve times before it was accepted for pub-
also felt “ emancipationist urges ” would
lication (200).
explain why her fi ction “ frequently opposes a
15 Chopin comments in an entry from May 22,
woman who stays home and one who strikes
1894, of a diary, reprinted in A Kate Chopin
out, and why she advocates no ‘ best way ’ to
Miscellany , ed. Seyersted and Toth , that when
live for a female ” (173).
asked by a friend, “ ‘ Would you not give any-
8
See Marks, Bicycles, Bangs, and Bloomers , for
thing to have [a nun ’ s] vocation and happy
satirical depictions of the New Woman in
life, ’ ” she responded, “ ‘ I would rather be that
American and British cartoons, poetry, and
dog, ’ ” pointing to one nearby (92).
editorials of the 1890s.
16
In “ The Search for Self in Kate Chopin ’ s
9
Several earlier critics dismiss the story;
Fiction
”
Patricia Hopkins Lattin similarly
Seyersted concurs with Daniel Rankin
’
s
notes that Adrienne has two identities, “ the
assessment of the story in 1932:
“
Only in
sophisticated, jaded woman of the world and
‘
The Maid of Saint Phillippe
’
…
did she
the ascetic identity she assumes two weeks of
turn to an historic event, and the result
the year when she goes to the convent ” (228),
was disastrous
” ( Kate Chopin
82). In book
-
contending that she is seeking a “ rebirth ” in
length studies of Chopin, both
Peggy
each visit.
Skaggs (57) and
Barbara Ewell
(80) fi nd 17
See Toth, Kate Chopin 373.
the story a weak anomaly among her work.
18
In “ Kate Chopin Thinks Back Through Her
However, Emily Toth has recently asserted
Mothers
”
Toth theorizes that this story is
its signifi cance as Chopin
’
s refl ection on
Chopin ’ s meditation on the life of her mater-
the life of her great - great - grandmother
nal grandmother, Mary Athena ï se Charleville
in “ Kate Chopin Thinks Back Through Her
Faris, who likewise “ had gone into marriage
Mothers. ”
naively and been wounded by it ” (18).
170
Charlotte Rich
19
See Chopin ’ s comments in a late essay, “ On
( Kate Chopin 207). Toth cites possible reasons
Certain Brisk, Bright Days ” (1899): “ ‘ Do you
for Chopin
’
s departure: preference not to
smoke cigarettes? ’ is a question which I con-
join a specifi c section; dislike of the emphasis
sider impertinent, and I think most women
on structure, organization, and committees;
will agree with me. Suppose I do smoke ciga-
or dislike of the emphasis on social uplift
rettes? Am I going to tell it out in meeting?
(209).
Suppose I don ’ t smoke cigarettes. Am I going
21
The use of opium was associated with the
to admit such a refl ection upon my artistic
1890s Decadent movement in the arts, as
integrity, and thereby bring upon myself the
were such New Woman authors as Anglo
-
contempt of the guild? ” (723).
Irish author George Egerton, as Elaine Show-
20
Toth notes that Chopin joined the Wednes-
alter notes in her introduction to Daughters of
day Club as a charter member in December
Decadence (x). Showalter asserts that Chopin ’ s
1890, but the club became increasingly
story, which she includes in this anthology,
regimented, and by the end of 1892, Chopin
“ describes an erotic hallucination brought on
“ had decided to be a loner, not a clubwoman ”
by smoking a yellow opium cigarette ” (xi).
References and Further Reading
Ardis , Ann . New Women, New Novels: Feminism and
Seyersted , Per , and Emily Toth , eds. A Kate Chopin
Early Modernism . New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers
Miscellany . Natchitoches, LA : Northwestern
University Press , 1990 .
State University Press , 1979 .
Chopin , Kate . The Complete Works of Kate Chopin .
Showalter , Elaine . “ Introduction . ” Daughters of
Ed. Per Seyersted. Baton Rouge : Louisiana State
Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin - de - Si è cle . New
University Press , 1969 , rpt. 1993.
Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press , 1993 .
Cunningham , Gail . The New Woman and the Skaggs , Peggy . Kate Chopin . New York : Twayne ,
Victorian Novel . New York : Harper & Row ,
1985 .
1978 .
Smith - Rosenberg ,
Carroll .
Disorderly Conduct:
Ewell , Barbara . Kate Chopin . New York : Ungar ,
Visions of Gender in Victorian America . New York :
1986 .
Knopf , 1985 .
Fernando , Lloyd . “ New Women ” in the Late Victorian
Thomas , Heather Kirk . “ ‘ What are the Prospects
Novel . University Park : Pennsylvania State Uni-
for the Book? ’ Rewriting a Woman ’ s Life . ” Kate
versity Press , 1977 .
Chopin Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou . Eds. Lynda
Lattin , Patricia Hopkins . “ The Search for Self in
S. Boren and Sara deSaussure Davis . Baton
Kate Chopin ’ s Fiction: Simple Versus Complex
Rouge : Louisiana State University Press , 1992 .
Fiction . ” Southern Studies 21 (Summer 1982 ):
36 – 57 .
222 – 35 .
Tichi , Cecelia . “ Women Writers and the New
Ledger , Sally . The New Woman: Fiction and Femi-
Woman . ” Columbia Literary History of the United
nism at the Fin de Si è cle . Manchester : Manchester
States . Gen. Ed. Emory Elliott . New York :
University Press , 1997 .
Columbia University Press , 1987 . 589 – 606 .
Marks , Patricia . Bicycles, Bangs and Bloomers: The
Toth , Emily . Kate Chopin: A Life of the Author of The
New Woman in the Popular Press . Lexington : Uni-
Awakening . New York : William Morrow , 1990 .
versity Press of Kentucky , 1990 .
— — — . “ Kate Chopin Thinks Back Through Her
Schneider , Dorothy , and Carl J. Schneider . Ameri-
Mothers: Three Stories by Chopin . ” Kate Chopin
&
nbsp; can Women in the Progressive Era, 1900
–
1920 .
Reconsidered: Beyond the Bayou . Eds. Lynda S.
New York : Facts on File , 1993 .
Boren and Sara deSaussure Davis . Baton Rouge :
Seyersted , Per . Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography .
Louisiana State University Press , 1992 . 15 – 25 .
Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press ,
Woloch , Nancy . Women and the American Experience .
1969 .
New York : Knopf , 1984 .
12
Frank Norris and Jack London
Jeanne Campbell Reesman
Frank Norris (1870 – 1902) and Jack London (1876 – 1916) were leading proponents
of “ naturalism, ” a French - infl uenced new school of American fi ction at the beginning
of the twentieth century, along with their contemporaries Stephen Crane and
Theodore Dreiser. American literary naturalism fl ourished between the 1890s and the
1920s. As a term in philosophy, art criticism, and literary criticism, “ naturalism ” has
a long history, but its meaning is still in debate. Is naturalism, as Norris believed, a
form of romanticism? (Norris, “ A Plea ” 75). Or is naturalism merely a branch of
realism – a “ heightened ” realism “ infused with pessimistic determinism, ” as Donald
Pizer describes it? ( Realism and Naturalism 11). In which competing and confl icting
ways does naturalism refer to nature? In its emphasis upon power, survival, and
biology, does it constitute materialistic determinism, as London thought? How does
its use of sensationalism refl ect its documentary function? As in their novels, the short
fi ction of Norris and London furnishes dramatic examples of engagement with these
questions.
Both É mile Zola and Hippolyte Taine, French originators of naturalism in mid -
nineteenth
-
century France, used the terms
realism
and
naturalism
as if they were
identical, as did Gustave Flaubert. Realism expanded in the nineteenth - century novels
of France, Russia, Britain, and the United States, attempting to offer an objective
view of everyday life that would constitute a new mimesis to replace the imaginative
subjectivity of the Romantics. The novel genre itself had developed in the preceding
two centuries out of the rising middle class, and the realistic novel became the stan-
dard of the genre. A detached point of view and everyday subjects seemed appropriate
to cultures increasingly inhabited by the bourgeois class, which venerated scientifi c
and social innovation and expected a literature to refl ect their more enlightened age.
Naturalism was no less a development of the middle class, but a different (and
poorer) middle class that included the voices of outspoken social critics such as Zola,
whose naturalism depicted the lives of the poor at the mercy of pitiless and illimitable
forces in biology and society, with themes of power and survival. In the preface to
172
Jeanne Campbell Reesman
Th é r è se Raquin (1868) , Zola compares the naturalist writer ’ s portrayal of his characters
to a surgeon dissecting a corpse, and elsewhere he classifi es literature as a social science.
Though far from an idealist, he did believe that the novelistic exposure of the real
conditions of survival in the world could help right political and economic wrongs.
With this aim his authorial descendants, Norris the “ muck - raker ” and London the
socialist, would heartily agree.
Naturalists employed a documentary, photographic use of detail in a way quite
different from the leisurely details of the realist novel, befi tting its different use of
data and its affi nities to journalism, sociology, and the new intellectual and social
challenges of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and, most of all, Charles Darwin and his
theories of natural selection and evolution. It is important to note the relationship of
naturalism to the new art of photography. But naturalism had its infl uences from the
arts, as well: one of Zola ’ s school - friends was Paul C é zanne, and through him, remarks
Lilian Furst, Zola was introduced to Impressionist painters who chose subjects from
contemporary reality set in the natural changing play of color and light ( Furst and
Skrine , Naturalism 5). The new world was able to see more than before, but the pow-
erful capitalist classes of the dawning century were not interested in seeing everything.
Naturalist writers arose to bring attention to those excluded realities.
Realistic plots work toward the restoration of order, often with a character ’ s proper
location in a class hierarchy; if minor crises lead to a major confrontation, it is fol-
lowed by resolution. In naturalistic novels the plot line may lead us fervently to desire
order or at least stasis, but instead of a climb upwards, naturalistic characters confront
crises and are destroyed. A realistic theme might suggest that good will ultimately
prevail, but in naturalistic novels, often in contradistinction to an author ’ s own politi-
cal ideals, humans are doomed by biological, social, and economic forces beyond their
control. Whereas the realist novels of the nineteenth century may attack social mores
and manners, they are rarely as critical of society as naturalist novels, which are inter-
ested in exposing the seamier sides of society ’ s underpinnings. At the turn of the
century, this included one ’ s genetic ancestry and one ’ s race or gender, thought to
predetermine a given individual ’ s traits, whether physical or mental health, sexuality,
criminality, or other tendencies, so that characters were seen as doomed from within
and without. With its clearer set of social doctrines, a more clearly restricted period
in literature (approximately 1890 – 1920), and location largely in just two countries,
France and the United States, naturalism sharply focused its critiques of the industrial
wealth of the bourgeoisie and articulated a sense of lower - class despair in the face of
economic and biological forces seen as too powerful to be reformed, as was the hope
of the liberal - minded in the nineteenth century and the dream of the New World.
Yet American “ naturalism ” was never really a school; that is, aside from reading each
other ’ s books, naturalists in the United States held forth no mutual doctrine, as did
naturalists in Europe.
One must remember that as tempting as it is to assign romanticism, realism, and
naturalism to different domains, one must be cautious. British Romantic poets
expressed belief in naturalness and spontaneity so as to give “ a powerful new impetus
Frank Norris and Jack London
173
to the study of nature ” by scientists, Furst notes ( Naturalism 3 – 4). Just as American
transcendentalists popularized the romantic conception of reality as organic, scientists
were led to observe and record related physical phenomena more carefully. And
realism, perhaps unwittingly, tended to open the doors to new realms of knowledge
diffi cult to assess by traditional Victorian standards.
Few naturalist heroes are heroic by traditional defi nition. In naturalist fi ction there
is usually a great distance between a protagonist an
d his creator, and in recognizing
that distance, readers are called upon both to experience alienation and to share the
larger view of the author, which may be merely to mourn or to observe the effects
upon the hapless protagonist, or even, as in Norris ’ s work, to see the entire situation
as tragicomedy. Pizer has insisted upon idealism as an ingredient of naturalist writing
to be located in the author ’ s, if not character ’ s, point of view: “ Whether in a Huck
Finn beleaguered by a socially corrupted conscience yet possessed of a good heart, or
a Carrie grasping for the material plenty of life yet reaching beyond as well, in these
and other works the late nineteenth - century American realists and naturalists contin-
ued to maintain the tension between actuality and hope which in its various forms
has characterized most Western literature since the Renaissance ” ( Pizer , Realism and
Naturalism xiii). Naturalism has been criticized as inconsistent because it degrades
humans as merely victims of internal and external forces beyond their control, while
at the same time identifying qualities that could elevate or lower individuals. For
Pizer the problem is solved by recognizing tragic themes in naturalist novels (Pizer,
Twentieth - Century x). He identifi es “ a compensating humanistic value … which affi rms
the signifi cance of the individual. ” Although the individual may be a cipher in an
amoral world, “ the imagination refuses to accept this formula as the total meaning of
life. ” Indeed, in his memorable defi nition: “ Naturalism refl ects an affi rmative ethical
conception of life, for it asserts the value of all human life by endowing the lowest
character with emotion and defeat and with moral ambiguity, no matter how poor or
ignoble he may seem. ” The “ vast skepticism ” of the naturalist hero, as Pizer calls it,
affi rms the “ worth of the skeptical or seeing temperament, of the character who con-
tinues to look for meaning in experience even though there probably is no meaning ”
( Pizer , Realism and Naturalism 11 – 12, 37). One can see this happening in Stephen
Crane ’ s “ The Open Boat, ” wherein the only saving value of the men ’ s struggle with
the sea is their realization of their dependence upon each other, their community.
The trick for the naturalist author, then, is to distance the naturalist protagonist
from the reader, like Zola ’ s “ corpse, ” but also to offer some sort of possible response
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 38