William Dean Howells' Editha
William Dean Howells was a conservative author who kept himself hidden from his writings. Unlike Mark Twain, whom he met in 1869, Howells was less energetic and concealed his emotions more. I believe his love for writing probably emerged from his father's side; William Cooper also had some of his work published starting in 1852. Growing up in Ohio and working at printer's shops and local newspapers, Howells worked as an editor and critic for many magazines. He easily recognized other rising writers and their talents. For example, he helped Mark Twain achieve success he already had experienced himself. Although good friends, they had opposite views in their writings. Twain was more enthusiastic, wilder, and energetic, while Howells kept to himself and expressed less. However, they shared a few of the same early experiences: printing shops and newspaper jobs, and moves to the East. Though poor and big with seven siblings, Howells's family was close and he was strongly affected by his father's championing of reform movements and of his own literary readings. As a novelist, his writings gave attention to details of everyday lives of ordinary people. It rejected romanticized plots and adventure to focus on character of contemporary American life. He helped shape American literature to what it was in 1900 by his commitment, earnestness, and ironic touch he brought to the audience in his writings. He also paid attention to rising female authors such as Emily Dickinson and Edith Wharton. As stated in The Harper American Literature, "Part of Howells's talent was the ability to admire in others what he himself was unable to do (348).
In 1905, Howells published "Editha". It told of a woman who wanted to idealize her fiancι, George. She found a way by forcing him to go to war while he was against it. She felt as if her future husband had to be worthy of her love and to deserve her, or to be her hero. I find this silly but interesting because is this how most women thought back then--to make their loved ones worthy? I seriously doubt it, but I'm sure a few were like that. "Editha" includes one of Howells's themes of ordinary, common folk. He says, "To see realistically is to meet the world honestly; to see romantically is to deceive and to be deceived" (McQuade 349).
In the eighteenth century, the process of choosing a husband and marrying was not always beneficial to the woman. A myriad of factors prevented women from marrying a man that she herself loved. Additionally, the men that women in the eighteenth century did end up with certainly had the potential to be abusive. The attitudes of Charlotte Lennox and Anna Williams toward women’s desire for male companionship, as well as the politics of sexuality, are very different. Although both Charlotte Lennox and Anna Williams express a desire for men in their poetry, Charlotte Lennox views the implications of this desire differently than Anna Williams.
The angry tone of Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Women” significantly contrasts with the cautionary tone of Austen’s “On Making an Agreeable Marriage,” seeking to reform society rather than guide people to live in that society. When Austen describes the drawbacks of loveless marriage, she writes that “Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection” (Austen 72-73). Austen uses “preferred” and “endured” to warn her niece against marrying too quickly, creating a cautionary tone. Moreover, “anything” emphasizes the miserableness of a marriage without affection, beseeching Austen’s niece to verify her love before diving headfirst into a marriage. In contrast, when demonizing the education system, Wollstonecraft
In her article, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," Barbara Welter discusses the nineteenth-century ideal of the perfect woman. She asserts that "the attributes of True Womanhood . . . could be divided into four cardinal virtues-piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity." Furthermore, she adds that "if anyone, male or female, dared to tamper with the complex virtues which made up True Womanhood, he was damned immediately as an enemy of God, of civilization and of the Republic" (Welter 152). In Hannah W. Foster's The Coquette, the characters Major Sanford and Eliza Wharton violate True Womanhood condemning them both to wretched fates.
“Deborah Sampson, the daughter of a poor Massachusetts farmer, disguised herself as a man and in 1782, at age twenty-one, enlisted in the Continental army. Ultimately, her commanding officer discovered her secret but kept it to himself, and she was honorably discharged at the end of the war.” She was one of the few women who fought in the Revolution. This example pictured the figure of women fighting alongside men. This encouraged the expansion of wife’s opportunities. Deborah, after the Revolution along with other known female figures, reinforced the ideology of Republican Motherhood which saw the marriage as a “voluntary union held together by affection and mutual dependency rather than male authority.” (Foner, p. 190). This ideal of “companionate” marriage changed the structure of the whole family itself, the now called Modern Family in which workers, laborers and domestic servants are now not considered member of the family anymore. However even if women thought that after the war they would have been seen from the society in a different way it never happened. The revolution haven’t changed the perception of the woman and the emancipated ideal
In the beginning Editha is war hungry. She wants her country to go to war, and she wants George to go and fight. Even though the author doesn’t give the age of Editha, I believe she acts very childish, and immature. I understand loving your country and wanting to fight for it, but one must also realize the danger that comes along with it. She is obsessed with her country and fighting for it. She puts an ultimatum on George. He is unsure of the war, and unsure of fighting in it, but she constantly pushes him to go. She even evolves God in it. Saying “God meant it to be war� (273). She is speaking of it, as if it was a “Holy War�. This is not the case, and George does not buy into it, but she keeps pushing him. The ultimatum comes when he says “I’ll come back to supper, if you’ll let me. Perhaps I shall bring you a convert� (272). She replies with “Well, you may come back, on that condition� (272). She is putting “if, and only if� requirements on his return to her.
When a writer starts his work, most often than not, they think of ways they can catch their reader’s attention, but more importantly, how to awake emotions within them. They want to stand out from the rest and to do so, they must swim against the social trend that marks a specific society. That will make them significant; the way they write, how they make a reader feel, the specific way they write, and the devotion they have for their work. Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgard Allan Poe influenced significantly the American literary canon with their styles, themes, and forms, making them three important writers in America.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a man of business, politics, nature, morals, dedication and imagination who was greatly haunted by the actions of his Puritan ancestors (Gollin 360). Being one of the pioneers of noteworthy American literature, Hawthorne used the issues of his time and the history of Puritan New England as his settings. He was the son of Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Manning and was born on July 4, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. After his father’s death, Hawthorne and his family moved to their mother’s house. Later, he went to Bowdoin College and graduated in 1825. Here, he became friends with future U.S. president Franklin Pierce. He lacked interest in medicine, ministry and law, so he chose to write (Gollin 358). Perchance in shame of sharing a tie with men like John and William Hathorne, he then added a w to his last name.
...nfortunate events, Mark Twain became very bitter, cynical and reclusive from the outside world. Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic style of writing and Mark Twain’s humorous and realism tone of writing have played a large role in the reasons of why literature is the way it is today.
America's greatest and most influential authors developed their passion for writing due to cataclysmic events that affected their life immensely. The ardent author Richard Wright shared similar characteristics to the many prominent American authors, and in fact, attained the title of most well-known black author of America. Richard Wright created many important pieces of literature, that would impact America's belief of racial segregation, and further push the boundaries of his controversial beliefs and involvements in several communist clubs. Wright's troubled past begins as a sharecropper while only a child. His childhood remained dark and abandoned.
This story is about a woman named Editha. Editha was engaged to George and told him it was his duty to his country to sign up and go serve in the war. Editha wanted a hero for a husband and she secretly wanted him to go to war so that she would have that hero. After an argument with him she finally convinces him to go. George dies in the war and his mother blames Editha for his death. Editha is in denial and accepts no responsibility for the death of George or the reasons that he chose to go to war in the first place.
What are you going to do if your girlfriend asks you to give up your life for your country? The first thing I will do is pick up my cell phone to call my family doctor to schedule an appointment to check my ears and make sure they are working well, or I can put on a strong emotional face to ask her, "Are you serious?" Most people would not want to see the person they love go off to a place where they could possibly die. In William Dean Howells' short story, "Editha", however, the main character is an unusual woman, Editha, who has her own perfect ideals and pushes them on her lover, George, to ask him to fight in the Spanish-American War. In the story Howells not only brought his anti-war message about the dangers of war but also satirized the United States' governments that have foolish ideas about the reasons to go to war. To do this, Editha's personalities are irrational patriotism, selfish romanticism understanding, and unrealistic ideas about war.
William Dean Howells' opinion of romanticism is his novel "Editha" by having the character of Editha symbolize his views on romanticism. When George announces that there is war, Editha surprises her lover and audience by saying "how glorious." She romanticizes the war by calling "any war glorious that is for the liberation of the people who have been struggling for years against the cruelest oppression." It's hard to figure out if Editha truly loves George, or if she is overtaken by the thought of having someone heroic to love. One of the ways Editha views life is that to have good things one must prove himself or herself worthy of it, for instance her love. In the story when she's thinking about George, she says George, "had simply asked for her love... and she gave her love... but if he could do something worthy to have her, be her hero- it would be grander." What better way to prove his love to Editha by doing something he was not favorable towards for Editha's sake and allowing himself named captain of Company A for her amusement. Her true feelings for George come to light when she writes him a goodbye letter saying why she was breaking her engagement with him since the man she marries "must love his country first." She wrote that letter as soon as he left, it's quite unfair and she even realizes it yet still writes it to satisfy herself. Even when he enlisted, she knew that he was not for him but for her. Editha noticed he became a different person after enlisting, " he made her feel as if she had lost her old lover and found a stranger in his place," if she had truly loved him she would not have felt giddy at the thought of kissing a stranger after losing her true love.
Realism, as described by William Dean Howells in the late nineteenth century, replaces the high art and style of the literature of the preceding decades by permitting such characters as Howells' Silas Lapham to have a distinct place in the pantheon of American literary characters. Fervently, Howells invoked the "truth" of the realist genre, writing, "ŒLet it portray men and women as they are, actuated by the motives and the passions in the measure we all know...let it speak the dialect, the language, that most Americans know - the language of unaffected people everywhere'" (Fictions of the Real, 188). This impassioned phrase, apparently invoking the importance of characters such as Silas Lapham, indicates the emergence of a gritty language, an "unaffected" dialect. Such a marker for realism connotes not the stories of Howell or James, but rather the coarse, common language of the masses as found in the pages of Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Howells' call for realism encompasses such literary giants as Henry James, but does not necessarily describe them. Both Howells and James, though utterly invested in "the motives and passions" of the human race, still rely and stylistic and social conventions in their novels. James, most especially, combines high art and society with a new conception of realism - one that removes the mask from the self-proclaimed moralism of the upper classes and demonstrates their hopes and failures in the very light of truth-telling fiction.
The story “I Want a Wife”, is a narrative essay signifying the demand placed on females during the 1970's. The author goes on to demonstrate the expectations that our male counterparts placed on women during that era. The way in which the author brought this issue to the surface was enthralling. As described by the author, a wife was to be seen and not heard, she is to cater to every impulse her husband has.Written out in sequence, a woman's duties were overwhelming and needed to be brought to the light. Men were treated like royalty by their wives, while showing little appreciation. A wife was expected to take care of the family while nothing was required of the husband. In addition, a wife was expected to look her best while tackling all of life's problems. The essay does not provide a notable amount of detail, yet the s...
Within these marriages, readers get a sense of how education plays an important role in a successful marriage, as this fulfills both of their dreams of personal identity. Although women in the nineteenth century were viewed to be superior wives and mothers, manage the household, and perform domestic tasks, it was important for women to become educated as “an education was supposed to enable these girls to become successful women in society” (Leigh 117). Women were not meant to be “trained” in some way to become good wives, but needed to be formally educated in order to be a successful wife and