A major theme of much 19th century American literature is the rejection of “civilization,” usually construed as the norms adopted by the wider community. This stance is epitomized by Huck Finn’s decision to “light out for the territories,” as well as his dislike of sleeping indoors, wearing uncomfortable clothes, and attending Sunday school. Similarly, Thoreau’s rejection of conformity throughout Walden reflects a desire to redefine civilization in radical different terms from those understood by his Concord neighbors. Thoreau has no patience for commercial success. He has an ascetic tendency that rejects the desire for fine food, excess clothing, and elaborate shelter. He lives at the edge of town, at Walden Pond, much as Huck seeks the frontier. According to Stephen Railton, we might also include James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, Melville’s Bartleby, Kate Chopin’s Edna, and Faulkner’s Ike McCaslin in this category of protagonists.
Tag: Twain
Sympathy vs Conscience
There is an interesting transition from a mid-nineteenth century emphasis on sympathy to a late-nineteenth century focus on conscience. Sentimental novels, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and slave narratives, such as Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, seek to arouse the reader’s sympathy. By portraying the suffering of the enslaved, authors like Stowe and Jacobs moved readers to feel compassion for the victims and righteous anger for the villains. Realist novels a couple of decades later, however, focus more on the individual’s conscience. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and William Dean Howells’s The Rise of Silas Lapham both feature protagonists wrestling with their consciences. Twain emphasizes the fallibility of conscience, as Huck’s makes him feel wrong for helping Jim escape slavery. Howells’s novel portrays the conflict between sympathy and conscience, as Rodgers evokes Silas’s sympathy for his wife in trying to persuade him to a shady business deal. Charles Chestnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition wants to evoke sympathy for the plight of African Americans during the “redemption” of the South by white supremacists, but it is more interested in exploring the process by which Southerners appeased their own consciences while defrauding, disenfranchising, and lynching their black neighbors.
