Nineteenth century American fiction: the dark voyage. Nathaniel Hawthorne -
Herman Melville. The symbolical/mythical fiction
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This course introduces two American 19th century writers whose main works are
structured on the model of the romance. However, it also witnesses its transformation into a
symbolic as well as psychological study of characters or into a hybrid - epic romance with
poetical/melodramatic overtones. It focusses on two literary texts -The Scarlet Letter and Moby
Dick- that have acquired different interpretations by means of the multiple choice perspective.
N.
dogmatic Calvinism and intolerance. But he retained the Puritan consciousness of the problem
of
evil and the nature of sin, and in his fiction he saw man darkly. The young
grew in company of books, chiefly those of Scott, Bunyan, Spenser. What he wrote,
however, became his first volume of stories, Twice-Told Tales (1837). His solitary years
enabled
an image of man. During later years he published the works which secured his literary
reputation: a second volume of ta 545b11f les, Mosses from an 01d Manse (1846), his greatest novel,
The Scarlet Letter (1850) as well as two other novels, The House of Seven Gables (1851), and
The Blithedale Romance (1852).
He never denied the latent nobility of man. But he understood him too well-both his
past and his present-to accept the overly generous notion of the transcendentalist. Emerson's
"perpetual
smile" irritated him;
to smile at." Yet both men were cordial neighbors and, within the limits of their polarity,
admired one another. More significantly, both represented their time-one its light, the other
its darkness.
The
characters in his tales and romances are in effect symbolic (or allegorical)
and Eves thrust into archetypal_ struggles between good and evil, reason and emotion, pride
and humility, man and nature. Often they attain the threshold of salvation, rarely are they
saved. Except for those like Ethan Brand, Rappacini, Hollingworth and Chillingworth -
guilty
of "want of love and reverence for the human soul" (
the fallen remain only obscurely conscious of why they have failed. This ambiguity
suggests
the mystery of
Evading
the platitude of moral statement with its apparent but unreal finality,
encourages the possibility of continued analysis and interpretation.
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The
emphasis that is being laid today on
recommend him as a critical authority as well, concerned with the nature of fiction. He defines
the status and claims a place equal to that of the novel for his type of fiction, described as
romance. A romancer « has a licence with regard to every-day probabillity » typical of the
novel, « in view of the improved effects which he is bound to produce thereby » (preface to
Blithedale Romance). His argument is the reverse of that followed by George Eliot at the close
of
the same century which saw the publication of Adam Bede as well as of
romances (Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, The Marble Faun, Blithedale Romance)
His famous prefaces to these works appear as a counterpart to G. Eliot's texts about British
realism. After pleading for the romancer's right to disregard the laws of the novel, he continues
adding that « In writing a romance, a man is always or ought to be carrering on the utmost
verge of a precipitous absurdity, and the skill lies in coming as close as possible without
actually tumbling over ».
He understands the claims of this fiction as an attempt to balance both Imagination
and Reality : « It is a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and the fairy land,
where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the nature of the
other ». The favourite locations of the neutral territory are either the legendary mist of the
past
or a country such as
time may also provide the writer with a perspective. The historical period to which he often
resorted in his romances and tales was that of the colonial past of New England. According
to Henry James's analysis, Puritanism and its moral percepts were for him « only a point of
view to be further explored », used for « an artistic and literary purpose ». Nevertheless, the
exploration of the nature of evil, sin and guilt lies at the core of Hawthorne's writings.
The world that the writer seeks and builds is generated by contemplation of the
symbol. The Puritan way of interpreting reality is allegory, in which anything may stand for
something else. The Puritans believed that every occurrence was a sign to be translated. But the
meaning of the allegory is fixed, there is only one correct translation. Although the allegorical
mode was deeply engrained in him by his inheritance and readings, Hawthorne used allegory in
the service of scepticism and search and in the process transformed it into a symbolic
method. The characters appear as representatives, picturesquely imagined, of a moral type or as
phantasms, not endowed with the reality of life, pictures rather than persons.
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The Scarlet Letter is built upon the symbolism of the letter A which stands in close
connection to all the four characters : Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth
and Pearl. At a first reading, the theme of the romance seems to be sin, its consequences and
retribution. But the American imagination seems less interested in the problems of good
and evil than in the dramatization of the inner conflicts, of the tension implied. Sin (in this
case, adultery) appears as a source of deepened understanding and development, as an
initiation into moral awareness through evil. Probing deeper into the nature of sin,
Hawthorne discloses a complexity which resists any attempt at a rigorous demarcation. The
complete isolation to which the scarlet letter condemns her, made Hester more perceptive of the
suffering of others, of the predicament of the human condition. Her life after the fall illustrates
moral growth, as Hester is not overwhelmed by it. Pearl, as Hawthorne reierates many times,
is the embodiment of the letter both physically and mentally as well as a kind of commentary
on it. The initial concept is changed and the image acquires different interpretations : « A »
starts to signify Able, Admirable, Angel, Abel, Artist, America, anything else than Adulteress.
Hawthorne uses here the device of « multiple choice », presenting a variety of symbolical
connotations.
Hawthorne's narrative of the interaction of these different points of views is
intended as a drama of ideas, interesting because the points of view represented comprise a
kind of symbolic history of the American conscience. « The truth of the heart » pictured by
romance acquires also a universal human significance.
Before H. Melville kindled his alchemic fires aboard the Pequod (Moby Dick
appeared in 1851), he had served a long apprenticeship as a sailor. His early books-Typee
(1846), Omoo (1847), Mardi (1849), and While-Jacket (1850) - recount his adventures
episodically but excitingly. Most of his readers enjoyed these tales chiefly as travel narratives,
largely ignoring Melville's pointed criticism of American civilization for its cruelty aboard
naval vessels and its intolerant imposition of western "civilization" upon "noble savages".
His conversations with Hawthorne altered more than the plan of his next book-they
affected his entire creative work. "Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul," he
wrote. In fact, rather, Hawthorne helped those seeds to burgeon which had long since been
planted: Melville's Calvinist heritage (in Mardi he had already spoken of evil as "the
chronic malady of the universe") and his extensive reading - the Bible (especially Job and
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Ecclesiastes, Shakespeare- King Lear above all), the metaphysical poets, and Carlyle's Sartor
Resartus. Melville's readers have discovered in his work a powerful sense of the tragedy of
human experience, and, as well, a profound religiousness and a democratic spirit. The
universe he had created, however, was dark, stained with evil. Man also was blemished by
his rebelliousness and flawed by his irreverent pride. The opaque symbolism and pessimism of
Moby Dick estranged his readers.
Melville's pronouncements on the status of the American writer and the lines along
which it was developing at that time, expressed in his review of Hawthorne's Mosses from an
Old Manse (1850) or included in his last novel The Confidence-Man plainly state his
opinion. His review of Hawthorne may be read as an expression of his overconfidence in the
huge possibilities of the American writer as well as his rejection of the European tradition.
He underlines the idea that the development of American literature claims that America's
cultural dependence on England should come to an end. On the other hand, he praises
Hawthorne for his depth of psychological insight, comparing him to Shakespeare.
Melville's experience has left its impress upon his work, structured around the theme of
the voyage as an exploratory act. Moby Dick is structured round the journey motif, implying
the quest for the white whale. It is prefaced with several pages of "Extracts" about whales from
the literature of the world, beginning with quotations from the Bible, namely references to the
Book of Job. They express the manifold and mysterious aspects of the whale, immense and
formidable, fabulous, real, intelligent, malignant, useful and dangerous to man at the same time.
Establishing the legendary character of the whale, it also turns the story of a real
whale's chase into a symbolic one. Ishmael, the narrator of the story, is an Everyman-type who
searches the world around him and whose function is to introduce the reader to this mysterious
adventure. The book may be called a battle between the mad captain Ahab of the whaler
Pequod and the mightiest of whales, the white monster Moby Dick. In a previous
encounter, Ahab had been defeated and bears the symbol of his defeat in a false leg; swearing
revenge, he sets out towards a second encounter in which he will allow only total victory or
total destruction. His obsession draws all his crew into the orbit of his passion, some
willingly, some passively, some reluctantly.
Other characters are grouped around these three: Ishmael, Ahab, the Whale. The three
mates of the Pequod represent three types of human intelligence and capability. The three
41
harpooners are all primitives: the Indian Tashtego, the Negro Dagoo and the Polynesian
Queequeg. Closer to Ahab are the mysterious Parsee Fedallah and the innocent Negro cabin
boy Pip. The rest of the Pequod's company are a "polyglot crew from all countries and
climates". Starbuck represents in the story conventional Christianity, Queequeg primitive
pagan morality, but neither can overcome Ahab's will; nor can the warnings of passing
ships that have encountered the object of his search or the numerous omens present in the
narrative.
Although saturated in the facts of whaling and an almost encyclopedic account of the
whale in all its aspects, Melville made his work into an enquiry of the problem of man
confronting his destiny. His captain appears as a titan who defies both God and Nature. Fact
becomes symbol and incident acquires universal meaning. Ahab, then, appears as a
Promethean figure, a conception as grand as Milton's Satan, with both of whom he has
affinities. Through him, Melville seems to warn of the consequences of Emersonian selfreliance
when carried to its utmost limit.
If Ishmael is self, Ahab is anti-self. He turns out to be totally incapable of
readjusting his vision: to him, the whale invariably conveys one meaning - the omnipresence of
evil. He is the extreme case of the nineteenth century egoist or in its Hawthornesque
variant, the Unpardonable Sinner who turns into a slave to will or intellect and abandons his
potential for fellow feeling. Ahab denies his crew any identity of their own, considering
them to be but instruments of his will, an extension of his own self. To Maurice Friedman, he
is "the most thoroughgoing example of the monological man", he "can hear no other human
voice because his own is high lifted". However, despite his gigantic and Romantic stature
resting entirely upon his will, Ahab seems to be lacking in a true Promethean dimension.
But how are we to take Moby Dick ? For Starbuck, he is a mere dumb brute. Ahab's
obsessive hatred seems to him blasphemous and mad. Moby Dick exploits myth in order to
load the whale with all the attributes of mystery and power. Indeed, the ambiguity of
everything in the novel is insisted upon throughout the novel. Ishmael's symbolic vision
enables him to ask questions of ontological and epistemological relevancy; and although he
is tempted to give tentative answers, it is the questioning rather than the attempt to reach
a definite conclusion that make his exploration meaningful. Ishmael's relation to it is defined
by the great flexibility of his point of view. In chapter 42, "The Whiteness of the whale", the
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narrator says that "it was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me".
As R. Chase puts it, " the meaning of whiteness, the paradoxical colour" involves all the
contradictions that Melville attributes to nature". Through Ishmael, Melville asserts the
otherness, the inscrutability of nature in relation to man.
Speculating on what the whale means for Ahab, Ishmael believes that the
meaning(s) of the whale is but an outward projection of a subjective consciousness. It is
commonly assumed that several influences were at work upon Melville in 1850 when he
was writing the book. Thomas Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus", "On Heroes", "German Romance"
helped determine the symbolic structure (as his device of "multiple choice" proves it). In
several respects, the account might fit the pattern of an epic romance - the journey motif
which reaches its climax in the attempt to kill the Leviathan is certainly remindful of the
mode of romance as described by Northrop Frye. Time in Moby Dick, comprising the
months from Christmas (winter solstice) to summer solstice during which the journey is
consumed, fits the time scheme in romance. But it can not be considered a romance proper.
N. Frye considers it a blend of romance and anatomy. The form that it finally takes fits no
clear classification; it is a hybrid - it may be considered a symbolist poem, containing
melodramatic if not fully tragic elements - while the particulars of whaling give it "a
solidity of specification". The saga of the white whale essentially deals with a philosophic
problem: it is the search for a true explanation of man's relationship with God in the
universe and the white whale is the very embodiment of the ultimate mystery.
Homework
1.Read Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and analyse the multiple levels of significance
suggested by the letter A. Why is it called a romance?
2. Which are the mythological, cetological, economical connotations in Moby Dick?
3. The initiation journey in Moby Dick. The Mythic dimension of Melville's fiction.
4. How does the multiple perspective device function in Melville's/Hawthorne' swork?
Posibile teme pentru examen:
1. The use of digression in Tristram Shandy.
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2. Sentimentalism and melodrama in Dickens's novels.
3. The significance of Fate in Hardy's novels.
4. Comedy and satire in two Victorian novels
5. The feminist perspective in George Eliot's/Hardy's novels.
6. Fielding's Tom Jones : the picaresque/satirical novel
7. Narrative frames/ Temporal patterns in the 18th c. novel
8. Fiction as meta-fiction in the 18th/19thc.
9. City versus countryside in G.Eliot's, Hardy's, Dickens's fiction.
10. The multiple perspective device in Hawthorne's/ Melville's fiction
11. The concept of self-reliance in Melville's fiction
Model test 1 (Grile)
1. Which of the following novels are Bildungsromans?
a) Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
b) Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy
c) Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
d) Fielding's Tom Jones
R. a), d)
2. Why does Robinson leave home ?
a) Because he wants to discover America.
b) Because his family had arranged a marriage for him with Clarissa
c) Because his father had destined him to a profession he didn't like
d) By accident
e) Because of the rivalry between him and his older brother.
R c)
3. Which of the following European authors are considered to have influenced the
development of the English novel in the 18th century?
a) Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust.
b) Cervantes, Rabelais, Lesage.
c) Cicero, Homer, Virgil.
d) Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf.
e) Th. Hardy, Dickens, Thackeray.
R b)
4. His work comments on the political realities of the day, and offers many-layered readings.
Under the disguise of authentic travel narratives his book offer a subtle critique of British
politics, while at the same time being enjoyed by children, as well as by sophisticated readers
44
because of their particular narrative structure, it was enjoyed both by children and sophisticated
readers. Which of the following authors fits this description?
a) Laurence Sterne
b) Jonathan Swift
c) Daniel Defoe
R b)
5. This novel is considered to be not only a classic travel and adventure story, but also as the
prototype of the novel, because of its focus on the daily, external and internal activities of
ordinary people, but primarily because of its exploration of both the internal and of the external
aspects of his hero, whose personal development occupies a central part in the story. Which of
the following books fits this description?
a) Gulliver's Travels
b) Robinson Crusoe
c) Pamela
R b)
6. Which of the following statements about Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is true?
a) It can be read as a metaphor of colonialism, because the relationship between
Robinson and Friday is the archetype of colonial relations.
b) Robinson lacks the psychological elements that would make him a full-fledged
character; he is therefore a persona.
c) Defoe's novel is a complex and multilayered satire directed against the social,
religious and political conflicts that were dividing British society at the time.
d) In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe constructs a meta-novel, because in it he experiments
with the mechanisms of novel-writing, thus revolutionizing the genre.
R a)
7. Which of the following novels represents a modern version of an initiation journey at the end
of which the hero finds maturity and respectability?
a) Gulliver's Travels
b) Robinson Crusoe
c) Tom Jones
d) Tristram Shandy
R. b), c)
8. Which of the following are NOT novels in a strict sense:
a) Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders
b) Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
c) Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
d) Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
R b)
9. Dickens's fictional world was characterized by Northrop Frye as "fairy-tale" in :
a) the high-mimetic mode
b) the low-mimetic mode
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R a)
10. Dickens's characters are formally described by critics as
a) round and complex ones b) flatly-drawn, symbolic
R b)
11. David Copperfield is mainly written in :
a) the 3rd person point of view b) the 1st person point of view c) the neutral omniscient perspective
R b)
12. Which one of Hardy's characters sold his wife and daughter in a fit of drunkenness at a fair?
a) Jude Fawley (Jude the Obscure)
b) Michael Henchard (The Mayor of Casterbridge)
c) neither of them
R b)
13. In Th. Hardy's novels, the setting is
a) Essex b) Sussex c) Wessex
R c)
14. What point of view does Hardy use in Tess of the D'Urbervilles:
a) omniscient b) selective omniscient c) subjective
R a)
15. In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Talbothay's Farm is
a) a drab and desolate place, with exhausted natural resources
b) a warm, fertile, rich place
R b)
16. In Jude the Obscure, Sue Bridehead embodies
a) instinctual drives and passion
b) a modern agnostic type of woman, an enlightened spirit
R b)
17. In George Eliot's Mill on the Floss Lucy is presented as
a) a subversive manner of attacking romantic illusion
b) a dark-haired, intelligent heroine at odds with the provincial mentality around her
46
R a)
18. The doctrine of the transcendental movement in American literarure (founders: Emerson,
Thoreau, G.Ripley, M.Fuller) was influenced by
a) English romanticism and German idealism
b) Victorian realism
R a)
19. In his critical prefaces, Hawthorne acknowledges to be writing fiction as:
a) an objective, faithful representation of reality
b) truth under circumstances, truth of the human heart, thus claiming a licence from
everyday probability
R b)
20. The historical period to which Hawthorne often resorted in his fiction was:
a) the medieval legendary age
b) his contemporary society
c) the colonial, Calvinist past
R c)
21. The Pequod sails from the centre of American whaling activity, which is
a) Nantucket
b) New York
R a)
Model test 2
1. Which of the following statements about Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is true?
a) It can be read as a metaphor of colonialism, because the relationship between
Robinson and Friday is the archetype of colonial relations.
b) Robinson lacks the psychological elements that would make him a full-fledged
character; he is therefore a persona.
c) Defoe's novel is a complex and multilayered satire directed against the social,
religious and political conflicts that were dividing British society at the time.
d) In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe constructs a meta-novel, because in it he experiments
with the mechanisms of novel-writing, thus revolutionizing the genre.
R: a)
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2. Which of the following statements is true?
a) The Bildungsroman is a literary genre that started in Germany, and is equivalent to a
fictional autobiography. One example is Robinson Crusoe.
b) Bildungsroman is a literary genre that started in Germany, and is in fact an adventure
novel, a travel narrative. One example is Gulliver's Travels
c) Bildungsroman is a literary genre that started in France, and it ultimately is an
extended meditation on story-telling, having as central premise the idea that what the story is
about is of secondary importance to how it is told. One example is Tristram Shandy
R: a)
3. H.Fielding compares literature to a) conversational commentaries
b) a feast meant to entertain the readers/guests.
R: b)
4. Tom Jones is described by its author as a) an idle, medieval romance
b) dynamic, realistic, comic, epic, heroic, prosaic
c) a poem in prose
R: b)
5. What do the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms stand for?
a) they represent extremes of theoretical and speculative reasoning, which Swift criticizes
because he believes that such excessive interest in science can lead those involved in it to lose
touch with reality
b) they represent instinct and reason, as two opposite tendencies that naturally live side by
side in the human spirit..
c) They represent embodiments of the Whig and Tory parties. They also embody the
English attitudes which Swift wishes to criticize and oppose to the ideal of the enlightened
monarchy.
R: b)
6. Read the following fragment from Robinson Crusoe, and choose among the statements below
the one that best describes it.
"After he had slumbered, rather than slept, about half-an-hour, he awoke again, and came out of
the cave to me: for I had been milking my goats which I had in the enclosure just by: when he
espied me he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the
possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a great many antic gestures to show
it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon
his head, as he had done before; and after this made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude,
and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me so long as he lived. I
understood him in many things, and let him know I was very well pleased with him. In a little
time I began to speak to him; and teach him to speak to me: and first, I let him know his name
should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life: I called him so for the memory of the time.
I likewise taught him to say Master; and then let him know that was to be my name: I likewise
taught him to say Yes and No and to know the meaning of them."
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a) The fragment describes the way in which Robinson sets out to civilize the island, by
recreating on it the comfort and the type of relationships he was accustomed to.
b) The fragment describes the moment when he saves Friday from death at the hands of the
band of cannibals.
c) The fragment describes a crucial moment that establishes the nature of the relationship
between Friday and Robinson- that of master and slave.
d) The fragment deals with Robinson's inner tensions between his religious beliefs and the
difficult situation he finds himself in, further complicated by the presence of Friday.
R: c)
7. Which of the following statements about Laurence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy is true?
a) It is a novel written in the third person, having an impersonal and omniscient narrator, who
knows everything about all his characters.
b) it is a meta-novel, because it is an extended meditation on story-telling, having as central
premise the idea that what the story is about is of secondary importance to how it is told.
c) it is a Bildungsroman, because it follows the story of the development of Tristram as an
individual, through the multiple adventures he has, which shape his personality and ultimately
help him find his place in society.
d) it explores the dramatic situation of women in the eighteenth century, and comments on the
double pressure exerted upon them by an oppressive patriarchal society.
R: b)
8. Nineteenth century American fiction has a kinship with
a) symbolism (traditional allegory included)
b) the novel of manners (Jane Austen, J.Fielding, W. Thackeray)
R: a)
9. N. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was meant as
a) a Puritan indictment of sin
b) a moral, allegorical probing into the nature of evil and guilt
R: b)
10. Moby Dick is generally viewed as
a) a novel proper
b) an epic romance in a tragic mode
c) a melodramatic travelogue
R: b)
11.Melville uses Queequeg's image in order to
a) assert the value of pagan morality
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b) warn the readers about the dangers of primitiveness
R: a)
12. In Fielding's Tom Jones, what does Sophia discern, when very young, about Master Blifil
A.that he was thoughtless
B.that he was prudent
C.that he was idle
D.that he was sober
E.that he was interested only in himself
F.that he was everybody's friend
G.that he was interested in everybody's well-being
a. B+D+E
b. A+C+D+E
c. A+E+G
Ans: A
Dickens' fertile, exuberant imagination is mostly remarkable for the creation of:
a. character
b. settings
c. plot structures
d. plot endings
Ans: a
In Dickens' fiction most characters are conceived:
a. allegorically, reduced to ideas, concepts of human nature.
b. mimetically, in abundant varieties of human likeness.
c. both allegorically and mimetically.
d. neither allegorically nor mimetically.
Ans: c
15. In Great Expectations, Pip learns from Magwitch, Joe and Biddy that:
a. feeling and conscience cannot shape him as a gentleman
b. social and educational improvement are irrelevant if moral worth is not heeded
Ans: b
16. In Hardy's major novels, plots
a. derive from characters, authenticate them.
b. derive from characters and teem with fateful incidents.
c.are autonomous from characters' nature.
Ans: b
17. The painful conflict between the old ways of provincial communities and the new order of
speculative capitalism underlies:
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a. The Mill on the Floss
b. The Mayor of Casterbridge
c. Great Expectations
Ans: b
18. In The Mayor of Casterbridge:
a. both Henchard and Lucetta succeed in denying their own past.
b. Henchard admits that the past cannot be buried despite one's will or desire.
c. Susan, Newson, the furmity -woman know the secret from Henchard's past but
willingly overlook it.
Ans: b
19. Mr. Tulliver is a fragile, meek, easy-going person.
a. True b. False
Ans: a
20. George Eliot's early novels - Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, are cast in agrarian, preindustrial
England.
a. True b. False
Ans: a
21. In The Mill on the Floss the conflict is generated by:
a. the protagonist's irreparably damaging her relationship with the community by a
moment's free choice.
b. the community living by amoral codes.
c. the community, as repository of long shared moral values.
Ans: a
22. The picaresque plays an important role in George Eliot's novels
a. True b. False
Ans: a
23. In Eliot's novels the idea of .... is a significant one
a. absolute freedom of the individual
b. kinship
c. the conflict between kinship and the freedom of the individual
Ans: c
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