Differences about Howells, James, and Twain
Although Howells, James, and Twain all worked for realism, but there were obvious difference between them.
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beninIn political-social ideas and attitudes James, writing about the wealthy, deep-rooted leisure class, became in a way its spokesman, stressing travel, cosmopolitanism, manners, and taste as indices to socialsuperiority. He was conrvative toward overzealous reformers the way Hawthorne was toward his fictional heroes Holgrave (in The Hou of the Seven Gables) and Hollingsworth (in stampingThe Blithedale Romance). But it is worth nothing that James was critical of U.S. imperialist behaviour as in the Spanish-American War, and that he expod predatory business competition of the New World , and its dehumanizing result, and the decadence and curruption of the Old, eing, among other things, the condition of the English upper class as “rotten and collapsible.” He was very critical of American life, its obssion with “business”, its extremes of wealth and poverty, its lack of culture and sophistication. The American Scene (1907) is his “restless analyst’s” report of obrvations
合计的英文>cretary generalfrom Boston to California and the sourth. Like Hawthorne, James regarded evil as esntially of inward cau and cure, advocated free-willed renunciation of the low or mean, and repeatedly emphasized magnanimity and the beauty of godness.
Howells thought realism was to interprete sympathetically the “common feelings of commonplace people”, and it was best suited as a technique to express the spirit of American. This was so becau it regarded the average as revealing a civilization’s progress more than any eccentric or capriciously unique single individual’s. the test of a civilization was the principle of greatest happiness of the greatest number, the good of all. Democracy in literature aimed to “make them know one another better, that they may be hunbled and strengthened with a n of their franternity.” American conditions “to invite the artist to the portray in every art of tho finer and higher aspects which unite rather than vere humanity.” He erged the writers to winnow tradition and write in keeping with current humanitarian ideals. On truth Howells held that truth is the hightest beauty, but truth includes the views that morality penetrate all things: “the best-man will be…subdued.” With regarded to literary criticism, Howells felt that literary critic should not try t
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establishingo impo arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books but should follow the detached scientist in accurate description, interpretation, and classification. The critic’s job was “to identify the literary species and explain the weakness of a work in the light of the author’s intensions.” Howells’ emphasis has always been on ethics. He stress the need for sympathy and moral intergrity, and the need for different social class to harmoniously adapt to their environment and to one another. There is indeed some bitterness toward the Boston upper class in A Chance Acquaintance, but after that Howells was studiously fair to both class and urged both the simple kindliness of heart and recognition of the deeper significance of manners and courtesy. In Tom Corey, and to some extent Aherton in A Modern Instance, Howells attempted to spread a new concept of the lf-independent, considerate of others, and scornful of class distinctions. Howells did not approve of competitive economic individualism.
Mark Twain prefered to reprent social life through portraits of local places which he knew best , indeed he started off as a teller of tall tales and local colorist. He felt that a novelist must not try to generalize about a nation. “No,” he says, “[The novelist] lays befor
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e you the ways and speech and life and the people of the whole nation.” He goes on to state at that “when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people,and not anywhere el can the be had.” Here he clearly the place and the function of the local colorism,and foresaw the coming in the ctions of the “great American novel” to which he did his best to contribute his best share. He drew heavily from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places. He confined himlf to the life with which he was familiar, convinced, as he states in a letter of 1890, that “the most valuable capital, or culture or education usable in the building of the novels is personal experience.” And certainly he was at his best when, in the words of Everett Carter, transmuting the ore of his personal experience into “the gold of reminscence, autobiography, and autobiographical fiction.” Mark Twain the great humorist ems to have overshadowed his social critic. All his life he loved life and people , and freedom and justice, felt a pride in human dignity and advocated brotherhood of man. He hated tyranny and inquity, despid meanness and cruelty, and took his role as a social critic in a rious and responsible manner. “From the beginning, [
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Mark Twain] took the side of the defenless or oppresd, and fought corruption, privilege and abu wherever he found them with a fierce humor.” His writings, novels, letters, notebooks and pamphlets, and all included, touched upon almost every issue of his time such as politics, religion, capital and labor,slavery, U.S. imprperialism abroad, and the precution of the Chine and Jews. His earlier works reveal his frontier n of lf-reliance, fair play, equality, and early hopefulness, though an elements of rascality and violence is already disturbingly noticeable in the background.
In thematic terms, James wrote mostly of the upper reaches of American society, and Howells concerned himlf with middle class life, whereas Mark Twain dealt largely with the lower strata of society. “I had never tried in even one single little instance,” he wrote in one of his letters, “to help cultivate the cultivated class. I was not equipped for it, either by native gifts or training, and I never had any ambition in that direction, but always hunted for bigger game—the mass.” He propod to entertain them with his prodigious humor. Technically, Howells wrote in the way of genteel realism, James pursued an “imaginative” treatment of reality or psychological realiam, but Mark Twain’s contribution t
o the development of realism and to American literature as a whole was a partly through his colloquial style.
