Handout 2

Identify & discuss the literary strategies used by the authors included in the handout, in terms
of relevant political, social, and aesthetic ideologies.
READING LIST (handout 2):

Hamlin Garland, Under the Lions Paw (1889);

William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885).

Hamlin Garland, Under the Lions Paw (1889)

1. It was the last of autumn and first day of winter coming together. All day long the ploughmen on their
prairie farms had moved to and fro in their wide level fields through the falling snow, which melted as it
fell, wetting them to the skin all day, notwithstanding the frequent squalls of snow, the dripping,
desolate clouds, and the muck of the furrows, black and tenacious as tar. Under their dripping harness
the horses swung to and fro silently with that marvelous uncomplaining patience which marks the
horse. All day the wild geese, honking wildly, as they sprawled sidewise down the wind, seemed to be
fleeing from an enemy behind, and with neck outthrust and wings extended, sailed down the wind,
soon lost to sight.
2. Jim Butler was one of those men called in the West "land poor." Early in the history of Rock River he had
come into the town and started in the grocery business in a small way, occupying a small building in a
mean part of the town. At this period of his life he earned all he got, and was up early and late sorting
beans, working over butter, and carting his goods to and from the station. But a change came over him
at the end of the second year, when he sold a lot of land for four times what he paid for it. From that
time forward he believed in land speculation as the surest way of getting rich. Every cent he could save
or spare from his trade he put into land at forced sale, or mortgages on land, which were "just as good
as the wheat," he was accustomed to say. Farm after farm fell into his hands, until he was recognized
as one of the leading landowners of the county. His mortgages were scattered all over Cedar County,
and as they slowly but surely fell in he sought usually to retain the former owner as tenant. () A fine
farm, known as the Higley place, had fallen into his hands in the usual way the previous year, and he
had not been able to find a tenant for it. Poor Higley, after working himself nearly to death on it in the
attempt to lift the mortgage, had gone off to Dakota, leaving the farm and his curse to Butler. This was
the farm which Council advised Haskins to apply for; and the next day Council hitched up his team and
drove down to see Butler.

William Dean Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)

1. AT the same moment young Corey let himself in at his own door with his latch-key, and went to the
library, where he found his father turning the last leaves of a story in the Revue des Deux Mondes. He
was a white-moustached old gentleman, who had never been able to abandon his pince-nez for the
superior comfort of spectacles, even in the privacy of his own library. He knocked the glasses off as his
son came in and looked up at him with lazy fondness, rubbing the two red marks that they always
leave on the side of the nose. "Tom," he said, "where did you get such good clothes?"
"I stopped over a day in New York," replied the son, finding himself a chair. "I'm glad you like them."
"Yes, I always do like your clothes, Tom," returned the father thoughtfully, swinging his glasses, "But I don't
see how you can afford 'em, I can't."
"Well, sir," said the son, who dropped the "sir" into his speech with his father, now and then, in an oldfashioned way that was rather charming, "you see, I have an indulgent parent."

"Smoke?" suggested the father, pushing toward his son a box of cigarettes, from which he had taken one.
"No, thank you," said the son. "I've dropped that."
"Ah, is that so?" The father began to feel about on the table for matches, in the purblind fashion of elderly
men. His son rose, lighted one, and handed it to him. "Well,--oh, thank you, Tom!--I believe some
statisticians prove that if you will give up smoking you can dress very well on the money your tobacco
costs, even if you haven't got an indulgent parent. But I'm too old to try. Though, I confess, I should rather
like the clothes. Whom did you find at the club?"
"There were a lot of fellows there," said young Corey, watching the accomplished fumigation of his father
in an absent way.
"It's astonishing what a hardy breed the young club-men are," observed his father. "All summer through,
in weather that sends the sturdiest female flying to the sea-shore, you find the clubs filled with young men,
who don't seem to mind the heat in the least."
"Boston isn't a bad place, at the worst, in summer," said the son, declining to take up the matter in its
ironical shape.
"I dare say it isn't, compared with Texas," returned the father, smoking tranquilly on. "But I don't suppose
you find many of your friends in town outside of the club." "No; you're requested to ring at the rear door,
all the way down Beacon Street and up Commonwealth Avenue. It's rather a blank reception for the
returning prodigal." "Ah, the prodigal must take his chance if he comes back out of season. But I'm glad to
have you back, Tom, even as it is, and I hope you're not going to hurry away. You must give your energies a
rest."
"I'm sure you never had to reproach me with abnormal activity," suggested the son, taking his father's
jokes in good part. "No, I don't know that I have," admitted the elder. "You've always shown a fair degree of
moderation, after all. What do you think of taking up next? I mean after you have embraced your mother
and sisters at Mount Desert. Real estate? It seems to me that it is about time for you to open out as a realestate broker. Or did you ever think of matrimony?"
2. He [Silas Lapham] knew who the Coreys were very well, and, in his simple, brutal way, he had long
hated their name as a symbol of splendour which, unless he should live to see at least three
generations of his descendants gilded with mineral paint, he could not hope to realise in his own. He
was acquainted in a business way with the tradition of old Phillips Corey, and he had heard a great
many things about the Corey who had spent his youth abroad and his father's money everywhere, and
done nothing but say smart things. Lapham could not see the smartness of some of them which had
been repeated to him. Once he had encountered the fellow, and it seemed to Lapham that the tall,
slim, white-moustached man, with the slight stoop, was everything that was offensively aristocratic.
3. Miss Kingsbury leaned forward and asked Charles Bellingham if he had read Tears, Idle Tears, the novel
that was making such a sensation; and when he said no, she said she wondered at him. "It's perfectly
heart-breaking, as you'll imagine from the name; but there's such a dear old-fashioned hero and
heroine in it, who keep dying for each other all the way through, and making the most wildly
satisfactory and unnecessary sacrifices for each other. You feel as if you'd done them yourself." "Yes,"
said Mr. Sewell, the minister. "And I don't think there ever was a time when they formed the whole
intellectual experience of more people. They do greater mischief than ever."
"Don't be envious, parson," said the host. "No," answered Sewell. "I should be glad of their help. But those
novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them--excuse me, Miss Kingsbury--are ruinous!"
"Don't you feel like a moral wreck, Miss Kingsbury?"asked the host.
But Sewell went on: "The novelists might be the greatest possible help to us if they painted life as it is,and
human feelings in their true proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are
altogether noxious."
This seemed sense to Lapham; but Bromfield Corey asked: "But what if life as it is isn't amusing? Aren't we
to be amused?"
"Not to our hurt," sturdily answered the minister. "And the self-sacrifice painted in most novels like this----"
"Slop, Silly Slop?" suggested the proud father of the inventor of the phrase.

"Yes--is nothing but psychical suicide, and is as wholly immoral as the spectacle of a man falling upon his
sword." ()"Commonplace? The commonplace is just that light, impalpable, aerial essence which they've
never got into their confounded books yet. The novelist who could interpret the common feelings of
commonplace people would have the answer to 'the riddle of the painful earth' on his tongue."