Antique Poverty Part 2: Naturalist Novels

Every innovation, every new mode of expression, every attempt to expand the boundaries of art has met with stern opposition. Novel reading was not always seen as an activity worthy of the upstanding, moral middle class. Like most new and enjoyable things, novels were once seen as a gateway drug to immorality. The moral gatekeepers of the Victorian age had very definite ideas of what constituted acceptable literature--usually those works that reinforced their ideal vision of themselves as God-fearing, prudent, self-reliant and industrious people. These are not exactly the ingredients for compelling fiction, and fortunately for us, the most widely read books of the period tended to subtly (and often not so subtly) subvert and question these ideals within their pages despite the objections of prim moralists. By mid-century, strains of a more realistic view of the world began to find a way into mainstream fiction that increasingly expressed the need for social change.

These two novels are examples of naturalism, a movement that sought to overturn conventional Victorian morality and style in favor of more realistic characters, settings and stories that used more direct language. It's beginnings can be seen in the works of Russian author Ivan Turgenev and the works of French novelist Émile Zola.

The thematic breadth and scope of literature during this period expanded while prose became leaner and the narrative voice became more objective. The characters depicted in naturalist novels did real things that most people do, like have sex, drink, gamble, fight, murder, etc. Moreover, the naturalist movement gave an emerging voice to the plight of women, the poor and to other issues of social and economic inequality that characterized the Victorian era. Naturalists saw human behavior as inexorably tied to heredity, class and education, and the behavior of the characters they created were portrayed as natural and inevitable responses to their environments.

As might be imagined, this movement generated its share of controversy. French novels of the mid-nineteenth century were seen as far too saucy and frank for English and American readers, but their influence was to be found in the work of a new crop of reform-minded writers who directly addressed unpleasant truths while attempting to express the commonality of human suffering to a mainstream, middle class audience. Critics saw this new literature as sordid, but by the time these novels were written, naturalism was more or less familiar to readers in both England and the U.S.

These two novels are worth considering side by side:


Esther Waters (1894) by George Moore

Discovering the work of Irish author and playwright George Moore is like discovering a secret. He wrote many novels, short stories and plays, but Esther Waters is his most famous work. Moore's brand of naturalism got him into trouble with lending libraries that refused to circulate his books, but by 1894, the furor had died down and this novel was widely acclaimed.

It's the story of a poor London girl who, lacking any other option and hoping to get away from an abusive family life, goes into service in the home of a well-to-do family whose wealth comes from breeding and racing horses. Her deeply religious background doesn't prepare her for the reality of her new surroundings in which loose talk and drinking among her fellow servants and the gambling obsession that possesses nearly everyone in the household regardless of rank, stands in contrast to the moral lessons of her youth. While below stairs, she falls in love with William, a fellow servant who promises to marry her as soon as his bets start to bring in money, but instead leaves her with child and runs off with a wealthy cousin of the household. She is then forced to fend for herself while caring for her son in a world that has little sympathy for an illiterate servant girl with a bastard child.

Esther's story mirrors the real life struggles of single English mothers of the age. In deciding to keep her son, she has taken on a burden that so stigmatizes her as to make it difficult for her to make even a meager living. She and those around her struggle against a rigid class system that allows for little social and economic mobility. Gambling seems the only chance to escape poverty and toil, but more often it leads to short term gains followed by long term ruin. Esther's religious beliefs become increasingly incongruous to her, representing to her an ideal which she finds it impossible to live up to and difficult to reconcile with the reality she faces.

But this is no artless social criticism or political tract; this is a very finely crafted novel written with great sensitivity and economy. Moore's language is direct and to the point, and that precision is what allows the story to flow in a way that would be impossible with language encumbered by dense Victorian style. This is also a novel that manages to bring itself full circle from beginning to end without capitulating to public taste for a happy ending. And yet, we get closure. That's good writing, and this book is worth reading.

Download Esther Waters from Project Gutenberg


Sister Carrie (1900) by Theodore Dreiser

In contrast to the Englishness of Esther Waters, Sister Carrie is a decidedly American story. Carrie is a middle class girl from rural Wisconsin who goes to Chicago with vague visions of wealth and status, uses men she meets as the stepping stones to sophistication and material success, and becomes a renowned actress in New York. The second of these men, George Hurstwood, is a married manager of a private Chicago dining club who leaves his wife and children, steals ten thousand dollars from the company safe and flees with Carrie, eventually settling in New York where, under an assumed name, they are married, albeit illegally.

As Carrie's star rises, Hurstwood finds it difficult to regain the status and wealth he once enjoyed in Chicago. As she becomes more confident and independent, Hurstwood sinks into depression and despair, increasingly relying on Carrie's new found success to support the household. He also gets a glimpse into the reality of the urban poor when he attempts to take a job as a scab streetcar driver during a labor strike. The two undergo a complete role reversal, and their contrasting experiences reflect the reality of millions trying to claw their way to the top or to regain the lives of status and leisure that have somehow slipped through their fingers.

Theodore Dreiser, once considered the premiere man of American letters in the early twentieth century, has fallen out of style. His writing is notoriously turgid, his dialogue can be stiff and unnatural. and his plots are generally underdeveloped and relentlessly linear. Yet this, along with his greatest novel, An American Tragedy (1925), are still read by American high school and college students. Why? Because he pulls no punches about the living and working conditions of the urban poor and the practical and moral dilemmas they faced. Sister Carrie breaks new ground, pitting the optimistic American cultural ideal of material reward for hard work and industry against the gritty, realistic urban backdrop of toil, poverty and degradation that existed at the turn of the twentieth century. Social mobility was--or was at least believed to be--achievable in America, where the ascribed status of family and rank had less meaning. Dreiser sees the pursuit of the American dream as an obsession that sacrifices moral reasoning for material gain in the name of virtue.

Sister Carrie is a novel that is very much of its time, and while it may not have aged well in some respects, it still has something to teach us. The American argument of self reliance versus social conscience still rages more than a century later, and along with the novels of Sinclair Lewis, Dreiser's work serves as a fairly accurate map of American cultural DNA. George Moore goes even further in Esther Waters by examining the incongruent demands of the Protestant work ethic--a doctrine at the core of American values--in light of the grim reality of those without the necessary breeding or education to escape their situation.

Download Sister Carrie from Project Gutenberg


Here are a few other good ones:

McTeague (1899) by Frank Norris

An odd, dark story about greed and animal instinct run amok. This novel has perhaps the greatest ending of all time. This book was adapted for the screen by Erich von Stroheim in the notorious Hollywood epic, Greed (1924), a film widely considered to be one of the greatest silent movies ever made. I can take or leave this novel, but that ending really does pack a wallop.

Download McTeague from Project Gutenberg


The Jungle (1909) by Upton Sinclair

This novel depicts the plight of immigrant workers in the Chicago meat packing industry, the inhuman nightmare of wage slavery and corrupt politics. The reading public's attention was more focused on the unsanitary conditions of food processing rather than the dire living conditions of those who had to work those awful jobs, so while a success, it kind of backfired. Like many Americans, I was forced to read this book in high school. Not for the squeamish.

Download The Jungle from Project Gutenberg


The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London

A story about a domesticated dog who is captured to serve as a sled dog in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. This is a truly timeless story of instinct and survival that is a fabulous read. It's also another book that American students are familiar with. Funny how many naturalist novels have become staples of American education, if indeed American school children are even required to read books anymore.

Download The Call of the Wild from Project Gutenberg

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

The free and easy availability of eBooks has pushed a few forgotten classics back into the spotlight. Unlike many, this one has remained more or less in print since its publication, largely because students of economics, history and sociology still read it, or at least parts of it. While it has mostly remained in print, it was not something the average bookseller was likely to stock on a regular basis. Like all of the books on The Overleaf, its public domain status means anyone who wants it can have it. That's a very good thing indeed, because it is a book well ahead of its time--one of those rare works that brings together elements of an original concept, cited research, accessible writing and adept storytelling. How does one begin to describe a book that is so wide ranging? I guess we're about to find out…


Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) by Charles MacKay

Scottish journalist and author Charles MacKay makes a compelling case for nonconformity in a comprehensive skeptic's almanac that spotlights human gullibility and its widespread effects on the reason and sanity of populations and cultures. MacKay writes, "Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future—the doom of man upon this sphere, and for which he shews his antipathy by his love of life, his longing for abundance, and his craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days to come." 

This passage sums up the book's scope. All of the manias, crises, wars, fads and trends seem to fall into one or more of these categories. He avoids matters of religion, wryly commenting in his introduction that questions of religion and mass delusion would provide enough material "sufficient to occupy a volume" of its own. Indeed. Apart from the Crusades and the craze for relics in the Catholic church, he largely stays away from confronting religion outright.

In the most famous section of this book, he examines two financial booms in England and France in the early eighteenth century that were in both cases quelled by the rampant insider trading of an impossibly corrupt aristocracy driven by their zeal to get rich quick. These two case studies are still read by students of economics, and anyone who lived through the real estate bubble that led to the world economic crisis of 2008 will find it hard to suppress a knowing smirk. He also touches on The Netherlands' Tulip Mania crisis, although the astronomical rise in the price of tulips is now believed by modern historians to have been substantially less disruptive to the Dutch economy than previously thought.

Historically, claiming to circumvent the time-honored existential ills of death, toil and the mystery of the future has proven to be highly lucrative, and there was never a shortage of charlatans who sought to profit from any eager seekers they could dupe. Scores of anecdotes are offered of the men and women who were driven to madness and/or destitution in the desire to manufacture gold, talk to the dead and see into the future. But the most fascinating sketches MacKay draws are those of the world's most accomplished quacks, tricksters and schemers who found ingenious ways to seduce people in high and low places to part with their money for unrealized promises. The intrigues and adventures of rogues and rubes make for some great reading.

As MacKay merrily debunks soothsayers and prophets like Nostradamus, "magnetizers" who sound eerily like bogus New Age "healers", witch hunting, haunted houses, dream interpreters and the insane pastime of deuling to settle petty differences, one begins to see hints of the then emerging discipline of sociology via the work of Auguste Comte, Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer. Unlike the works of those three heavy hitters, MacKay's book was written to entertain, and his language is lively and accessible to modern readers.

The extensive piece that depicts the Crusades as a humanitarian crisis caused by a mass delusion is an excellent piece of writing that is well ahead of its time. Errors in collective judgement often lead to ridiculous, painfully comic results, but MacKay was clearly dismayed and appalled by senseless human suffering and envisioned a day when society would grow beyond its tendency to rashly embrace spurious truths and its capacity to destroy each other in the process. Well, it's 2013 and we're still waiting, Chuck. I feel you, man.

MacKay's anecdotal style means that you don't have to swallow this book whole; it can be read piecemeal without any loss of context or continuity. Truth is, you're better off taking it bit by bit. It's as dense as a cheesecake, touching on many subjects over roughly two thousand years of history--so much good stuff, in fact, that I'm probably not doing this book justice in writing about it. But believe me, It's endlessly fascinating and lots of fun. A chapter of this book can cleanse your literary palette between novels or provide a diversion while riding the train to work or waiting for your plane to land. It's much more fun than the in-flight magazine.

A note on the digital edition: The lack of illustrations in the eBook edition is a bit unsettling, since the captions describing them remain, taunting and frustrating readers with the ghosts of rich and compelling images unseen. Project Gutenberg has done a great job of going back into their catalog to refurbish titles to make them play nice with today's eReader devices, often including complete texts with images. This book is a prime candidate for an overhaul. I want to see those pictures!

Next time, I'll get back to writing about novels.

Download Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds from Project Gutenberg