Usually categorized as naturalistic fiction, Harriette Arnow's The Dollmaker (1954) may be considered more fruitfully within the context of heightened realism. Beneath the deceptively simple surface of its narrative lies a selectivity and shaping that transcends the reportorial naturalistic method. The journey which the novel describes of Gertie Nevels and her family from the Kentucky mountains to Detroit is an archetypal one: from pastoral to urban setting and specifically a literal and metaphorical descent from an almost Edenic environment to the city of Hell. Both physical milieux and the characters' psychological responses re-enforce the perception. To consider Gertie's experience in such terms is to broaden our awareness of the work's riches, for we must evaluate the nature of the urban world's torture, determine what innocence is lost, and decide whether or not a figurative exit from the society of the damned is possible.
The novel's two-part development, its movement from pastoral to urban setting, is pivotal. Arnow's description of Gertie's mountain life in the first nine chapters provides a contrast by which one may fully measure her torment in the city. Her clearly defined relationships to the earth itself, to artistic endeavor, to family and community give insight into the sources of fulfillment available in the Kentucky hills. Then, as her painful experiences in Detroit emerge, they force an evaluation of the effects wrought by the loss or modification of these relationships. (p. 92)
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