Summary:
American writers such as Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau and Herman Melville sought to distance themselves from popular culture and writing in the 19th and 20th centuries. These Transcendentalists sought to weave a new form of writing using philosophy as the "vehicle of thought."
Following the influx of the puritanical style of writing in America during the 17th Century by the Founding Fathers, it could be said that what we now know as the collective 'American writing' was once created almost as an effort to distance its own style from that of other European styles.
Perhaps not being incredibly popular outside their own circle of influence, writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists began, in the 19th Century, to weave a new form of writing using philosophy as the 'vehicle of thought' . While this allowed them to explore new and untouched areas in the mind, it also greatly influenced many later writers from Henry Thoreau to the more 'popular' and recent Mark Twain.
Let us begin with Henry Thoreau's Walden. While Thoreau was educated in Harvard University, he lived, through a time of vast change in America. During a rise in cultural expansion and globalisation, America became more unified through the addition of new states such as Florida in 1845 and later Texas. This change also brought about a huge increase in population with numbers rising from 17 million to 133 million in 1930.
However, it seems that this explosion of life in America inspired Thoreau, as well as many of his contemporaries to, not praise the state and revel in the sense of security and comfort that the ever-prosperous America offered as many 'popular' writers at the time did, but instead challenge its beliefs.
As inspiration for Walden, Thoreau lived 'in the woods...in a house I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond' for, we are told, 15 years, thus distancing himself from popular culture and humanity in general. During his time there he began questioning many things, especially Benjamin Franklin's idea that through giving our lives to the state and its economy, we can find our own independence through a collective identity.
Although some critics may treat Walden as simply a text on the love of nature, Thoreau's message, and indeed philosophy, seems to lay deeper. Although he never openly criticises the state of America, there are certainly references to suggest that this text is somewhat a social commentary or criticism of the society in which he lived. For example he suggests 'Better if [men] had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in' . Through this extract, and indeed through much of the text, we can see that Thoreau uses the image of nature to suggest his own ideal of society. It seems that by isolating himself from civilisation, he begins to understand himself through self-realisation and thus establishes his own identity. From the question, 'Why should they begin digging their own graves as soon as they are born?', we learn a little of Thoreau's philosophy on life: he disagrees with the collective identity of the increasingly capitalist America in which he lives, asking why should we passively comply with a capitalist machine?
Similar to the way in which Thoreau isolated himself from civilisation, poet Emily Dickinson also attempted to question the values of this new society in which she lived, except this time from within the seclusion of her own home in Massachusetts.
Clearly Dickinson's poetry was far from anything the American public had ever experienced before, which explains why she was not recognised until much after her death. Although having her roots in transcendentalism, Dickinson's style was very different from any other writer or poet at the time. Such is the diversity of Dickinson's poetry, if we were to examine almost any of her work, we could always extract different meanings from it. However, there are certain poems that we could say deal with her own identity as a reflection of America's, for example 'The Soul selects her own Society' . The opening few lines could be argued to show just this:
'The Soul selects her own Society -
Then - shuts the Door -'.
Here and throughout, Dickinson expresses her own desires to be left in isolation, as not to pollute her own poetry and identity with that of capitalist America. Had Dickinson wished to appeal to such an audience, she surely would have resorted to a more conventional style, such as abandoning her typical style of using dashes and capitalisation to express the 'naked voltage of her poems' . Clearly then Dickinson as a poet, sought to, and succeeded in distancing herself from popular writing and culture at the time.
Moving on, we can now begin to explore how other, more conventional writers perceived America in the 19th Century. Herman Melville's Bartleby, The Scrivener, seems to attack America in a more solid and accessible way. Perhaps Melville harboured some ill feelings towards the state and public for not holding any of his previous work, such as the tale of Moby Dick, in high regard at the time. Nevertheless, Bartleby now stands as another great, some argue Marxist, criticism of pre 20th Century America.
Assuming Melville's text is entirely metaphorical, the character Bartleby may represent many different things. For example, if we were to take Bartleby as being the voice of Melville himself, it may reflect his failed career as a writer. Like Bartleby, Melville, should he have wanted to, could have easily done a good job and gave America a simple story which required little thought to understand. Instead, he 'prefers not to'. Would giving in to the public demand make him a failure?
Like Dickinson though, the story of Bartleby is also open to interpretation. We are constantly bombarded with images of death and solitude during the text as Bartleby is described as a 'motionless young man' and 'like a ghost...noiselessly slid into view'. This works in tandem with how he begins working under the narrator: 'he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically' and seemingly giving his all to such a menial task. At this point, as far as the wheel of capitalist America is concerned, we could say the Bartleby is fulfilling his duty as a citizen.
If we were to take Bartleby's work colleagues as representing the average American man, simply being comfortable and doing there bit for society, it makes the character of Bartleby seem even more intriguing. About midway through the text, Bartleby simply shuts down and stops conforming to his work team, and even humanity itself as he acts more 'alone, absolutely alone in the universe', spending much of his time peering at the brick wall outside his window instead of working.
The much repeated phrase 'I'd prefer not to' soon becomes a mantra for him, and perhaps the author himself as both refuse to partake in anything that would benefit the system at their own expense.
What is also of interest in this story when questioning an author's stance on popular American writing and culture is the actions of the narrator. Although he, the narrator, becomes increasingly aggravated at Bartleby's actions, there is always a sense of doubt about his character. Meaning that for some reason he always seems to feel sympathetic towards Bartleby and his state of mind. For example he 'felt something superstitious knocking at [his] heart' when faced with the soulless Bartleby. Similarly, the narrator also goes to visit Bartleby when he is taken away. Perhaps this is an incredibly subtle point by Melville, who is maybe suggesting that within any man there is always the ability to change and question their own actions regarding their own place in the state. This, combined with the dramatic final sentence of the book, 'Ah Bartleby, Ah humanity', shows that maybe the story of Bartleby and his subsequent death is actually an extreme of people who are entirely overtaken by a consumerist society system. Perhaps Melville is indicating that, through the character of the narrator, there is hope of reformation.
To conclude, it seems that what Thoreau, Dickinson, and Melville all have in common is their ability and need to distance themselves from 'popular' ideas of culture and writing by continually questioning what is America? The deeper they seem to delve into this conundrum, the more they start to reveal the shocking truths and unravel their own identity. This seems to be the reason as to why they were not, at the time, seen as 'popular' in anyway outside the literary circle. The public simply wanted to read a good story and not have to think about their own positions in society for fear of humiliation perhaps. However, as time passes, these writers' work becomes increasingly relevant to the society in which we live. This was highlighted during the Vietnam War long after Henry Thoreau's death. Walden was held in extremely high regard by those who, like Thoreau during the war against Mexico, skipped conscription.
Bibliography
- Selected by Hughes, Ted. Emily Dickinson. Ed Ted Hughes. (Faber and Faber, 2001)
- The Norton Anthology of American Literature, sixth edition. Ed Nina Baym (Norton 2003)
- Thoreau, Henry David. Walden or Life in the Woods, pg 1807 - 1982. (1846-50)
- Melville, Herman. Bartleby the Scrivener, pg 2330 - 2355. (1853)
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