American Literature: Romanticism Sample Final Exams 2013 final exam assignment Question 2

Sarah McCall DeLaRosa

Surviving traditions of American Romanticism

            Many of the characteristics of American Romanticism have lasted beyond the American Renaissance of the middle 1800’s and are present in the Realism and Modernism periods, and even in our own contemporary time. The Romanticism that sticks around in literature today is mixed and melded with the characteristics of these other literary traditions, and being able to recognize them across American literary history is a valuable part of our cultural literacy. I will discuss some of these surviving and adapted characteristics of American Romanticism in Henry James’s “Daisy Miller” (1878), Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Town Poor” (1890), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Winter Dreams” (1922), and Sylvia Plath’s “Blackberrying” (1960).

            “Daisy Miller” has many Modern characteristics, such as the class-consciousness exhibited by Winterbourne and his society; and many Realistic characteristics, such as the very natural dialogue throughout and the simple matter-of-fact death of Daisy at the end of the novel, which is not romanticized at all. James uses the common Romantic trope of the desire/loss cycle to help motivate the plot, as Winterbourne pursues Daisy. The trope is altered to the post-Romantic world by tinges of Realism with Winterbourne’s decreasing interest in Daisy as the plot goes on, and he seems very little affected by her death at the end of the story. We can see James hinting at his Romantic precursors in his references to Lord Byron—the Castle of Chillon in part 1 of “Daisy Miller” is the setting of Byron’s “Prisoner of Chillon,” and in part 2, paragraph 237 we are ironically told that “As [Winterbourne] stood there [in the Roman Coliseum] he began to murmur Byron's famous lines, out of ‘Manfred,’ but before he had finished his quotation he remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors.” The Romantic reference to the poet Lord Byron, and the setting of the scene are almost scoffed at with the reality of the danger of catching malaria in the evening. James’s “Daisy Miller,” published recently after the height of the American Renaissance, acknowledges the debt it owes to the great literary period just before, and makes a fun play on a familiar Romantic plot to make it more realistic.

            Sarah Orne Jewett’s “The Town Poor” comes a bit later, in 1890, and to me it seems to have less to do with Romanticism than anything else. Tending toward Realism, the story has very realistic dialect and gives insight to regional customs (i.e. local color), and in pushing toward Modernism the story is very class-conscious and alludes to feminist ideas in a soft way. In the line of its hereditary American Romanticism, “The Town Poor” focuses on nostalgia for the earlier times the women remember when life was simpler and easier, and not so negatively impacted by the indifferent, bureaucratic town selectmen. We also see in the story a quiet reverence for nature and feel the transcendent love that binds the women in sisterhood and spurs Miss Wright and Mrs. Trimble on to their new heroic resolutions after the story closes. We see elements of the sublime and evidence of the women’s transcendent love in paragraph 45 of the story:

Then there was a silence, and in the silence a wave of tender feeling rose high in the hearts of the four elderly women. At this moment the setting sun flooded the poor plain room with light; the unpainted wood was all of a golden-brown, and Ann Bray, with her gray hair and aged face, stood at the head of the table in a kind of aureole. Mrs. Trimble's face was all aquiver as she looked at her; she thought of the text about two or three being gathered together, and was half afraid.

The silence, warm feelings, sunlit glows and aureoles, and the fear it evokes in Mrs. Trimble are examples of the American Romantic concept of the sublime. Though Jewett’s story seems strongly a Realism, Local Color piece, it has some sweet hints of Romanticism that endear the reader to the women and motivate us behind them.

            In 1922 F. Scott Fitzgerald published “Winter Dreams,” which feels very post-Romantic, Modern, and Realistic to me, and yet he still retains the important Romantic plot-motivator of the desire/loss cycle. Dexter’s overpowering desire for Judy heaves the plot along, across years of the fragmented time of the story’s plot (a Modern technique). When Dexter is in the loss part of the cycle, however, he has a more Realistic response and is not as emotional as his Romantic forefather characters would have been. Once Judy is back in his life, however, he drops everything for her, in a cool casual way, and tries to keep her with him as long as he can before she inevitably slips away again. As a child, Dexter can see the Romantic and sublime power Judy holds in paragraph 1.11:

The little girl who had done this was eleven—beautifully ugly as little girls are apt to be who are destined after a few years to be inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great number of men. The spark, however, was perceptible. There was a general ungodliness in the way her lips twisted ,down at the corners when she smiled, and in the—Heaven help us!—in the almost passionate quality of her eyes. Vitality is born early in such women. It was utterly in evidence now, shining through her thin frame in a sort of glow.

The juxtaposition of pain and beauty, as in “beautifully ugly,” or “inexpressibly lovely [women who] bring no end of misery” to men, are examples of the Romantic sublime; and the perceptible spark in Judy, her almost passionate eyes, her vitality, and the glow that shines through her thin frame are all examples of the Romantic reverence for children. Edging more towards Modernism, “Winter Dreams” has a few very overt passages dealing with class consciousness in the opening of the novel dealing with the caddies and the several golfers; and in paragraph 3.2, for example, when Dexter muses: “His mother's name had been Krimslich. She was a Bohemian of the peasant class and she had talked broken English to the end of her days. Her son must keep to the set patterns.” These post-Romantic characteristics all mix and enhance the traditional Romantic plot that Fitzgerald has adapted for his story.

            Sylvia Plath’s poem “Blackberrying” was published in 1960, but it seems to be a lot more strongly Romantic than these other pieces I have handled so far. The narrator is peacefully and happily an individual alone in nature, and the reverence for nature is evident in the personification of the blackberries with whom the speaker imagines “a blood sisterhood; they must love me” (line 8). These are very Romantic themes, and also the description “[t]he high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within” (line 14) gives a life and light to nature that is classically American Romantic. At the end of the poem, when the narrator reaches the ocean it is a sublime experience of scale, light, and sound: “nothing but a great space / [o]f white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths / [b]eating and beating at an intractable metal” (lines 25-27). Of course, as with all literature, there are other elements in “Blackberrying,” but the Romanticism in it is very strong.

            Many characteristics of American Romanticism have survived beyond the artistic peak of the American Renaissance and have stayed through the flux of generations and movements and culture. It is interesting and inspiring to me to see these remnants of our literary past still present and strong through more recent history and to today. Understanding now, at the end of this semester, the genesis of these characteristics, and seeing their evolution, adds a new aspect to my appreciation of American literature.