Summary American Unseen Notes on other texts for context
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Course
Comparative and contextual study
Institution
OCR
American Unseen Notes on other texts for context
Includes:
- The Portrait of a Lady
- A Hazard of New Fortunes
- Sister Carrie
- The Jungle
- White Fang
- My Antonia
- Three Soldiers
- Passing
- A Farewell to Arms
- The Sound and the Fury
- As I Lay Dying
- Their Eyes Were Watching G...
- The Portrait of a Lady – Plot
o Isabel Archer from Albany NY is invited by her aunt Lydia Touchett to visit following IA’s
father’s death. There she meets her uncle Ralph and the Touchetts’ neighbour Lord Warburton
who unexpectedly proposes to her.
o IA also rejects the hand of Caspar Goodwood, the charismatic son and heir of a wealthy Boston
mill owner as she is committed to her independence.
o After inheriting the Touchett estate, IA travels the Continent and meets American expatriate
Gilbert Osmond in Florence. She accepts GO’s proposal unaware of Madame Merle’s
involvement.
o IA and GO settle in Rome but GO is arrogant and lacks genuine affection.
o IA grows fond of Pansy, GO’s daughter (assumed by first marriage) and wants to grant her wish
to marry Edward Rosier, a young art collector.
GO would prefer Pansy accept Warburton’s proposal which IA is suspicious of, thinking
Warburton just wants to be close to her again. This conflict strains their marriage.
o IA learns that Uncle Ralph is dying and prepares to go but GO opposes the plan.
IA learns from her sister-in-law that Pansy is actually Madame Merle’s daughter who had an
affair with GO for years.
IA leaves to comfort Ralph and remains until his death.
o Caspar Goodwood encounters her at Ralph’s estate and begs her to leave GO. He passionately
embraces and kisses her, but she flees. CG seeks her out the next day but is told she left for
Rome.
o The ending is ambiguous as the reader is left to imagine whether Isabel returned to GO or might
rescue Pansy and leave GO.
Throughout the novel James uses ellipses and skips the action.
- Themes - Real introspection on characters – psychological realism, International theme
o Also, idea of innocence vs. decadence and the Female Experience.
o Independence
IA tells CG that she values her independence too much and he says that “It’s to make you
independent that I want to marry you” and that an unmarried girl is “hampered at every step”
(Book 1 Chapter 16. Before she marries GO)
- Henry James was born in 1843 in NYC and died in 1916 in London. He was one of the most prolific
major American authors of the post-Civil War period.
William Dean Howells – A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890)
- Follows March as he walks through New York – presents a New York with many immigrants
o Narration does mock March subtly
o Explores idea of American identity/melting pot
o Presentation of immigrants:
March only engages with surface-level stereotypes of them (“swarthy, strange”)
March seems removed from their poverty, believing that he is intelligent when he wonders
why the poorest live homeless on the worst streets
Corrected by a boy (voice of reason/hope for the future) who describes how “the
burden of all the wrong in the world comes on the poor”
Theodore Dreiser – Sister Carrie (1900)
- Sister Carrie – Plot (Set in Chicago and NYC in 1890 during a period of rapid economic growth for
America)
, o Carrie takes a train from Columbia City to Chicago in hopes of fulfilling the American Dream.
o She goes to live with her sister Minnie and brother-in-law Hanson.
o Carrie meets Drouet (travelling salesman) on the train and she becomes his mistress while he aids
her financially.
o Carrie struggles to find labour in the city, only getting a simple job as a manual labourer in a
wholesale shoe house. She ends up feeling disillusioned with the repetitive nature of her job.
o After falling sick one winter she loses her job, searches and finds Drouet who spoils her.
She sees his faults but stays for the lifestyle.
o She then meets Hurstwood who manages a high-end saloon and they have an affair.
o At one point, Carrie performs in a play at a club that both Hurstwood and Drouet see that tells of
her love triangle.
o Hurstwood turns to drinking, steals money from the saloon and tricks Carrie that Drouet was
seriously wounded so she would jump on a train with him.
They end up married in NY but Hurstwood’s businesses collapse so Carrie is forced to live
more cheaply.
o Carrie’s wealthy neighbours, Mrs Vance and her cousin Ames, tell Carrie that wealth defines
happiness.
o Carrie gets a job as a chorus girl and moves in with another chorus girl, abandoning Hurstwood
and gaining a new independence with her theatre job.
The novel ends with Carrie gaining huge fame in the theatre and living in a luxurious hotel
while Hurstwood ends begging in the streets.
Drouet tries to win her back but she rejects him and ends the novel disillusioned and
contemplating her whole lifestyle and sense of place as a woman.
- Opening scene depicts Caroline Meeber boarding a train for Chicago with only a few items
o Sense of moving on and change – for her and country – it references industrialisation “What,
pray, is [...] a few hundred miles”
o Says that a girl who leaves home will either be saved or assume the “cosmopolitan standard of
virtue” and become worse under the influence of the city.
Presentation of the city as seductive, alluring, and predatory.
Reflects contemporary anxiety about growing urban life.
- Themes – Urban life and decay, morality, American Dream, Class, Women, Transportation
- Reception
o Two publishers rejected Dreiser’s realism and the main publisher labelled the book as “immoral
and vulgar” for not punishing Carrie and publishers saw it as an advocation for leading an
unchaste lifestyle.
- Theodore Dreiser - Born in the Midwest into a large, poor family. Raised Roman Catholic but later
detested it.
o His lack of formal education means his writing has many grammatical and syntactical mistakes
but this mirrors the uneducated Carrie trying to find her way in the world aristocracy.
o Dreiser was a naturalist - Naturalism involved looking specifically at human behaviour and
interactions:
Naturalist literature often focused on psychological realism and included a bleak/honest
view of society.
Naturalist literature can take the form of a character study, looking at minute thoughts
of an individual.
“the human beast” – behaviour governed by forces that can be analysed and studied.
Upton Sinclair – The Jungle (1906)
- Third Person – follows Jurgis
- Presentation of immigrant experience
o Jurgis has no job and later too weak because of hunger to keep one
o Lexical field of monsters/ “phantoms”/ “possession” to talk about hunger
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