Chapter 2: The Realistic Period
General Introduction
1. Historical duration and historical position:
The period ranging from 1865 to l914 has been referred to as the Age of Realism in the literary history of the United States, which is actually a movement or tendency that dominated the spirit of American literature, especially American fiction, from the 1850s onwards.
Realism was a reaction against Romanticism or a move away from the bias towards romance and self-creating fictions, and it paved the way to Modernism.
Instead of thinking about the irrational, the imaginative, realists touched upon social and political realities and pressures in the post-Civil war society. Three dominant figures are William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James.
2. Historical and social background:
A. the American society after the Civil War provided rich soil for the rise and development of Realism.
C. the literary scene after the Civil War proved to be quite different a picture. The harsh realities of life as well as the disillusion of heroism resulting from the dark memories of the Civil War had set the nation against the romance. The Americans began to be tired of the sentimental feelings of Romanticism. Thus, started a new period in the American literary writings known as the Age of Realism, characterized by a great interest in the realities of life.
3. Characteristics of Realism:
Guided by the principle of adhering to the truthful treatment of life, the realists touched upon various contemporary social and political issues.
In their works, instead of writing about the polite, well--dressed, grammatically correct middle--class young people who moved in exotic places and remote times, they introduced industrial workers and farmers, ambitious businessmen and vagrants, prostitutes and unheroic soldiers as major characters in fiction.
They approached the harsh realities and pressures in the post-Civil War society either by a comprehensive picture of modern life in its various occupations, class stratifications and manners, or by a psychological exploration of man’s sub-consciousness.
The three dominant figures of the period are William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Henry James. Together they brought to fulfillment native trends in the realistic portrayal of the landscape and social surfaces, brought to perfection the vernacular style, and explored and exploited the literary possibilities of the interior life.
The three dominant figures of the Realistic period differed in their understanding of the “truth”.
1 While Mark Twain and Howells paid more attention to the “life” of the Americans, Henry James laid a greater emphasis on the “inner world” of man. He came to believe that the literary artist should not simply hold a mirror to the surface of social life in particular times and places. In addition, the writer should use language to probe the deepest reaches of the psychological and moral nature of human beings. He is a realist of the inner life.
2 Though Twain and Howells both shared the same concern in presenting the truth of the American society, they had each of them different emphasis. Howells focused his discussion on the rising middle class and the way they lived, while Twain preferred to have his own region and people at the forefront of his stories, which is known as “local colorism”, a unique variation of American literary realism.
4. The American naturalism:
Theory basis
1Reason: The impact of Darwin’s evolutionary theory on the American thought and the influence of the 19th century French literature on the American men of letters gave rise to yet another school of realism: American naturalism.
2Theory basis: natural selection
3Definition: (naturalism)
American Naturalism: American naturalism was a new and harsher realism. American naturalism had been shaped by the war; by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an earlier age. America’s literary naturalists dismissed the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by their environment and heredity.
4Subject and theme
They chose their subjects from the lower ranks of society and portrayed the people who were demonstrably victims of society and nature. And one of the most familiar themes in American Naturalism is the theme of human “bestiality”, especially as an explanation of sexual desire.
5Characteristics
Artistically, naturalistic writings are usually unpolished in language, lacking in academic skills and unwieldy in structure.
Philosophically, the naturalists believe that the real and true is always partially hidden from the eyes of the individual, or beyond his control. Devoid of rationality and caught in a process in which he is but a part, man cannot fully understand, let alone control, the world he lives in; hence, he is left with no freedom of choice.
In a word, naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more detached, ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a different philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence. Notable writers of naturalistic fiction were Frank Norris, Sherwood Anderson, and Theodore Dreiser.
6The similarity and difference between realism and naturalism
Naturalism is evolved from realism when the author’s tone in writing becomes less serious and less sympathetic but more detached, ironic and more pessimistic. It is no more than a different philosophical approach to reality, or to human existence.
The distinction lies, first of all, in the fact that Realism is concerned directly with what is absorbed by the senses; Naturalism, a term more properly applied to literature, attempts to apply scientific theories to art. Second, Naturalism differs from Realism in adding an amoral attitude to the objective presentation of life. Naturalistic writers, adopting Darwin’s biological determinism and Marx’s economic determinism, regard human behavior as controlled by instinct, emotion, or social and economic conditions, and reject free will. Third, Naturalism had an outlook often bleaker than that of Realism, and it added a dimension of predetermined fate that rendered human will ultimately powerless.
The typical authors during this period
Mark Twain
1. Mark Twain’s life and position:
Mark Twain is a great literary giant of America, whom H.L. Mencken considered “the true father of our national literature.” With works like Adventure of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Life on the Mississippi (1883) Twain shaped the world’s view of America and made a more extensive combination of American folk humor and serious literature than previous writers had ever done.
Mark Twain, Pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born on father died, he began to seek his own fortune. He once worked as a journeyman printer, a steamboat pilot, a newspaper columnist and as a deadpan lecturer. Twain’s writing took the form of humorous journalism of the time, and it enabled him to master the technique of narration.
2. Writing features:
Local colorist Twain is also known as a local colorist, who preferred to present social life through portraits of the local characters of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. Consequently, the rich material of his boyhood experience on the Mississippi became the endless resources for his fiction, and the Mississippi valley and the West became his major theme. Unlike James and Howells, Mark Twain wrote about the lower-class people, because they were the people he knew so well and their life was the one he himself had lived. Moreover he successfully used local color and historical settings to illustrate and shed light on the contemporary society.
Vernacular (language style)
Another fact that made Twain unique is his magic power with language, his use of vernacular. His words are colloquial, concrete and direct in effect, and his sentence structures are simple, even ungrammatical, which is typical of the spoken language. And Twain skillfully used the colloquialism to cast his protagonists in their everyday life. What’s more, his characters, confined to a particular region and to a particular historical moment, speak with a strong accent, which is true of his local colorism. Besides, different characters from different literary or cultural backgrounds talk differently, as is the case with Huck, Tom, and Jim. Indeed, with his great mastery and effective use of vernacular, Twain has made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language was later taken up by his descendants, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway, and influenced generations of letters.
Humor
Mark Twain’s humor is remarkable, too. It is fun to read Twain to begin with, for most of his works tend to be funny, containing some practical jokes, comic details, witty remarks, etc., and some of them are actually tall tales. By considering his experience as a newspaperman, Mark Twain shared the popular image of the American funny man whose punning, facetious, irreverent articles filled the newspapers, and a great deal of his humor is characterized by puns, straight-faced exaggeration, repetition, and anti-climax, let alone tricks of travesty and invective. However, his humor is not only of witty remarks mocking at small things or of farcical elements making people laugh, but a kind of artistic style used to criticize the social injustice and satirize the decayed romanticism.
II. Henry James 1. His life and writing:
Henry James was the first American writer to conceive his career in international terms. Today with the development of the modern novel and the common acceptance of the Freudian approach, his importance, as well as his wide influence as a novelist and critic, has been all the more conspicuous.
Henry James was born in New York City. His father was a theological writer and his elder brother was the distinguished philosopher and psychologist William James, who made a great contribution to the theory of the stream-of-consciousness technique. James was one of the few authors in the American literary history who was not obliged to work for a living. He exposed early to an international society. In 1862, he entered Harvard Law School where he developed a lifelong friendship with William Dean Howells. There he read intensively Balzac, Merimee, George Sand, George Eliot and Hawthorne. Later, he toured Europe and met Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola and Turgenev, who exerted a great influence on him. While Mark Twain and William Dean Howells satirized European manners at times, Henry James was an admirer of ancient European civilization. The materialistic bent of American life and its lack of culture and sophistication, he believed, could not provide him with enough materials for great literary works, so he settled down in London in 1876, and in 1915 he became a naturalized British citizen.
2. His major works:
In the first period (1865-1882), James took great interest in international themes.
Daisy Miller (1878)
The Europeans (1878)
The Portrait of A Lady (1881 )- masterpiece
The second period: exploring the relationship of the artist to the society
The Bostonians (1886)
The Princess Casamassima (1886)
The Private Life (1893)
The Death of a Lion (1894)
The Middle Years (posthumously 1917)
The Turn of the Screw (1898)
The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
Last and major period: James returned to his “international theme.”
What Maisie Knows (l897).
The Wings of the Dove (l902),
The Ambassadors (1903)
The Golden Bowl (1904).
Literary criticisms: The Art of Fiction is the most famous.
3. Writing features:
International theme:
James’s fame generally rests upon his novels and stories with the international theme. These novels are always set against a large international background, usually between Europe and America, and centered on the confrontation of the two different cultures with two different groups of people representing two different value systems.
Literary criticism:
James’s literary criticism is an indispensable part of his contribution to literature. It is both concerned with form and devoted to human values. The theme of his essay “The Art of Fiction” clearly indicates that the aim of the novel is to present life, so it is not surprising to find in his writings human experiences explored in every possible form: illusion, despair, reward, torment, inspiration, delight, etc. He also advocates the freedom of the artist to write about anything that concerns him, even the disagreeable, the ugly and the commonplace. The artist should be able to “feel” the life, to understand human nature, and then to record them in his own art form.
Psychological realism:
James’s realism is characterized by his psychological approach to his subject matter. His fictional world is concerned more with the inner life of human beings than with overt human actions. His best and most mature works will render the drama of individual consciousness and convey the moment-to-moment sense of human experience as bewilderment and discovery. And we observe people and events filtering through the individual consciousness and participate in his experience. This emphasis on psychology and on the human consciousness proves to be a big breakthrough in novel writing and has great influence on the coming generations. James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century “stream-of-consciousness” novels and the founder of psychological realism.
Narrative point of view:
One of James’s literary techniques innovated to cater for this psychological emphasis is his narrative “point of view.” James avoids the authorial omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal intervention. So it is often the case that in his novels we usually learn the main story by reading through one or several minds and share their perspectives. This narrative method proves to be successful in bringing out his themes.
Language:
James is not so easy to understand. He is often highly refined and insightful. With a large vocabulary, he is always accurate in word selection, trying to find the best expression for his literary imagination .Therefore Henry James is not only one of the most important realists of the period before the First World War, but also the most expert stylist of his time.
III. Emily Dickinson
1. Dickinson’s life and writing:
Miss Emily Dickinson was born into a Calvinist family of Amherst, Massachusetts. She attended Amherst Academy for seven years and suffered serious religious crisis. After affected by an unhappy love affair with Reverend Charles Wadsworth, she became a total recluse, living a normal New England village life only with her family. Her private life was pretty much in order. She wrote poetry, and read intensively by herself. Her favorite writers were Keats, the Brontes, the Brownings, and George Eliot; classic myths, the Bible, and Shakespeare were what Emily drew commonly on for allusions and references in her poetry and letters. She also drew intellectual resources from her contemporary American, Thoreau and Emerson. In general, Dickinson wanted to live simply as a complete independent being, and as a spinster.Dickinson’s poetry writing began in the early 1850s. Altogether she wrote 1,775 poems, of which only seven had appeared during her lifetime. Most of her poems were published after her death. Her fame kept rising. She is now recognized not only as a great poetess on her own right but as a poetess of considerable influence upon American poetry of the 20th century.
2. Dickinson’s poems:
Her religious poems
She wrote about her doubt and belief about religious subjects. While she desired salvation and immortality, she denied the orthodox view of paradise. Although she believed in God, she sometimes doubted His benevolence.
Her poems on death and immortality
Her poems concerning death and immortality: These poems are closely related to her religious poetry, ranging over the physical as well as the psychological and emotional aspects of death. She showed her ambiguous attitude towards death and immortality. She looked at death from the point of view of both the living and the dying. She even imagined her own death, the loss of her own body, and the journey of her soul to the unknown. Perhaps her greatest rendering of the moment of death is to be found in “I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died –”, a poem universally considered one of her masterpieces.
Her love poems
Love is another subject Dickinson dwelt on. One group of her love poems treats the suffering and frustration love can cause. These poems are clearly the reflection of her own unhappy experience, closely related to her deepest and most private feelings. Many of them are striking and original depictions of the longing for shared moments, the pain of separation, and the futility of finding happiness. The other group of love poems focuses on the physical aspect of desire, in which Dickinson dealt with, allegorically, the influence of the male authorities over the female, emphasizing the power of physical attraction and expressing a mixture of fear and fascination for the mysterious magnetism between sexes. However, it is those poems dealing with marriage that have aroused critical attention first and showed Dickinson’s confusion and doubt about the role of women in the 19th century America.
Her nature poems
Her nature poems: More than 500 of her poems are about nature, in which her general skepticism about the relationship between man and nature is well-expressed. On the one hand, she shared with her romantic and transcendental predecessors who believed that a mythical bond between man and nature existed, that nature revealed to man things about mankind and universe. On the other hand, she felt strongly about nature’s inscrutability and indifference to the life and interests of human beings. However, Dickinson managed to write about nature in the affirmation of the sheer joy and the appreciation, unaffected by philosophical speculations. Her acute observations, her concern for precise details and her interest in nature are pervasive, from sketches of flowers, insects, birds, to the sunset, the fully detailed summer storms, the change of seasons; from keen perception to witty analysis.
3. Features:
1Themes:
Dickinson’s poems are usually based on her own experiences, her sorrows and joys. But within her little lyrics Dickinson addresses those issues that concern the whole human beings, which include religion, death, immortality, love, and nature.
2Artistic features
Her poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way.
Her poems have no titles, hence are always quoted by their first lines.
In her poetry there is a particular stress pattern, in which dashes are used as a musical device to create cadence and capital letters as a means of emphasis.
Most of her poems borrow the repeated four-line, rhymed stanzas of traditional Christian hymns, with two lines of four-beat meter alternating with two lines of three-beat meter.
A master of imagery that makes the spiritual materialize in surprising ways, Dickinson managed manifold variations within her simple form: She used imperfect rhymes, subtle breaks of rhythm, and idiosyncratic syntax and punctuation to create fascinating word puzzles, which have produced greatly divergent interpretations over the years.
Dickinson’s irregular or sometimes inverted sentence structure also confuses readers. However, her poetic idiom is noted for its laconic brevity, directness and plainness.
Her poems are usually short, rarely more than twenty lines, and many of them are centered on a single image or symbol and focused on one subject matter. Due to her deliberate seclusion, her poems tend to be very personal and meditative. She frequently uses personae to render the tone more familiar to the reader, and personification to vivify some abstract ideas.
Dickinson’s poetry, despite its ostensible formal simplicity, is remarkable for its variety, subtlety and richness; and her limited private world has never confined the limitless power of her creativity and imagination.
IV. Theodore Dreiser
1. Dreiser’s life and position:
Theodore Dreiser is generally acknowledged as one of America’s literary naturalists. He possessed none of the usual aids to a writer’s career: no money, no friend in power, no formal education worthy of mention, no family tradition in letters. With every disadvantage piled upon him, Dreiser, by his strong will and his dogged persistence, eventually burst out and became one of the important American writers.
2. His major works:
Sister Carrie 嘉丽妹妹--the best-known
Nigger Jeff
Old Rogaum
His Theresa
Jennie Gerhardt
Trilogy of Desire:
Financier 金融家
The Titan 巨头
The Stoic 斯多噶
The Genius
The American Tragedy
Dreiser Looks at Russia
An American Tragedy 美国的悲剧
3. Dreiser’s style:
Dreiser’s style has been a controversial aspect of his work from the beginning. For lack of concision, his writings appear more inclusive and less selective, and the readers are sometimes burdened with massive detailed descriptions of characters and events. Though the time sequence is clear and the plot straight forward, he has been always accused of being awkward in sentence structure, inept and occasionally flatly wrong in word selection and meaning, and mixed and disorganized in voice and tone. For him language is a means of communication rather than an art form. However, Dreiser’s contribution to the American literary history cannot be ignored. He broke away from the genteel tradition of literature and dramatized the life in a very realistic way. There is no comment, no judgment but facts of life in the stories. His style is not polished but very serious and well calculated to achieve the thematic ends he sought.
4. An analysis of Sister Carrie:
Sister Carrie best embodies Dreiser’s naturalistic belief that men are controlled and conditioned by heredity, environment and chance, but a few extraordinary and unsophisticated human beings refuse to accept their fate wordlessly and instead strive, unsuccessfully, to find meaning and purpose for their existence. Carrie, as one of such, senses that she is merely a cipher in an uncaring world yet seeks to grasp the mysteries of life and thereby satisfies her desires for social status and material comfort. In Sister Carrie, Dreiser expressed his naturalistic pursuit by expounding the purposelessness of life and importance of men.
5. Dreiser’s literary naturalism (or American naturalism):
As a genre, naturalism emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances. At bottom, life was shown to be ironic, even tragic. Dreiser described earthly existence as “a welter of inscrutable forces,” in which was trapped each individual human being. In his words, Man is a “victim of forces over which he has no control.” To him, life is “so sad, so strange, so mysterious and so inexplicable.” No wonder the characters in his books are often subject to the control of the natural forces -- especially those of environment and heredity.
6. Dreiser’s naturalism in his works:
Dreiser’s naturalism found expression in almost every book he wrote.
In Sister Carrie, Dreiser expressed his naturalistic pursuit by expounding the purposelessness of life and attacking the conventional moral standards.
An American Tragedy proves to be his greatest work and by entitling this book with such a name, Dreiser intended to tell us that it is the social pressure that makes Clyde’s downfall inevitable.
Clyde’s tragedy is a tragedy that depends upon the American social system which encouraged people to pursue the “dream of success” at all costs.
7. Dreiser’s exploration of human desire and revelation of the dark side of human nature:
From the first novel Sister Carrie on, Dreiser set himself to project the American values for what he had found them to be--materialistic to the core. Living in such a society with such a value system, the human individual is obsessed with a never-ending, yet meaningless search for satisfaction of his desires. One of the desires is for money which was a motivating purpose of life in the United States in the late l9th century. For example, in Sister Carrie, there is not one character whose status is not determined economically. Sex is another human desire that Dreiser explored to considerable lengths in his novels to reveal the dark side of human nature. In Sister Carrie, Carrie climbs up the social ladder by means of her sexual appeal. Also in the “Trilogy of Desire,” the possession of sexual beauty symbolizes the acquisition of some social status of great magnitude. However, Dreiser never forgot to imply that these human desires in life could hardly be defined. They are there like a powerful “magnetism” governing human existence and reducing human beings to nothing. So like all naturalists he was restrained from finding a solution to the social problems that appeared in his novels and accordingly almost all his works have tragic endings.
1. naturalism ['nætʃ(ə)rəlɪz(ə)m] n. 自然主义;本能行动;自然论 E.g. As a genre, naturalism emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances. 作为一个流派，自然主义强调遗传和环境在塑造特定环境 下的个人形象中的重大作用。
2. naturalistic [næ tʃ(ə)rə'lɪstɪk] adj. 自然的;自然主义的;博物学的 E.g. In Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser expressed his naturalistic pursuit by expounding the purposelessness of life and attacking the conventional moral standards. 在《嘉莉妹妹》中，德莱塞通过阐述人生的目的性和对传统道德标准的攻击，表达了他的自然主义的追求。
3. naturalist ['nætʃ(ə)rəlɪst] n. 自然主义者 adj. 自然的(等于 naturalistic);自然主义的 E.g. Like all naturalists, Theodore Dreiser was restrained from finding a solution to the social problems that appeared in his novels and accordingly almost all his works have tragic endings. 像所有的自然学家那样，德莱塞在寻求解决出现在他小说中的社会问题的方法时都受到了限制，因此几乎所有他的作品都具有悲剧性结局。
4. psychological [saɪkə'lɒdʒɪk(ə)l] adj. 心理的;心理学的;精神上的
5. realism ['rɪəlɪz(ə)m] n. 现实主义;实在论;现实主义的态度和行为 E.g. Among the following writers Henry James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th-century “stream-of-consciousness” novels and the founder of psychological realism. 亨利·詹姆斯被普遍认为是 20 世纪“意识流”小说的先驱和心理现实主义的创始人。
6. death [deθ] n. 死;死亡;死神;毁灭
7. immortality [ɪmɔː'tælɪtɪ] n. 不朽;不朽的声名;不灭 E.g. Within her little lyrics Dickinson addresses those issues that concern the whole human beings, which include religion, death, immorality, love and nature. 在她的短篇抒情诗里所涉及到的问题却是有关人类的，包括宗教，死亡，不朽，爱情和自然。
8. local ['ləʊk(ə)l] adj. 当地的;局部的;地方性的;乡土的
9. colorism ['kʌlərizəm] n. 特色，色彩 E.g. Mark Twain’s particular concern about the local character of a region came about as “local colorism,” a unique variation of American literary realism. 马克·吐温对地方特色的关注被称为“地方特色”，美国现实主义文学的独特变体。
10. emphasis ['emfəsɪs] n. 重点;强调;加强语气 E.g. While Mark Twain seemed to have paid more attention to the “life” of the Americans, Henry James had apparently laid a greater emphasis on the “inner world” of man. 虽然马克吐温似乎更注重美国人的“生活”， 亨利·詹姆斯显然更加重视人的“内心世界”。
11. narrative ['nærətɪv] n. 叙述;故事;讲述 adj. 叙事的，叙述的;叙事体的 E.g. One of Henry James’ literary techniques innovated to cater for the psychological emphasis is his narrative “point of view”. 詹姆斯文学创作技巧的一个方面就是强调这种心理分析，以叙述者的视角为线索。
12. international [ɪntə'næʃ(ə)n(ə)l] adj. 国际的;世界的 E.g. Henry James was the first American writer to conceive his career in international terms. 亨利·詹姆斯是第一个试图探索国际主题的美国作家。
13. theme [θiːm] n. 主题;主旋律;题目 E.g. The literary career of Henry James is generally divided into three periods and in the first period, he took great interest in international themes. 詹姆斯的文学生涯分成三个时期。在他的早期作品中，他对国际主题很感兴趣。
14.influence ['ɪnflʊəns] n. 影响;势力;感化;有影响的人或事 vt. 影响;改变 E.g. With the development of the modern novel and the common acceptance of the Freudian approach, Henry James’s importance, as well as his wide influence as a novelist and critic, has been all the more conspicuous. 随着现代小说的发展和弗洛伊德心理分析广泛接受，詹姆斯的重要性以及他作为一个小说家和评论家的广泛的影响力已经更加突出。
15.conspicuous [kən'spɪkjʊəs] adj. 显著的;显而易见的
16. figure ['fɪgə] n. 数字;人物 vi. 计算 vt. 计算;认为 E.g. It is Henry James’ novels and his literary essays that make him a fascinating case in the American literary history and a conspicuous figure in world literature. 正是亨利·詹姆斯的小说和他的文学随笔，使得他成为美国文学史上的典范以及世界文学上声名显赫的人物。
17. fiction ['fɪkʃ(ə)n] n. 小说;虚构，编造;谎言 E.g. The rich material of Mark Twain’s boyhood experience on the Mississippi became the endless resources for his fiction. 马克吐温少年时代在密西西比河的经历为他的小说提供了丰富的素材。 E.g. We can easily find in Dreiser’s fiction a world of jungle, and naturalism found expression in almost every book he wrote. 我们可以很容易地在德莱塞的小说中看到一个弱肉强食的世界，自然主义体现在几乎他写的每本书中。
18. fictional ['fɪkʃənl] adj. 虚构的;小说的 E.g. The effect of Darwinist idea of “survival of the fittest” was shattering in Theodore Dreiser ’s fictional world of jungle, where “kill or to be killed” was the law. 达尔文主义“优胜劣汰”的观念的影响在德莱塞虚构的弱肉强食的世界中无处不再，在这里“杀或被 杀”是自然规律。
19. tragedy ['trædʒɪdɪ] n. 悲剧;灾难;惨案 E.g. Mark Twain’s The Tragedy of Puddn’ head Wilson shows the disastrous effects of slavery on the victimizer and the victim alike. 《傻瓜威尔逊的悲剧》表明了奴隶制的加害者和受害者都将会有灾难性的后果。
20. victim ['vɪktɪm] n. 受害人;牺牲品;牺牲者
21. force [fɔːs] n. 力量;武力;军队;魄力 vt. 促使，推动;强迫;强加 E.g. Man is a “victim of forces over which he has no control.” This is a notion held strongly by Theodore Dreiser. 用德莱赛的话来说，人类是“各种力量交织在一起的受害者，这些力量人类是无法控制的”。
22. approach [ə'prəʊtʃ] n. 方法;途径;接近 vt. 接近;着手处理 vi. 靠近 E.g. With the development of the modern novel and the common acceptance of the Freudian approach, Henry James’s importance, as well as his wide influence as a novelist and critic, has been all the more conspicuous. 随着现代小说的发展和弗洛伊德心理分析广泛接受，詹姆斯的重要性以及他作为一个小说家和评论家的广泛的影响力 已经更加突出。
23. desire [dɪ'zaɪə] n. 欲望;要求，心愿;性欲 vt. 想要;要求;希望得到...vi. 渴 望 E.g. The Financier, The Titan and The Stoic by Theodore Dreiser are called his “Trilogy of Desire. ” 《金融家》，《巨头》和《斯多葛》是德莱赛的“欲望三部曲”。
24. heredity [hɪ'redɪtɪ] n. 遗传，遗传性 E.g. As a genre, naturalism emphasized heredity and environment as important deterministic forces shaping individualized characters who were presented in special and detailed circumstances. 作为一个流派，自然主义强调遗传和环境在塑造特定环境下的个人形象中的重大作用。
25.forerunner ['fɔːrʌnə] n. 先驱;先驱者;预兆
26.consciousness ['kɒnʃəsnɪs] n. 意识;知觉;觉悟;感觉 E.g. Among the following writers Henry James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th-century “stream-of-consciousness” novels and the founder ofpsychologicalrealism. 亨利·詹姆斯被普遍认为是20世纪“意识流”小说的先驱和心理现实主义的创始人。
27unique [juː'niːk] adj. 独特的，稀罕的，独一无二的 n. 独一无二的人或物 E.g. Emily Dickinson’s poetry is unique and unconventional in its own way. For example,herpoemshavenotitles. 狄金森的诗歌很独特，不依惯例，诗作里没有标题。
28.personification [pə,sɒnɪfɪ'keɪʃ(ə)n] n. 人格化;化身;拟人法(一种修辞手 法);象征 E.g. Emily Dickinson frequently uses personae to render the tone more familiar to the reader, and personification to vivify some abstract ideas. 狄金森经常运用主人公形象让语气为读者所熟悉，并运用拟人来生动的表达一些抽象的概念。
29.materialistic [mə,tɪərɪə'lɪstɪk] adj. 唯物主义的;唯物论的 E.g. From the first novel Sister Carrie on, Dreiser set himself to project the American values for what he had found them to be, materialistic to the core. 在第一部小说《嘉莉妹妹》出版过后，德莱塞一直把美国的价值观推向彻底的物质享受主义。
30. expression [ɪk'spreʃ(ə)n] n. 表现，表达;表情E.g. We can easily find in Dreiser’s fiction a world of jungle, and naturalism found expression in almost every book he wrote. 我们可以很容易地在德莱塞的小说中看到一个弱肉强食的世界，自然主义体现在几乎他写的每本书中。