Reading the American Novel 1865 - 1914 (Hardcover)

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

1 Toward the “Great American Novel”: Romance and Romanticism in the Age of Realism 9

2 Of Realism and Reality: Definitions and Contexts 25

3 Dramas of the Broken Teacup: American “Quiet” Realism 41

4 The Nature of Naturalism: Definitions and Backgrounds 55

5 Implacable Nature, Household Tragedy, and Epic Romance 73

6 Frank Norris: The Beast Within 91

7 The Rocking Horse Winners: Theodore Dreiser and Urban Naturalism 109

8 Subjective Realism: Stephen Crane’s Impressionist Fictions 125

9 Impressions of War: The Interior Battlefield 141

10 Sense and Sensibility: Sentimental Domesticity and “New Woman’s Fiction” 157

11 Domestic Feminism: The Problematic Louisa May Alcott 179

12 “All the Happy Endings”: Marriage, Insanity, and Suicide 195

13 Vulgarians at the Gate: Edith Wharton and the Collapse of Gentility 215

14 Tea-Table as Jungle: Henry James and “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” 235

15 Economies of Pain: W. D. Howells 261

16 The “Gilded Age”: Genteel Critics and Militant Muckrakers 283

17 What Is An American? Regionalism and Race 299

18 The Territory Ahead: Emerging African American Voices 323

19 The “Dream of a Republic”: War, Reconstruction, and Future History 343

20 At the Modernist Margin: Mark Twain 367

Bibliographical Resources 387

Index 421