Editha, William Dean Howells

American Literature

"Editha" (1905)

a short story by

William Dean Howells1837-1920

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William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

Novelist, playwright, critic, essayist, reviewer, poet, and editor. He was always in the public eye, and his influence during the 1880s and 1890s on a growing middle-class readership was enormous.

In the “Editor’s Study” essays he wrote for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine starting in 1886 - some of which were collected in Criticism and Fiction (1891) - Howells attacked sentimentality of thought and feeling and the falsification of moral nature and ethical options wherever he found them in fiction.

“The Dean of American Letters”: Howells represented both the traditional and the innovative through his promotion of a new American Realism.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

He published his most famous novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham, in 1885, which traces the moral rise (and economic collapse) of Silas Lapham, a typical American entrepreneur who has built a paint manufacturing company out of a combination of sheer luck, hard work, and shady business dealings.

Howells had been finding his way as a novelist during his ten years as editor, publishing 7 novels, beginning with his Their Wedding Journey (1872). These early novels are short, uncomplicated linear narratives that deliberately avoid the exaggerated characterizations and plots of romantic fiction in favor of a more ordinary realism.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

In the course of his lifelong career as literary authority, Howells was international in outlook and promoted some contemporaries such as Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Émile Zola, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. In the constant stream of reviews he wrote over five decades, he also supported many younger American writers and early on recognized and publicized the work of talented African American and women writers, including Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles Chesnutt, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Edith Wharton, and Emily Dickinson.

He publicly opposed the Spanish-American War (1898), which was presented by its supporters as an unselfish effort to liberate Cuba from Spain, but which Howells feared was actually about US expansionists’ designs on Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and other Spanish colonial possessions.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920)

In “Editha” (1905), Howells characteristically explores the moral failure of individuals who have been corrupted by their culture’s worst values. Though the Spanish-American War is not specifically mentioned in the story, its satire of romantic conceptions of battlefield glory and the rush to war suited the political moment.

"Editha" (1905)

What's the plot?

Who are the characters?

Which narrative voice is used?

The opening scene

"war feeling"

“He was very nearly perfect as he was.” What’s Editha’s sense of perfection?

"Before her reasoning went her emotioning [...]"

"She had always supposed that the man who won her would have done something to win her; but she did not know what, but something".

How did they start dating?

"duplex emotioning"

Clashing

Standpoints on the War

Editha Balcom

George Gearson

vs

Stage Directions

Editha Balcom

George Gearson

“'Yes, right or wrong!' she returned, fervidly” “'Don't you think so? she entreatead him”

"'I suppose so', he returned, languidly" “He went on as if to himself without apparently heeding her"

“She seized his hand in her two hands, and poured her soul from her eyes into his”

patriotism

idealism realism

religion

vs

American flag

Mrs. Gearson

"No, you didn't expect him to get killed" [...] "You thought it would be all right for my George, your George, to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls that you would never see the faces of". The woman lifted her powerful voice in a psalmlike note. "I thank my God he didn't live to do it! I thank my God they killed him first, and that he ain't livin' with their blood on his hand" [...] What you got that black on for?" [...] "Take it off, take it off, before I tear it from your back!"

Description of Mrs. Gearson’s house

closing scene

"To think of your having such a tragedy in your life!" the lady said. She added: "I suppose there are people who feel that way about war. But when you consider the good this war has done – how much it has done for the country! I can't understand such people, for my part. And when you had come all the way out there to console her – got up out of a sick-bed! Well!"

"The mystery that had bewildered her was solved by the word; and from that moment she rose from grovelling in shame and self-pity, and began to live again in the ideal".

The Letter

"GEORGE: - I understood - when you left me. But I think we had better emphasize your meaning that if we cannot be one in everything we had better be one in nothing. So I am sending these things for your keeping till you have made up you mind."I shall always love you, and therefore I shall never marry any one else. But the man I marry must love his country first of all, and be able to say to me, 'I could not love thee, dear, so much. Loved I not honor more.' "There is no honor above America with me. In this great hour there is no other honor. "Your heart will make my words clear to you. I had never expected to say so much, but it has come upon me that I must say the utmost. EDITHA"

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield

Yet this inconstancy is such As thou too shalt adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.