Fiction and Fictionality in American Realism

Winfried Fluck

ABSTRACT
In this essay, classic American realism is seen as a cultural strategy to influence the defmition of a
new stage of American civilization after the Civil War. In order to achieve this purpose, the realist
had to base his work on a theory of effects. Classic American realism has been habitually described as a
(Victorian) model of reality; a closer analysis shows, however, that it based its hopes of creating a "com-
mon" vision of the specific potential of American civilization not on expectations of identification and
imitation, but on a process of communication and conversation which the novel was to initiate and sup-
port through its own dialogical mode of representation. For the realist, fiction's usefulness for drawing
the reader into an ongoing dialogue about American civilization lay neither in the familiarity of its
world, nor in the fictional disruption of that familiarity, but in a carefully controlled tension between the
two. Typically realist strategies such as the striving for naturalization or the de-emphasis of fictionality,
can thus be seen as part of an attempt to establish a new kind of semantization, and, thereby, a new
function for the. novel. An art-as-model paradigm is replaced by a view of art as a stimulus of communi-
cation. Yet even this revision of our traditional views of the realist text is in need of further differentia-
tion. For in the final analysis, what complicates any explanation of American literary realism and its
often criticized inconsistencies is the fact that it constantly oscillated between these two possibilities of
fiction, so that its own history presents a running commentary on the problems and difficulties of each.
This would allow us to rewrite the history of these inconsistencies as a clash between two functional
models of the literary text; rather than deploring the lack of an "uncontaminated" American realism, the
irritating co-existence of different aesthetiC strategies should be seen as a source of cultural commentary
and insight.

Classic American realism of the period between 1865 -1900 did not come into exis-
tence as a violent break. with tradition. Nor was it a movement gUided by a well worked-
out theory of realism and supported by writers intent on writing novels that would stand
as successful illustration of their own realist program. What stood at the beginning were
rather interventions into the literary world of the romance. These interventions. however,
had their cultural purpose-they served as literary devices to establish a cultural vision
that evolved out of an advanced stage of American Victorianism. Briefly speaking, at-
tempts in the mode of writing that la ter came to be called realism can be seen as symbolic
strategies to influence the definition of American society after the Civil War. Reflecting
the crucial role which the idea of civilization played for the self-definition of the so-called
Gilded Age-which Ursula Brumm has worked out in her essay on the idea of progress in
American thought of the 19th century-the Civil War was regarded as a watershed in
American history. The divided nation was reunited; slavery, its last moral blemish, had
finally been abolished. In the first example of American realism, Miss Ravenel's Con-
version, John William DeForest suggests that the union between North and South holds
the promise of a new America which now seems ready to enter a stage in the development
of human civilization never before attained. :;;';";"<.'~
This new stage, however, was still a promise; it had yet to become a reality. Outworn
cultural conventions and a widespread persistence of foolish romantic notions prevented
American society from realizing its full potential. It was here that literature was called
ripon to playa most important role as moral and intellectual stimulUS that would convert
102 Winifried Fluck
Fiction and Fictionality in American Realism 103
readers to a full perception of the potential of American civilization. In order to function
as a civilizing instrument, however, the novel had to be redefined and upgraded as a mode trating the problem of perception that is at the core of the realist project. Since in the age
of discourse: "If, after half a century," Howells wrote in Criticism and Fiction, "fiction of Victorian morals the relation between the sexes is still dependent on a perception and
still mainly works for 'children, minors, and semi-fatuous persons of both sexes,' it is knowledge of the other that, for the most part, remains external, courtship and marriage
are particularly well suited to dramatize the painful, self~destructive consequences of an
nevertheless one of the hopefulest signs of the world's progress that it has begun to work
inadequate and distorted reading of reality. In the end, the sad fates of a Marcia Gaylord
for 'grown persons' ...:'\
or Isabel ArCher teach a welcome lesson: to trust only one's own experience, to learn to
If the novel was to develop into something that "grown persons" (and by that, one can
see and judge for oneself. Refunctionalizing the motif, the realist novel thus tries to revise
surmise, Howells meant especially adult males) would take seriously, it had to be purified
and re-emplot the story of courtship and marriage as a test-case of how to acquire reliable
of those excesses and infantile residues of the romance which distorted the perception knowledge about the world.
of human nature and the' social fabric. The romance, in this sense of an infantile discourse, It was one of the constant dangers of such realist revision of the romance, however, to
became the sign of a lack of control in American civilization, of a weakness in the culture, remain on a primarily thematic level of revision, to offer countermodels of behavior, not
that still stood in the way of its democratic and cultural progress, and the struggle against of reading. Ironically, the strategy of influencing the reader would in this case still be
it could thus be seen as a cultural task of the first importance: "Whatever in my mental based on the same functional model that the domestic romance employed: that of setting
make-up is wild and visionary, whatever is untrue, whatever is injurious," Howells quotes a strong example of behavior for the reader. But the realist's critique of the romance had
a skeptical reader with approval, "I can trace to the perusal of some work of fiction."2 also been that of the genre's form and function. The danger of the romance did not only
What unites novels otherwise as different as Huck Finn, Silas Lapham or The Portrait of a lie in the examples it set, but even more so in the self-indulgent kind of reading it sug-
Lady is a movement beyond such dangerous states of mental and emotional dependency. gested. Its theme, as we have seen, could be re-emplotted to teach a new and helpfulles-
In each case, the text is centered around an exemplary process of learning in which char- son, but if literature was to promote a different kind of knowledge then the use of the
acters misguided by books are confronted with the painful consequences of their own text made in the reading process itself had to be part of the change. The danger, in other
false perception of the world. In this process, it is experience that makes all the differ- words, lay in replacing one model of behavior with another, but not the view of art as
ence. The imagination, of course, is not to be denied as a source of knowledge, but it model itself.
needs to be restrained and checked by experience. The fatal error is to imitate models of It is exactly at this point that the realists seem to get into trouble with the concept of
behavior offered by literature (that is, to borrow someone else's perception). In contrast, fiction. One may have noticed, for example, that in my quotation of the Howellsian cri-
representative characters of classic American realism-from Miss Ravenel to Isabel Archer tique of romance Howells himself employed the term fiction instead of romance. At
and Annie Kilburn-finally learn to trust their own experience as the only reliable source times, in fact, the two words seem to have become virtually synonymous, both carrying
of knowledge. And this, by analogy, was also the promise the realist text extended to its the same connotation of illusion, if not downright lying. But if fiction was an illusion,
reader. If the perception of a specific potential of American civilization was to be ground- what about the fictional nature of realism's own critique of fiction?
ed on the possibility of a common experience, then the realist text had to finj ways to To cut through the fictions people impose on their life was one of the main goals of
make the reader experience the necessity of experience itself. realism, that it had to do this by means of fiction seems to emerge as one of its main
dilemmas. We appear to have reached the ultimate paradox: a critique of fiction by means
of fiction. It is a contradiction which seems to confirm the modernist and postmodernist
II suspicion that the realist text lacks an awareness of its own fictionality and is thus based
on naive self-deception. As a consequence, to quote Harry Levin, it "goes out of its way
How could this be accomplished? How could the novel generate a reading that would to avoid the appearance of the fictitious," as if it would be possible to deny the fictional
correspond to realism's theory of gaining knowledge? At first, the American realists seem mode altogether. 3 Realism's critique of the romance, however, can only be considered a
to have assumed that it would be sufficient-in Howells' words-to expose the idle lies contradiction as long as realist fiction did indeed do nothing but replace one model of
about human nature and the social fabric on which the romance based its effects. The behavior with another, if it made a claim for superior cultural authority by calling the
potential of American civilization would then become self-evident, common sense and romance a lie while at the same time trying to deceive the reader about its own fictional
common vision would prevail. Such a strategy explains, for example, the predominance of mode.
a theme in classic American realism that has puzzled and irritated subsequent generations Yet though there is a tendency in realism, typical of 19th-century rationalism, to de-
of critics in their search for a pure and uncontaminated realism. I am referring to the lude itself about the extent to which we fictionaliz.e in perceiving reality, it seems too
central role thematic elements of the domestic romance such as courtship and marriage easy to see the realist's critique of fiction as merely a naive illusion about the possibilities
continued to play in the realist novel. To see this thematic emphasis merely as a deplor- of replacing fiction by fact. For clearly, what the realists had in mind was not the elimina-
able concession to a female reading pUblic is to miss its specific point and function within tion of fiction, but its redefinition-and the ensuing conflict is therefore not one between
American realism. For quite obviously, the motif of courtship plays a crucial role in illus- illusion and reality, but between two different functionl!-Lp:.()d,els of literature. Two mean-

1 William Dean Howells, Criticism and Fiction (New York: Hill and Wang, 1962), p. 103. 3 Harry Levin. The Gates of Hom: A Study of Five French Realists (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,

2 Ibid., p. 92. 1963), p. 2S.

104 Winifried Fluck
Fiction and Fictionality in American Realism 105
ings of the word fiction must be kept apart here: I. our modern, all-embracing sense of
the reading process as an act of identification, it appears much more reasonable to think of
the word in which fiction has come to denote a tentative, experimental mode of dis-
it in interactionist terms, that is, as a kind of internal dialogue between various aspects of
course, bracketed, so to speak, by an 'as-if' that turns fiction into a means of cultural
the self in which the 1 and Me, the spontaneous and the socialized aspects of the self enter
experimentation; and 2. the meaning of the word from which the realists took their point
into complicated negotiations made possible through the tentative as-if-status of the fic-
of departure-in which fiction, exclusively defined through the romance, carried the
tional text. This, in turn, would imply that typically realistic goals such as the naturaliza-
association of an infantile indulgence in fantasy and wish-fulfilment. In the first sense tion of signs, or the striving for verisimilitude, do not simply function as a strategy of per-
there never seems to have been any confusion among the realists that they wrote fiction suasion. What purposes are they supposed to fulfill then? The answer lies, 1 think, in the
and the critique they levelled against the romance was thus not aimed at the mode of fic- new kind of semantization which realist fiction wanted to evoke and, ultimately, in a new
tion itself. but only at a certain use made of it. If the romance catered to infantile forms theory of communication it wanted to realize.
of regression, then the novel had to help the reader grow up and face the necessity of Of all the strategies through which the realist novel strives to establish its own world as
rational self-awareness and self-control. Fiction had to be redefined and re-written as the 'real,' that of creating an innertextual plausibility seems to be the most basic and the
discourse of adults. most important. In response to a moment of epistemological crisis, realism as a strategy
of representation promised to reconstruct the world on the basis of a new coherence. In
doing this, it set itself an ambitious and complicated task: to create a sense of coherence,
III although, or rather precisely because, such coherence was no longer guaranteed by a
transcendent moral law. As a consequence, the element of contingency in the experience
At this point, it is necessary to extend the functionalist model of explanation initially of reality had increased. Reconstructing the world on a new epistemological base thus
proposed. For even if this model helps us to understand how American realism came into meant to establish semantic linkages between an increasing number of seemingly con-
existence as a cultural strategy, designed to suggest a new vision of America, it still fails tingent elements of reality-a project that could be confidently tackled because the belief
to explain how this goal could be reached through the inner organization of the text itself. in evolutionary progress asserted the existence of causal connections between all empirical
Consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly the realist had to base his work on objects and events. The success of the operation was cruciai. For only if the new epist-
a theory of how the text was to achieve its cultural aims as an effect of the reading process emological premises proved their usefulness, could the project of anchoring a new national
itself. Two answers are suggested by almost all of our current discussions of realism. In the self-definition in experience be successful.
more interesting and ambitious one, structuralism has reminded us again that realism is The ensuing task was to model American reality in fiction so that its diverse and
not a final 'break-through' to reality, but the verbal construction of a reality made to seemingly random aspects could be linked as parts of a coherent system, of a new civiliza-
appear more real than that of non-realistic fiction through the use of certain communica- tion that provided them with meaning. Confirming a belief in a new stage and moral qual-
tive strategies. In this view, the reading effect we call 'realism' is created by a linguistic ity of American society depended on the extent to which realist fiction succeeded in
convention, that is, a standardized mode of presentation, used by the writer to appeal to doing this. Stances of inspection thus dominate early American realism. In his first novel,
some set of existing preconceptions about the nature of reality which he hopes to share Their Wedding Journey, Howells proudly emphasizes the eventlessness of both the jour-
with his audience. Hence in order to create a reality effect, realist fiction must be consis- ney and the book. The programmatic aim of the novel is the development of a new mode
tent with another pre-existing discourse, not with its referent. The impression, or rather of narration that would be suited to register the significance of the commonplace and
the illusion of realism is thus created by familiarity-realism is that type of fiction in seemingly random aspects of American life as part of a pattern of promise. Similarly, it is
which the structures of our own life-world converge with that of the text. certainly no accident that all important realists-DeForest, Twain and Howells as well as
Why do we read realist novels then? The answer structuralism seems to imply is that we James and Fuller-chose for their early literary efforts the genres of travel narrative and
find a special security and thus gratification in the recognition and confirmation of our local color story, in which the inspection of a new and unknown territory creates the
own habitual patterns of thought and belief. Such an explanation, however, would leave need to establish patterns of cultural consistency that are not yet sufficiently visible for
open the question why-not only American-realism created such controversy when it the traveling tenderfoot.
emerged and why it literally had to force its way into a hostile culture. If realism as an The increase in detail in American realism has usually been discussed as an example of
aesthetic effect comes into existence by a similarity betweelJ the patterns of our everyday verisimilitude, that is, as a device to create what Roland Barthes has called the reality
perception and that of the fictional world, then such a homology obviously had not been effect. It can also be seen, however, as a consequence of the necessity to establish a new
established yet at that stage in cultural history. On the contrary, in order to arrive at a semantic coherence. Characterization in the realist novel is a case in point. For whereas in
consensus realism first had to convince the culture of the validity and plausibility of its the romance the essence of character is still typically grasped by comparatively few but
own vision. Thus, the realist novel was not simply generated by the need to express a con- significant signs such as for example the color of hair, the perception and judgment of
sensus, but by a gap between its own vision and prevailing cultural paradigms of the real, a characters has become increasingly complicated in realism. Accordingly, a far greater
gap which it could only hope to bridge by means of fiction. This in turn suggests a second number of signs has to be introduced and processed and only if all of these can be mean-
theory of effect: namely, that by naturalizing signs and striving for life-likeness, the real- ingfully linked as part of a coherent semantic field of reference can we hope to under-
ist text intends to initiate processes of identification and imitation. stand a character fully. In a key scene of The Portrait of a Lady the problem is drama-
As an explanation of literary effects, however, the concept of identification seems just tized in the discussion between Isabel Archer and Mme. Merle. In it, Isabel still argues for
as deficient as the assumption of a mere familiarity of worlds. Instead of conceptualizing the pre-realistic, romantic view of what constitutes the self. If, as she claims, dress, hous,
106 Winifried Fluck Fiction and Fictionality in American Realism Ie
or social environment have no significant bearing on a person's identity, then the novel IV
could indeed dispense with their detailed description. Yet Isabel's understanding of real-
ity is clearly faulty and incomplete at this stage of the novel, as her own misreading of In an important essay on American realism Heinz Ickstadt has demonstrated the possi-
Osmond and Mme. Merle will soon demonstrate. In contrast, Mme. Merle seems to rep- bility of re-conceptualizing the period's theory of realism as a theory of communication.
resent the realist perspective in the conversation between the two. In her view, the self As he argues, the crucial role of the idea of communication can, among other things, help
constitutes itself only in constant interaction with its environment; following this view, to explain an otherwise puzzling formal adherence to the novel of manners in American
J ames dwells at great length on how people look, what they wear, and where they live. realism. In it the dialogue between members of a society stands at the center of the narra-
Mme. Merle, however, is not the author's voice in the novel. On the contrary, she most tive, always holding the promise of a future consensus. Classic American realism, it can be
clearly represents the dangers of a development about which Isabel as well as the reader claimed, is built around the idea of conversation:
have to be warned. For although Mme. Merle has realized that meaning is created in con-
This inner space of communication for Howells always has ideal implications. Where it works
stant interaction with the social environment, she has not drawn the kind of conclusion democracy is experienced in the free exchange of opinions, right conduct affirmed or redefined
from it on which a new civilization could be founded. By manipulating the increasing dif- in rational discourse, experience reflected in dialogue. When conversation deteriorates or collapses,
ficulties in linkage which perception now encounters for her own purposes, she has re- a deeper crisis is always indicated-many of his novels are centred in such catastrophes of com-
sorted to a well-calculated strategy of deception. If the relationship between a sign and its munication.s
referent is no longer stable, then signs can easily be manipulated for the purposes of If the realist novel is to avoid such breakdowns of communication, then the reader has to
impression~management. In order to counter this and to become thus a match for the
become part of the dialogue in the act of reading itself. It is now easier to understand the
Mme. Merles and Osmonds of this world, Isabel-and with her the reader-must learn to basic thrust of the realist's attempt to redefine fiction as a cultural act: The reading activ-
develop a sense for the increasingly complex relations between sign and referent. As she ity demanded by the romance is one that denies communication-isolated and withdrawn
finally comes to realize, appearance and reality, sign and referent can no longer be linked in regressive fantasies the reader is cut off from communication and thus from the possi-
in any fixed and stable way. On the contrary, knowledge of their true relationship can bility of genuine experience and knowledge. The realist novel, on the other hand, sets out
only be gained through a long and complicated process of experiences for which there is to reconnect him with a social order created, maintained and controlled by communica-
no short-cut available and no guarantee of success can be given-for as life unfolds, new tive in teraction.
linkages are constantly revealed. In The Portrait ofa Lady, to live is thus to go through a It is here that the rhetoric of mimesis and the corresponding deemphasis-if not inner-
potentially endless sequence of experiences and to go through experiences in realism textual suppression-of fictionality can be accounted for as part of a realist theory of
means learning to connect a seemingly contingent multitude of signs into a coherent and communication. To provide a common ground for the comparison of worlds and experi-
causally linked whole. Seen in this way, verisimilitude is no longer a narrative strategy to ences was a precondition for the dialogue the realist novel hoped to initiate. If the reader
foreclose the imagination, but one that activates it through the constant necessity of was to be drawn into this dialogue, realist fiction did not only have to devise a way to be
interlinkage. For if it is no longer possible to ascribe with any degree of confidence a taken serious as grown-up discourse; it virtually had to establish itself as a conversational
fixed and stable meaning to a given sign, then it is only through the constant interlinking equal by establishing a familiarity of worlds which could then become the backdrop for
of signs that meaning emerges. the actual effect to be achieved-that of a change or adjustment in perception. De-empha-
As perception becomes an increasingly difficult act for the characters in the realist sizing fictionality was thus, in principle, not a ruse to escape the fictional mode-which,
novel, however, so it does for the reader. For his own training in reading, too, there can in an institutional sense, could not and was not to be denied anyway-but a device to
be no short-cut and no easy success-formula. By moving him, in obvious analogy to the enable the fictional text to fulfill its revised function as a model of communication. To be
characters within the novel, through a series of failed hypotheses, realist fiction makes the sure, such de-emphasis of fictionality involved a calculated risk and, ironically, held the
reader experience the necessity of exposing himself to ever new instances of communica- danger of opening up new possibilities for identification on the part of the reader. And
tive interaction, since only they can promise 'growth' in our knowledge of reality. In this yet, it seemed the only effective way to move the reader into the role of a grown-up. If,
sense, the realist redefinition of the novel aims at replacing an offer for imitation by an
invitation to the reader to follow the mode of perception and interpretation established
in the novel itself; fiction is no longer to serve as a model of behavior, but as a model for challenged, as he is indeed in daily life, to look for those semantic interlinkages that would make the
single sign meaningful. Today's reader of experimental fiction, on the other hand, may disengage himself
the reading activity. Ideally then, the text constitutes itself as a space of communication, much more easily from the text because he or she knows by now that the daz~ling multiplicity of codes
as a stimulus for generating ever new acts of communicative interaction. A successful is only meant to "represent" the idea of the text's own subversive potential. This, at least, would explain
reading would then be one which uses the text as part of a cultural dialogue which con- a certain type of "allegorical" reception of modernist and postmodernist literature, in which the (most
stantly opens up new linkages and thus creates the possibility of establishing coherence of the time professional) reader, far from being drawn into the openness of the text and thus being
and meaning in the act of communication itself. In brief: The art-as-model paradigm "activated" by it, rests content in reaffirming the text's openness without really entering it. In these
4 (monologic) interpretations, experimental texts have become mere allegories of the idea of modernism
would be replaced by a view of fiction as a model of communication. or postmodernism.
5 Heinz Ickstadt, "Concepts of Society and the Practice of Fiction: Symbolic Responses to the Experi-

• In my opinion, the prevailing dichotomy between modernism as a type of literature that activates ence of Change in Late Nineteenth Century America," in Impressions of a Gilded Age: The American
Fin de Siecle, ed. Marc Chene tier and Rob Kroes (Amsterdam; Amerika Instituut, Universiteit van
our perception and realism as a literature that suffocates it, may very well be in need of revision, or, at
Amsterdam, 1983), p. 86.
least differentiation. For since meaning IS potentially everywhere in realism, the reader is constantly
108 Winifried Fluck
Fiction and Fictionality in American Realism 109
on the other hand, the realist strategy would be effective, the reader in his newly acquired
fictional text-is also a source of constant instability, enabling communication as well as
role as adult reader would no longer be tempted to exhibit the childish reading habits in- endangering it.
voked by the romance, his naive attitude toward literature as a model would be success-
A strange irony is at work here: In realizing its own view of experience as the essential
fully transformed and the realist's struggle for a new attitude toward reading and reality
mode of knowledge, the realist novel constantly tests and risks its own coherence; but
would be won.
only in risking it can it fulfill its own potential as a space of communication patterned on
the model of a dialogue. The dilemma re-emerges on several levels of the text: Semanti-
cally, realism has been described as a move toward semantic closure, but, as we have seen,
v it is also, in order to arrive at closure, a strategy to open up reality toward the contingent
and unfamiliar. If realism wants to establish a new semantic coherence, then it has to
Yet even in reconceptualizing the realist text as a model of communication, the prob- focus on those elements that are not yet linked; in doing this, however, the realist text,
lem still remains why the realists thought fiction an especially useful tool for establish- by its own inner logic, also constantly strives to introduce those elements that question
ing the kind of communication they had in mind. There are obvious answers on an insti- its own plausibility.
tutional level-the promise of a wider scope of dissemination among them-but again it is From the perspective of cultural history, American realism has been described as astra t-
the innertextual potential that interests us. In what sense can a certain type of naturalized egy to affirm social order by incorporating elements of disorder into models of social co-
text be especially effective in establishing communication with the reader? There are, I hesion. In trying to do this, the realists-in the words of Alan Trach ten berg-gave them-
think, two essential aspects to be considered. selves "one of the most strenuous and complex intellectual tasks of the era; not to blink
Communication becomes necessary when problems have to be clarified, when consen- at the new facts of conflict and loss in America and yet to continue to believe in it.,,6
sus does not yet exist. If the purpose and gratification of realism, on the most general What has long been considered as the actual source of realism in the novel of the period,
level, was to establish a new coherence, then communication was required where the task its new subject-matter, is thus really only a temporary disturbance of its innertextual
of providing this coherence was not yet accomplished or was threatened by elements of world; the realist novel can be seen as an attempt to draw new materials into the text in
disruption that could not be made consistent with the idea of a new civilization. Fiction order to integrate and control them. In an instructive sequence of genres, the new realities
not only allowed the reader to rehearse tentatively responses to such dissonant experi- of the industrial age thus entered the realist novel as challenges which put the character of
ences. What made it especially useful for stimulating communication was that, in its own American civilization to a test: In the political novel of the Seventies, for example, the
structure, it could anticipate the process it intended to initiate: Grounded in the very deterioration of politics from the gentry-ideal is satirized, in the local color fiction the
conflict that it strives to control and naturalize, the realist text constantly moves between threatening anarchy of the border regions explored; in the early Eighties businessman and
the disturbance of meaning and its reconstitution on a new basis. As a mode of communi- labor leader enter the realist novel of manners as potential candidates for conversion to
cation it is, in other words, patterned on the model of an inner conversation. Ironically the goals of a new social order; while the social and utopian novel of the late Eighties be-
then, the often criticized inner contradictions of American realism, as, for example, gins a descent into the lower regions of the new cities which figure as an unknown threat-
its uneasy co-existence of elements of romance and realism, are not to be seen as self- ening territory that needs to be mapped out, made coherent and then linked to the soci-
destructive aberrations from a narrow path of realist virtue, but should rather be regarded ety at large.
as its nourishing element. If realism ever succeeded in creating a completely realistic i1lu- In all of these instances the realist project was the incorporation of the new realities of
sion, its own communicative potential would vanish and the text would lose much of its the Gilded Age into the idea of American civilization, but in the end the attempt resulted
interest. in complication and paradox. Its initial premise had been the assumption that realism
If the specific usefulness of fiction for initiating processes of communication lay in its would be able to integrate new and yet disturbing elements through a communicative
own dialogical potential, however, why was realism intent on reducing this inner tension interaction which would steadily increase social coherence and rational consensus. Yet in
instead of increasing it as a modernist text would? The explanation seems to lie in a dif- seeking consistent patterns in American reality, fiction again and again uncovered new
ferent theory of communication, that is, in a different theory of how literature can and disturbing elements of that very same reality, which could not be immediately inte-
achieve perceptual and social change. For while modernist literature pursues strategies of grated or which resisted final integration. As a result, the ideal of a new civilization be-
radical semantic disruption, for the realist effective communication seems only possible came more elusive with each attempt to establish it. While Howells was still elaborating a
through a controlled interplay between semantic familiarity and its disturbance. Realism, theory of American realism, many works, inclUding some of his own, had already begun
one might say, is thus torn, or rather, moving between these two worlds. It tries to estab- to subvert its premises. The dialogic mode unfolded its own unexpected eventfulness and
lish a familiar world in order to have a common ground to correct it, and its corrections with that eventfulness its own potential as a cultural commentary, revealing an insoluble
and transgressions remain always linked to the familiar in order to make them effective. inner complication of the realist project itself. Realism as communication was never com-
Its usefulness for drawing the reader into the text then, lies neither solely in its familiarity pletely successful in establishing a consensus because it was fiction, and yet the realists
nor in the fictional disruption of that familiarity, but in a carefully controlled tension could only hope to realize their cultural goals by drawing on this very fictional element.
between the two; if the gap between the inner world of the text and that of the reader is
opened too widely, this inner tension is exploded, and the need for communication
breaks down. This means, however, that the very aspect that could be considered as espe- 6 Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New
cially effective for stimulating communication-the inherent dialogical potential of the York: Hill and Wang, 1982), p. 256.
110 Winifried Fluck Fiction and Fictionality in American Realism III

Such inner complication however, could not leave realism's own theory of the literary challenging the reader with alternative visions of breakdown and regeneration with which
text as a model of communication unaffected. The novel that was to become the first he has to come to terms. s The novel's logical sequel, Annie Kilburn, however, must be
really great example of American realism, Howells' A Modern Instance, is a telling case in one of the most strongly controlled versions of American realism that we know. It is at
point. In introducing the subject of divorce as a typical phenomenon of an increasingly this point that Howells and James finally separated: Howells' political radicalization led
liberal civilization, Howells thought he had found a topic of such wide national impor- him to take back the idea of communication in favor of the art-as-model paradigm;
tance as slavery had been a few decades before. The story of Marcia Gaylord and Bartley James, who had already established a dialogical mode in his novels by liberating his heroes
Hubbard which ends in divorce would exemplify the dangers to the idea of civilization and heroines from the superior moral guidance of the guardian figure, and who had then,
that certain new tendencies in American life entailed. The ensuing problem was how an in focussing on the workings of consciousness, intensified this dialogical mode by exam-
awareness of the damage could best be communicated to the reader as an effect. A Mod- ples of truly achieved inner dialogue, began to deconstruct reality into processes and to
ern Instance seems to me the first example in American realism which not only affirmed the radicalize the idea of perception by interaction. Howells and Twain, on the other hand,
necessity of conversation and communication on the thematic level, but tried to realize a seem to have despaired eventually in their attempts to unfold the dialogical potential
model of communication in its own formal structure. No exemplary learning process of the nove\. For Howells, the idea of control and consensus by communication could no
takes place in the text. In the early chapters, insight and knowledge are not provided by a longer be convincingly realized and yet it could not be given up. Twain, who had started
model character, but are supposed to emerge in the act of reading, in which the denial of out in the monological mode of the tall tale tradition, only succeeded once-in Huckle-
a moral cen ter forces the reader to realize what no one in the novel tells him. Yet clearly, berry Finn-to establish something like a dialogical mode. In its most interesting sequel, A
if the strategy works, the activated reader is supposed to arrive at conclusions, which the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, his fantasies remained largely unchecked
narrator, who repeatedly talks to him of "our civilization," hopes to share with him. because-in juxtaposing two extremely unequal modes of communication-Twain had
Hopes to share! For if the characters in the novel no longer serve as models, he cannot be manipulated the communicative situation from the start in favor of his own monomaniac
sure. The opening up of the realist novel as a model of communicative interaction clearly and monologic concerns. 9 One is reminded of the complete breakdown of communication
bore the danger of unexpected and unwelcome results. Consequently, A Modern Instance into neurotic and inherently ambiguous forms of perception in a text like The Tum of the
is both marked and marred by the suspicion that the realist strategy might backfire. And Screw, but while the Jamesian text, in its carefully calculated indeterminacy, may be
as the functional model complicated itself, so did the attitude towards deemphasizing the successful in reinserting the reader into a (new) mode of perception, the manipulation in
text's fictionality. Intended as an invitation to role-playing, this de-emphasis, as I have A Connecticu t Yankee retains the reader in mere complicity.
tried to show, had the purpose of encouraging the reader to act the part of a grown-up
member of American civilization. Yet in the process of writing, a suspicion must have
taken hold of Howells that his reader might not be a complete grown-up yet and that the VI
novel's strategies might fail to transform him into one-which also raised the frightful
possibility that the reader might confuse the signals of the text altogether and read them In reacting against the cultural effects of the romance, the realists had also reacted
in unintended and unsuspected ways. Who was to guarantee, for example, that the read- against a view of fiction-as-model and replaced it by a belief in fiction as a stimulus for
ing public might not become infected by Marcia's shortcomings? Howells, as is well communication-assigning the dialogical mode a central role both in the culture and in
known, must have lost his nerve after some 30 chapters or S9, and broke up the dialogical the literary text. Because of its own conversational structure, the realist novel was to
structure of the novel rather violently. 7 In introducing the up-to-then largely dysfunc- further this mode of communication and was especially qualified to do so because it
tional Atherton. he literally forced a voice of civilization into the novel in a desperate allowed threatening and unfamiliar experiences to be introduced in a tentative, experi-
attempt to regain symbolic control over his materials. In doing this, however, he also mental way-thereby initiating a process of conversation both in the novel and with the
undermined the working assumption from which he had started. Realism, by following its novel in the process of reading. In this conversation, the deviant aspects constituted both
inner logic of opening up toward experience, could not automatically serve as stimulus the necessity and the possibility of communication. But, as we have seen, they were also
for a new consensus on American civilization. As a result, Howells moved back toward the aspects that constantly called the validity of the realist project into question. If the
the idea of the realist text as a model of civilization in The Rise of Silas Lapham, and the inner tension of the text became uncontrollable, communication and thus the final goal
subsequent novels within American realism can be read as fascinating battle-reports on of a new national order were jeopardized; if order was established too tightly, on the
the conflict that had been opened up in A Modern Instance. other hand, the text was in danger of becoming a mere model and thus undermining its
A Hazard of New Fortunes, Howells' second ambitious attempt at centering the idea of own dialogic potential.
American civilization around the idea of communication, ends in a near collapse of com-
munication in the novel itself, which holds however the promise of a regenerating experi-
ence on the part of the reader and thus manages to maintain a dialogical mode as novel,
8 Cf. Ickstadt, "Concepts of Society."
7In his Democracy and the Novel (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978) Henry Nash Smith has 9 Cf. Winfried Fluck, "The Restructuring of History and the Intrusion of Fantasy in Mark Twain's A
drawn our attention to the inner tensions within the novel. Smith tries to explain them by what he calls Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," in Fonns and Functions of History in American Litera-
the theological components in Howells's theory of realism, that is, a weakness in ideology. I find it much ture: Essays in Honor of Ursula BTUmm, ed. W. Fluck, J. Peper, and W. P. Adams (Berlin: Erich Schmidt,
1981), pp. 134-148.
more convincing to see them as the result of a clash between two models of the realist text.
112 Winifried Fluck

We are here, it seems, at the heart of the problem. American realism has been habitu-
ally described as an (insufficient) model of reality; in revising and extending this view, I
have tried to describe it as a model of communication. But even such a revision seems in
need of further differentiation. In the final analysis, the actual complication for an
analysis of American realism is that it was in constant movement between these two pos-
sibilities of fiction, that its own history presents a running commentary on the difficulties
of each. It appears therefore impossible to come up with one functional model for a de-
scription of American realism. On the contrary, I would suggest that its own history of
inconsistencies could be most fruitfully rewritten as a clash of the two functional models
I have tried to describe. It is a history that cannot be unfolded in neat chronological
order, however, only as a story of constant negotiation often within one text-resembling
a fever curve more than a line of linear development and offering, in its own dialogical
way, a fascinating study in the perpetual decomposition and recomposition of a literary
system.

j
"1
1
1
J
<
j
.~

~
:.;1
~
'!
'~
"

.~
:lt'

-:'~;;:W;;',!::::. .......