American realism as a cultural movement embraces the period from the Civil War to the turn of the century during which fiction writers like Howels, Davis, James, Twain and others explored American life in various contexts. G. J. Becker in his essay Realism: An Essay in Definition (1949) has proposed three criteria to define realistic mode:
- Verisimilitude of detail derived from observation and documentation;
- Authors’ reliance on the representative rather than the exceptional in plot, setting, and character;
- Prevalence of an objective, rather than subjective or idealistic view of human nature and experience (184).
When the Civil War ended the United States started to grow rapidly: “the increasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence” were common for the country (Campbell 2007) These factors created a beneficial literary environment for those who were interested in understanding the rapid shifts in culture. A. Kaplan in her work Social Construction of American Realism (1988) has called realism a “strategy for imagining and managing the threats of social change” (ix).
R. Chase in The American Novel and Its Tradition (1980) singled out the following characteristics of American realism:
- It renders reality closely and in comprehensive detail. Selective presentation of reality with an emphasis on verisimilitude, even at the expense of a well-made plot;
- Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject;
- Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive; they are in explicable relation to nature, to each other, to their social class, to their own past;
- Class is important; the novel has traditionally served the interests and aspirations of an insurgent middle class;
- Events will usually be plausible. Realistic novels avoid the sensational, dramatic elements of naturalistic novels and romances;
- Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact;
- Objectivity in presentation becomes increasingly important: overt authorial comments or intrusions diminish as the century progresses;
- Interior or psychological realism as a variant form (Campbell 2007).
D. Howells describes realism as “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material” (Howells 1889, 966). Further we will explore how this claim is valid in relation to Jack London’s Martin Eden. We will investigate how the traits of American realism stated above are applicable to the novel and will conclude whether it is justified to call the novel a reflector of the American society of the time described or not.
Realistic Basis of Martin Eden
Howells’ definition of realism starts to be justified from the history of Martin Eden’s creation. Jack London devoted a great part of his life to sailing which is similar to the main character of the novel. Once, in 1907, being on board of his own Snark, he started to write Martin Eden.
The novel was inspired by the changes in the author’s life: then he faced a lot of challenges the life presented him with and now he was one of America’s most famous writers, then he could only dream of sailing about in small boats, now he was the owner of the Snark. It was easy for the author to render his personal feelings about the drastic change in his life and Martin Eden became the one who aired London’s understanding of the world around. Thus, the main character’s story was an artistic copy of the author’s life. Though, Sam Baskett, the author of the most perceptive analyses of Martin Eden claims:
London asks us first to believe in the surpassing importance and dignity of Martin, and then he asks us to believe in a malign and incomprehensible universe in which the individual has no importance and dignity. Again, as a conscious artist, London has failed to create a consistent work of art; but as a tormented human being he has graphically represented his not untypical anguish as he confronts what seemed to him some of the facts of twentieth-century life (Baskett 1963, xii).
In his work Baskett also admits that the novel has a seamless logic and a terrifying honesty (Baskett 1963, xii). Though logic and honesty are not exclusive features that characterize realistic works and samples of any literature movement can possess them, we suppose that they become more obvious in realistic works. The author’s personal struggle empowered him to be logic and honest in what he described. The honesty and the logic contributed to the realistic character of the novel.
Social Class Theme of Martin Eden
Jack London’s work is realistic as it depicts burning issues of the American society at the beginning of the twentieth century. Social class theme is one of the leading ones in the novel. The main character’s perception of social class is significant for those who strive to understand the situation in which the country occurred at that time. Eden has a working class background. He is a sailor and he feels very uncomfortable when he first meets the representatives of bourgeoisie. When he is introduced by Arthur Morse as Mister Eden,
his mind seemed to turn, on the instant, into a vast camera obscura, and he saw arrayed around his consciousness endless pictures from his life, of stokeholes and forecastles, camps and beaches, jails and boozing-kens, fever-hospitals and slum streets, wherein the thread of association was the fashion in which he had been addressed in those various situations (London 2000, 4).
Inspired by his love to Ruth Morse, Martin Eden becomes involved in a program of self-education. He has far reaching goals at this time: he wants to become a renowned writer and win Ruth’s hand in marriage. As Martin succeeds in his education, he becomes more and more distant from his working class background and people around. Soon, his education surpasses that of the bourgeoisie’s he strived for and he feels even more isolated than before. His personal fall resulted from his inability to find the golden mean between “a wealthy Martin of the present who is civilized and clean, and a proletarian Martin of the past who is a fistfighting barbarian” (Berman 2002, 4).
It is worth while admitting that the action of the novel develops in two contexts: in personal which focuses on Martin’s affectionate feelings to Ruth, their relationships and Martin’s self-education and in social which focuses on Martin’s strivings for his place in the bourgeois society and for his recognition as a writer there. It is notable that these contexts are closely interconnected: Ruth and Martin’s break up reflects the general picture of social relations in the bourgeois world. The problem is not simply rooted in the fact that Ruth appears to be a submissive daughter who does not dare to contradict her parents and puts an end to her relationships with Martin.
The problem is much more complex here. The principles of bourgeois morality are too restricted and they turn to be stronger than the romantic feeling of love. This is where the social importance of Ruth and Martin’s break up is rooted.
One more important aspect of bourgeois morality is that people from this circle do not allow others to become a member of it. The Morses could not to ignore the fact that Martin was an ordinary sailor and at least because of this he could not be a perfect match for their daughter. What is more important, Martin could not be adjusted to Morses’ way of living, he could not be forced to give up his writings, that, according to the Morses, were of no use, and start up a new career. Martin’s social origin and his kinship with plain folk – this is what bourgeois society could never stand.
If we consider Ruth as a true representative of the bourgeois world we will see that her origin always prevented her from being happy with Martin. She did help him in his self-education, but this help was motivated by her desire to see him a worthy man in the bourgeois society. She wanted him to become either an official or a businessman. She did not only fail to understand Martin’s passion for literature, but she got irritated at it and resisted it in any possible way.
Ruth did not appreciate Martin’s works; she could not understand their message and find them a mere waste of time. Martin Eden was a working stiff and his views based on the deep understanding of life of ordinary people did not appeal to Ruth who was brought according to the traditions of the bourgeois morality. She, as a part of her class, had a restricted set of values as far as the human life is concerned. This was the main gap between her and Martin and this gap led to the overall fall of the main character. He understood this crucial difference too late and told Ruth about it during their last date:
You would have destroyed my writing and my career. Realism is imperative to my nature, and the bourgeois spirit hates realism… all your effort was to make me afraid of life… you wanted to formalize me, to make me over into one of your own class, with your class-ideals, class-values, and class-prejudices (London 2000, 364).
The manipulative role that Ruth played in Eden’s life is obvious, and the charges are quite fair. But still, going by John Hedrick (1982) we suppose that Eden had to come to awareness of his own part in this:
It was he, after all, who came in frank humility and asked to be initiated into the middle-class holy of holies; he presented himself to Ruth as clay to be molded, and she greatly enjoyed giving herself to that project (214).
London admits that Ruth “knew her Browning, but it never sunk into her that it was an awkward thing to play with souls” (London 2000, 65). But it was up to Martin whether to become a tool in her hands playing the innocent boy or not. It came out that his play went too far and turned out to be his personal tragedy. We are inclined to think that this character’s behavior is not a rare thing in any society and the American society, in particular; therefore, this is another aspect in which Martin Eden is projected as a realistic novel.
Role of Art in Martin Eden’s Tragedy
It was quoted above that realism was imperative to Eden’s nature. He reflected upon the events of real life and created his masterpieces. Art was a driving force for his life; his life was a driving force for his art. First, the woman he was deeply in love with served a source of his imagination:
She has inspired his imagination, and huge bright cloths arose before him, and on the mysterious, romantic images, stages of love and heroic feats in the name of the woman – the pale woman, a gold flower. And through these unsteady, quivering visions as a wonderful Mirage, it saw the alive woman spoken to it about art and the literature (London 2000, 70).
But the society in which Martin Eden found himself at last was not willing to give him a helping hand in his strivings as a writer. No one understood him: his relatives, his friends, people who he regarded as the finest representatives of the bourgeois society were not capable of it. Everyone tried to make him change his views and make him go astray. One has to have a lot of willpower and determination to resist such pressure of the society and not to be misled by it. Not everyone succeeds in this, but Martin did. He became a recognized writer.
But this success was not that unclouded as it was expected: its real tragedy is rooted in the fact that Martin struck it alone, without anyone’s help, in his struggle with the society where he lived and worked. He lost the person he desperately loved, his relatives abandoned him, and gradually he lost his faith in himself and in his occupation and decided not to write any more at last. Well-deserved success did not bring him any satisfaction. It became his personal tragedy.
Eden’s writings, his destiny and his tragic departure were his defiance to the bourgeois morality. This defiance was common for many creative American people of the period described. But Jack London realized that a creative person should not live in his or her own world only, trying to disclaim the principles of the world around. By his main character’s example he showed what this individuality might result in, thus preventing other artists from making the same mistakes as Martin Eden had made.
Conclusion
The research conducted has shown that Martin Eden follows the three principles of realism suggested by G. J. Becker: the author integrates his personal experiences with observations of the crucial tendencies in development of the American society giving them objective consideration. R. Chase’s characteristic of the American realism is also applicable to the work under consideration: the work renders reality with the emphasis made on the verisimilitude, the main character’s development is shown in terms of development of the society, his close interconnection with two social classes is demonstrated and the impact of both of them is depicted. Through investigation of such issues as the main features of American realism, the autobiographical elements of the novel, the way the social and art themes are disclosed the main aim of the research was achieved.
We conclude that Martin Eden can be considered a perfect example of American realism literature. The novel might serve a guide for those who strive to understand the way America lived at the beginning of the twentieth century, as it is “nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material” (Howells 1889, 966).
Works Cited
Auerbach, Jonathan. 1996. Male Call: Becoming Jack London. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Basket, Sam S. 1963. Martin Eden: Jack London’s poem of the mind. University of Chicago Press.
Becker, George J. 1949. Realism: An essay in definition. Modern Language Quarterly 10: 184-197.
Berman, Paul. 2002. Introduction to Martin Eden. New York: Random House.
Campbell, Donna M. 2007. Realism in American literature, 1860-1890. Literary Movements. Web.
Hedrick, Joan D. 1982. Solitary comrade, Jack London and his work. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Howells, William D. 1889. Editor’s study. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 13: 966.
Kaplan, Amy. 1988. Social construction of American realism. University of Chicago Press.
London, Jack. 2000. Martin Eden. Adamant Media Corporation.
London, Jack. 2007. In The Columbia Encyclopedia 6th ed., edited by Lagasse, Paul. New York: Columbia University Press.