An Introduction to Short Stories to 1924
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The stories shared in this section represent early examples of the short story genre. These selections are formative stories written by canonical and lesser known authors publishing in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Short stories flourished worldwide in the nineteenth century as one of the primary forms of entertainment. American authors writing in this era were tasked with forming a national identity through their literature. The Romantic period saw an unprecedented optimism and faith in the innate goodness of humans. Authors waxed poetic about nature, creativity, and the power of the individual to work for the greater good. This was also the era of reform as writers used their work to advocate for a more just society through their work with the abolitionist and suffragists movements, among many others.
This optimism was tempered by the American Civil War. Authors in the last half of the nineteenth century sought to represent the reality of post-war life. Realism, famously defined by William Dean Howells as nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material, became the most popular style of writing. Regionalist authors like Mark Twain sought to preserve small town American life in the face of growing industrialism. Literary Naturalism soon followed realism and regionalism as a grittier style of writing influenced by Social Darwinism. In Naturalist works, characters are often at the whim of nature and any higher power is bleakly absent. Jack London’s “The Law of Life” and Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” are formative examples of this genre.
Like all fiction, the short stories in this section of the anthology are best appreciated after multiple readings. The language used by some of these authors may be challenging for a 21st century audience used to a more concise and straightforward style of writing. For example, in “Young Goodman Brown,” Hawthorne doesn’t say that his protagonist walks into the woods, he ruminates that Brown “had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.” This dense, descriptive prose was a hallmark of Romantic writing, which was primarily concerned with the power of imagination and the liminal space between the real and imaginary. This flowery description may seem unnecessary today. However, Hawthorne’s astute understanding of human psychology and his moral struggles between good and evil are easily recognizable to the modern reader. With a deeper, more focused reading, Brown’s walk into the forest and understanding of human sin becomes our own.
At first glance, the subjects explored in these short stories also seem like relicts of ages passed. Stripped of the romantic language, though, these authors struggle with human truths and social issues that still reverberate into the 21st century. Chesnutt’s representation of plantation life may seem outdated until scholars and activists like Angela Davis remind us of the lasting impact of chattel slavery on our modern prison system. Gilman’s gothic description of one woman’s obsession with her wallpaper may seem quaint, but women’s struggles with mental illness and post-partum depression are still dismissed by doctors today. Reading these early short stories provides us with a foundational understanding of this literary genre, but also shows the foundation of social and cultural issues that still haunt society.