American Lit 2 (Fall 2012)

"Her conversation was chiefly of what metaphysicians term the objective cast; but every now and then it took a subjective turn."

"Daisy Miller", Henry James

"I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman — "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper"

"Well, girls are ferocious sometimes, you know. Girls in love especially. And I remember laughing to myself all that evening at the idea that you were waiting around there in the dark, dodging out of sight, listening for every sound, trying to get in—of course I was upset when I heard you were so ill afterward."

Edith Wharton, "Roman Fever"

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America

Louis Menand

Lyrics of Lowly Life (Sympathy)

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Emily Dickinson's Letters

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"I've knelt to a n—— wench!" he muttered. "I thought I had struck the deepest depths of degreadttion before, but oh, dear, it was nothing to this....Well, there is one consolation, such as it is—I've struck bottom this time; there's nothing lower."

Twain, Puddin'head Wilson

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Walt Whitman

"instead of getting to heaven- at least-/ I'm going, all along."

"324," Emily Dickinson

"One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted— One need not be a House— The Brain has Corridors—surpassing Material Place—"

"670" by Emily Dickinson

"She sat herself upon a revolving stool before a counter that was comparatively deserted, trying to gather strength and courage to charge through an eager multitude that was besieging breast-works of shirting and figured lawn."

"A Pair of Silk Stockings," Kate Chopin

"What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she been nine years growing, and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird's sake?"

"A White Heron" by Sarah Orne Jewett

"Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality."

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Pierce

"A light broke upon [her] in the darkness which she felt had been without a gleam of brightness for weeks and months. The mystery that had bewildered her was solved by the word; and from that moment she rose from groveling in shame and self-pity, and began to live again in the ideal."

"Editha," William Dean Howells

"It was almost as if the other face, the face of the superseded woman, had obliterated that of the intruder."

"Ethan Frome," Edith Wharton

"After each of these orgies of living he experienced all the physical depression which follows a debauch; the loathing of respectable beds, of common food, of a house penetrated by kitchen odors; a shuddering repulsion for the flavorless, colorless mass of everyday existence; a morbid desire for cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers."

"Paul's Case" by Willa Cather

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood.

"Song of Myself"--Walt Whitman

"I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, -- When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee."

"Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"Perchance they might be formulated thus: 'If I am going to be drowned -- if I am going to be drowned -- if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life?'"

"The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane

The colonel added to paternal affection a considerable respect for his son as the heir of a large estate. He himself had been "raised" in comparative poverty, and had laid the foundations of his fortune by hard work; and while he despised the ladder by which he had climbed, he could not entirely forget it, and unconsciously manifested, in his intercourse with his son, some of the poor man's deference toward the wealthy and well-born.

"The Passing of Grandison" by Charles Chesnutt

"Advancing from the bank of the creek he suddenly found himself confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before it, a rabbit!"

Ambrose Bierce, "Chickamauga"

"Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck."

Ambrose Bierce, "Chickamauga"

"His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command."

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Bierce

"Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking for now he sees another scene- perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine."

Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

My First School Days

Charles A. Eastman

"It was the last appeal of poor humanity. When the pride of intellect and caste is broken; when we grovel in the dust of humiliation; when sickness and sorrow come, and the shadow of death falls upon us, and there is no hope elsewhere - We turn to God, who sometimes swallows the insult, and answers the appeal" -

Charles W. Chestnut, The Marrow of Tradition

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore Others will watch the run of the flood-tide; Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east;

Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry -Walt Whitman

"'We never got away - how should you?' seemed to be written on every headstone..."

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

"People struggled on for years with 'troubles,' but they almost always succumbed to 'complications.'"

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

"The night was perfectly still, and the air so dry and pure that it gave little sensation of cold. The effect produced on [him] was rather of a complete absence of atmosphere, as though nothing less tenuous than ether intervened between the white earth under his feet and the metallic dome overhead."

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

"To him, who was never gay but in her presence, her gaiety seemed plain proof of indifference. The face she lifted to her dancers was the same which, when she saw him, always looked like a window that has caught the sunset."

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome,

"This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me The simple News that Nature told -- With tender Majesty"

Emily Dickinson — "This Is My Letter To The World".

"With Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz— Between the light—and me— And then the Windows failed—and then I could not see to see—"

Emily Dickinson, "I hear a Fly buzz — when I died —"

My life closed twice before its close— It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson, "My life closed twice before its close - "

He had always been more sensitive than the people about him to the appeal of natural beauty. His unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility and even in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion. But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it.

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

"And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history."

FJ Turner, from The Significance of the Frontier in American History

The Significance of the Frontier in American History

Frederick Jackson Turner

"What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions an activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely."

Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History"

The School Days of an Indian Girl

Gertrude Bonnen (Zitkala Sa)

"I cried aloud, shaking my head all the while until I felt the cold blades of the scissors against my neck, and heard them gnaw off one of my thick braids."

Gertrude Bonnen (Zitkala Sa) The School Days of an Indian Girl

"But in the deadly hush between the lift of the weapon and its fall there came a gush of faint, childish laughter and then across the range of his vision, far away and dim, he saw the sun-bright head of his baby girl, as, with the pretty, tottering run of a two-year-old, she moved across the grass of the dooryard."

Hamlin Garland, "Under the Lion's Paw,"

"He felt very sorry for her -- not exactly that he believed that she had completely lost her head, but because it was painful to hear so much that was pretty and undefended and natural assigned to a vulgar place among the categories of disorder."

Henry James, Daisy Miller

"He remembered that a cynical compatriot had once told him that American women - the pretty ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom - were at once the most exacting girls in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness"

Henry James, Daisy Miller

"These old-timers were rather womanish, some of them, he thought. All a man had to do was to keep his head, and he was all right. Any man who was a man could travel alone."

Jack London — "To Build a Fire"

It was a surprise to find so clean and comfortable a little dwelling in this New England wilderness. The young man had known the horrors of its most primitive housekeeping, and the dreary squalor of that level of society which does not rebel at the companionship of hens. This was the best thrift of an old-fashioned farmstead, though on such a small scale that it seemed like a hermitage.

Jewett, A White Heron

"She was not going through any acute mental process or reasoning with herself, nor was she striving to explain to her satisfaction the motive of her action. She was not thinking at all. She seemed for the time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function and to have abandoned herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility."

Kate Chopin, "A Pair of Silk Stockings,"

"If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her; if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better."

Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Emily Dickinson

I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them.

Life on the Mississippi (Chapter Nine)--Mark Twain

The face of the water, in time,became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to theuneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.

Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain

"What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a 'break' that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?"

Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain

The war was fought to preserve the system of government that had been established at the nation's founding—to prove, in fact, that the system was worth preserving, that the idea of democracy had not failed. This is the meaning of the Gettysburg Address and of the great fighting cry of the North: "Union." And the system was preserved; the union did survive. But in almost every other respect, the United States became a different country. The war alone did not make America modern, but the war marks the birth of modern America.

Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America

"[She] perceived that here was the beau ideal of a man. Her dim thoughts were often searching for far away lands where, as God says, the little hills sang together in the morning. Under the trees of her dream-gardens there had always walked a lover."

Maggie, Stephen Crane

"Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world"

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

"APRIL 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four."

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson.

"'T ain't no sin—white folks has done it! It ain't no sin, glory to goodness it ain't no sin! Dey's done it—yes, en dey was de biggest quality in de whole bilin', too—kings!"

Mark Twain, Puddin'head Wilson

"The matter having been thus far explained, I was soon on my way to the little mission school, two miles distant over the prairie."

My first School Days- Charles A. Eastman

This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties, Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs?

Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask"

Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask.

Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask"

"There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt."

Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

"But his enjoyment was brief. He stared a considerable time at the three strips, and seemed stupefied with astonishment. At last he put them down and said, "I can't make it out at all- hang it, the baby's don't tally with the others!"

Pudd'nhead Wilson, Mark Twain (111)

"When she entered her appearance created no surprise, no consternation, as she had half feared it might."

Roman Fever - Wharton

"Remember that getting money may make you as poor as it has me, and can leave you at last a beggar for a little friendliness, and sympathy, and occupation. There are other things which a man needs beside wealth to make him happy."

Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron"

"She had never seen anybody so charming and delightful; the woman's heart asleep in the child, was vaguely thrilled by a dream of love."

Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron"

Dear loyalty, that suffered a sharp pang as the guest went away disappointed later in the day, that could have served and followed him and loved him as a dog loves!

Sarah Orne Jewett, "A White Heron"

"What a spirit of adventure, what wild ambition! What fancied triumph and delight and glory for the later morning when she could make known the secret! It was almost too real and too great for the childish heart to bear."

Sarah Orne Jewett, A White Heron

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets: A Story of New York

Stephen Crane

"When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples."

Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat"

"From her eyes had been plucked all look of self-reliance. She leaned with a dependent air toward her companion. She was timid, as if fearing his anger or displeasure. She seemed to beseech tenderness of him."

Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

"Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good."

The Yellow Wallpaper - Gilman

The Strenuous Life (From American Ideals)

Theodore Roosevelt

"It would be a sad and evil thing for this country if ever the day came when we considered the great deeds of our forefathers as an excuse for our resting slothfully satisfied with what has already been done. On the contrary, they should be an inspiration and appeal, summoning us to show that we too have courage and strength; that we too are ready to dare greatly if the need arises; and, above all, that we are firmly bent upon the steady performance of every-day duty which, in the long-run, is of such incredible worth in the formation of national character"

Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life

"The old iron days have gone, the days when the weakling died as the penalty of inability to hold his own in the rough warfare against his surroundings. We live in softer times."

Theodore Roosevelt, from American Ideals

"No slave in the Roman galleys could have toiled so frightfully and lived, for this man thought himself a free man, and that he was working for his wife and babes."

Under the Lion's Paw, Garland

"Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much? Have you practiced so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?"

Walt Whitman "The Song of Myself"

"It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw patches down upon me also; The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious; My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they no in reality meagre? would not people laugh at me?"

Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Bridge"

"Just as you feel when you look on the river and the sky, so I felt; Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;"

Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

"Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high, A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide."

Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

What is it, then, between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not

Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

"It avails not, neither time or place -distance avails not; / I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence; / I project myself -also I return—I am with you, and know how it is."

Walt Whitman, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,"

"The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemmed cloth is offering moccasins and beadbags for sale, The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with halfshut eyes bent sideways, The deckhands make fast the steamboat, the plank is thrown for the shoregoing passengers..."

Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself."

"It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not; I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence; I project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is."

Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

"What is it, then, between us? What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not."

Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

"Above, about, within it all, was the rumble and roar, the hurry and toss of thousands of human beings as hot for pleasure as himself, and on every side of him towered the glaring affirmation of the omnipotence of wealth."

Willa Cather, "Paul's Case"

"All the while, in her duplex emotioning, she was aware that now at the very beginning she must put a guard upon herself against urging him, by any word or act, to take the part that her whole soul willed him to take, for the completion of her ideal of him."

William Dean Howells, "Editha"