An Autumn Sunset By William J. Long

By noting the subtitles of human conditions under the stress of strict societal control, Edith Wharton created literature that is true to the society she portrayed. Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley probably would have liked to cause each other bodily harm, yet their society ruled that such behavior would not be tolerated. Therefore, they buried their feelings and expressed them only in subtle movements and off the cuff remarks, bits and pieces of communication that most people would overlook. However, Wharton realized that these fragments composed the only true communication and therefore composed the real story of Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley.

The Long Shadow is a book written by three research sociologists; Karl Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, and Linda Olson. Karl Alexander is John Dewey Professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at the John Hopkins University. The late Doris R. Entwisle was a research professor of Sociology at the John Hopkins University. Linda Olson is an associate research scientist with the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) and the Center for Social Organization of Schools at the John Hopkins University. This book was originally published on April 14, 2014 and in this book, these professors followed the lives of 790 children growing up in various neighborhoods throughout Baltimore, Maryland. I would consider this book a case study because it took over twenty-five years of research, interviews and surveys to finally get it done and then later on published. The three main subjects researched in this book are a family’s background, disadvantaged urban youth, and the transition to adulthood. And in this paper, I will present my central findings of this book.

American History, it has done so much in time that has affected how we live life today and how we interpret things. American Literature reflects that and all it has left us with. Throughout the stories and passages we’ve read this course all of them have left a impact on how and why the writers wrote about what they did. It was all because of American History which later went on and fathered American Literature. American Literature has made society how it is today and painted a vivid picture of how American’s and people live and many of these writers had that in mind when they took these notes.

American Novelists, 1910-1915. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Ed. James J. Martine. Saint Bonaventure University. Gale Research 1981. 413-68

Born in 1862, Edith Wharton Newbold Jones was brought up within the graceful, wealthy yet conservative, confining circle of New York society, which fostered sexual repression and prided itself on the innocence of its young girls. Edith Wharton herself was discouraged from expressing her emotions or developing her intellect which was supposed to be very unbecoming traits in a woman. This is the reason why she stressed in her fiction the need of growth, and has shown how painful and frustrating this process can be for a woman. This process of growth and development is revealed in her major works, Ethan Frome (1911), and Summer (1917) (Balakrishnan 1).

The literary rebellion, known as realism, established itself in American writing as a direct response to the age of American romanticism’s sentimental and sensationalist prose. As the dominance of New England’s literary culture waned “a host of new writers appeared, among them Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Mark Twain, whose background and training, unlike those of the older generation they displaced, were middle-class and journalistic rather than genteel or academic” (McMichael 6). These authors moved from tales of local color fiction to realistic and truthful depictions of the complete panorama of American experience. They wrote about uniquely American subjects in a humorous and everyday

Throughout one’s lifetime growth occurs, and the trials and tribulations they face shape their opinions and beliefs of the world. The Death of a Confederate Colonel, written by Pat Carr, shows the hardships Saranell Birdsong, a young girl, experiences and how she conquered her struggles during the Civil War period. Though Saranell’s pain was enough to ruin her emotionally, she was able to overcome and change into a more mature young girl. It is only through tragedy that true growth can take place.

Through choice of detail and diction, Edith Wharton justifies Frome’s adultery by juxtaposing the warm, charismatic nature of Mattie to the cold, barren one of Zeena. While his wife speaks in a “monotonous” (129) “flat whine” (32) her cousin’s “suffuse[s] him with joy” (44). Despite the fact that both women are frail and sickly, Zeena’s “puckered throat” and “protruding wrists” (47) disgusts Ethan, while Mattie is so “small and weak-looking that…it wr[i]ng[s] his heart” (106). Throughout the novel, Wharton’s choice of detail drastically contrasts the two women, one a vivacious, vigorous beauty, the other a walking, whining corpse. From their physical looks alone, Zeena is hard to love—sterile and dark—while Mattie—fertile and warm—is easy to. The author intentionally feeds this bias, allowing the readers to feel the same temptation that Frome has in the novel. However, he

Gathering from diaries, newspapers, letters, memoirs, and biographies, Faust depicts specific effects of the American Civil War on southern women, the antebellum social hierarchy of the Confederacy, and the overall upheaval of lives

The movie “Gone with the Wind” is about a rich southern girl named Scarlett O’Hara and her life hardships set during the time-period of the Civil War. In the story, Scarlett is forced to watch helplessly as her family’s wealth and lives fade as the confederacy loses the Civil War. Even though, the movie is mainly centered on the dilemmas of Scarlett’s love life, there are many historical accuracies that immerse the viewer in the southern mindset as well as the timeframe. The portrayal of class structures and the confederate attitudes before the Civil War are both accurate and engaging details that the movie successfully implements. In the film, these examples are displayed mainly through the dialogue and setting.

Because of Wharton's slight deviation from naturalistic conventions, a literary debate exists among critics as to the validity of viewing The House of Mirth as a novel which embodies

Realism, Naturalism, and Regionalism are just a few examples of the many styles of writing that exist. Each style of writing deals with a specific time period. Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat”, Henry James’s “Daisy Miller”, and Mary E Wilkins Freeman’s “The Revolt of Mother” are just a few examples of the literary works that represent these time periods. These literary works are perfect examples of the specific time periods each writing style was popular among certain authors. These stories allow readers to compare the modern times that we live in currently to the period these authors were in. They also allow the reader to branch out and be different.

In a postmodern world it is worth contemplating in what we can put our faith. Does culture, religion, or God merit our trust? Or is this a world of mechanical and biological evolutionary processes void of any meaning and purpose? The Sunset Limited, “a novel in dramatic form,” by Cormac McCarthy, is a dialogue between two persons who approach each other from opposite worlds to answer these questions. Black, a born-again believer and ex-con, and White, a nihilistic college professor, attempt to determine whether belief in God is viable in this world and if life is worth living. Despite Black’s efforts to convince him otherwise, White remains a Depressed Self who denies God’s existence, affirms his view of the world as deranged, and leaves to complete his suicide.

At first glance, Ernest Hemingway’s The  Sun Also Rises is an over-dramatized love story of bohemian characters, but with further analysis, the book provides a crucial insight into the effects of World War I on the generation who participated in it. Hemingway’s novel follows a group of expatriates as they travel Europe and experience the post war age of the early 1900’s. The protagonist is Jake Barnes, an American war veteran who lives in Paris and is working as a journalist. Jake was injured during the War and has remained impotent ever since. His love interest, Lady Brett Ashley, is an alcoholic englishwoman with severe promiscuity, which is representative of women and the sexual freedom that emerged during the Progressive Era. Jake and Brett

The development of American Literature, much like the development of the nation, began in earnest, springing from a Romantic ideology that honored individualism and visionary idealism. As the nation broke away from the traditions of European Romanticism, America forged its own unique romantic style that would resonate through future generations of literary works. Through periods of momentous change, the fundamentally Romantic nature of American literature held fast, a fact clearly demonstrated in the fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In an era of post-war disillusionment, when idealism succumbed to hedonistic materialism, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s romantically charged novel,