As far as I can tell, "regionalism" in reference to American literature means nothing more than subpar works by Black, Female and Southern writers. After all, the labels are coined to differentiate these authors not on their particular qualities as a writer, but on their particular qualities as a person. No real writer should ever have to hide behind the label of "woman" or "minority" in order to prove the worth of their work; that simply defeats the purpose! Too bad that the authors in this week's selections are by no means the exception to that rule.
The worst of the offenders is Kate Chopin, whom the Norton Anthology even identifies to be "shallow" and "thin"! And yet they keep her in the canon because? Because she is a Southern woman who was one of the first Southern women to complain about the restrictions of social mores. Her writing is adolescent at best, attempting for "style" and coming up with...nothing but a pale imitation of Southern dialect and customs. In fact, her use of dialect, unlike Twain's, is never masterful, is always overbearing and unnatural. It's as if she hides behind dialect to disguise the fact that her dialogue is never worth a damn. Gilam and her "Yellow Wallpaper," a thinly veiled autobiographical piece, lacks even the hint of dialect to pull it through; it's simply a bland, boring, self-righteous little tirade about the evils of the patriarchy. And without even a solution to them! Just useless vitriol hoping to...to what? Win other women to her cause? Funny, because she even acknowledges that most women will not be able to read the drat thing in "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper." Finally, Edith Wharton is better off resigned to the trashbin of history. Being droll is not by nature being witty, being cynical is not by nature being intelligent, and the "twist" at the story's end is forgettable. Best to forget this nonsense, especially when James' "Daisy Miller" is incredibly similar in content and yet infinitely better, rendering this piece completely superfluous.
Dunbar and Lazarus' poetry is forgettable on the best of days; the only reason that Lazarus is even remembered is because her poetry is attached to the Statue of Liberty, though I dare say most people are only capable of remembering the lines "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free," all while forgetting that this is part of a poem and that the poet is for some unknown reason considered famous.
I feel that Dubois isn't even worth mentioning, especially not in a Major that is more than anything concerned with the great works of FICTION and POETRY (which would be my biggest complaint with this course: if we're going to read NONFICTION [something we rarely do in other English classes] why spend so much of that time reading drab historical accounts of an obnoxious religious bent and demands for equality when would could be reading more of Emerson or William James, both of whom are eminent philosophers/intellectuals in their own rights?]). There is not much to be gained from a long outdated, long dead policy on White/Black integration, other than to notice that one particular man, instead of using his talents for himself and his own betterment, used them to demand equality from his ostensible owners for himself and those of his race. Where he writes there is no style to speak of, where he speaks there is no thought to pick up, just dull wind whistling and kicking up the dust between the pages. If this was a class in sociology or American history, I might understand his inclusion, but in a class devoted to the aesthetics of writing, I cannot fathom why he is in here unless he is meant to dissuade students from following in his footsteps.
Of them all, only Jewett has written anything of lasting work. Slow as "The White Heron" is to begin, it is a knockout story, somehow managing to deeply explore themes of immortality and delicacy of human sexuality in a scant six pages, all while maintaining a consistently high level of quality. The imagery is particularly noteworthy; Sylvia's view of the woods from where she stands atop the evergreen -- and her climb up it -- is breathtaking. This is the sort of work that deserves a full class' worth of attention, but because of the interference of these other, lesser works, does not receive it. Here is a story that does not use the vain and shallow recourse of hiding behind authorial labels to earn its worth; it does that through the telling.
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