Framing the jumping frog story

American Literature in the Nineteenth Century

1800 – 1900

Short Stories

Introduction

The Civil War marks a turning point in American culture and

consequently, in literature. After the end of the Civil War (1865), the

United States of America began to transform from a rural, agrarian

republic to an industrialized, urbanized world power. The literature

during the first half of the century is characterized by Romanticism,

but a move toward regionalism and realism continued through the

mid-to-late nineteenth century. Works written at the turn of that

century reflect a variety of ways American men and women came to

terms with the profound changes evident in the nation’s social

institutions and cultural values.

Historical Perspective

A chronology of some significant events of the period:

1865 – The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment

for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall

exist within the United States . . .”

1866 – Ku Klux Klan is founded in Tennessee; Chief Seattle dies

1869 – The Cincinnati Redstockings, the first professional

baseball team, begins play

1870 – The Standard Oil Company is incorporated, with John D.

Rockefeller as president

1872 – Susan B. Anthony is arrested for trying to vote

1876 – Central Park opens in New York City

1880 – Cigarette rolling machine invented; mass production of

cigarettes begins

1882 – Ralph Waldo Emerson dies

1883 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules Native Americans are

“aliens” and “dependents”; the Brooklyn Bridge is completed

1885 – The Washington Monument completed after 36 years of

construction; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published

1886 – Emily Dickinson dies

1887 – Chief Seattle’s speech published for the first time in a

newspaper

1890 – 300 Sioux and Chief Sitting Bull are killed by U. S. Army

in Massacre at Wounded Knee

1895 – Frederick Douglass dies

1910 – Mark Twain dies

Literary Trends and Themes

From Romanticism to Regionalism and Realism

Romanticism had been the dominant literary movement in America

from about 1820 through the mid-1860s. The writers of this era

shared a sense of wonder, a belief in the potential of people, and a

fondness for emotions and intuition. They also favored works that

explored the beauty and restorative powers of nature.

Emily Dickinson is considered a Romantic writer, and yet her life and

work extended to a time later in the century when Realism began to

flourish, as did the life and work of Mark Twain. The Civil War (1861 –

1865) marks the beginning of the change toward Realism, a

movement that emerged out of the country’s industrial growth and a

wave of technological developments such as the light bulb, the

phonograph, the telephone, and elevated trains. The writers of this

time were less idealistic and more pragmatic. Concerned with

presenting things as they were, not as they wished them to be, writers

paid attention to the details of daily experience, dialects, and local

customs, trying to depict them with a journalistic perspective. The

Regionalists, who can be seen as early Realists, paid close attention to

setting and thus became known for their “regional” depictions of areas,

or the “local color.” Regionalism was intensely popular in the first two

decades after the Civil War.

By the end of the century, almost every region of the country had its

Regionalist writer or “local colorist.” These writers sought to

immortalize the distinctive natural, social, and linguistic features of

their regions. A growing nostalgia for simpler times, the emergence of

mass periodicals (magazines) as a market for short fiction, and

curiosity about different sections of the rapidly expanding country

encouraged this trend in writing. Mark Twain is usually viewed as one

of the most significant American Regionalist writers. Mary Eleanor

Wilkins Freeman is another Regionalist writer; she depicted the New

England landscapes and used people from her childhood as characters

in her stories.

Nineteenth-Century Authors

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)

The mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe seems to

be right in keeping with his writings, many of them

about mysterious occurrences set in Gothic

contexts. His brief life was marked by loss, family

conflicts, and poverty.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, Poe was orphaned before he

was three years old. Shortly after his father abandoned the family, his

mother, an actress, died in Richmond, Virginia while on a tour in 1811.

The little boy was taken in by John Allan and his wife and given a good

education in both England, where the family spent five years, and in

Richmond. Though Mrs. Allan doted upon him, Mr. Allan was a difficult

presence in Poe’s older years. Tensions escalated between them,

culminating in Mr. Allan’s refusal to pay for a second year at the

University of Virginia, objecting to Poe’s literary aspirations and

gambling debts. Poe spent time in the army, and later entered West

Point Academy for a short time before being dismissed for an

infraction. He also published three books of poetry, Tamerlane and

Other Poems (1827), Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829),

and then Poems (1831), but without any significant financial gain. Mr.

Allan died in 1833, omitting Poe from his will.

Poe then lived with his aunt and family in Baltimore, where he began

to publish short stories, and eventually, at the age of twenty-seven,

married his cousin, Virginia, when she was only thirteen years old.

Having moved back to Richmond, he worked as a magazine editor but

left when his drinking created problems, a pattern that

was repeated at his next magazine job. Settling then in

New York, he published numerous stories, but it was his

poem, “The Raven,” that made him famous when it was

published in 1845. Despite that success, their poverty continued, and

in 1847 Virginia died from tuberculosis after a long battle marked by

many relapses. Though at first devastated, Poe later recovered well,

and by some accounts, ceased drinking and became engaged again

just before his untimely death at the age of forty.

Poe was found in a coma on the streets of Baltimore (some report that

he was found sick in a tavern) and died in a hospital a few days later

on October 7, 1849. Speculation abounds regarding the possibilities of

what happened to him. Baltimore was experiencing local elections,

known to be hazardous for voters due to unscrupulous political agents,

and some surmise that he was encouraged to get drunk and perhaps

beaten in order to manipulate his vote. Others suspect that he simply

drank too much and stumbled in the cold, passed out, and developed

pneumonia. Whatever the case, the air of mystery surrounding Poe

has continued.

Poe’s subject matter is often considered bizarre or grotesque, and

many stories, such as “The Fall of the house of Usher,” contain Gothic

elements in which a crumbling mansion provides the setting for a

ghost story. His narrators slip into madness, fantastical events occur,

and stories end with macabre twists. His work offers a glimpse into

criminal psychology in such works as “The Tell Tale Heart.” Also

considered to be the father of the detective story, he was an influence

for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his creation of Sherlock Holmes, the

famous London detective. Poe’s use of symbols is widely

acknowledged, and he was daring in his exploration of the darker

psychological states that people could experience. His work seems to

lend itself to psychological interpretations, as the narrators grapple

with fear and terror or find themselves going mad by slow degrees.

Despite his short life, he left a solid collection of compelling works that

are still studied and celebrated.

“The Cask of Amontillado” (1846)

Poe wrote “The Cask of Amontillado” late in his life,

just three years before he died, and having written

dozens of stories already, he was a master of the

genre. A story of revenge, it is told to a distinct

but unknown audience. The narrator relates the

tale carefully and slowly, recounting his deliberate

pitiless act without any obvious remorse or guilt. Why then is he

telling the story? Who do you think the listener is? Why does

Montresor relate the tale with such calmness and steadiness?

In the opening line, Montresor reveals a vague reason for revenge:

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but

when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” Notice the

technique of using first person narration to draw a reader immediately

into an evolving set of attention-grabbing circumstances. The first line

also introduces the other main character, Fortunato, who has a

deliberately symbolic name. Known for using symbolism consciously

in his work, Poe has sprinkled plenty of symbols throughout the story.

What are some them? The clothing of the characters is also significant

in the plot. What are they wearing? How do their clothes suggest

their roles in the story?

Pay attention to the ironies and humorous comments in the story. Do

you find yourself repelled by Montresor, or is he a likeable character?

What do you think of Fortunato? The end of the story reveals more

than the resulting revenge. What it reveals will be yours to explore!

Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

Born in Florida, Missouri on November 30, 1835,

one of six children, Samuel Langhorne Clemens,

better known as Mark Twain, grew up in Hannibal,

near the Mississippi River, an area that was to

become the setting for two of his novels, Tom

Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884). Hannibal was also a port

stop for steamboats arriving from New Orleans and St. Louis. After his

father died, when the boy was just twelve, Samuel became a printer’s

apprentice, and then went to work for his brother’s newspaper, where

he developed his writing skills as a journalist. The pseudonym of Mark

Twain apparently came from his years as a riverboat pilot; the term

“mark twain” meaning “two fathoms,” or a safe depth of water for the

boat. When the Civil War broke out, the riverboat trade ceased, Twain

went to work as a reporter traveling the country, something he would

do often in his lifetime. He visited California and more of the western

territory, the eastern U. S., Hawaii, the Mediterranean, the Holy Land,

and lived periodically in England and Austria. In addition, he took a trip

around the world in 1895 depicted in his book, Following the Equator

(1897). Having humor as his strong point, he developed into a full-

fledged satirist as he aged. His first successful piece, “Jim Smiley’s

Jumping Frog,” as it was then called, appeared in a newspaper in 1865

and gave him national attention, as did his lectures given all over the

country.

Twain married Olivia Langdon in 1870, and they had

four children, eventually moving to Hartford

Connecticut where they built a large home. Later,

the family had severe financial problems. Their

firstborn, a son, died in infancy, and two daughters

died in their twenties, leaving their daughter Clara as

the sole survivor. Twain found it difficult to withstand these losses,

and his writing sometimes reveals the anguish and bitterness he

suffered. Despite his grief, he continued writing humorous lectures,

articles, and stories, completing close to thirty books in his lifetime

and numerous newspaper articles, sketches, and travel accounts. He

is known as America’s great satirist, his topics spanning politics,

religion, and social pretense. Having grown up in the pre-Civil War

South, Twain was drawn to themes about black Americans, and his

memorable hero, Huck Finn, learns to treat the slave Jim as a person

with dignity, though Huck has been taught differently. Twain’s

mastery of local dialects connects him to the regionalist trend in

American writing, but the scope of his observations is much larger

than a typical “local colorist,” and he is perhaps the most well known

author from the nineteenth century. Olivia died in 1904 while living in

Italy, where she had gone to improve her declining health. Twain died

in Connecticut on April 21, 1910 of angina pectoris.

“The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865)

This story, Twain’s first famous work, appeared in

a New York magazine in 1865. A good example

of a regionalism, this story about an American

Easterner visiting with an American Westerner, is

full of “local color,” or details about people in

specific regions of the country who had particular

habits of speech and curious lifestyles. Simon Wheeler is just such a

character, as the story teller who entertains the first person narrator

with an account of Jim Smiley and his jumping frog. Wheeler, a “fat

and bald-headed” old man, sleeping in a “dilapidated tavern” next the

stove, lives in Calaveras County in a semi-abandoned mining camp

during the aftermath of the California Gold Rush. Notice the

differences in speech between the first person narrator and Simon

Wheeler. The use of dialect becomes useful to regionalist authors who

wish to portray the nuances and peculiarities of speech in people from

a specific region. The narrator is well-spoken: “In compliance with

the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East . . .” As a

contrast, Wheeler says “feller” instead of “fellow” and “warn’t” instead

of “wasn’t.”

Sometimes called a “frame” narrative, the story begins with our first

person narrator, but soon we are in another story told to that person

by Simon Wheeler; thus, we have a story within a story. The outer

“frame” of the story is our narrator’s story; the inside of the frame is

Simon Wheeler’s story. The literary device of framing allows us to

react and “listen” along with our narrator, making the inner portion of

the frame seem like more of a spectacle, an anecdote of sorts. The

story is humorous. We find out about Jim Smiley and his penchant for

betting on animals. The names of the animals poke fun at American

figures such as Andrew Jackson, the dog, named after the former

president and army general, who was a rough and bold soldier, and

“Dan’l” Webster, the frog, named after the brilliant orator and Union

patriot. We are in a world of humor and satire. At the heart of the

story is the encounter of Jim Smiley with the Stranger, who outwits

him and wins the frog-jumping contest. We know that the narrator’s

friend has also tricked him into visiting the region and seeking out

Simon Wheeler, knowing that he would be forced to listen to this

story, and perhaps several others. Finally, we are tricked by the

narrator, since we have now become the listeners. Think about how

the story would be different had it been told without the regionalisms,

the dialect of the rough, western mining town. Would it have the

same appeal?

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Material in this lecture has been drawn from multiple sources, including the Concise Anthology of

American Literature, Sixth Edition, McMichael and Leonard, The Heath Anthology of American Literature,

Third Edition, Lauter, et al, The American Tradition in Literature, Shorter Edition in One Volume, Eleventh

Edition, including Instructor’s Manual and Ariel CD, Perkins & Perkins, The Norton Anthology of American

Literature, Fifth Edition, V. 1, Baym, PAL: Perspectives in American Literature, A Research and Reference

Guide at URL: http://web.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/, and MAPS: Modern American Poetry at

URL:http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/.