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William Dean Howells - "Editha", does she undergo a learning…
William Dean Howells - "Editha"
Biography
William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
an American author, editor, and literary critic and one of the greatest champions of realism in the U.S.
In his essays, Howells programmatically expresses his ideas about what contemporary writing should (and should not) do
Howells turned the social issues of his time into a focus of attention and explored the effects of processes of urbanization, the materialism of the Gilded Age, as well as class and ethnic conflicts.
General facts
written in 1905
"Editha" is set in upstate New York (and Iowa) after the Civil War
the "war feeling" described in the short story's first sentence presumably refers to the atmosphere that led to the Spanish-American War (1898) --> it was part of a number of early 20th-century U.S. imperialist ventures
Editha's attitudes towards patriotism, war, love, and gender roles are entirely shaped by learned patterns of behavior. Editha never questions the validity of such learned modes of perception, but is thoroughly guided by them.
In the course of the story, we have been given more than ample evidence to realize that her way of approaching the world through other people's ideas and learned patterns of behavior is inappropriate and can even prove fatal
Style
a heterodiegetic narrative voice that uses the female protagonist of the story as a focalizer, but maintains a flexible degree of distance towards her
Plot
We first encounter Editha just before her fiancée announces that the U.S. is at war. Editha has made up her mind that her fiancée will have to go, but he is much less enthusiastic
The course she will take is to use his love for her in order to move him towards what she sees as the right course of action for him. --> This course of action is at least as closely associated with Editha's ideas about courtship as it is with her enthusiasm for the war
Editha's ideas about love and courtship are an example of those conventional plots as well as the habits of thought and false standards that Howells opposed
Her glorifications of war and patriotism provide another example that demonstrates the ways in which she uncritically internalizes the platitudes of war propaganda, e.g. "There is nothing but our country."
How dangerous such wrong assumptions about the world are, is demonstrated in the denouement of the story – i.e., by George's death. This death, then, could give Editha (and the reader) the opportunity for learning and growth that are often provided by realist fiction.
does she undergo a learning process?
At first it seemed so because she spends months in “darkness” but in the last scene she talks to a lady painter and there you can see she is still shallow and naive