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it was ahead of its time. InThe Awakening, a young marriedwoman with attractive children andan indulgent and successful husbandgives up family, money,respectability, and eventually herlife in search of self-realization.Poetic evocations of ocean, birds(caged and freed), and musicendow this short novel with unusualintensity and complexity.Often paired with The Awakeningis the fine story “The Yellow Wallpaper”(1892) by Charlotte PerkinsGilman (1860-1935). Both workswere forgotten for a time, butrediscovered by feminist literarycritics late in the 20th century. InGilman’s story, a condescendingdoctor drives his wife mad by confiningher in a room to “cure” herof nervous exhaustion. The imprisonedwife projects her entrapmentonto the wallpaper, in the design ofwhich she sees imprisoned womencreeping behind bars.MIDWESTERN REALISMFor many years, the editor ofthe important Atlantic Monthlymagazine, William Dean Howells(1837-1920) published realisticlocal color writing by Bret Harte,Mark Twain, George WashingtonCable, and others. He was thechampion of realism, and his novels,such as A Modern Instance(1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham(1885), and A Hazard of NewFortunes (1890), carefully interweavesocial circumstances withthe emotions of ordinary middleclassAmericans.WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLSPhoto © The Bettmann Archive51Love, ambition, idealism, andtemptation motivate his characters;Howells was acutely aware of themoral corruption of business tycoonsduring the Gilded Age of the1870s. Howells’s The Rise of SilasLapham uses an ironic title to makethis point. Silas Lapham becamerich by cheating an old businesspartner; and his immoral act deeplydisturbed his family, though foryears Lapham could not see thathe had acted improperly. In theend, Lapham is morally redeemed,choosing bankruptcy rather thanunethical success. Silas Lapham is,like Huckleberry Finn, an unsuccessstory: Lapham’s business fallis his moral rise. Toward the endof his life, Howells, like Twain,became increasingly active in politicalcauses, defending the rights oflabor union organizers and deploringAmerican colonialism in thePhilippines.COSMOPOLITAN NOVELISTSHenry James (1843-1916)Henry James once wrote that art,especially literary art, “makes life,makes interest, makes importance.”James’s fiction and criticismis the most highly conscious,sophisticated, and difficult of itsera. With Twain, James is generallyranked as the greatest Americannovelist of the second half of the19th century.James is noted for his “internationaltheme” — that is, the complexrelationships between naïveAmericans and cosmopolitan Europeans.What his biographer Leon