ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT IN THE EARLY 1900S

The first decade of this century saw an increase in the demand for easy reading material and light entertainment. But more serious international and regional artists also found an American audience and passed to it socially significant messages. A new spirit of realism crept into literature, painting, and sculpture.

The ruling elders in the field of literature included Mark Twain, Henry James, and William Dean Howells. All three were firmly established by 1900. During the early 1900s, Twain published mainly short works of fiction and pronouncements upon public events in magazines, but his popularity never waned and his earlier, longer works continued to be read extensively. For James, this decade would be one of his most prolific, since between 1900 and 1904 he wrote The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl. He also wrote short stories, a biography, and another novel over the same period. James’s intellectual novels contrasted naive and crass Americans with rich, cultured, educated Europeans. While Twain interspersed humor into his social commentaries, James and Howells painted dismal and painful pictures of humanity’s problems in their writings. Howells attacked American sentimentality and romanticism in fiction, realistically depicting the world through his novels.

Newer writers also came to the fore. Theodore Dreiser wrote Sister Carrie in 1900, which was suppressed because of its frank depiction of illicit love. In fact, following rejection by several other publishers and a great deal of reluctance, the publisher issued the book in a small edition without a name on the cover. Willa Cather was a young novelist who would write some of her best work early in this century. During this decade, she worked on the staff of McClure’s magazine, while she wrote her first novel, Alexander’s Bridge, which was published in 1912.

Popular, easy-to-read books at the turn of the century included the writer (not the statesman) Winston Churchill’s Richard Carvel and Helen Keller’s autobiography. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, by Kate Douglas Wiggin, was one of the most popular books of 1903. The public’s taste for easy reading made romanticism hard to avoid. Even Jack London lapsed into the romantic with his 1903 novel The Call of the Wild, followed by Sea Wolf in 1904. In his work, London, philosophically a left-wing Socialist and social critic, glorifies the primitive, mystical side of life.

Helen Keller. (1880-1968)

Helen Keller became blind and deaf as the result of an illness she suffered before she was two years old. Yet her life is a testament to what can be accomplished by a determined spirit.

As a young child, Keller lived in a silent world. Her family was unable to communicate with her, although she appeared bright, and she developed into a willful and wild child.

Keller’s father spoke to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell about his daughter, and he recommended that the Kellers contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. When Keller was seven, the Perkins Institute sent Anne Sullivan to teach her to speak using the finger alphabet, to read Braille, and to write. She set limits on Keller’s behavior ant encouraged her to learn about the world. She even taught her how to talk.

Keller entered Radcliffe in 1900 with Sullivan at her side to spell out lectures. She was expected to do the same amount of work as all the other students. Keller graduated with honors.

She then devoted her life to teaching people about the blind. After her graduation Keller became active with the American Foundation for the Blind and the American Foundation for Overseas Blind. She urged the U.S. government to print books for the blind and raised money for these activities.

But without Miss Sullivan’s dedication and guidance, it would have been impossible for Keller to achieve success. While Keller was a student at Radcliffe, her autobiography was published in Ladies Home Journal. Of Miss Sullivan, she wrote, "Had it not been for her devotion, adaptability and willingness to give up every individual pleasure, we should long ago have found it necessary to retire to complete isolation."

In 1902, this autobiography was published as a book called The Story of My Life. Before the decade was over, Keller would go on to publish Optimism, The World I Live In and Song of the Stone Wall. She would publish seven more books before her death in 1968, and they would be published in more than fifty languages.

Not only did Keller become a spokesperson for the disabled, she became an advocate of women’s rights, child welfare, and labor reform. She began to write about these subjects. She marched in "Votes for Women" parades and later lectured on labor reform and the rights of the working class. Keller’s political views received a lukewarm reception, and magazine editors, who had eagerly accepted past articles, began to reject her work based on her politics rather than its quality.

In 1905, Sullivan married John Macy, a Socialist and writer who influenced Keller to join the Socialist party. Money became a problem for Keller. She lived with Sullivan and Macy, who had their own financial difficulties. Nevertheless, Keller turned down a $5,000-a-year pension offered to her by an admiring Andrew Carnegie.

Keller’s life received much publicity because it was so unusual for a child with handicaps to receive the amount of education that she had at that time. Of her curiosity and intellect she wrote, "My hands felt every motion and in this way I learned to know many things." Of her deafness and blindness, Keller recalled, "Gradually I got used to the silence and darkness that surrounded me and forgot that it had ever been any different."

Poetry and Portrayals

Although Paul Laurence Dunbar, an Ohio-born poet and novelist, would never be considered by critics to be one of the country’s major writers, his work left an impression of black America for future generations. Writing about the lives, customs, and language of black America in the early 1900s, Dunbar captured the dignity and humor of southern blacks in the face of hardship, portraying black life realistically and honestly. His first book, The Sport of the Gods, was published in 1902. His most famous poems, written in black dialect, include "When Malindy Sings" and "When De Co’n Pone’s Hot."

Paul Laurence Dunbar. (1872-1906)

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an African American novelist and poet who portrayed black life realistically and honestly. Dunbar’s father had escaped from slavery in Kentucky before the Civil War and settled in Dayton, Ohio, before Paul was born on June 27, 1872.

Education was always important to the family. Dunbar’s mother had gone to night school and taught him to read and write before he entered first grade. Dunbar’s father died when he was eight, so Paul and his brothers went to work as street lighters to help make ends meet. There was never a question about whether the boys would finish school.

In high school, Dunbar and his brothers attended their first minstrel show. Dunbar quickly realized that the show was a parody of African-Americans, making them appear shiftless, lazy, and stupid. He believed he could create stronger portrayals of his people and began to write with this in mind. Throughout high school, he had poems published in the Dayton Herald, but was turned down for a job as a reporter because he was black.

Dunbar published the Tattler, a black newspaper that was printed by the Wright brothers, whom he had befriended in eighth grade. Meanwhile, he tried to find work. The only job he could obtain was as an elevator operator for $4 a week. In 1893, Dunbar went to join his brothers in Chicago.

In 1893, his first book of poetry, Oak and Ivory, was published privately, followed by Majors and Minors in 1895. Many praised his dialect poems, while others, including his wife, Alice Moore, criticized them. "I didn’t start as a dialect poet," he confided in a friend. "I simply came to the conclusion that I could write it as well, if not better than anyone else I know. And that by doing so, I should gain a hearing. I gained a hearing and now they don’t want me to write anything but dialect."

Dunbar wrote several novels between 1896 and 1902, but they were never as popular as his poems.

William Carlos Williams created a stir when he published Poems in 1909. The poems defied traditional conventions and were written for the average American rather than for the intellectual elite. Ezra Pound published Personae and Exultations that same year. These works represented a short-lived poetic movement called imagery, in which poets used common language to describe everyday objects and sights to convey their messages. Their poetry was in the way they used metaphor and rhythm.