Literary Perspective and Political Ideology

Realism vs. Naturalism

Carefully read the following excerpts from literary descriptions of the poor in New York City during the 1890’s. See if you can determine the writer’s political ideology from his narrative point of view. What details are selected? What diction is used? What metaphors? How do these literary techniques reveal political stances?

From How the Other Half Lives (1888) Jacob Riis in the New York Sun 

Leaving the Elevated Railroad where it dives under the Brooklyn Bridge at Franklin Square, scarce a dozen steps will take you where we wish to go… with its rush and roar echoing yet in our ears we have turned the corner from prosperity to poverty. We stand upon the domain of the tenement… enough of them everywhere. Suppose we look into one? No? – Cherry Street. Be a little careful, please! The hall is dark and you might stumble over the children pitching pennies there. Not that it would hurt them; kicks and cuffs are their daily diet. They have little else. Here where the hall turns and dives into utter darkness is a step and another, another, a flight of stairs. You can feel your way, if you cannot see it. Close? Yes! What would you have? All the fresh air that ever enters these stairs comes from the hall door that is forever slamming and from the windows of the dark bedrooms that in turn we see from the stairs the sole supply of the elements God meant to be free, but that man deals out with such niggardly hand.

From New York Streets by William Dean Howells

The sidewalks swarm with children and the air rings with clamor as they fly back and forth at play; on the thresholds the mothers sit nursing their babes and the old women gossip together…. In a picture it would be most pleasingly effective, for then you could be in it and yet have the distance on it which it needs. [To be in it] is to inhale the stenches of the neglected street and to catch that yet fouler and dreadfuler poverty smell which breed from the open doorways. It is to see the children quarreling in their games and beating each other in the face and rolling each other in the gutter like the little savage outlaws they are.

From The Midnight Platoon by William Dean Howells

How early did these files begin to from themselves for the midnight dole of bread? As early as ten, as nine o’clock? If so, did the fact argue habitual destitution, or merely habitual leisure? Did the slaves in the coffle make acquaintance, or remain strangers to one another, though they were closely neighbored night after night by their misery? Perhaps they joked away the weary hours of waiting; they must have their jokes. Which of them were old-comers, and which novices? Did they ever quarrel over questions of precedence? Had they some comity, some etiquette, which a man forced to leave his place could appeal to, and so get it back? Could one say to his next-hand man, “Will you please keep my place? And would this man say to an interloper, “Excuse me, this place is engaged”? How was it with them, when the coffle worked slowly or swiftly past the door where the bread and coffee were given out, and word passed to the rear that the supply was exhausted? This must sometimes happen, and what do they do then?

From Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane

Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against an hundred windows. Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire-escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. In the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels. Withered persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure corners. A thousand odors of cooking food came forth to the street. The building quivered and creaked from the weight of humanity stamping about in its bowels.