review of
William Dean Howells's A Modern Instance
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 25, 2013

WARNING: This review has spoilers but is hopefully written in such a way that even if you read it thru it won't actually spoil yr enjoyment of reading the novel b/c the review doesn't give you the plot as much as it does my meta-take on the plot.

Ah.. yes, yet-another "too long" review of mine. For the full thing go here: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/347703-review-of-william-dean-howells-s-a-mo...

It seems almost inevitable to me that reading a bk entitled A Modern Instance over 130 yrs after it was originally published is going to yield a bit of 'how modern does it seem now?' type thinking - much as a Science Fiction novel written predicting what was then the future & now the past will undergo scrutiny as to its accuracy. In this case, Howells is a very good observer of human nature & I found myself emotionally engaged in his characters in a way I wdn't have if they didn't still ring true.

As seems to be usually the case when I read a 19th century novel these days I find myself wondering why I bother when I have so many other bks to read & review that're more immediately relevant to my current life & interests. Nonetheless, I generally find the descriptions to be written w/ detail that appeals. Furthermore, what ultimately endeared me to this bk, & wch was something completely unexpected to me, was that I ended up w/ a personal take on the people in it that brought to my introspective attn some of my takes on people in general.

In particular, I found myself at odds w/ the author of the Introduction, noted Howells scholar Edwin H. Cady. Ordinarily, I read such framing material in full expectation of being illuminated by the scholarship. I accept as a given the superior knowledge of the commentator. I read Cady's Intro &, not having read the novel yet, just read it w/o having any understanding of what he was referring to. THEN I read the novel & gradually began to find Cady's introduction to it.. repulsive.. almost like a malicious gossip's unfair maligning. It was as if Cady, himself, was a particular type of person in real life who was envious of the type of person represented by the main character Bartley Hubbard & who was taking out his own frustrations on the character.

"Bartley was not a villain. There wasn't enough of him to furnish forth villainy. He was just a run-of-the-mill scoundrel with nothing much in him but a large, tender ego and a great deal of shallow cleverness. He had not an unselfish bone in his body, nor one that wasn't lazy. Is he not a modern man? Is he not the modern man, the "new man," a foregone failure?" - p xvi

The reader is certainly being set up for a completely negative perception of Bartley, in much the same way an 'expert witness' at a trial acts like a spin doctor to ruin the reputation of whoever he's being pd top dollar to defame. &, yet, consider this tidbit from a few pp later:

"But scarcely half of A Modern Instance had been serialized before Mark Twain, lost in admiration at the portrayal of the drunken scoundrel Bartley, claimed emphatically that Howells had taken Bartley from Sam Clemens. Promptly denying it, Howells said he had used himself for Bartley." - p xviii

Interesting, eh? Clemens/Twain liked the character enuf to identify w/ him & so did Howells. Given that they both may've had a sense of humor & probably more than a little bit of self-deprecating humor, they might've still felt that Bartley Hubbard wasn't w/o his redeeming qualities. So is he really "the drunken scoundrel" Cady makes him out to be? I think not. From my POV, Hubbard actually has MORE qualities than most of the other characters in the novel - most of whom are envious & contemptuous of him w/o any trace of introspection about themselves & their own privileges & weaknesses.

The novel's action precedes, happens during, & follows the contested presidential election of 1876 in wch the people voted for Samuel J. Tilden but the Electoral College voted for Rutherford B. Hayes. Hence Hayes became president against the voting public's wishes. From Howells's perspective of the 'modernity' of these times, youth was having a pretty unrestrained time of it:

"It was midnight, as the sharp strokes of a wooden clock declared from the kitchen; and they were alone together and all the other inmates of the house were asleep. This situation, hardly conceivable to another civilization, is so common in ours, where youth commands its fate, and trusts solely to itself, that it may be said to be characteristic of the New England civilization wherever it keeps its simplicity. It was not stolen or clandestine; it would have shocked no one in the village if the whole village had known it; all that a girl's parents ordinarily exacted was that they should not be waked up." - p 7

Hubbard, "the drunken scoundrel", as Cady wd have the reader think, is a handsome & witty man who gets the girls. Does Cady envy him & his counterparts in real life? After reading the whole bk, I tend to think so. In fact, much of the hatred in the novel directed against Hubbard seems to be based on such envy by people who never acknowledge it to themselves or anyone else. Whether Howells intended this to be read that way or not, I can't say. Here's Bartley flirting w/ Marcia, the girl who eventually becomes his wife, by trying to get her to write a letter accepting his invite to go on a ride thru the snow w/ him:

""Now the address. Dear"—

""No, no!" she protested.

""Yes, yes! dear Mr. Hubbard. There, that will do! Now the signature: Yours"—

""I wont write that. I wont, indeed!"

""Oh, yes you will. You only think you wont. Yours gratefully, Marcia Gaylord. That's right. The Gaylord is not very legible, on account of a slight tremor in the writer's arm, resulting from a constrained posture, perhaps. Thanks, Miss Gaylord, I will be here promptly at the hour indicated"—

"The noises renewed themselves overhead; some one seemed to be moving about. Hubbard laid his hand on that of the girl still resting on the table, and grasped it in burlesque alarm; she could scarcely stifle her mirth." - p 13

Marcia can "scarcely stifle her mirth" b/c Bartley's flirtation is doing exactly what he wants it to do: it's making her have fun, making her attracted to him. Is this "shallow cleverness" or "lazy", as Cady describes him? I think not. It's both hard work & ACTUALLY CLEVER. Cady strikes me as a type of man who ENVIES Hubbard b/c he's good at what less successful men only wish they were. The above passages are from the beginning of the novel. Cady says that "When A Modern Instance opens, Bartley is, though mildly, already demonic." (p xvii)

"Bartley is the first fully drawn worshipper of William James's "bitch-goddess Success" in American fiction. He is the new "success" type (who would so confuse later writers like Norris and Dreiser and London). Cozy, he is quick to spot a hole and dive through it to advantage. Easy-going , cynical, he lives by an unrationalized code of social Darwinism. When he can, he will 'take' anybody for anything and in any way; he will exploit and devour; never a lover or a giver, he lives psychically and professionally by grasping and extorting." - p xvii

Cady even quotes character Ben Halleck in his condemnation of Hubbard: "As early as college he had achieved, as his generous, self-sacrificing friend Halleck perceived, "no more moral nature than a baseball."" (p xvii) But there are some very, very significant things lacking in Cady's characterization here. Ben Halleck's 'generosity' is w/ inherited wealth - he didn't work for it, it's from his father's leather business. Never is Ben's wealth questioned as potential ill-gotten gains. In fact, EVERYONE'S money, except for Hubbard's, is accepted as somehow deserved - even tho the 'charitable' Clara Kingsbury is depicted as more or less completely out of touch w/ the harsh realities that she's ostensibly dedicated to 'righting'.

In fact, Ben's hatred for Bartley is rooted in one simple thing far more than any other: Bartley gets the girl(s) - in this case, Bartley specifically gets the beautiful Marcia who Ben's been pining for in secret. But Ben has a somewhat crippled leg b/c as a child he injured it after being tripped by another child. I kept wondering if this wd be neatly tied together by having the malicious tripper turn out to be Bartley. I'm thankful to Howells that he didn't go that route. Ben never acknowledges to himself that he's sexually frustrated & inhibited by his leg. Instead, Bartley, who's not nearly as horrible a husband as the others frequently choose to believe, is under constant scrutiny for any action that can be blamed against him. Bartley is assertive, he has to be to survive. Unlike Ben, he isn't wallowing in inherited wealth that enables him to wander aimlessly in a self-deluding miasma of impotent self-righteousness. Interestingly, Ben asks the lawyer Atherton, sometimes presented as one of the more ethical characters, this question about Marcia's reaction to Ben's taking Bartley home one night after Bartley had gotten uncharacteristically drunk (followed by Atherton's reply):

""Shouldn't you expect her to make you pay somehow for your privity to her disgrace, to revenge her misery upon you? Isn't there a theory that women forgive injuries, but never ignominies?"

""That's what the novelists teach, and we bachelors get most of our doctrine about women from them."" - p 283

Ben knows nothing about women, despite having 3 sisters, &, of course, there's plenty of novelistic self-reflexive humor in Atherton's reply. Ultimately, it's the moral posturing here that I can't relate to. B/c Bartley gets drunk ONCE Marcia is 'disgraced'. NOT. Was that really the way it was in that social milieu in the mid to late 19th century? I reckon yes b/c Howells seems to be an excellent realistic observer. But from my 21st century perspective that seems particularly stupid. Skipping back in the narrative a few paragraphs we have this:

""Atherton," he said, "if you found a blackguard of your acquaintance drunk on your doorstep early one morning, and had taken him home to his wife, how would you have expected her to treat you the next time you saw her?"" - pp 282-283

Ben refers to Bartley as a "blackguard", pompously passing judgment. &, yet, in one of the few instances that I see to Ben's credit, he saves Bartley from being arrested, in order to spare Marcia the misery:

""Do you know this man, Mr. Halleck?" asked the policeman.

""Yes—yes, I know him," said Ben, in a low voice. "Let's get him away quietly, please. He's all right. It's the first time I ever saw him so. Will you help me with him up to Johnson's stable? I'll get a carriage there and take him home." - p 272

Even Ben admits that "It's the first time I ever saw him so" drunk &, yet, b/c of this ONE incident & b/c he develops a habit of drinking light beer later on he's called by Cady a "drunken scoundrel".

From the Introduction, I got the impression that Bartley was a reporter. He was, but he was, more importantly, an editor. Howells was a magazine editor who transitioned away from that into full-time novelist thru this bk. Undoubtedly, Howells was critical of the ethics of mainstream publishing, undoubtedly Hubbard is used as a critical foil. But I see Hubbard as not so much a scoundrel as simply an energetic man who doesn't ethically scrutinize the givens of the social milieu he finds himself in. But neither does anyone else. All the characters are just un-self-critical players in the game they find themselves born into.

While Howells is still setting the atmosphere of the small town that the novel begins in, he writes that: "Religion had largely ceased to be a fact of spiritual experience and the visible church flourished on condition of providing for the social needs of the community." (p 24) Now given that I find religion to be one of the most malevolent forces in society b/c it encourages total obedience to a non-existent external authority that unscrupulous humans then present themselves as representatives of, I don't think that churches that provide "for the social needs of the community" are a bad idea at all. If they cd get rid of the 'god' shit & just serve an actual positive purpose for the community then they'd be much, much better from my POV.

But what surprised me here was the modernity of such a description. Throughout my adult life, as a performer I've often used church spaces for events. In BalTimOre, where I'm originally from, there were at least 4 inner-city churches that were open to political & cultural events that had no connection otherwise to the church & its dogma. EG: here's footage of a Franz Kamin performance called "A.S.R.B.#1 (Aleatoric Reactory Systemic Bulletin #1)" in a church: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tzwxfyPNTk & of another Franz Kamin peerformance of a piece called "Unknowing Games at the Hut"":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C32z98YpSDU at another church.

Cady says that Hubbard "will 'take' anybody for anything and in any way; he will exploit and devour; [& is] never a lover or a giver" but it seems to me that there are numerous instances in Howells's depiction of him that contradict this. Take this internal monolog of Hubbard's: "A distaste for their somewhat veteran ways in flirtation grew upon him as he thought of her; he philosophized against them to her advantage; he could not blame her if she did not know how to hide her feelings for him. Yet he knew that Marcia would rather have died than let him suppose that she cared for him, if she had known that she was doing it. The fun of it was that she should not know; this charmed him, it touched him even; he did not think of it exultantly, as the night before, but sweetly, fondly, and with a final curiosity to see her again, and enjoy the fact in her presence." (p 31) He thinks of Marcia "to her advantage", he's "charmed" & "touched", he thinks of matters related to her "sweetly" & "fondly" - these are hardly the characterizations of a completely hard-hearted man.

Cady prejudices the reader in advance by referring to Bartley as "the drunken scoundrel". However, this isn't born out by the narrative. Take, eg, this: "Ricker offered him his choice of beer or claret, and Bartley temperately preferred water to either; he could see that this raised him in Ricker's esteem." (p 171) Indeed, while Hubbard eventually develops a drinking habit, he's initially plagued by an actual drunkard whose excesses far exceed anything Hubbard ever reaches:

""Old Morrison was here, just before you came in, and said he wanted to see you. I think he was drunk," said Bird, anxiously. "He said he was coming back again."

[..]

"Where Morrison got his liquor from was a question that agitated Equity from time to time, and baffled the officer of the law empowered to see that no strong drink came into the town. Under conditions which made it impossible even in the logging camps, and rendered the sale of spirits too precarious for the apothecary, who might be supposed to deal in them medicinally, Morrison never failed of his spree when the mysterious mechanism of his appetite enforced it. Probably it was some form of bedevilled cider that supplied the material of his debauch; but even cider was not easily to be had." - pp 63-64

The ensuing encounter w/ the drunk Morrison is one of the key events leading to Hubbard's eventual downfall. In this encounter, Hubbard is sober. The misunderstanding deliberately fostered by Morrison's drunkenness leads to Hubbard's jealous assistant assaulting Bartley:

"Here his rage culminated, and with a blind cry of "Ay!" he struck the paper, which he had kept in his hand into Bartley's face.

"The demons, whatever they were, of anger, remorse, pride, shame, were at work in Bartley's heart too, and he returned the blow as instantly as if Bird's touch had set the mechanism of his arm in motion. In contempt of the other's weakness he struck with the flat of his hand, but the blow was enough. Bird fell headlong, and the concussion of his head upon the floor did the rest. He lay senseless." - p 69

Bartley, engaged to be married to Squire Gaylord's daughter, Marcia, is faced w/ the decision of how to break the news of his having hit Bird & of Bird's subsequent concussion: "If on the other hand, he went first to Squire Gaylord the old lawyer might insist that the engagement was already at an end by Bartley's violent act, and might well refuse to let a man in his position even see his daughter." (p 75) &, yes, Bartley is ill-perceived & treated. It appears that no-one seems to blame Bird much for the assault that resulted in his being struck back. "The more Bartley dwelt upon his hard case, during the week that followed, the more it appeared to him that he was punished out of all proportion to his offense." (p 83) Howells may've been ironically mocking Bartley's indignation here but I tend to agree w/ Hubbard's assessment & to take it even further. Hubbard was actually SORRY he'd struck Bird - & not for purely selfish reasons. I say Bird deserved it.

As for Cady's contention that Hubbard's "never a lover or a giver"? I say, once again, the narrative contradicts this. Marcia is understandably angry about a social affair she & Bartley have just gone to. She's sensitive to things that Bartley's willfully oblivious to. When they return home she rushes off to bed in a huff. Consider Bartley's reaction:

"Bartley stood a moment in the fury that tempted him to pursue her with a taunt, and then leave her to work herself out of the transport of senseless jealousy she had wrought herself into. But he set his teeth, and, full of inward cursing, he followed her upstairs with a slow, dogged step. He took her in his arms without a word, and held her fast, while his anger changed to pity, and then to laughing. When it came to that, she put up her arms, which she had kept rigidly at her side, and laid them round his neck, and began softly to cry on his breast." - p 228

Bartley chooses to de-escalate the situation rather than to give in to his anger. That strikes me as a loving & giving solution. ( )

4154 A Modern Instance, by William Dean Howells (read 16 Apr 2006) This is a 1882 novel which, while it shows its age, I thoroughly enjoyed and found easy reading. Marcia Gaylord is a not very likable but "good" person, living in Equity, Maine, the only child of a bearcat of her lawyer-father. She falls in love with Bartley Hubbard, a weak flashy guy, and throws herself at him, and they marry. I found the story, supposedly based on the famed Greek tragedy, Medea, full of interest. I someday will read Howells' A Hazard of New Fortunes. (I read The Rise of Silas Lapham clear back on 19 Aug 1959.) ( )