2004/12/01 by Lisa Honaker · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Themes in Literature Analysis #American and British Literature Analysis #Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies #HERO #Realism #Romance #Character (mathematics) #Literature #Adventure #Decadence #Treasure #Passions #Drama #History #Art #Aesthetics #Philosophy #Art history
paper · doi:10.1353/jnt.2004.0003
openalex publication_date 2004/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
In 1887, Andrew Lang declared that Robert Louis Stevenson "intended only a boys' book when he wrote 'Treasure Island' and restored Romance" (693). While this observation makes that feat sound innocent and serendipitous, subsequent commentators have made it clear that restoring romance at the end of the nineteenth century meant, in fact, writing only boys' books.1 The "romances of adventure," which subordinated character to action and often located that action in exotic settings, defined a genre aesthetically and ideologically at odds with nineteenth-century domestic realism. The well-rounded character, whose growth and development had become realism's foundation during the period, came in for particular scorn. This character, finding definition in largely female venues, where, [End Page 27] romancers argued, either decadence or impotence reigned, had little to recommend him, no matter what "school" he came from. Typical are Rider Haggard's remarks on the characters he finds in French and American realism. Dismissing "lewd" French heroines, "living for lust and lusting for life . . . and naught beyond," and pitiful American heroines, who "dissect their petty feelings and elaborately review the feeble promptings which serve them for passions," Haggard denounces realism's heroes as "emasculated specimens of an overwrought age . . . with culture on their lips and emptiness in their hearts" (176, 175).2 The romancers urged their own leaner, more daring action hero as an alternative to this soft and/or impotent figure. Forsaking the well-rounded character would, they argued, be good, even character building, for readers since the leaner hero would both display and inspire vigor. Such reasoning was in keeping with the general Victorian vision of the moral power of literature even as it turned upside down accepted notions of character "growth."