""Dancing in Chains" is far more than a sensitive biography (though
it is surely that); it is also a model of psychologically informed
social and cultural history. Olsen recognizes that psychic
conflicts often play themselves out on a higher plane, that psychic
and intellectual history are intertwined. He presents a wonderful
nuanced picture of Howells."
--Jackson Lears, Rutgers University
In this insightful study of the childhood and youth of William
Dean Howells, "Dancing in Chains" demonstrates how the turbulent
social and cultural changes of the early nineteenth century shaped
the young Howells's emotional and intellectual life. His early
diaries, letters, poetry, fiction, and newspaper columns are used
to illustrate Olsen's argument, which also in turn throws light on
the dominant tensions in antebellum America.
Accepting the emergent middle-class ethos of civilized morality,
with its new conceptions of child rearing and gender spheres,
Howells's parents urged him to achieve self-control and individual
success while also teaching him to seek the good of others rather
than his own glory. For Howells the conflicts coalesced at the time
of his leaving home, an increasing common rite of passage for
antebellum youth. Trying to affirm his sense of literary vocation,
he tested his aspirations against the family's Swedenborgian
religious convictions and the antislavery commitments of his
village while experimenting with competing literary ideologies in
the process of meeting the demands of the new mass reading
audience. For Howells the resulting tensions eased toward the end
of his youth but reappeared in his more mature works of fiction and
social criticism in later years.
Portraying the ordeal of coming of age during a momentous period
of American history, "Dancing in Chains" is a fascinating study
with a broad appeal to general readers as well as scholars.
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