Part 8
GENERAL. Fannie Hurst is represented in three collections of “The Best Short Stories.” The reason lies in the facts that she is one of the skilled technicians of the time, one of the hardest workers--sparing no pains to achieve that sound structure and perfection of detail which only the seasoned artist knows how to achieve; that by narrative, which stands without emphasis of didactic or propaganda purpose, she yet manages to convey an idea much larger than the story itself, and that she has quite literally created a unique world of men and women who nevertheless in their behavior reflect a part of the myriad-minded and many-mooded contemporary life. Any one of the present stories will prove the truth of this assertion.
STARTING POINT OF “T. B.” “The flint that struck spark for ‘T. B.’,” says Miss Hurst, “was the sight of a humpy looking girl standing before the window display of a Tuberculosis exhibit.”
PLOT.
_Initial Impulse_: Sara Juke faints at the Hibernian Hop. How is this event prepared for in the finally developed story?
_Steps toward the Dramatic Climax_: Sara and Charley leave the hall. This stage is succeeded by others preparing for the counter-play and emphasizing the T. B. motif. They see the Tuberculosis exhibit, and visit it. The pink-faced young attendant gives Sara a circular. Sara fears the disease. She revisits the display. The attendant, Eddie Blaney, shows his interest, advising her to go to a clinic for examination. At Sharkey’s Sara tells Charley the doctor’s verdict. What obvious steps in the action has the author omitted, thus giving the reader the chance to help in constructing the story?
_Dramatic Climax_: Charley leaves Sara. (This climax is, of course, intensified by its juxtaposition to the doctor’s verdict; in fact, the two details together may be regarded as a double climax. Miss Hurst is one of the best authors to study for duplication of dramatic climax effect. See also, for example, “Ice Water.”)
_Steps toward the Climax of Action_: Eddie Blaney meets Sara and takes her to the country. (Has this step been prepared for duly? Why is it one not left to the reader’s imagination--that is, the engagement made previously?) Eddie encourages Sara, telling her she will be well by Christmas.
_Climax of Action_: (Deduced by reader.) How has Miss Hurst in the developed story suggested the inevitable ending?
CHARACTERS. By what speeches and acts does the author flash the personality of Sara? By which ones in particular does she draw the reader’s sympathy to her? How is Hattie Krakow used to emphasize the appeal of Sara? What other purpose does Hattie serve? How is her interest in Sara motivated? How far is Charley one of a type? To what extent individualized? Is the type or the individual more necessary to the author’s purpose here? How does Charley’s treatment of Sara enhance the reader’s interest? How is Blaney’s solicitude for the girl motivated? Do the three characters constitute the three figures of a “triangle” story? If so, is the triangle one of distinctly new features?
SETTING. How many times does the scene change? How is contrast employed in the construction of settings? Does the change in scene conform to the plot action? Has this relationship a necessary unifying value? What is the time of the story?
DETAILS. How much space does the author consume before gliding into the introduction of character and setting? What is its worth? A student once asked Miss Hurst why she chose such openings, suggesting that quite frequently the reader found it difficult to see the connection. Miss Hurst smilingly replied that it was her idiosyncrasy. “That’s where I take _my_ fling.” Is there more back of her words than her modesty allowed her to assert? What is the real contribution made by page 84?
What are the principal features of the economy by which she presents to the reader the opening situation?
Note the many details by which throughout the story the author keeps vividly before the reader the actual setting. Although her method is that of the romanticist, her result is one of reality. In listing these details, notice that another purpose is also effected--another economical device. “On a morning when the white-goods counter was placing long-sleeve, high-neck nightgowns in its bargain bins,” page 85, conveys the season, better than statement could do (because more picturesquely) at the same time it builds up the scene.
How has the author enriched the main narrative by contrast with lightly suggested situations? (See the Van Ness passages.)
Study the narrative for sounds and odors as well as for pictures. Contribution to vividness of reality? What contrasts do you find in these sense appeals?
How does Miss Hurst make most of her transitions in time and place? Is the double space well used? What is the acting time of the story?
From whose angle of narration is it told? Is there a shift from the objective to the omniscient point of view? If so, is it justified by a gain?
“ICE WATER, PL--!”
STARTING POINT. According to Miss Hurst, “Ice Water, Pl--!” had its germinal beginnings in the self-imposed query: Given, a mother whose joys are largely the vicarious ones that come through her daughter, to what extent can her own personal life become more and more submerged?
SETTING. The locale of this story is the same as that of “T. B.” Point out evidence, explicit or implicit, of its being New York City. In general, notice that the larger setting of Miss Hurst’s stories is frequently St. Louis or New York. Account for this fact. How long is the action of “Ice Water, Pl--!”?
PLOT. The _initial impulse_, the force that sets the story-action going, is Mr. Vetsburg’s invitation to Mrs. Kaufman and Ruby to “come down to Atlantic City over Easter.” (Fill in the important steps toward the dramatic climax.) The _dramatic climax_ is a double header: First, Ruby accedes, after a struggle, to her Mother’s wishes that she accept Mr. Vetsburg. Second, Mrs. Kaufman gives in to Ruby’s marrying Leo. By this clever duplication, not only is the turning point made more emphatic, but the sympathy of the reader is evoked for both mother and daughter. It is another excellent instance of economy joined to strength.
The _climax of action_ follows without much delay: It is bound up with the dénouement, since in it Mrs. Kaufman learns that it is herself--not her daughter--whom Vetsburg loves.
CHARACTERIZATION. What is Mrs. Kaufman’s outstanding trait? Ruby’s? Vetsburg’s? Is Mrs. Kaufman’s dominant characteristic logically connected with her capability as a boarding-house keeper? Are the two so portrayed as to make satisfactory the dénouement, by which Mrs. Kaufman will be married to Mr. Vetsburg? What preparation leads to the happy outcome?
How is Ruby akin to her sisters, Sara Juke and Selene Coblenz? How is she differentiated? Is the individualization stronger than the type resemblance?
Close your eyes after finishing the story and call up images of the two main women characters and of Vetsburg. Go over the narrative and see how the author has given you these pictures, and also observe how accurately you have registered the impressions. If there are discrepancies between your memory and the presentation, whose fault is it?
What purposes are fulfilled by the background figures? Recall instances of humor to which they contribute. Have you ever met Irving Katz?
Why is Leo so slightly touched? Do you notice other measures taken to keep in the foreground the middle-aged pair? What are they?
DETAILS. What popular attitude does the philosophy of page 181 subtly criticize? What is the link which connects the generalizing preliminary with the particular instance? (Notice that the slide is effected on the towels.)
Where is the first scene laid?
Who, in the first scene, reveals most of the situation to the reader?
Page 187 contains an important clue to the subsequent action. What is it?
What is the purpose of the next fully developed scene (in Mrs. Kaufman’s apartment)?
What is the purpose of the continuation of the scene (after Vetsy’s exit, page 194)? Does the division into two parts (before and after the women retired) contribute to more than an impression of reality?
Study the transition between the night scene and eleven o’clock the next morning. What value has the paragraph (page 205) beginning “At eleven”?
How does the author effect the return of Vetsburg and Mrs. Kaufman to the apartment? How is Ruby disposed of? (See page 107, “Down by Gimp’s I sent her,” etc.).
Miss Hurst is an expert scene-developer. Her setting is clear; her characters move as they move in real life; the action is in the right tempo for the conditions and the time at hand; no scene exists without a definite purpose. It is the fine scene-work which gives to her stories a dramatic quality equalled only by that of the stage.
Compare the scene-work of this story with that of “T. B.” and of “Get Ready the Wreaths.”
Has the Easter season a contributory significance?
GET READY THE WREATHS
GERMINAL IDEA. “‘Get Ready the Wreaths’ was, of course, inspired by the overwhelming drama of the Russian Revolution and my own feeling that even Siberia had at last been justified.”--_Fannie Hurst._
ANALYSIS. The predominating interest and hence line of action, since it composes a line of action, is Mrs. Horowitz’s desire, struggle, to return to Russia. This struggle has been going on for years; it has its roots and beginnings in the past. Alone it would not make a short-story; for the conflict is too level, too empty of actual event.
The beginning of the complication is the engagement of Selene Coblenz, her love affair constituting the second line of interest. This is the truly complicating line, although there is also a third line of interest, properly subdued. It enters as a factor, first, in the first line. Mark Haas shows his interest in Mrs. Coblenz by offering to arrange for her the details of the Siberian journey. For a long time this interest exists, seemingly, only as a means for developing the main struggle: there is an entire amalgamation of the two interests. (See e.g., page 342, “Mark Haas is going to fix it for me,” etc.).
Selene Coblenz’s request brings on the immediate struggle. It is only a step, however, in Mrs. Horowitz’s long fight to get back. It turns out to be not a deciding step, but one in complication. See that by considering the old lady’s struggle and the daughter’s mental anguish, Shila’s search for ways and means starts from it, rather than is decided by it. There is no specific struggle after it, only a complication waiting to be solved. Mrs. Coblenz could not have started for Russia until after the reception, anyway. If Mrs. Horowitz had lived, she could have gone. Nothing is determined by this minor climax: much mental trouble starts from it for Shila. It simply advances events to a state, where at a later moment they will need a struggle and a decision.
But for another reason this decision of Mrs. Coblenz’s is a big crisis, though not the big plot crisis; especially is this true if you regard the story as a character story. Shila’s devotion to her mother: her devotion to her daughter--which will win? Will her sense of duty triumph over her indulgence? The girl’s reasoning, the impracticability of her mother’s desire assist to “play up” the struggle. Selene is dominant with Shila. She is a great-hearted woman, but she has a weakness. If she had not had, Selene might have been a less self-centred girl.
With the news of the reception evening, the three lines of interest come together; the high point of the complication is reached. There is a momentary crisis for Mrs. Coblenz. Her mother can go back to Russia now; she will insist. Selene’s line enters as an accomplished fact to prevent: It helps with the other to compose a crisis here. The third line is present as a factor to assist: But Mrs. Coblenz is blind to it: it is a suspended resource.
If, as you might have expected, the writer had derived her solution from that line, she would have done the obvious thing. Also she would have made Shila’s escape from her weakness, easy. And, last of all, she would have finished a struggle which had its derivation in blood and sacrifice with a conclusion too quiet and unheroic.
The author did what technically might have been a very bad thing. To get your solution out of a physical or natural stroke, by sudden illness or an accident of nature, is equivalent to using a god from the machine,--a charge often laid at the feet of Euripides. But here the death is so logical a consequence--so well prepared for--that you cannot quarrel with it. And there is a heroic touch in having Mrs. Horowitz die beneath her tremendous recollection and appreciation of all the triumph had cost. The outcome is satisfying: she died in a high moment. Shila is not too much to blame, and consolation for her is at hand. And Selene, being right from her angle of youth and life, is both happy and sufficiently rebuked.
The story, then, has both an opposing and an assisting line. The climax at which all meet and the forces balance is the Revolution news. It is not the deciding moment in the Selene story: that is over.
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The emotional effect of this story represents in a high degree one of the author’s best achievements. Her stories are notable for their human appeal. One man went so far as to state to the present critic that he would willingly have bartered his soul to enable that old lady to go back to Russia. Study all the ways by which she reaches your sympathy.
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GENERAL METHODS. “Almost invariably my plots emerge from characters, rather than characters from plots. I doubt if this latter is ever as sound in method except in the detective or picaresque story.
“I have never based a short story upon a concrete incident, written a character directly from ‘life,’ or, except rarely, incorporated a speech actually heard into dialogue.
“A situation may suggest the beginnings of a story, or a chance word be the seed of an idea, but most often I find myself puttering around the hypothetical psychology of folks....
“... Unity of Effect, no matter how the unities must be smashed to attain it, I consider the corner stone of short-story writing. Without it, architectural beauty and continuity of development are impossible....”
--_Fannie Hurst._
MR. EBERDEEN’S HOUSE
STARTING POINT AND FIRST PROCESSES. “Mr. Eberdeen’s House” was to have been originally only the effect of an old New England House upon a New Englander who had become rather enfranchised from his austere beginnings, and returned to find them only more crabbed, more grim, than ever, and himself strangely, inexplicably connected with them. The explanation of how he was connected with this distasteful setting, and of why it was distasteful to him evolved the author’s theme. The hero’s great-grandmother had fled from the same grimness and straight-lacedness and puritanism by running away with a Frenchman, just before the birth of her child, of whom Mr. Eberdeen was, contrary to his bleak, orthodox suspicions, the father. The author’s plan was to have Mr. Eberdeen, representing all that was distasteful to the hero (Hastings) in the New England character, the hero’s ancestor without his knowing it--the great-grandmother after she had fled, having presumably taken the name, for herself and child, of Tremaine.
The ghosts seemed to Mr. Johnson the only media through which to tell the story pictorially. Whether one believes ghosts in a story real or not is, in his opinion, beside the point, so long as they _seem_ real enough for the sake of the telling. They may be compared to the _deus ex machina_ of Euripides, of to the scenes in motion pictures which show what some one is dreaming or thinking.
ANALYSIS OF THE DEVELOPED STORY. Some inner stories may be detached from the outer husk as a letter is drawn from its envelope (find examples in these collections). Others are a necessary part of the external interest and refuse to be separated without damage to each. This story is one of the latter sort.
Jack Hastings and Julia Elliott are betrothed. He has come to New England, after some time in Paris, to make her a visit. It is understood, at the end of the action, that they will go abroad to live. So much for the outer wrappings which are bound so closely to the heart of the matter, as is indicated in the
_Preparation for the Significant Part, or the Inner Story_: Jack’s mystic knowledge of “Mr. Eberdeen’s” house; his strange mood; “they talked of it bein’ ha’nted.” These details are followed by the more immediate preparation; Jack is ill and sleepy, he sleeps. (Or _does_ he sleep?)
Here, then, the outer story merges, by way of Jack as a medium, with the inner.
_Dramatic Climax of the Entire Story_: (Formed by the developed scene which constitutes the inner action.)
_Explanation_: The characters are Jack Hastings, his counterpart, and the woman. Jack in his dream or vision apparently represents in his thoughts part of the personality of his great-grandfather; the ghostly counterpart represents that ancestor as he really behaved, at what must have been the original enactment of the scene. (Except, of course, that Jack was absent from that drama, played long before his birth.) This unique treatment of dual personality should be studied with Markheim, William Wilson, Jekyll and Hyde. For daring and yet naturalness combined with mysticism, it surpasses them. The end of the scene, in Jack’s vision, shows the ancestor about to do violence to his wife (Jack’s great-grandmother), but restrained by Jack himself. (Interpreted, this is to say that the better nature of Jack’s ancestor had actually triumphed and he had rushed from his wife.)
_The Climax of Action_ (_Whole of the Story_): Jack Hastings awakes to find that he has been ill. He lies in a state of semi-realization, of semi-lapse into the world of his recent adventure.
_Dénouement_: Julia and Hastings plan to live abroad. The old man whom Jack had met appears and suggests that he saw the lady of the house go from it to meet Henry. (Is this old man a figment of the fancy or is he real?) In this addition to Jack’s vision is furnished the _dénouement_ of the inner story, Julia leads Jack to Mr. Eberdeen’s room, which proves to be the one wherein he had seen the ghostly drama. The original of “John” is the portrait Julia had hung upon the panel. Julia reveals that when Jack came downstairs he had looked like the portrait. Clinching the reality of the whole thing is the discovery of the gray chiffon, with the bloodstains.
COMMENT. This, then, is a narrative the mystery of which must be explained by each reader to his own satisfaction. If the reader “believes” in the supernatural, he will take the whole thing, ghostly scene and all, as somehow occurring. If he does not “believe,” he will then accept the scene as the obsession of a sick man--with a few details left in mystery. I should class it as a story of the supernatural, wherein the appearance is visible to the sick or the clairvoyant mind. Knowing that the germinal idea had to do with the effect of a house upon a man, and that the story is developed by emphasis on this feeling, deepened by a ghostly visitation, one would find it impossible to characterize the story as other than one of atmosphere. And it is the best atmosphere story in the four Yearbooks. The right way to achieve an atmosphere story, Stevenson told us long ago, is to begin with a mood induced by a place; Mr. Johnson has pursued the plan.
Atmosphere is, then, bound up with setting; plot interest follows in importance; character is of note mainly in the unique manifestation of dual personality. A dreamer, an artist, an idealist--any sensitive medium--would fittingly play the part demanded. The love interest enriches the action and humanizes the character.
THE VISIT OF THE MASTER
COMMENT. Mr. Johnson has here produced a satirical character study, wherein Mary Haviland Norton well nigh stands in place of the story; but in playing up the visit of Hurrell Oaks he has secured narrative interest. That a mere visit should have loomed as an event, and that the loss of it should have proved so disappointing becomes the test of Miss Haviland’s character. Building a story upon so negative an incident is a feat worthy of Henry James--or Mary Haviland Norton.
PLOT.
_Initial Incident_: Miss Haviland invites Hurrell Oaks to Newfair.
_Steps toward the Dramatic Climax_: It appears that the great man can stop only for an hour or so. To receive him worthily, Miss Haviland decorates her apartment in borrowed and elegant trappings; she invites a select few to meet him. George Norton, who is devoted to Miss Haviland, is not included.
_Dramatic Climax_: Hurrell Oaks arrives earlier than he is expected, while Miss Haviland is in her bath-tub, and since there is nobody to receive him he goes away.
_Steps toward the Climax of Action_: Miss Haviland rushes out to detain him as the possibility occurs to her that his knock may have heralded the famous guest. He is gone. She betrays to one of her students her bitter disappointment.
_Climax of Action_: As the guests arrive she tells them that Hurrell Oaks could not wait, though he and she have spent an “immemorial” hour together.
_Dénouement_: Two days afterward she announces her engagement to George Norton.
PRESENTATION. The story is recounted ten years later, after a formal dinner, by the student whom Miss Haviland had helplessly, impulsively, taken into her half-confidence. Her auditor is the narrator, presumably Mr. Johnson, himself. The related story is exceptionally well told with regard to the assumed narrator; she betrays just enough of the school-girl character and manner to enliven the drama of middle age. From a stylistic point of view, the narrative testifies to the author’s craftmanship; for it is almost as if told by a young woman.
CHARACTERIZATION. Mary Haviland was interesting to the girl narrator because of her native ability, determination, and her acquired connoisseurship. Harmonizing her fundamental power with her culture, hitting off little discrepancies and exaggerations that the reader might see her whole--these demanded a highly conscious technique. Further, to regard her half-seriously, half-lightly, yet in the end to demand the reader’s sympathy and admiration for her, required nothing short of Meredithian genius. Finally, the bubble of fun blown out at the last: “She was no doubt _in the tub_,” etc., indicates an irresponsible humor which makes play of the whole situation.
THE STRANGE-LOOKING MAN
THE STARTING POINT. “I got the idea for ‘The Strange-Looking Man,’” says Mrs. Costello, “from reading of the homecoming of a Canadian soldier, limbless, partially blind, wholly demented, to his young wife--Homebringing, I should have said. As I read, I simply _saw_ the story as it was written, nor could I help feeling as I wrote that my little boy symbolized Germany as she is and my young man life, as we are now so strongly hoping it may come to be.”
The statement from the author serves, also, to explain her symbolical treatment.
SETTING. Should you judge, from the connotation, that the time is the near or far future? What is the place? How is it indicated?
ACTION. Brief; it begins “One morning,” page 363, and ends with the final words, page 364. Do you foresee the dénouement?