American Realism and American Drama, 1880-1940 (review)

Brenda Murphy. American Realism and American Drama, 1880-1940. Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture. New York: Cambridge U P, 1987. 232 pp. $34.95. Professor Murphy's study of the formative years of modem American drama boldly pursues two very large and worthy goals: to uncover "a literary definition of dramatic realism upon which criticism of realistic plays can be based" (x), and to determine the degree to which late nineteenth-century American realists influenced the dramatists "who dominated the American theater between the two world wars" (xi). In essence Murphy hopes to demonstrate that the maturing American drama of 1918-1940 is centrally rooted in a solid American realist tradition, despite general assumptions that "the American dramatists before World War I [were] too inferior as artists to have influenced the literary drama of O'Neill and those who followed" (ix). In fact, Murphy argues that placing "American drama in the context of Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, Chekhov, the French symbolists, and the German expressionists " (ix) is more arbitrary than natural since such placement does not accurately reflect lines of influence and development. As Murphy suggests, grouping American drama with European dramatic trends is actually more the result of an unfortunate academic decision to segregate American drama from other American literature, a decision that many American drama scholars have begun to challenge . Murphy's book is an intelligent and significant contribution to the effort of bridging that gap "between literary specialists who study drama and those who study American literature" (ix). As evidence that such bridging is both natural and essential, Murphy's work focuses on the dramatic theories and practices of Henry James and William Dean Ho wells, recalling for us that these literary figures were influential in forging early modem American dramatic traditions. Such a focus is also a natural beginning to the matters of establishing a literary definition of realism and of tracing American influences on the dominant American playwrights between the wars. Murphy observes that James and Howells were very influential in articulating early theories of American dramatic realism. After summarizing in the first chapter the state of drama in the 1880s—demonstrating that it was by no means merely a melodramatic waste land—Murphy's second chapter details James's and Howells's theories on realistic drama. The implicit debate between these two men helped mold the post-1880s American dramatic scene, with Howells's ideas eventually becoming the more widely accepted. While James was not "an unswerving admirer of realism" (27), going so far as to admire and strive to imitate the "'fairy-tale' unreality of domestic comedy" (64), Howells longed for drama to develop almost exclusively into "an artistic reflection of reality as he saw it" (25). James's discussion of realism in drama often restricted itself to stagecraft and aesthetic concerns—arguing that, above all, a work should be well-made— while Howells made the rather problematic assertion that "art and truth are forever bound up in each other" (39), but then supported himself by articulating particular agendas. Howells, for example, studied the thematic implications of closure and The Henry James Review 11 (1990): 220-22 © 1990 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Review of American Realism and American Drama, 1880-1940 221 applications of psychology in developing character rather than merely presenting characters that conform to plot designs. Murphy outlines the points of disagreement between these critics to demonstrate the broader debate about the viability of dramatic realism around the tum of the century. But she additionally concludes that despite specific important differences, most of the early theorists agreed that dramatic realism should be "a representation of the playwright's conception of some aspect of human experience in a given milieu, within the fourth-wall illusion and in the low mimetic style" (49). A third chapter studies the actual dramatic products of these literary realists, including James and Howells, but also Mark Twain, Hamlin Garland, and James A. Heme. As bridges between the pre-1880 drama and the mature twentiethcentury drama, most of these artists' efforts were incomplete and experimental by today's standards, but important to dramatic development. The section on James divides his dramatic career into five phases...