Frontier and Utopia in the Fiction of Charles Seals field: a Study of the Lebensbilder aus der westlichen Hemisphäre by Jerry Schuchalter (review)

Reviews 185 of frontier woman “pervades frontier letters, journals, diaries, memoirs, poems, paintings, popular songs, fiction, travel books, and illustration” (p. 5), and admits: “There is no reason to doubt its accuracy” (p. 5). Yet, in this oddly contrived volume, she seeks to counter that image. She sets out to illustrate how women’sfictionalized accounts of prairie life offer an alternative to this crumpled figure; seeking in novels an image of women “energetic, strong, self-sufficient, inventive, and far-sighted,” and she finds it. Fairbanks concludes: “Women’sprairie fiction reveals a pervasive optimism rarely found in the works of men” (p. 252). While Fairbanks has done a commendable job of pulling together important sources and fiction on the prairie, it is most regrettable that she has not, then, confronted the question of why the fictionalized accounts by women of women contradict the personal accounts of the pioneer women themselves. The question of literature reflecting reality must be the critical one here. She does not argue that these works of fiction should be taken as more historically accurate than the personal writings of pioneer women, yet she also does not tackle the momentous question of why this alternative image persists in the fiction. Fairbanks hedges her bets by merely stating that the novels offer a different image. Now, she or someone else should tackle the question of what we do with this fascinating information. As for the argument about whether pioneer women were tough or broken-hearted, challenged by the land of homesick for the East and its refinement, would it not be safer to guess that some were and some weren’t? ELAINE J. LAWLESS University of Missouri Frontier and Utopia in the Fiction of Charles Sealsfield: a Study of the Lebensbilder aus der westlichen Hemisphare. By Jerry Schuchalter. (Frank­ furt am Main: Peter Lang, 1986. 337 pages, $36.30.) Charles Sealsfield was the pen name and American alter ego for the elu­ sive Karl Postl, Austrian novelist and former monk, whose discursive versions of Bildungsrornane were among the first literary explorations of the intricacies of the antebellum United States. For a time, in the 1830s and 1840s, Sealsfield ’s works, most of which were written in German, enjoyed some vogue, being praised by Longfellow and Poe, but his reputation rapidly faded, leav­ ing him to lament the coming of the Civil War, the conflict which meant the end of the American dream he articulated. Schuchalter’s study is of value for pointing out Sealsfield’s place in American letters (his use, for example, of the stock themes and characters of American folklore) and for delving into the complexity of Sealsfield’s vision. As Schuchalter makes evident, Sealsfield anticipated Turner in seeing the frontier as crucial for the formation of the American character. The frontier was the arena in which immigrants were cleansed of the European dress and emerged as “Homo Americanus,” free, 186 Western American Literature democratic, self-sufficient. However, confrontation with the wilderness was not simply a redeeming experience; instead of the New Adam, the frontier could release primitive emotions and Gothic horrors. It was typical of Sealsfield to be sensitive to the shadows as well as the hopes of America and to note dichotomies in all things. Though supposedly Jacksonian in outlook and anxious to escape the social inequities of the Old World, Sealsfield constructed his ideal America from that most aristocratic of institutions, the plantation, where he saw self-made gentlmen-philosophes exercising benevolent domin­ ion over slave kingdoms, with democracy being a privilege enjoyed chiefly by the elite. Schuchalter’s book provides an interesting and intricate guide to Sealsfield ’s frontier and utopia. However, Schuchalter does not really fulfill his secondary goal of placing Sealsfield in the context of his own times. Perhaps the historical aspect of this book would have been enriched had the author gone beyond Schlesinger’s theories and come to grips with more recent Jacksonian scholarship, such as that of Robert Remini. Further, the biograph­ ical chapter of the book is indequate. It is difficult to tell what influences formed Sealsfield’s outlook or even why he fled to the United States, only to return to Europe. A number of Schuchalter...