Confined in small spaces: Naturalism in the American short story, 1890--1910

Drawing upon narrative theory, short story genre theory, and critical theories of literary naturalism, this dissertation argues that American naturalists created in their short fiction aesthetics that were distinctly different from those that emerged in their novels. The aesthetics of the naturalist short story placed a greater emphasis on symbolism, symbolic characterization, epistemological uncertainty (which connects naturalism to modernism), affirmation of human dignity (seen in characters' attempts to survive rather than in the possibilities of an empowered subject), naturalism as a transgeneric mix of romanticism and realism, and the use of what I have termed "the familiar uncommon" to increase dramatic intensity and to link extreme situations to commonplace realities. Because the scholarship on literary naturalism derives almost wholly from studies of the naturalist novel, the dissertation thus attempts to provide a fuller understanding of naturalist aesthetics and themes: correcting distortions arising from a focus on novels; locating and exploring new areas of the genre's aesthetics; and extending elements previously noted by critics. The first chapter provides a historiographical review and assessment of previous theories of naturalism and proposes a new theory based on the naturalist short story. Subsequent chapters examine the short fiction of Ambrose Bierce, Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Kate Chopin, and Edith Wharton, taking this fiction as illustrative of naturalism's impact on the short story at the turn of the nineteenth century.