Jackie Robinson

Since America has always been marked by its diversity, it seems difficult to identify a single theme or quality as "American." Certainly, the works we read this semester have been diverse, stylistically, thematically, and geographically. Still, they have in common an ambivalent take on change and tradition, on new ways vs. old ways, that seems very American.

The time period in which all the works were written (late 19th and early 20th century) seems particularly representative of this ambivalence. Indeed, it seems almost like a national adolescence, with all of the anger, excitement and confusion that accompany that time period. Thus, the characters seek to make a break from the very traditions which shaped them. Many of the characters seems to have a love/hate relationship with European culture, which serves as a sort of absent parent. In The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer and all of the New York society of which he is a part affect an air of superiority about European society, while at the same time appropriating and imitating its culture, like naughty children who secretly just want their parents' approval. Edna Pontellier, in The Awakening, seeks to abandon the values of the largely European shaped Creole culture, only to find that they have been too deeply etched for her to ever make a clean break. Daisy Miller enjoys flouting European convention, and dies as a result of it. The House of Mirth's Lily Bart struggles against the values taught to her by her mother, while Fitzgerald's Berniece makes a break from tradition, then regrets it deeply, and finally exacts a revenge on the agent of her disobedience.