SOURCE: “News and Fiction: Prescriptions for Living,” in The Fear of Sinking: The American Success Formula in the Gilded Age, University of Tennessee Press, 1996, pp. 1-7.

[In the essay below, Kilmer discusses the popularity of the “rags-to-riches” success formula during the Gilded Age, suggesting that news items as well as bardic tales featuring these types of formulaic plots often served as reminders to readers that “honor, public esteem, and fidelity could not be bought.”]

Such opening phrases as “Once upon a time” or, in a newspaper, “The following story comes well authenticated from Trenton, Tennessee,” alerted nineteenth-century readers to expect an outrageous sequence of events, followed by a moral. Editors of the time often launched bizarre reports with declarations of their veracity. For example, in October 1883, the Alexandria (Louisiana) Town Talk assured readers that trustworthy folks in Tennessee had witnessed the following train of events:

A young man, long past maturity, had no beard at all. Then one day he noticed a lump on his neck a few inches beneath his chin. The unsightly wen resembled a large walnut. He asked the doctor to remove it. As the doctor made the incision, a matted, spongy substance popped out. The wad was a “closely matted and coiled mass of hair.” It seems that the beard, which should have been spread over the young man's face, had concentrated in this one spot and grown beneath the skin. The hair was removed, and the opening soon healed, and the strange development became unnoticeable.¹

Henry Nash Smith explains in The Virgin Land that such narrative codes point to a plane of reality where concepts and emotions fuse to form symbolic images.² Parables fascinate readers by posing plausible explanations that make the improbable incident sound factual. Their plots appeal to the reservoir of archetypes upon which each member of a community draws in interpreting messages. The cited news item generated conversations as well as guffaws; Sunday scientists and poets may have debated whether that freakish lump could have formed. Men with no beards or light beards may have felt comforted.

Such tales articulate affective truths rather than physical realities, however. The imagery resonates within the heart. Like a fairy tale, such a story works through symbolism. Indeed, the strange phenomenon reinforces the moral of Alger's rags-to-riches tales: be satisfied with middle-class affluence. The figures in the story represent values. For instance, the mature lad might be the nation and the lack of a beard the blindness of the population concerning wealth. The matted lump could be monopoly, covetousness, or the unhealthy acquisition of physical treasures. The physician may represent the bard, editor, minister, or other seer who lances the canker by cutting through the facade of unwise preoccupation with social climbing. The scar's final healing, of course, is the inner peace that awaits the community once no one hoards power or money and everyone avoids vice (and, in consequence, everyone ascends to the middle class).

This news account resembles a fairy tale in a number of striking ways. The central character has no name. The location could be Anywhere, U.S.A. The protagonist struggles and then proves himself worthy by having the wen removed. The doctor plays the role of the benefactor. The implicit moral—“the opening soon healed, and the strange development became unnoticeable”—promises redemption to those who lance the boils festering on their souls.

Sometimes, of course, false hopes and phony piety blind people. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined the phrase “The Gilded Age” to describe the hypocrisy of their day, which was rooted in unrealistic expectations. Their novel, The Gilded Age (1872), satirizes the scramble for political renown, industrial power, and economic advancement through speculation. To Twain and Warner, the Gilded Age sparkled with a patina of noble values that glittered in speeches but crumbled when citizens took action. Many historians have agreed with the novelists. Certainly the historical record contains examples of greed. The Robber Barons, for example, gained prestige and aristocratic status through unscrupulous ploys more despicable than the chicanery of petty thieves.

The disparity between the Robber Barons and ordinary citizens has stimulated economic analyses of the forces of production in a capitalist society. For example, in Mechanic Accents, Michael Denning viewed the dime novels produced between 1840 and 1893 as helping to maintain class lines by blinding workers to their social immobility and by encouraging their unrealistic hopes of rising through diligence.³ His “Unknown Public”—the million anonymous immigrant laborers and farmers, mostly Irish and German—bought the ten-cent thrillers. During the Gilded Age, Christine Bold concluded in a related study, the publishing industry discovered the money-making potential of formulas and forced writers to utilize predetermined plot lines, stunting their artistic development.⁴

For the first time in history, cheap paper and fast presses made it possible to write down what in earlier times would have been spoken or sung. By creating a mass market for stories, the publishing industry's innovations led to an increase in the number of a new variety of strolling minstrels. When stories became commodities to be bought and sold in a market, writers found new economic and occupational niches. The demand for entertaining reading enabled hundreds of authors to work independently as producers of cliff-hangers (serials composed of episodes that end suspensefully), paperbacks, feature articles, and news briefs.

The proliferation of magazines and books concerned both those who equated reading with spiritual well-being and those who denounced popular bards as mouthpieces of the devil. Popular culture became enmeshed in this argument over the social role of reading as the arena in which the desire to acquire wealth might be reconciled with the need to feel pure in spirit. Some ministers preached to the populace through cheap fiction. Like citizens, many preachers assumed making too much money incited ruthless behavior and obscured the futility of seeking fulfillment in owning things.

Editors hired cultural bards because plots containing the success archetype satisfied a demand in the marketplace. Nevertheless, although the writers lived on their earnings, they did not consider their work merely a means of paying bills. Interviews with them indicate many took pride in their ability to please readers who sought escape from drudgery and disappointment in eagerly awaited installments detailing a modern Cinderella's quest for happiness in a wicked world.

While both readers and writers shared in the struggle to survive financially, factors other than economic ones fueled public interest in the rags-to-riches paradigm. For instance, changing technology, which multiplied the mechanical dangers the public faced daily, made the success prototype a refuge from modernity. This was especially true because the process of invention enticed individuals to acquire material possessions. Innovation was viewed ambivalently, as both creator and destroyer. Each wave of technological advancement exposed citizens to new threats, as well as to new pleasures and sources of wonder. Often, euphoria over time saved, money earned, or physical barriers surmounted repressed recognition of the anxiety introduced into the community by the new technology. The timeless Cinderella paradigm recalled a safe day when elves rather than machines made shoes and when frogs taught rude princesses lessons in decorum. The popular plots reassured those who felt overwhelmed by the stresses of everyday life. In fantasy, they briefly attained the success that often eluded them in the real world.

Frequently, progress intensified the misery of the poor, even while raising their standard of living. The urban Cinderella tales inspired optimism amid ugliness. Sunny plots about lucky folks who vanquished villainy, overcame their troubles with grit, and thereby earned the respect of kind strangers, provided a sanctuary for desperate people trapped in poverty. Like mystic chants, plots repeated a cherished archetype that promised better times ahead—times when justice would prevail against perfidy and the deserving would live happily ever after, secure in the knowledge the wicked had danced to death in flaming shoes or—in Victorian parlance—been annihilated by Demon Rum or Tempter Tobacco.

Before journalists were expected to be objective, reporters as well as fiction artisans exposed the sins of Demon Rum and invoked the magical power of words to redress social injustices. The Corliss Engine did not dethrone Cinderella. The ability to transform raw materials into such wonders as refrigerated railroad cars, bicycles, and ice-cream bricks did not relieve humans of their need for narrative closure. Indeed, the world remains a blank stage until the players codify their experiences in scenarios. Language provides the means of understanding life. For the throngs of anonymous readers, writers recycled ancient archetypes and myths that had sustained people for centuries. The story, and not the facts, prevails; because, without a narrative frame, societies collapse.

Past, present, and future coalesce in the web of archetypes implanted in cultural myths that bind society. A primary set of plot lines, distilled from centuries of exposure to the Cinderella tale, evolved around the notion that, without honor, money was worthless. Alger's adventures retold that tale from a male perspective and illustrated the effects of changing technology on individuals as well as on progress. Indeed, authors employed technology to update the ancient art of balladry. They sang the ballads people longed to hear. But, instead of lutes, they stroked typewriters. Instead of congregating in marketplaces to listen to a strolling bard, people read modern versions in new formats (news, serials, mysteries, adventures, romances, and horse operas) that recast proven values and symbols in modern guises recognizable to even the most obtuse spectator.

The new technology enabled writers to skip back and forth between the very separate worlds of traditional oratory and contemporary print. The hybrid was not always beautiful, but, in the age of the useful and the practical, it gave believers a bit of whimsy, a corner of fantasy, a dose of imagination. This was allowed only because it improved the reader's character or brought her or him one step closer to passing through the eye of the needle—that is, to laying up treasures both in heaven and on earth.⁵

The formula for balancing the desire for material goods with the need for spiritual well-being evolved as a part of the success archetype. The bardic tales combined elements from novels and fairy tales into a new form, a hybrid that conveyed archetypes to reinforce values. Writers adapted bardic tales to genres that appealed to the multitudes: dime thrillers, mysteries, domestic fantasies, romances, and idea novels. In The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale, Richard Weiss observes, “Their writings reflect the craving for stability in a society in the throes of transformation.”⁶ Regardless of the format, these updated fairy tales denounced money as the root of all evil and illustrated how excessive wealth drove youths into billiard parlors, theaters, and race tracks.

The success paradigm helped people to negotiate reality by providing interpretations of what it meant to be rich. Popular bards cautioned that no one was truly rich without the love and esteem of family, peers, and colleagues. Gold could not replace fidelity.

Soon, however, the presence of thousands of wealthy families challenged the folk wisdom concerning amassing material goods. Steel mogul Andrew Carnegie and the Reverend Russell Conwell suggested prosperous individuals might attain salvation by serving as exemplars of success. Such individuals, by sagely investing the fortunes entrusted to them by God, could help the poor lift themselves up by their bootstraps. The meaning of the Cinderella paradigm fluctuated to accommodate progress. People sought to maintain their spiritual health amid massive upheavals in their understanding of the world. The rags-to-riches formula guaranteed constancy; but, to see that the success archetype continued to function as a viable link between past and present, the popular bards employed modern images in explicating it.

John G. Cawelti, author of Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture, and other scholars have demonstrated the cultural significance of formula writing. James D. Hart, in The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste, and Frank Luther Mott, in Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States, trace the history of writing for the multitudes.⁷

Feminist scholars have made significant contributions to our understanding of such writing. By adjusting standards to reflect crucial historical contingencies, Jane Tompkins, in Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860, enlarges the traditional literary canon to include romance writers. Her imaginative work proves it can be profitable to evaluate narratives using criteria other than those associated with literary masterpieces. Mary Kelley has studied the private diaries and papers of a dozen popular women writers to probe the social role of romances. Her analysis in Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America reveals the human side of these often-neglected creators of best sellers about women's struggles to provide happy homes for their children.⁸

Although some critics consider potboilers to be inferior works of literature, the analysis reported here demonstrates the bardic tales belong in the category of popular culture rather than in that of timeless classics. The essential differences between bardic tales and novels arise from the authors' and the readers' purposes. Popular bards breathe new life into the shared wisdom of the community, wisdom contained in the traditional formulas that impel individuals to aspire to serve forces larger than themselves and, concomitantly, to affirm their membership in society. Novelists, on the other hand, give readers a highly personalized, unique view of the human condition that provides intellectual stimulation and aesthetic pleasure.

Readers of all ages have found, and still find, intellectual satisfaction in novels and emotional grounding in formula tales. In the twentieth century, these bardic tales have inspired radio, television, and motion picture dramas. In the nineteenth century, children encountered the success archetype in several arenas. Their parents read to them from the Bible and from magazines that repeated popular plots. Their teachers taught them to recite from McGuffey's Readers, which reiterated the same values codified in the success archetype: thrift, perseverance, loyalty, integrity, honor. Aphorisms warned that money, unless invested honorably, corrodes one's soul. Rhymed exercises extolled diligent workers who surmounted obstacles and ultimately earned the respect of their neighbors, as well as modest remuneration. At church, ministers preached about the folly of squandering heavenly treasures to acquire objects. Some pupils won Sunday-school books given as prizes at picnics and socials. Others checked out volumes with character-building plots from the church library.

In fact, the Cinderella paradigm appealed so strongly to the popular bards that many of them recast their own life stories to fit the same imaginative formula they had written and rewritten so many times for publishers. Perhaps the power of this cultural icon—the image of a hard-working protagonist who deserves to succeed—seduced the writers so completely they could not see their own experiences except in ways that fit the cherished paradigm. They emphasized personal incidents that conformed to the same hallowed pattern their readers had found amusing and fulfilling for decades.

During the Gilded Age, newspapers, biographies, and cliff-hangers repeatedly echoed that same pattern, which promised good would prevail over evil. Editors deified community leaders, turning them into personifications of the success archetype. Obituaries and retirement stories praised diligent citizens who attained middle-class respectability but were too honest to make a fortune through speculating or profiting from the misery of others.

Reporters cast disaster accounts in the language of the pluck-and-luck myth. Fires served as almighty levelers. The rich and the poor suffered together. Money vanished. Only faith endured. Moreover, those endowed with integrity stood the test of the loss, while those pampered by a lifestyle of ease or sloth sank into oblivion. Devastation strengthened the true-hearted, who transformed their sorrow into opportunity. Individuals as well as towns arose from the ashes stronger than ever, according to editorials. Bardic tales similarly depicted fires and other tragedies as painful but invigorating chances to discover the inner strength that would revitalize a protagonist's life.

In addition to framing disaster accounts in terms of the archetypes that reinforced social mores, reporters reminded readers of the tension between materialism and spirituality. Stories about the sad consequences of spoiling sons and daughters underscored the pernicious effect of money on families. Both newspapers and publishing houses deplored the foolishness and decadence of the rich. Treasures of the heart, editors warned readers to remember, endured long after gold had lost its luster. Both bardic tales and news items pointed out that honor, public esteem, and fidelity could not be bought. The bards gradually reinterpreted paradigms to preserve traditional values.

Notes

1. Alexandria (La.) Town Talk, 3 Oct. 1883, 2:3. The notice carries no headline.

2. Henry Nash Smith, The Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1950), xi.

3. Michael Denning, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and the Working Class Culture in America (New York: Verso, 1987).

4. Christine Bold, “The Voice of the Fiction Factory in Dime and Pulp Westerns,” Journal of American Studies 17 (Apr. 1983): 29-46.

5. Lewis Atherton, in Main Street on the Middle Border (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1954), describes the late 19th century as the age of the useful and practical.

6. Richard Weiss, The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale (New York: Basic Books, 1969), 11.

7. John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1976); James D. Hart, The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1950); Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1947).

8. Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985), esp. chap. 7, “Is It Any Good? The Institutionalization of Literary Value,” 186-201; and Mary Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in 19th-Century America (New York: Oxford, 1984).