William Dean Howell's A Hazard of New Fortunes and Soren Kierkegaard's Philosophy of Existence (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Literature, University of Basel (English Seminar), course: 2nd Year Course: Howells & James, language: English, abstract: In contrast to the writings by his contemporary Henry James, Howells's A Hazard of New
Fortunes can surely not be called a "difficult" read. The socio-critical message seems obvious,
the sequence of events is almost linear and easy to follow, and the characters act in a
sufficiently comprehensible way. Yet as it often happens, more subtle implications become
apparent when the novel is given some deeper thought. One just has to begin to ask questions
like 'why do we have such a multitude of characters?' or 'why is this or that statement put into
irony?', and one will discover an intrinsic network of interrelated meaning on a number of
different levels.
Ironically enough, Howells seems to give himself some of the reasons for a certain
underestimation of his literature. He sees that an art which prefers "the common, the simple
and the unpretentious" contradicts the aesthetic demands of a sophisticated readership, and so
does a strong ethical concern. In A Hazard Howells makes March explain, for example, that if
he wrote "those things with an ethical intention explicitly in mind, [he] should spoil them"
(129). Furthermore strong ethical opinions are met with a lack of understanding. Ethical
convictions do not seem to fit into modern times and appear either old-fashioned, antiaesthetic
or both.
Whilst Howells explores the question of ethics, responsibility and agency through the
carful description of people's problems, thoughts and doings - faithful to his maxim that
"realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material" (1993, Vol
II: 319) - a Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, developed a system of modes of human
existence to the same purpose half a century earlier. Like Howells, he started from a faithful
description and analysis of human character. [...]