February 6th Review

Hi Class,

I will be traveling to Albuquerque for an academic conference this week and may not be able to respond quickly. It will be best to reach me through email through Sunday.

Your assignment this week is to finish reading The Great Gatsby and write the Great Gatsby paper. You can use the prompts I handed out in class or you can come up with your own. What I do not want is a summary. Make it an argument. Tell me about the symbolism or the theme or how you think Daisy and Gatsby are portrayed. Tell me how this novel reinforces or rejects Marxism. Connect this novel to another idea.

The Gilded Age:

•The period from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the twentieth century was an era noted for the widening social and economic gap between the powerful and the powerless, the “haves and the have-nots.”

•Name given by Mark Twain for its greed and vulgarity, marked by conspicuous consumption by the newly rich as they flaunted their enormous personal wealth…the same wealth that financed extensive political and corporate corruption.

•Hardly “gilded” to average Americans or recent immigrants

The Political Culture:
Shaped by three main factors: the balance of power between the Democrats and the Republicans, the high level of public participation in everyday politics, and the often corrupt alliance between business and political leaders at all levels of government.


Urbanization:

•Between 1865 and 1900, the urban population skyrocketed from 8 million to 3o million.

•This rapid growth in the cities led to widespread poverty, unsanitary living conditions, and new forms of political corruption.

•Complicating these other conditions was the development of neighborhoods divided by racial and ethnic backgrounds.

•At the same time, advances in modern science stimulated public support for higher education but also opened up doubts about many long-accepted “truths” and religious beliefs.

•America is “moving to town!”

Nativists:

      Then, as now, many native-born Americans saw the newest immigrants as a threat to their jobs and way of life. Many “nativists” were racists who believed that “Anglo-Saxon” Americans-–British or Germanic background--were superior to Slavic, Italian, Greek, and Jewish newcomers. 

Chinese Exclusion Act:

•The first federal law to restrict immigration of free people on the basis of race and class.

•Barred unskilled Chinese laborers from entering U.S. for ten years, periodically renewed until 1902. Finally removed in 1943.

Cultural Changes:

•Middle and upper-class families spend free time together, singing around the piano, reading novels, or playing games.

•Saloons become more popular in urban areas.

•Mass entertainment venues: Theatres, music halls, movies, art museums, symphonies, sporting events, circuses—drew a large cross-section of residents.

•Sports events brought together different ethnic, racial, and social classes, rooting for the ”hometeam.” 

Saloons in the Gilded Age:

•Popular leisure destinations for urban working-class

•In 1900, there were more saloons than grocery stores.

•Popular among the immigrant working-class: Irish, German, Italian Catholics.

•Doubled as polling places.

•“The social and intellectual center of the neighborhood.”

Impact of Darwinism:

On the Origen of the Species

•Radical new ideas that affected multiple disciplines and areas of thought

•     Many Christians feared Darwin’s ideas would lead to atheism, 

       while others found their faith shaken by both the evolutionary theory and the new scholarly analysis applied to the Bible.

•      Most of the faithful, however, reconciled science and religion, deciding the process must be God’s doing.

       Social Darwinism:

      Although Darwin’s theory of evolution applied only to biological phenomena, many applied it to human society. Herbert Spencer was the first “major prophet” of Social Darwinism.

•     “Survival of the fittest” promoted competition, dominance, and “the greatest perfection.”

•Rejected by Darwin, himself. He found it “unconvincing.”

•Hands-of “laissez-faire” approach to government. No government interference in regulation or sanitation and housing.

•“Fostering good-for-nothing people at the expense of the good, is an extreme case of cruelty” to the health of the civilization.

Natural selection preached 

Reform Darwinism:

•An alternative response to Social Darwinism

•Lester Ward worked his way from poverty, believed in collaboration.

•“Humanity could actively control social evolution through long-range planning.”

•Cooperation, not competition

•Government should alleviate poverty and promote educating the masses.

•Became the “pillar” of the progressive movement during the late 19th century and after.

William Jennings Bryan:

•Evangelical Moralist

•Spoke passionately for unlimited coinage of silver,  and attacking Cleveland’s “do-nothing” response to the depression

•Claimed two ideas for American government were competing: Republicans believed “that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below.” The Democrats, on the other hand, believed “if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it. “

Realism in Art:

•Emphasis on closely observing everyday life grew out of the scientific spirit. 

•Committed to showing the “gritty reality” of the urban scene.

•They made Americas aware of the significance of their everyday life and surroundings, in all of their beauty and ugliness.