In+the+Novel

Chapters XVI-XVII (The Grangerfold and Shepherdson Family Feud)

 * Realism**

//Lenin With Villagers//. (1959). Painted by Evdokiya Usikova.


 * Romanticism**

http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/artists/romanticism/romanticism_002.jpg


 * Victorian**

http://www.gober.net/victorian/photos/chair.jpg

Mark Twain was an author of the Realism movement, essentially a movement of writers who depicted life as it was, rather than romanticizing life as the previous literary movement of that name did before. As such, in //The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,// by Mark Twain, he satirizes European ideals in the forms of Romantic and Victorian literature, and the American customs as contrasted with those of Europe with the Grangerfold family.

In one aspect, the Grangerfold family represents the European customs, and in doing so gives contrast to the wild American customs with this aristocratic European modeled family, “There warn’t not bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them,” (153). Again, Twain comments on the American customs with several more descriptions of odd things that Huck notices while with the family, “When him and the old lady [Colonel Grangerfold and his wife] come down in the morning all the family got up and out of their chairs and give them good day, and didn’t set down again till they had set down.” (159). In this section, Twain subtly criticizes the outrageous and nontraditional American customs that exceedingly differ from the European (primarily British) customs from which the American’s originated and rebelled against.

Mark Twain also makes use of the Grangerfolds to mock the romantic authors of Europe and America. Romanticism was intended to be a rebellion against the aristocratic standards of Europe, with primary focuses of the movement being emotion, specifically those connected to a cause, and the awe inspired by nature. On the walls of the home, “They had pictures hung on the walls-mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes, and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called, ‘Signing the Declaration.’” (153). All the subjects of these paintings deal with romantic themes. Particular are the battles, which are very crucial events in fighting for a cause, and the “Signing of the Declaration” which hints at the American ideals of liberty and democracy that were won in a bloody revolution. After showing that the Grangerfolds are romantics, he later condemns their folly with their thirty-year-long feud (their cause) with the Sheperdsons. This is another “aristocratic” family that slowly kills off the Grangerfolds, and vice versa. One of Twain’s main criticisms of romantics was their unwavering dedication driven purely by feeling, which led to irrationalism. Buck Grangerfold admits to Huck that he knows neither the cause of the feud nor have any members personally offended him, yet he partakes in the manhunt. Consequently, more family members die with each year rather than deny their pride and put an end to the fighting. This foolishness eventually leads to the deaths of all the Grangerfolds except one daughter who runs off.

Twain satirizes another type of European literature, Victorian literature and its obsession with mourning and death with the Grangerfold family. The Grangerfolds had a daughter, Emmeline, that died from illness. She represents Victorian literature’s main themes of unhappiness, oppression, mourning, and death. She painted solemn portraits and wrote poems, or what she called “tributes,” to citizens that passed away in the town. “This young girl kept a scrap-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the //Presbyterian Observer,// and write poetry after them out of her own head,” (155). Though Huck pities this girl with her short life, he depicts her as a very depressive and dark figure. In this way, Twain makes Victorian literature to be entirely too obsessive with death.

The Grangerfolds were a large source of the social and literary criticism of Twain. Twain’s realistic writing (and therefore the ideals of his writing) greatly contrasted those of romantics and the Victorian writers. He also comments on American tastes relative to the tastes of Europeans.

P5 MKunert