Notes on the Local Color Movement

Some Local Color Authors:

• George Washington Cable, Kate Chopin, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Joel Chandler Harris, Bret Harte, O. Henry, Sarah Orne Jewett, Harriet Beecher Stowe, MarkTwain

General Notes:

• A "bridge" between romanticism and realism
• Contains elements of both romanticism and realism
• Influenced by both romanticism and realism
• Emphasizes setting
• Concerned with the "character" of a district or of an era
• Emphasizes customs, dialects, costumes, landscape, other peculiarities
• Exploits the speech, dress, mannerisms, habits of thought, and topography peculiar to a certain region
• Arose after the Civil War; writers used local color to portray the different sections of the united country to one another

Characteristics:

• Accurate dialect
• Eccentric characters
• Sentimentalized pathos
• Whimsical humor
• Lacks basic seriousness of realism
• Entertainingly informative
• Verisimilitude of detail without being concerned about truth or the larger aspects of life or human nature

Elements of Romanticism:

• Strange places
• Unusual customs
• Sentimentalism
• Exoticism
• Historical romancing
• Idyllic representations of youth

Elements of Realism:

• Verisimilitude
• Minute detail
• Sense of fidelity
• Accuracy of description

(Notes taken from Hart’s The Oxford Companion to American Literature and Holman and Harmon’s A Handbook to Literature)

Other Notes:

• Conflict of city vs. rural values
• Emphasis on physical nature
• Character types representative of region
• Appearance of an intrusive outsider
• Portrayal of "backwater life"
• Antipathy to time, change, modernity
• Simple plots
• Avoid literary realism / naturalism