Rural Life Depicted in Literature

At Issue

Social concerns and desires often become the elements upon which literary works are based, and the unique perspectives of rural societies provide the basis for a diverse array of writings. Although times and concerns change, one of the most common recurring settings used in literature—and American literature in particular—has been rural areas. Rural America has long symbolized the American character and connection of Americans to some specific place.

History

From its earliest days, American literature has been replete with works focusing upon rural life. Such precolonial writers as William Bradford and William Byrd II concentrated their writing upon the rural settings into which American settlers would need to venture if the American Dream of land ownership and expansion were to be realized. French immigrant Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crèvecœur provided one of the earliest, most direct connections between Americans and rural life in his Letters from an American Farmer (1782). In Letters from an American Farmer, Crèvecœur argues that the true significance and foundation of the American character can be found in the nation's farmers.

As America expanded and its population wanted native reading materials, many writers saw the importance of incorporating ideas with which the reading populace would identify. Rural settings became prime vehicles for Americans seeing their identity myth presented in literature. In such poems as "On the Emigration to America and Peopling the Western Country" and "On the Uniformity and Perfection of Nature," Philip Freneau shows the realistic and romantic reasons settlers had for locating themselves in rural areas. Similarly, Joel Barlow chose to celebrate the person of Captain Meriwether Lewis, who led the expedition to map the western portion of America, in his "On the Discoveries of Captain Lewis." By selecting this hero, who entered the unknown West, instead of choosing a safer, closer subject, Barlow indicated that the American populace's attention and admiration went to those opening up the rural areas for settlement.

With the further development of an American national literature, writers continued focusing upon rural areas for the settings for their works. In his best-known stories, "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Washington Irving saw America coming to terms with itself through the confrontations of urban and rural values. In both of these essential works of American literature, the winning force is rural self-reliance. Irving foresaw, however, a time when change would come, but he questioned how good that change would be. This fear of change and the loss of rural innocence was also the foundation of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales (1823-1841), in which Natty Bumppo fights to retain his identity through preserving his rural home. Natty sees coming changes that he cannot stop.

Placement of value upon things and persons rural did not stop with the early writers of American literature. In the nineteenth century the nation's literary output grew considerably along with its borders, establishing new styles and currents of thought. Among the great authors of the time, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mark Twain are just a few whose incorporation of rural settings and themes are particularly notable. The twentieth century also saw the continued depiction of rural people identifying with their home area as an American concept, especially as industrialization and then suburbanization deeply changed the fabric of society. As fewer and fewer Americans actually lived rural lives, literature increasingly drew on examples of rural and small-town life to establish clear, "authentic" identities as well as symbolic meaning. For example, the romanticization of the rural, so-called Wild West became a staple of popular literature.

Regionalism also flourished in twentieth-century American literature. The size of the United States means that rural identity is highly diverse, despite often being stereotyped in the popular imagination as simply the opposite of urban. Southern rural literature included greats such as William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. The vast, sparsely populated Great Plains region was captured in vivid detail by Willa Cather. In his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and other works, John Steinbeck depicted rural Americans from Oklahoma to California. The experience of rural African Americans, both in the South and elsewhere, is examined in many of Toni Morrison's novels. The rural Southwest, and particularly American Indian communities in the region, has been portrayed by Tony Hillerman and others.

Rural identity continues to be a popular feature in literature into the twenty-first century. As always, the themes and issues at play are diverse and complex—and even conflicting. For example, rural settings still often suggest purity and a natural state of being, but can also signal ignorance and backwardness. Contemporary rural literature often contrasts the scenic beauty and rich cultural traditions of small communities with the social and political challenges such places frequently face, including poverty and substance abuse. Perhaps reflecting this, rural-set crime fiction (often known as "country noir") proved highly popular from the mid-twentieth century on, exemplified by works such as Deliverance (1970) by James Dickey and Winter's Bone (2006) by Daniel Woodrell. Common tropes include characters longing for the peace and freedom of the country or dreaming of escaping rural monotony and small-mindedness for the vibrancy of the city. In many critically acclaimed works, however, such tensions are deeply nuanced rather than clear and moralistic, reflecting the true complexity of real rural life.

Meanwhile, contemporary rural literature, like many other subgenres, has been marked by greater attention to minority voices, including people of color and the LGBTQ community. Award-winning authors of the early twenty-first century noted for their attention to rural subjects include Louise Erdrich, who featured American Indian characters living on rural reservations in works such as The Round House (2012), and Jesmyn Ward, who explored rural and small-town African American life in novels such as Salvage the Bones (2011) and Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017).

Bibliography

Brooks, Van Wyck. The World of Washington Irving. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1944.

Fournier, Mauricette, ed. Rural Writing: Geographical Imaginary and Expression of a New Regionality. Newcastle upon Tyne Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018.

Herron, Ima Honaker. The Small Town in American Literature. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1939.

Lewis, R. W. B. The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.

Martin, Wendy, ed. Colonial Travel Narratives. New York: Penguin, 1994.

Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Pratt, Linda Ray. Great Plains Literature. U of Nebraska P, 2018.

Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. New York: Vintage, 1950.

White, Simon J. Romanticism and the Rural Community. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Witschi, Nicholas S., ed. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West. Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.