The California Naturalists

Abstract

The literary output of Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck presents characters at the mercy of hereditary and environmental pressures that condition their experiences and opportunities, representations that emphasize the principals’ limited ability to impact their material circumstances. In many texts, these Naturalist writers connect this theme to conventional formulations of the American Dream, which holds that people can attain financial security or perhaps even wealth through diligent labor. Significantly, these novelists drew on important events from California history in their handling of these concerns. From the Mussel Slough Affair of 1880, which provided the basic plot for Norris’s The Octopus (1901), to the cotton strike of 1933 that Steinbeck incorporated into In Dubious Battle (1936), these occurrences inform the authors’ portrayals of the institutional forces that determine the range of action available to the protagonists. The treatment of these issues further illuminates the social criticism that informed these works and their depiction of economic Determinism. This project will augment the existing scholarship on Naturalism by analyzing the immediate sources that Norris, London, and Steinbeck used for their major novels and investigating how they shaped this material into illustrations of the causative agents that undermine the realization of individual potential.