Literature – a Map of Human Progress
History skims the surface of past and present world events, such as wars, depressions, famines, plagues, revolutions, with facts. Literature puts flesh on the bones of those facts. One way in which it does this is by mirroring the eras in which it was written, and, thus, also providing a record of generations past for present and future readers.
Since most literature is written about contemporaneous eras, it often interprets the political, social, and technological advances of present-day society and their effect on society, but in a way that intimately cleaves to the human experience. For instance, many of the novels that emerged from the Victorian era were often written in response to the changes the Industrial Revolution had on both rural and urban landscapes. They also addressed the social concerns and prejudices these changes unearthed. Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, might seem to modern readers like little more than a good scary vampire story, but when it was first published it vividly reflected the fears Victorian society had toward such contemporary issues as mental illness, women’s suffrage and sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, and the flood of Eastern European immigrants into London. Other novels which were published during this period, like many of Charles Dickens’s work and, later, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, depicted the crushing, demoralizing blow industrialization had on many of its citizens, particularly that of immigrants and the underclass.
Slave narratives, which were published earlier in that same century, became a useful tool for the Abolitionist Movement both in the United States and Europe to speak out against the immoral practice of slavery and the slave trade. The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, which was a popular book when it was published, is one example. Novels, like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, also dealt with slavery in a literary fashion. While the debate still continues to this day whether either book actively reflected the true experience of slavery in America, they generated serious discussions about the moral and ethical issues surrounding human bondage at the time of their publication.
Literary movements, in which groups of writers were joined by either the issues concerning its generation or by literary style, also reflected the tenor of the times. The Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the Realism and Beat Movements of Cold War America, the Black Arts, metafiction, minimalist, and postmodern movements of the 1960s to the 1980s each, either through content or style, mirrored the periods in which they flourished (the Prohibition era or the 1960s civil rights and antiwar movements, for instance). Writers who emerged from these eras, like historians, became astute observers of their times, not only recording their observations in their literature, but also defining their eras, as well. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, says more about the dreams and ambitions of his generation than any history textbook ever could.
Not all literature is written contemporaneously (for instance, the historical novel dramatizes past events and eras). But, by addressing issues of current, or even past societies, all literature becomes a cogent document of the human experience preserved for future generations. They open windows into the past, the people who lived during that period, the hardships and joys they felt, and, as I had previously written, the most pressing issues and concerns that gripped their societies. By doing so, historical events become lived experience.
That was the experience I had while reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, a narrative recounted by its author, Harriet Jacobs, about her experience growing up a slave on a southern plantation, the seven years she spent in hiding from her sexually abusive master, and her eventual escape from slavery to London. Her experience was so moving and real, vividly portraying the dehumanizing claustrophobia of having her body, soul, thoughts, and identity controlled by someone else, that it personalized slavery in a way that was heartbreaking. After reading her book, I came to a better understanding of the sacrifices my ancestors made in order to achieve even the most minute triumphs during that time. History can help shape the past, but literature, like Jacobs’s stirring book, brings it alive.
Literature endures not only because we still relate to these tales of human endurance, but also because they transport us as readers back into a different time and place that we could not otherwise do. Literature is the ultimate time travel machine. They offer us the opportunity to see our own lives reflected in the past, allow us to see how certain dreams, desires, and human strengths and flaws endure, while at the same time show us how much our societies have changed, either politically, culturally, or technologically. They also remind us how far we need to go. In this way, literature is a true map of human progress.
