The Whole Family
Encyclopedia
The Whole Family: a Novel by Twelve Authors (1908) is a collaborative novel
told in twelve chapters, each by a different author
. This unusual project was conceived by novelist William Dean Howells
and carried out under the direction of Harper's Bazaar
editor
Elizabeth Jordan
, who (like Howells) would write one of the chapters herself. Howells' idea for the novel was to show how an engagement or marriage would affect and be affected by an entire family. The project became somewhat curious for the way the authors' contentious interrelationships mirrored the sometimes dysfunctional family
they described in their chapters. Howells had hoped Mark Twain
would be one of the authors, but Twain did not participate. Other than Howells himself, Henry James
was probably the best-known author to participate. The novel was serialized in Harper's Bazaar in 1907-08 and published as a book by Harpers in late 1908.
proprietors of a silverplate
works that turns out ice-pitchers and other mundane household items. Daughter Peggy Talbert has just returned from her coeducational college
engaged to a harmless but rather weak young man named Harry Goward.
It was Howells' intention that each of the eleven subsequent authors would examine the impact of Peggy's engagement on a different member of the Talbert family. But the very next chapter, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, immediately sent the novel careening off Howell's intended trajectory. Freeman made her assigned character
, the "old-maid aunt" Elizabeth Talbert, into anything but a quiet old spinster. Instead she created Aunt Elizabeth as an older but vibrant and sexually attractive woman who doesn't mind getting noticed by Peggy's fiancé.
This was, as project editor Elizabeth Jordan later wrote, the "explosion of a bombshell on our literary hearthstone." Howells, never particularly comfortable with frank sexuality
, recoiled from Freeman's spicy conception of a character he had intended as a harmless old lady. Contributor Henry Van Dyke, who would eventually write the concluding chapter, reacted in a half-humorous, half-worried letter to Jordan:
As subsequent critics have pointed out, the rest of the novel became an effort by the later writers to cope somehow with this introduction of Aunt Elizabeth as a sexual competitor with Peggy for her fiancee's affections. Although some of the writers had their doubts about Freeman's work, at least her reimagination of the spinster aunt gave the book a narrative
impetus.
Eventually, after many twists and turns introduced by the subsequent contributors, Harry Goward is dismissed as a suitor, Aunt Elizabeth is sent off to New York City
, and a more suitable mate for Peggy is found in a college professor named Stillman Dane. Peggy marries Dane and the couple sails off to Europe
with Peggy's brother Charles and his wife Lorraine for a honeymoon tour.
Freeman's reinvention of the maiden aunt as an independent, sexually alluring woman has come in for much comment, favorable and not. Feminist critics have applauded Freeman's imagining of Aunt Elizabeth as a lively woman of spirit and intelligence. Others, such as contributor Alice Brown, thought Aunt Elizabeth was a gauche projection
of Freeman's own personal issues. Brown believed that in creating Aunt Elizabeth, Freeman was reacting subconscious
ly to growing older. (In 1902 at age 49 Freeman had married a man seven years younger than herself, and the marriage proved unhappy.) Whatever the truth of this conjecture, Brown's penultimate chapter tied up the loose ends of the plot and helped resolve many of the difficulties of the collaboration.
The book's treatment of the issues of family
, marriage
and women's roles in society has generated some comment, often colored by the personal ideology
of the commentator. Critics of all persuasions have admired editor Elizabeth Jordan's firm control over what sometimes threatened to be a hopelessly contentious project. Contributor Edith Wyatt, for instance, originally produced an unpublishable chapter, a series of letters that were out of harmony with the rest of the book. Jordan finally coaxed a rewritten and acceptable chapter from her. Then there were the inevitable disputes over payments. Many authors were insistent on generous compensation; Elizabeth Stuart Phelps demanded no less than $750, for example, easily equivalent to $15,000 in today's pre-tax money. And simply assembling the cast of authors was no easy task, as many writers—particularly Mark Twain—declined to participate in what some regarded as a literary stunt.
: "The Whole Family was a mess!" Critic Alfred Bendixen sympathized when he wrote: "As The Whole Family developed, the plot increasingly focused on family misunderstandings and family rivalries, which were mirrored by the artistic rivalries of the authors. The writing of the novel became a contest as much as it was a collaboration, with each author trying hard to impose his vision on the entire work."
In his long, dense but insightful chapter, and with charged rhetoric
reminiscent of his late novels, Henry James has the aesthetic son Charles Talbert rail against the frustrations that he and his equally artistic wife Lorraine experience due to the claustrophobic realities of family life in his small New England town:
James might as well have been talking about the frustrations that many of the authors felt with the "family" of their collaborators.
The novel's contemporary reception was rather favorable, with decent sales and mostly positive reviews. However, the book's sad Amazon.com
sales rankings show that this odd but interesting collaboration has been almost completely forgotten. Although a modern reader might find some of the material dated and uneven, the novel still manages to get its plot and characters into reasonable order. The collaboration may have been an uncomfortable one, but a final product did emerge with some clever and entertaining contributions from its often squabbling authors.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
told in twelve chapters, each by a different author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
. This unusual project was conceived by novelist William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...
and carried out under the direction of Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
Elizabeth Jordan
Elizabeth Jordan (writer)
Elizabeth Garver Jordan , American journalist, author, editor, and suffragist, is now remembered primarily for her relationship with Henry James, especially for recruiting him to participate in the round-robin novel The Whole Family. She was editor of Harper's Bazaar from 1900 to...
, who (like Howells) would write one of the chapters herself. Howells' idea for the novel was to show how an engagement or marriage would affect and be affected by an entire family. The project became somewhat curious for the way the authors' contentious interrelationships mirrored the sometimes dysfunctional family
Dysfunctional family
A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often abuse on the part of individual members occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is...
they described in their chapters. Howells had hoped Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
would be one of the authors, but Twain did not participate. Other than Howells himself, Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
was probably the best-known author to participate. The novel was serialized in Harper's Bazaar in 1907-08 and published as a book by Harpers in late 1908.
The chapters and their authors
- The Father by William Dean HowellsWilliam Dean HowellsWilliam Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...
- The Old-Maid Aunt by Mary E. Wilkins FreemanMary Eleanor Wilkins FreemanMary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman was a prominent 19th century American author.- Biography :She was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for one year, from 1870–71...
- The Grandmother by Mary Heaton VorseMary Heaton VorseMary Heaton Vorse or Mary Heaton Vorse O'Brien was an American journalist, labor activist, and novelist. Vorse was outspoken and active in peace and social justice causes, such as women's suffrage, civil rights, pacifism , socialism, child labor, infant mortality, labor disputes, and affordable...
- The Daughter-in-Law by Mary Stewart CuttingMary Stewart CuttingMary Stewart Cutting was an author and a suffragist.-Biography:She was born Mary Stewart Doubleday in New York City, she married Charles Weed Cutting in 1875. She was widowed in 1893.-References:...
- The School-Girl by Elizabeth JordanElizabeth Jordan (writer)Elizabeth Garver Jordan , American journalist, author, editor, and suffragist, is now remembered primarily for her relationship with Henry James, especially for recruiting him to participate in the round-robin novel The Whole Family. She was editor of Harper's Bazaar from 1900 to...
- The Son-in-Law by John Kendrick BangsJohn Kendrick BangsJohn Kendrick Bangs was an American author, editor and satirist.-Biography:He was born in Yonkers, New York. His father was a lawyer in New York City....
- The Married Son by Henry JamesHenry JamesHenry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
- The Married Daughter by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
- The Mother by Edith Wyatt
- The School-Boy by Mary Raymond Shipman AndrewsMary Raymond Shipman AndrewsMary Raymond Shipman Andrews was an American writer. Best known for a widely read short story about Abraham Lincoln, often printed as a small volume, The Perfect Tribute, she was born at Mobile, Alabama, and married William Shankland Andrews, judge of the New York Court of Appeals. She published...
- Peggy by Alice BrownAlice Brown (writer)Alice Brown was an American novelist, poet and playwright, best known as a writer of local color stories. She also contributed a chapter to the collaborative novel, The Whole Family ....
- The Friend of the Family by Henry Van DykeHenry van DykeHenry Jackson van Dyke was an American author, educator, and clergyman.-Biography:Henry van Dyke was born on November 11, 1852 in Germantown, Pennsylvania in the United States....
Plot summary
In the rather pedestrian opening chapter Howells introduces the Talbert family, middle-class New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
proprietors of a silverplate
Silver (household)
Household silver or silverware includes dishware, cutlery and other household items made of sterling, Britannia or Sheffield plate silver. The term is often extended to items made of stainless steel...
works that turns out ice-pitchers and other mundane household items. Daughter Peggy Talbert has just returned from her coeducational college
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
engaged to a harmless but rather weak young man named Harry Goward.
It was Howells' intention that each of the eleven subsequent authors would examine the impact of Peggy's engagement on a different member of the Talbert family. But the very next chapter, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, immediately sent the novel careening off Howell's intended trajectory. Freeman made her assigned character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
, the "old-maid aunt" Elizabeth Talbert, into anything but a quiet old spinster. Instead she created Aunt Elizabeth as an older but vibrant and sexually attractive woman who doesn't mind getting noticed by Peggy's fiancé.
This was, as project editor Elizabeth Jordan later wrote, the "explosion of a bombshell on our literary hearthstone." Howells, never particularly comfortable with frank sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
, recoiled from Freeman's spicy conception of a character he had intended as a harmless old lady. Contributor Henry Van Dyke, who would eventually write the concluding chapter, reacted in a half-humorous, half-worried letter to Jordan:
- Heavens! What a catastrophe! Who would have thought that the old maiden aunt would go mad in the second chapter? Poor lady. Red hair and a pink hat and boys in beau knots all over the costume. What will Mr. Howells say? For my part I think it distinctly crewel work to put a respectable spinster into such a hattitude before the world.
As subsequent critics have pointed out, the rest of the novel became an effort by the later writers to cope somehow with this introduction of Aunt Elizabeth as a sexual competitor with Peggy for her fiancee's affections. Although some of the writers had their doubts about Freeman's work, at least her reimagination of the spinster aunt gave the book a narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
impetus.
Eventually, after many twists and turns introduced by the subsequent contributors, Harry Goward is dismissed as a suitor, Aunt Elizabeth is sent off to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and a more suitable mate for Peggy is found in a college professor named Stillman Dane. Peggy marries Dane and the couple sails off to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
with Peggy's brother Charles and his wife Lorraine for a honeymoon tour.
Key themes
Due to the novel's unusual collaborative nature, it was perhaps inevitable that critics, both contemporary and later, concentrated more on the interactions of the various writers than the actual substance of the book. As several commentators have pointed out, each writer seemed to want to bend the novel to his or her own particular vision of the plot and characters.Freeman's reinvention of the maiden aunt as an independent, sexually alluring woman has come in for much comment, favorable and not. Feminist critics have applauded Freeman's imagining of Aunt Elizabeth as a lively woman of spirit and intelligence. Others, such as contributor Alice Brown, thought Aunt Elizabeth was a gauche projection
Psychological projection
Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people...
of Freeman's own personal issues. Brown believed that in creating Aunt Elizabeth, Freeman was reacting subconscious
Subconscious
The term subconscious is used in many different contexts and has no single or precise definition. This greatly limits its significance as a definition-bearing concept, and in consequence the word tends to be avoided in academic and scientific settings....
ly to growing older. (In 1902 at age 49 Freeman had married a man seven years younger than herself, and the marriage proved unhappy.) Whatever the truth of this conjecture, Brown's penultimate chapter tied up the loose ends of the plot and helped resolve many of the difficulties of the collaboration.
The book's treatment of the issues of family
Family
In human context, a family is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. In most societies it is the principal institution for the socialization of children...
, marriage
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
and women's roles in society has generated some comment, often colored by the personal ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
of the commentator. Critics of all persuasions have admired editor Elizabeth Jordan's firm control over what sometimes threatened to be a hopelessly contentious project. Contributor Edith Wyatt, for instance, originally produced an unpublishable chapter, a series of letters that were out of harmony with the rest of the book. Jordan finally coaxed a rewritten and acceptable chapter from her. Then there were the inevitable disputes over payments. Many authors were insistent on generous compensation; Elizabeth Stuart Phelps demanded no less than $750, for example, easily equivalent to $15,000 in today's pre-tax money. And simply assembling the cast of authors was no easy task, as many writers—particularly Mark Twain—declined to participate in what some regarded as a literary stunt.
Critical evaluation
Many years after the book was published, Elizabeth Jordan exclaimed in her autobiographyAutobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
: "The Whole Family was a mess!" Critic Alfred Bendixen sympathized when he wrote: "As The Whole Family developed, the plot increasingly focused on family misunderstandings and family rivalries, which were mirrored by the artistic rivalries of the authors. The writing of the novel became a contest as much as it was a collaboration, with each author trying hard to impose his vision on the entire work."
In his long, dense but insightful chapter, and with charged rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
reminiscent of his late novels, Henry James has the aesthetic son Charles Talbert rail against the frustrations that he and his equally artistic wife Lorraine experience due to the claustrophobic realities of family life in his small New England town:
- It's in fact in this beautiful desperation that we spend our days, that we face the pretty grim prospect of new ones, that we go and come and talk and pretend, that we consort, so far as in our deep-dyed hypocrisy we do consort, with the rest of the Family, that we have Sunday supper with the Parents and emerge, modestly yet virtuously shining, from the ordeal; that we put in our daily appearance at the Works—for a utility nowadays so vague that I'm fully aware (Lorraine isn't so much) of the deep amusement I excite there, though I also recognize how wonderfully, how quite charitably, they manage not to break out with it: bless, for the most part, their dear simple hearts!
James might as well have been talking about the frustrations that many of the authors felt with the "family" of their collaborators.
The novel's contemporary reception was rather favorable, with decent sales and mostly positive reviews. However, the book's sad Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
sales rankings show that this odd but interesting collaboration has been almost completely forgotten. Although a modern reader might find some of the material dated and uneven, the novel still manages to get its plot and characters into reasonable order. The collaboration may have been an uncomfortable one, but a final product did emerge with some clever and entertaining contributions from its often squabbling authors.
Trivia
- Among the twelve of them, the authors have eight first names.
- The first born author was William Dean Howells (1837), and the last to die was Mary Heaton Vorse, in 1966. The life-gap for the group is 129 years.
- The above sentence by Henry James has 124 words, 120 if not counting words in parentheses.
External links
- Competing for the Reader, dissertation by Heidi Michelle Hanrahan with an extensive chapter on The Whole Family