Style
Rebecca Harding Davis' literary style is most commonly labeled as realism. Her literary works mark a transition from romanticism to literary realism. For instance, "Life on the Iron Mills" utilizes a realistic style comparable to writers in the height of American literary realism, which came two decades after the text was published. Although realism is the genre most prominently attached to Harding Davis' collective works, naturalism is also prevalent in her writing style. Naturalism is thematically linked to realism. Where realists, like Harding Davis, endeavor to depict reality, naturalists expand on that reality by approaching the scientific and or psychological influences on characters due to their environments. In Life in the Iron Mills, the two genres are blended to create a realistic depiction of the everyday life of iron mill worker Hugh Wolfe, as well as illustrate the effects of that environment on him. In addition to realism and naturalism, Harding Davis also published works employing such literary genres as the gothic and folklore.
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Famous quotes containing the word style:
“One who has given up any hope of winning a fight or has clearly lost it wants his style in fighting to be admired all the more.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“His style is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a book. It is not literary or classical; it has not the music of poetry, nor the pomp of philosophy, but the rhythms and cadences of conversation endlessly repeated.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)