‘Willful Sadness’: American Decadence, gender, and the pleasures and dangers of pessimism

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century in America, there emerged groups of writers, artists and intellectuals identifying themselves with Decadence. In light of the chaos and human misery brought by the rapid transformations of the world around them, which presaged the end of an empire, if not of the world, they made a deliberate decision to turn away from genteel, bourgeois ideals of happiness and pleasure. The response to a crumbling civilization was a search for pleasure and beauty in the strange, the perverse, the sick and the diseased. One of the most striking features of Decadence, especially for its detractors, was its deliberately affected pessimism. This willful sadness and the criticism it created, suggest a facet of the way that affect, gender, health, nation and empire were connected at this historical moment. Willful sadness marked Decadents as gender transgressing, unhealthy and a threat to both the gender order and America’s national self-image.

Keywords:

• Decadence
• Fin de siecle
• deviant sexuality
• gender inversion

Notes

1. For a more elaborate discussion of the possible meanings of Decadence see Weirs (2007).

2. Louise Imogen Guiney 1861–1920 was a New England-based poet specializing in lyrical poetry. Her poor health and constant money problems left her poetic output not as prolific as it might have been. She is better remembered for her critical and biographical studies and her championing of seventeenth century poetry.

3. Edgar Saltus (1855–1921) and his short-lived brother Francis were at the centre of the New York Decadent circle. While he is now almost completely forgotten, at this particular moment in history Saltus was one of the great literary lights. His style dazzled, and his wit charmed. Many thought of him as the American Oscar Wilde. Though he had many supporters in the next generation of literati like H.L. Mencken, Carl Van Vechten and Ben Hecht, and his influence is felt in subtle ways today, his overblown style, restricted subject matter, and rapid decline in quality, led to quick obsolescence. He published dozens of novels and innumerable short stories. He worked for several major newspapers and magazines including Cosmopolitan and Harper’s. He wrote several works attempting to popularize pessimism.

4. For an understanding of how literature was seen as dangerous up to the mid-nineteenth century see Davidson (2004). Davidson argues that the novel was a site of argument about the nation, the nature of democracy and the role of women in the new nation. Therefore, the novel had the potential to educate, but also to contaminate or seduce. See also Docherty (1997), Sullivan and Schurman (1996), and Flynn and Schweickart (1986).

5. M’lle New York was a little magazine published from 1895 to 1898. Its first volume was 11 issues, there were no issues in 1897 and the second volume in 1898 was only four issues. It was published fortnightly and sold for 10 cents. The cover and some other illustrations were printed in colour. At eleven by eight it was much larger than many of its contemporary little magazines (the Chap-Book for instance was four and a half inches by seven and a half), the margins were wide and covered in marginalia. Thomas Flemming and Thomas Powers were the illustrators, and Vance Thompson and James Huneker provided almost all of the content. It was, according to Huneker ‘More Parisian than Paris’. The phrase ‘little magazine’ referred originally to the size of these avant-garde literary magazines, but later became the term for the small-circulation high-art magazines published by circles of friends that proliferated in this era, but are better studied as the harbingers of literary modernity some two decades later.

6. Ralph Adams Cram 1863–1942 was a renowned architect known for his Gothic Revival style. In addition to designing churches and public building, he had an active life as a writer and contributed to many of the ‘little magazines’ edited by his friends. The Decadent was printed privately for him by his friends. In later years he remembered it as a youthful indiscretion and attempted to destroy remaining copies.