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The Social Conscience of Harold Bell Wright, Joyce Kinkead
 

Chapter VI

A Concluding Assessment 

            Harold Bell Wright committed himself to illustrating his preferred themes through sentimental fiction.  He deliberately chose romantic novels as the vehicle for his message because he felt he could reach a wider audience through melodramatic plots than through realistic or naturalistic fiction.  Wright, the author of nineteen popular novels, became America's most successful literary preacher-writer.

            Rooted in the nineteenth-century thought, Wright assumed the role, in his early writing, of a critic of the church.  He advocated that practical Christianity be performed in daily life.  As a minister, he was deeply concerned with the hypocrisy and corruption of church members.  To try to remedy that situation, he wrote That Printer of Udell's, a story which exposes church members who do not practice Christianity.  He becomes more bitter toward the church as an institution in the novel entitled The Calling of Dan Matthews, where he details the double standards of the people.  Finally, he idealistically calls for the unification of churches in the fictional work, God and the Groceryman.  Nearly all of Wright's novels have some comment on the spiritual development of the individual.  Wright finally abandons the church entirely and substitutes nature as a more conducive atmosphere to spiritual growth.  The Shepherd of the Hills best reflects this philosophy as the Shepherd becomes a more stable person after he accepts the teaching of nature.

            In the mind of Wright, nature is partially responsible for the growth of virtuous character.  Using the rural setting first of the Ozarks and later the West, Wright believes that rural people are morally superior to those who live in the city.  Country people are usually physically and intellectually superior because a more rugged life in the country develops the individual's body, and experience, not education, is the best teacher.  In fact, a formal education obtained in the city can be detrimental to a person.  John in Ma Cinderella, Ollie in The Shepherd of the Hills, and Kitty in When a Man's a Man suffer from lack of experience in rural matters, a lack to which their city education contributes.  Natives of Wright's Eden often possess an innate nobility; they also demonstrate a flair for wit, humor, and wisdom.

            In the West, Wright found another Eden.  The West held possibilities for being a paradise, untouched by the corruption influences of the East.  Wright discovered that weak people could not survive in the desert, thus leaving the physically and intellectually superior individuals, who, in order to survive, devised a moral code for all to follow.  Wright sees the East as a moral wasteland, in contrast to the West which provides an opportunity for a pure society.  He warns the westerners to exclude easterners from their business and their lives if they are to keep the West free of eastern corruption.  Wright desires most of all to steer the nation on a steady, Christian course.  In all of his western novels, an easterner becomes a better individual after willingly being influenced by the freshness of western nature.  Willard Holmes in The Winning of Barbara Worth and Patches in When a Man's a Man are two examples of the eastern convert.

            Although Wright's central themes are religion, virtuous character, and the superiority of nature, he also treats the social issues of labor, the arts, and science.  Helen of the Old House argues for a joint effort between employee and employer to keep industry operating for the good of the country.  The subject of The Eyes of the World is the moral degeneracy of writers and artists who sell their artistic genius for fame and money.  In The Devil's Highway Wright suggests that science and human considerations should be so mixed that human and humane considerations control science.  These three books are close to being social tracts rather than fiction.

            Wright's popularity was phenomenal during the early years of the twentieth century.  He accurately described the conditions of the church, and he served as a religious muckraker along with other novelists such as Upton Sinclair.  He also echoed the theme used by William Dean Howells in The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)--the importance of the moral rise of man.  Although Wright was involved in the social revolt of his time, he later was less critical.  He was an optimistic social critic in a time when pessimism flourished.  Following World War I, the times changed, but Wright could not remove himself from his nineteenth-century frame of mind into the new age of literary expression.  He continued to be a sentimental preacher and storyteller, and his mass audience remained loyal to him until the Depression nearly wiped out the American optimism.  Unable to keep up with progressing literary trends, Wright chose the novel, The Eyes of the World, to attach realism and naturalism as the causes of the moral corruption of the twenties.

            Wright is an avowed sentimentalist, but he is also valuable to the literary scholar.  He serves as a social critic and historian, accurately describing the intellectual and moral atmosphere of the first two decades of this century.  As a regional novelist, he comprehensively details the characteristics of the Ozarks, Arizona, and Southern California, areas which are relatively unexplored in literature.  He refused to become a part of the literary renaissance in America.  Instead, he kept his position as spokesman for the American masses.  Wright and his novels embody the thoughts and sentiments of the American public as it approached a new age in the nation's development.

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WORKS CONSULTED 

Primary Sources

Wright, Harold Bell.  The Calling of Dan Matthews.  New York:  A. L. Burt, 1909.

-------------------.           Exit.  New York:  Appleton, 1930.

-------------------.           The Eyes of the World.  Chicago:  Book Supply, 1914.

-------------------.           God and the Groceryman.  New York:  A. L. Burt, 1927.

-------------------.           Helen of the Old House.  New York:  Appleton, 1921.

-------------------.           Long Ago Told (Huh-Kew ah-Kah):  Legends of the Papago

                                    Indians.  New York:  Appleton, 1929.

-------------------.           Ma Cinderella.  New York:  Harper, 1932.

-------------------.           The Man Who Went Away.  New York:  Grosset and Dunlap,

                                    1942.

-------------------.           The Mine with the Iron Door.  New York:  Appleton, 1923.

-------------------.           The Re-Creation of Brian Kent.  Chicago:  Book Supply, 1919.

-------------------.           The Shepherd of the Hills.  Chicago:  Book Supply, 1907.

-------------------.           A Son of His Father.  New York:  Appleton, 1925.

-------------------.           That Printer of Udell's.  New York:  A. L. Burt, 1911.

-------------------.           Their Yesterdays.  Chicago:  Book Supply, 1912.

-------------------.           To My Sons.  New York:  Harper, 1934.

-------------------.           The Uncrowned King.  Chicago:  Book Supply, 1910.

-------------------.           When a Man's a Man.  Chicago:  Book Supply, 1916.

-------------------.           "Why I Did Not Die."  American Magazine, June 1924, pp. 13-

                                    15, 82-90.

-------------------.           The Winning of Barbara Worth.  Chicago:  Book Supply, 1911.

-------------------.           and John Lear.  The Devil's Highway.  New York:  Appleton,

                                    1932.

 Secondary Sources

Bradley, W. A.  Rev. of The Winning of Barbara Worth, by Harold Bell Wright.  Bookman, 34 (1911), 97-99. 

Rev. of the Calling of Dan Matthews, by Harold Bell Wright.  A. L. A. Booklist, Nov. 1909, p. 94. 

Rev. of The Calling of Dan Matthews, by Harold Bell Wright, Literary Digest, 2 Oct. 1909, p. 546. 

Rev. of The Calling of Dan Matthews, by Harold Bell Wright.  New York Times Book Review, 18 Sept. 1909, p. 551. 

"Comment on Current Books."  Rev. of The Shepherd of the Hills, by Harold Bell Wright.  Outlook, 5 Oct. 1907, pp. 269-70. 

Cooper, Frederick Taber.  Rev. of The Calling of Dan Matthews, by Harold Bell Wright.  Bookman, 20 (1909), 189-90. 

"Death Takes Noted Ozark Country Writer."  Dallas News, 26 May 1944, Sec. I, p. 2. 

Fitzgerald, F. Scott.  "The Jelly-Bean."  In Reading the Short Story.  Ed. Harry Shaw and Douglas Bement.  New York:  Harper, 1941, pp. 332-53. 

Gaston, Edwin W., Jr. The Early Novel of the Southwest.  Albuquerque:  Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1961. 

Advertisement of God and the Groceryman, by Harold Bell Wright.  New York Times Book Review, 31 July 1927, p. 15. 

Rev. of God and the Groceryman, by Harold Bell Wright.  New York Times Book Review, 7 Aug. 1927, pp. 13, 16. 

Graham, Gladys.  Rev. of God and the Groceryman, by Harold Bell Wright.  Saturday Review of Literature, 26 Nov 1927, p. 347. 

"Grief in the Ozarks over the Divorce of Harold Bell Wright."  Literary Digest, 21 Aug. 1920, pp. 57-58. 

"Harold Bell Wright Dead at 72."  New York Times, 25 May 1944, p. 21 cols. 1-2. Ifkovic, Edward.  "Harold Bell Wright and the Minister of Man:  The Domestic

            Romancer at the End of the Genteel Age."  Markham Review, 4, No. 2 (1974), 21-26. 

Kenamore, Clair.  "A Curiosity in Best-Seller Technique."  Bookman, 47 (1918), 538-44. 

Lewis, Sinclair.  Main Street.  New York:  Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1920. Rev. of Ma Cinderella, by Harold Bell Wright.  Books, 11 Sept. 1932, p. 8. 

Rev. of Ma Cinderella, by Harold Bell Wright.  Boston Transcript, 15 Oct. 1932, p. 1. 

Macmullen, Margaret.  "Love's Old Sweetish Song."  Harper's, Oct. 1947, pp. 371-80. 

"A Mad Scientist."  Rev. of The Devil's Highway, by Harold Bell Wright and John Lebar.  New York Times Book Review, 3 April 1932, p. 22. 

Millard, Bailey.  "The Personality of Harold Bell Wright."  Bookman, 44 (1917), 463-67. 

Mott, Frank Luther.  Golden Multitudes:  The Story of Best Sellers in the United States.  New York:  Macmillan, 1947. 

Overton, Grant.  An American Night's Entertainment.  New York:  J. J. Little and Ives, 1923. 

Pattee, Fred Lewis.  The New American Literature, 1890-1930.  New York:  Century, 1930. 

Payne, William Morton.  "Recent Fiction."  Rev of The Winning of Barbara Worth, by Harold Bell Wright.  Dial, 16 Sept. 1911, pp. 199-200. 

"A Personalized Sermon."  Rev of Their Yesterdays, by Harold Bell Wright.  New York Times Book Review, 8 Sept. 1912, p. 491. 

Randall, Dale B. J.  "The 'Seer' and 'Seen' Themes in Gatsby and Some of Their Parallels in Eliot and Wright."  Twentieth Century Literature, 10 (1964), 51-63. 

Rayburn, Otto Ernest.  Ozark Country.  New York:  Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1941.

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