Atherton, Gertrude (Franklin Horn)

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ATHERTON, Gertrude (Franklin Horn)

Born 30 October 1857, San Francisco, California; died 15 June 1948, San Francisco, California

Also wrote under: Asmodeus, Frank Lin

Daughter of Thomas and Gertrude Franklin Horn; married George H. Bowen Atherton, 1876, children: two

The daughter of a Yankee businessman from California and a Southern belle, Gertrude Atherton spent the first 30 years of her life in and around San Francisco, a city whose history and destiny she utilized as subject and background for her favorite character, a new Western woman. She sporadically attended private schools, eloped at seventeen with a suitor of her mother's, bore two children, and rebelled against the conventions of domestic life. Only after the death of her husband did she begin her serious writing career in New York in 1888.

Atherton's first significant novel was Patience Sparhawk and Her Times (1897), published in London where her novels at first attracted more critical attention than in the U.S. This novel introduced the new Western woman, who in three subsequent novels symbolized the evolution of Western civilization at the turn of the century. In Patience Sparhawk and Her Times, Atherton offered an ironic appraisal of American self-reliance and society in the 1890s from the point of view of an aspiring Western woman. Through her characterization of the heroine as an idealistic, self-reliant, but passionate woman, born into lowly, isolated circumstances in California, Atherton narrated a romantic-realistic and psychological version of the 19th century argument over the effect of heredity and environment on the development of the individual.

In American Wives and English Husbands (1898), Atherton's independent-spirited heroine, Lee Tarleton, proud of her Creole heritage and aristocratic California upbringing, is confronted with the "solid fact" of English tradition and convention, personified by Cecil Maundrell, scion of a landed English family, whom she marries and who expects her to become his second self. Their marriage tests the past and present values of the two civilizations in regard to the relationship between man and woman and to the perpetuation of the race. In this novel and also in The Doomswoman (1893), The Californians (1898), and Ancestors (1907), Atherton penetrated the facade of civilization that organizes the basic relationship between man and woman and between individuals and nature. She displayed a continually ironic stance toward the argument on heredity and environment by labeling as a "fool's paradise" an individual's excessive and illusory dependence on either inherited characteristics or a given environment as a path to happiness. Her independent and self-conflicted heroine challenges the assumption that a woman unthinkingly accepts a passive, procreative function as a definition of herself and of the relationship between herself and nature and between herself and civilization.

Atherton enacted her criticism of Howells' "dull" realism by a call for originality and imagination in American literature. From Hippolyte Taine, she borrowed the technique of lifting a type of character out of the commonplace conditions to which he or she was apparently doomed and transferring him or her to an environment, replete with change and opportunity, where latent potentialities could be developed.

From her first novel to her last, Atherton's genius lay in her ability to tell an exciting story about a character or characters worthy of attention as they confronted the environmental and psychological circumstances of their lives, the "fool's paradise" which they could or could not manage. She believed an author was obligated to extend the knowledge of readers beyond their provincial existence. Not always successful in style and form according to current critical tastes, Atherton nonetheless told stories in the form of the novel according to the logic of sometimes invisible patterns of cause-and-effect and yesterday-today and expected her readers to apprehend and participate in them.

Other Works:

What Dreams May Come (1888). Hermia Suydam (1889). Los Cerritos, A Romance of the Modern Time (1890). A Question of Time (1891). Before the Gringo Came (1894, enlarged in The Splendid Idle Forties, 1902). A Whirl Asunder (1895). His Fortunate Grace (1897). A Daughter of the Vine (1899). Senator North (1900). The Aristocrats (1901). The Conqueror (1902). A Few of Hamilton's Letters (1903). Mrs. Pendleton's Four-in-Hand (1903). Rulers of Kings (1904). The Bell in the Fog, and Other Stories (1905). The Traveling Thirds (1905). Rezánov (1906). The Gorgeous Isle (1908). Tower of Ivory (1910). Julia France and Her Times (1912). Perch of the Devil (1914). California, an Intimate History (1914). Mrs. Balfame (1916). Life in the War Zone (1916). The Living Present (1917). The White Morning (1918). The Avalanche (1919). Transplanted (1919). The Sisters-in-Law (1921). Sleeping Fires (1922). Black Oxen (1923). The Crystal Cup (1925). The Immortal Marriage (1927). The Jealous Gods (1928). Dido, Queen of Hearts (1929). The Sophisticates (1931). Adventures of a Novelist (1932, reprinted 1980). The Foghorn (1934). Golden Peacock (1936). Rezánov and Doña Concha (1937). Can Women Be Gentlemen? (1938). The House of Lee (1940). The Horn of Life (1942). Golden Gate Country (1945). My San Francisco (1946).

Bibliography:

Bradley, J., Valedictory Performances of Three American Women Novelists (dissertation, 1981). Bryant, B., Late California Writers (audio cassette, 1960, 1969). Christensen, L. E., Gertrude Atherton: The Novelist as Historian (audio cassette, 1982). Courtney, W. L., The Feminine Note in Fiction (1904). Dickey, F.A., Gertrude Atherton, Family, and Celebrated Friends (archive manuscript, 1981). Forman, H. J. "A Brilliant California Novelist: Gertrude Atherton" in California Historical Society Quarterly (March, 1961). Forrey, C. D., "Gertrude Atherton and the New Woman," in CHSQ 55 (Fall 1976). Jackson, J. H., Gertrude Atherton (1940). Knight, G. C., The Strenuous Age in American Literature (1954). Leider, E. W., California's Daughter: Gertrude Atherton and Her Times (1991). McClure, C. S., "Gertrude Atherton, 1857-1948," in ALR 9 (Spring 1976). McClure, C. S., Gertrude Atherton (Boise State University Western Writers Series, 1976). Parker, G. T., William Dean Howells: Realism and Feminism (Harvard English Studies, 1973). Phillips, N. P.,"The Woman's Tournament: Men and Marriage in Six Novels by Gertrude Atherton" (thesis, 1981). Shumate, A., A San Francisco Scandal: The California of George Gordon, '49er, Pioneer, and Builder of South Park in San Francisco (1976, 1994). Starr, K. Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915 (1973). Underwood, J. C., Literature and Insurgency (1914). Weir, S., "Gertrude Atherton: The Limits of Feminism," in SJS 1 (1975).