The social self: Contemporary psychology and the writings of Hawthorne, Howells, and William James

The history of American literary studies reveals that scholars have used the symbol of the transcendent, individualistic self to help unify their object of disciplinary inquiry. But when the idea of American selfhood is historicized through an examination of popular contemporary psychology texts, a strongly social vision of the self emerges from canonical nineteenth-century literature against a background of pervasive concern about the potential breakdown of social cohesion. The works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, and William James reveal both discussions of selfhood that were informed by contemporary psychological theories and also dramatizations of conflicts implicit within those theoretical systems.; Common Sense psychology, which dominated early nineteenth-century thought, recreated on a theoretical level the opposition of individualism to social authority within American culture, an opposition highlighted by the growth of individualistic economics. In a number of short stores, Hawthrone translates the insights and conflicts of this psychological theory into modes of characterization and plot development. Additionally, the seemingly individualistic Scarlet Letter, like the moralistic Grandfather's Chair, though critical of Puritan authority, ultimately asserts such conventional values as domestic harmony, social cohesion, and benevolence.; In his utopian Altrurian Romances, Howells attempts to incorporate ethical precepts within a framework of deterministic late nineteenth-century evolutionary psychology. The comic structure of the Altrurian Romances reveals irresolution about cultural hegemony, an issue made salient by the post-Civil War increase in immigration. His uncertainties concerning immigration subvert Howells's commitment to altruistic idealism. Also published in the 1890s, William James's Principles of Psychology exhibits a narrative structure and an informing trope. Its conclusion affirms the centrality of habit, the informing trope, while it shows the self, the object of a narrated search, to be an ongoing process rather than a philosophical essence. By presenting an experiential basis for selfhood, James establishes a Pragmatist vision of the self that allows for willed action while its situates the individual within the social realm. James's vision has significance for contemporary literary theorists who attempt to negotiate between deterministic and transcendent theories of selfhood.