34 pages • 1 hour read
Bret HarteThe Outcasts of Poker Flat
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1869A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Bret Harte
Francis Bret Harte was born in 1836 in Albany, New York. With only four or five years of formal schooling, he satiated his voracious appetite for reading by consuming the books his professor father kept around the house. Harte supposedly read Shakespeare at six years old, as well as the prominent British novelists, such as Charles Dickens. He also attempted writing in his youth, yet “[h]e was a dreaming, mooning lad, not of the stuff that makes young prospectors” (Harte, Bret. “Introduction.” The Works of Bret Harte, edited by Ben Ray Redman, Black’s Readers Service Company, 1932, p. x).
After his father’s death and his mother’s remarriage, the 18-year-old Harte moved west in 1854, as mining towns boomed during the California Gold Rush. Critics acknowledge that while Harte possessed a genuine writing talent, had it not been for his experience on the Western frontier, he may not have achieved popularity. The characters and personalities he encountered heavily influenced the setting, characterizations, mood, and dialect in his oeuvre. While in San Francisco, Harte’s occupations included miner, teacher, stagecoach shotgun, and finally writer. Becoming a writer enabled him to become the first editor of The Overland Monthly in 1868, a magazine that flourished under his leadership. As the editor for the next two years, Harte composed his most famous short stories: “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868), “Tennessee’s Partner” (1869), and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1869). Harte’s fiction gathered triumphant acclaim, and he accepted the position as a writer for The Atlantic Monthly, prompting a move back to his roots in the East.
Despite his resounding authorial success in California, Harte never regained that level of acclaim. His later stories’ repeated use of similar stock characters caused him to acknowledge, “I grind out the old tunes on the old organ, and gather up the coppers” (“Bret Harte 1836-1902.” Anthology of American Literature Volume II: Realism to the Present. 7th ed., edited by Leah Jewell, Prentice-Hall, 2000, p. 191). After his stint at The Atlantic Monthly, Harte accepted positions as a lecturer and a member of the United States diplomatic corps in Scotland and Germany, but he spent his final years grieving the loss of his writing career (“Bret Harte 1836-1902,” 191).
Literary Context: Regionalism
The 19th-century literary movement of Realism began in Europe as a reaction against the preceding movement of Romanticism. Turning away from idealized characters and sentimentality, Realist authors strove to portray everyday life truthfully. The first introduction of Realism in American writing occurred as Regionalism, which sought unvarnished representation of distinctive local cultures and geographies—“the dialects, customs, sights, and sounds of regional America” (“The Age of Realism.” Anthology of American Literature Volume II: Realism to the Present. 7th ed., edited by Leah Jewell, Prentice-Hall, 2000, p. 6). “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” with its focus on idiosyncrasies of the Western frontier, put Harte on the literary map as the first successful American writer to use this subset of Realism. His literary success can be attributed partially to his realistic portrayals of characters whom his contemporary society deemed immoral, such as sex workers, gamblers, and fugitives. Harte rendered a microcosm of American life that many readers had not yet experienced in literature, and his use of dialect—“ain’t,” “reckon,” “yer,” and “square fun”—emphasizes common speech, which contrasts dramatically with the lyricism and elevated diction of previous literary movements.
Regionalism enabled its writers to depict how customs could vary by locale, and the Western frontier, often termed “the Wild West,” quickly became a popular Regionalist setting. For many Americans during this period, the “wildness” and lack of an authoritative governing body seemed incomprehensible. On the American frontier, the ideas of justice and authority often remained arbitrary forces, and the narrator in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” admits, “[I]t was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment” (Paragraph 3). Life in a Western mining town embodied lawlessness because so much of it prospered on activities that European and Anglo-American societies had traditionally condemned or stigmatized, such as sex work, gambling, and drinking.
Similar to the Gold Rush, Regionalism did not run a long course in American literature. The movement was at the height of its popularity in the 1880s, but by the beginning of the 1900s, it captured less of readers’ interest. With its lack of original plotlines and characterizations, Regionalism was soon outstripped by other literary movements (“The Age of Realism” 7).
Related Titles
By Bret Harte
