집단 정체성 약화와 개인의 탄생: 『사일러스 라팜의 성공』에 나타난 하웰즈의 시대 인식

Abstract

William Dean Howellss The Rise of Silas Lapham focuses on the meaning of collective identity breakdown in late nineteenth-century American society through the lens of the then rising individualism. As the traditional class identity lost much of its validity, people had to accommodate themselves to the different contexts in their own ways. The established common social values such as class and family ties were disintegrated while each individual had to survive in the turmoil of the burgeoning market economy. According to Howells, individuals can share the democratic experiences in the American soil which shape alternative common values to stick them together; the weakening collective identity is substituted for the individual identity coupled with the national identity. Such an Howellsian understanding of social reality is described in Silas Lapham.