Local Color Novel

“[Novel readers are] an enormous class, who have neither leisure, nor inclination, of graver and more solid studies."¹ Local Color novels appealed to the masses because Southern authors offered readers a salve for the wounds left behind by the Civil War. Though they share some characteristics, Regionalism tried to draw the reader’s attention to social problems, while Local Color literature regaled them with regional fiction that substantiated the urban audience’s stereotypical beliefs. However, recent critics have found redeeming qualities within Local Color storytelling. These findings have highlighted the importance of Local Color novels’ contributions to national identity.

Plantation fiction downplayed the horrors of slavery, Wikimedia

Meaning of Local Color Novels

Local color refers to clothes, mannerisms, customs, and language that define a particular place or time. Local Color novels are a variation of American Regionalism literature. These authors wrote fiction using regional details such as dialect, customs, and superstitions after the Civil War in response to the massive political and cultural changes happening in the United States. Their attempt to portray what they believed to be a life-like portrait of the people and places they wrote about is Local Color realism.

Characteristics of Local Color Novels

Although Local Color literature focused on different regions of the United States, they are recognizable by these characteristics:

Sentimentalism

Local Color fiction tended to soften the rough edges of history and society. They gloss over issues dealing with race, class, and gender. Local Color literature rarely presents an objective account of the complex or problematic nature of past events and cultural norms.

Setting

The setting of these novels was often rural to call attention to the necessity of a relationship between man and nature. This was in response to uncertainty about the increased urbanization of previously rustic areas.

Cultural Traditions

There is a sense of looking through a box of old photographs while reading Local Color fiction. The region is described in terms of its rituals, values, and superstitions, which are frozen in time. People speak in dialect, which may be exaggerated. There is not much growth or self-awareness along the story arc.

Literary Influences on Local Color Novels

The writing style in Local Color literature was influenced by:

Down East Humor

Down East humor centered around a caricature known as the “comic Yankee” based loosely on President Andrew Jackson and the Northeast coastal region of the United States. What the comic Yankee lacked in book smarts he made up for in common sense. When confronted by the complexities of the political machine, his misunderstandings inadvertently revealed flaws in the system. The comic Yankee was a rural figure whose outsider status allowed him to critique urban life. Down East Humor and the comic Yankee helped shape Local Color because their popularity determined how traveling journalists would write about other regions.

The tall tales of the Southwest region introduced comically epic adventures of flamboyant folk heroes. Southwest humor evolved into slapstick comedy and colorful language, most often about braggarts, con men, and tricksters. Controlling the wilderness of the Southwest by making fun of it undermined the conflict of Man vs. Nature in a way that appealed to its urban, educated, white male audience.

Romanticism

Romanticism was a literary movement that was popular from around the end of the eighteenth century until about the middle of the nineteenth century. Romanticism rebelled against the Industrial Revolution and scientific advancements that defined the world in practical terms. Readers were comforted by the emphasis on emotion over rational thought. In addition, vivid sensory details immersed readers in exotic locations and glorified historical events, making Romanticism extremely accessible. Finally, Romanticism celebrated beauty, nature, and the individual as a counterpoint to industrialization.

Local Color vs Regionalism

Local Color novels share some similarities with Regionalism literature because both revolve their stories around a region of the United States and use cultural, historical, and geographical landmarks to advance the plot. However, Regionalism fiction is written in a more realistic style than Local Color novels.

Realism vs. Romanticism

Examining the novel’s writing style quickly distinguishes whether it is a work of Local Color or Regionalism fiction.

Romanticism looked at history through rose-colored glasses, and Local Color literature does the same. For example, plantation novels went viral in the South after the Civil War in response to slave narratives. White Southern authors wrote fiction that took place before the Civil War that openly longed for what they felt were better times. In these novels, the plantation was an idyllic place where enslavers protected those they enslaved because they could not live independently. In contrast, Regionalism texts used plain language and an objective eye to call out the demoralizing conditions of slavery.

Similarly, Romanticism’s tendency to dramatize and exaggerate to emphasize emotional response creates characters in Local Color novels who stereotype the people they’re meant to represent. As a result, the African American who was, in reality, forced to be dependent on a white character in antebellum Regionalism literature is portrayed as “child-like” in a Local Color novel.

Tone

Aside from Southern Local Color, many other authors were not from the regions they wrote about. Instead, much of Local Color fiction was written for Eastern urban audiences in newspapers and magazines. As a result, some critics have categorized Local Color literature as a form of domestic travel fiction because they argue it was written to confirm Eastern urban stereotypes.

Because the tone of these Local Color stories and articles tends to be ironic and dismissive of indigenous populations, they miss the opportunity to question the policies of Manifest Destiny, instead justifying the United States’ push westward. In contrast, much of regionalism fiction critiques the status quo from an outsider’s perspective.

Local Color Authors

It has been noted that some gender bias comes into play regarding which authors were characterized as Local Color writers. At the time, Local Color was considered a frivolous genre, and its authors were overwhelmingly female. A few examples of Local Color authors include:

• Helen Hunt Jackson
• Alice Brown
• Ruth McEnery Stewart
• Grace King

However, the most famous Local Color author was arguably Joel Chandler Harris. His collections of short stories centered around an old freedman named Uncle Remus. Harris used Uncle Remus as a storyteller who recounted the African American folktales he collected, and his tales about Br’er Rabbit are still a household name.

Harris's attempt to document African American folk tales is admirable, but his portrayals of African American characters are problematic, Wikimedia

Examples of Local Color Novels

Some examples of Local Color Novels include:

Ramona (1884)

Written by Local Color author Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona was one of the first novels to acknowledge Native Americans' struggles. Jackson’s attempt to appeal to readers’ sympathy for the plight of Native Americans had mixed results. Most readers were drawn to her romantic descriptions of colonial California.

However, Ramona was so famous that it is credited with impacting the development of Southern California’s culture and image. Ramona has never been out of print, and an adaption for the stage, The Ramona Pageant, is still performed yearly in Hemet, California.

The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches (1870)

This collection of short stories by Bret Harte offers a glimpse into the adventures of the California Gold Rush. Harte became internationally known for the regional details he combined with melodramatic plots to create the myths of the West that came to define the region.

Pembroke (1894)

Mary Wilkins Freeman’s Local Color novel combines politics and thwarted romance. The small New England town of Pembroke becomes a dramatic battleground of pride, Puritan self-righteousness, and emotional repression.

Importance of the Local Color Novel

For all of their flaws, critics have found that Local Color plantation novels performed a critical function in post-Civil War America. While their nostalgia for antebellum culture is off-putting at first glance, contemporary theory argues that while these authors were looking to the past, their fiction also created a path for modern American society.

The use of local color was very important to this type of storytelling because it allowed readers to process their feelings of loss surrounding the Civil War. Connecting northern and southern characters through stories facilitated reconciliation by encouraging the two regions to move toward post-slavery race and class relationships. And surprisingly, critics have discovered a layer of nonconformity and uncertainty underneath many Plantation Novels’ harmonious surface.