The "Progressive Steps" of the Narrator in Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer

Abstract

THE "PROGRESSIVE STEPS" OF THE NARRATOR IN CRÈVECOEUR'S LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER Stephen Carl Arch Michigan State University Throughout J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's Letters From An American Farmer, James, the narrator, is interested in the concept of "progress," especially the "progressive" acculturation of Europeans who have immigrated to America. "All I wish to delineate," he says concerning his short "History of Andrew, the Hebridean," in Letter III, "is the progressive steps of a poor man, advancing from indigence to ease, from oppression to freedom, from obscurity and contumely to some degree of consequence."1 James' fascination with progress is ironic, since he begins his correspondence with Mr. F. B. as a curiously static personality leading a pleasant but static existence. Letter II reveals that James' farm was left to him by his father, that he has done nothing to improve it, and that, having once considered selling it, he immediately retreated from such a potential alteration in lifestyle , fearing that in a "world so wide . . . there would be no room for [him]" (p. 52). James himself ingenuously admits that his life is an imitation of his father's: "I have but to tread his paths to be happy and a good man like him" (p. 53). Willingly constrained by this narrow life, James initially presents a striking contrast to Andrew the Hebridean, whose history is a record of his progression from oppressed European to free American.2 However, James, too, undergoes a "great metamorphosis" in Letters and is dislodged from his "narrow circles" (p. 65). His progress is closely linked to the epistolary form and dialogic structure of Letters. Many critics have argued that the letters and the dialogue are simply rhetorical devices that have no relevance to the work as a whole; they have argued that the letters are essentially separate documents that produce a loose structure for the whole3 or that, perhaps , the tenor and subject matter of each letter simply reveal the extent to which Crèvecoeur's own hand can be seen "pointing to the importance of some moral issue by manipulating his protagonist."4 Thomas Philbrick has gone a bit further, arguing that the "epistolary form ... is far more than a strategem by which Crevecoeur excuses his violations of logical organization; by serving as the vehicle of characterization and narration, it spins its own strands of coherence ."5 In other words, due to its epistolary form, Letters might even be considered a "prototypical" or "germinal" American romance.6 146Stephen Carl Arch However, these critics take away as much as they mean to give; they praise Crèvecoeur's work as much for what comes later (the "real" American romance) as for what it did, or what it tried to do, in 1782. In fact, the epistolary form and dialogic structure of Letters are much more than mere ornament. Letters is not a romance that simply and inconclusively juxtaposes opposing sets of terms (the idyllic and the demonic,7 idealism and realism,8 romanticism and skepticism), it is a philosophical work of fiction that comments on the dangers of revolution and on the inadequacies of man's fictions about himself.9 Letters begins with James, his wife, and his minister discussing Mr. F. B.'s request that James become his American correspondent. James is undecided: he is afraid that, with his "limited power of mind" and undeveloped writing skills, he will not make a good correspondent (pp. 39-40). His wife is even more reluctant, fearing both that Mr. F. B. is too sophisticated and that James' own local reputation might suffer from his being called a writer. It is the minister who convinces James to write to Mr. F. B. He points out that Mr. F. B., in his first letter to James, asserted "that writing letters is nothing more than talking on paper" and indicated that he wants "nothing of [James] but what lies within the reach of [his] experience and knowledge" (p. 41). The minister agrees with this dialogic notion of writing: "What we speak out among ourselves we call conversation," he tells James, "and a letter is only conversation put down in black and white...