Flirtation as Wireless Communication
Howells is an elegant writer who knows how to fashion metaphorical language today in a way that makes many more famous writers pale in comparison. Consider the creativity in this example in which the conversation among men turns to spoiled woman and flirting and one remarks of an unnamed female known to both:
“She is sailing through time, through youthful space, with her electrical lures, the natural equipment of every charming woman, all out, and suddenly, somewhere from the unknown, she feels the shock of a response in the gulfs of air where there had been no life before.”
The Power of Books
Howells was committed to the idea that literature is important and that reading is more than merely time-consuming entertainment. The opening paragraph of “The World Opened by Books” is a testament to his fervent commitment that the world of the imagination is more like a place of portal to multiple dimensions rather than just one aspect of a person:
“Every boy is two or three boys, or twenty or thirty different kinds of boys in one; he is all the time living many lives and forming many characters; but it is a good thing if he can keep one life and one character when he gets to be a man. He may turn out to be like an onion when he is grown up, and be nothing but hulls, that you keep peeling off, one after another, till you think you have got down to the heart, at last, and then you have got down to nothing.”
The Realist
Howells was a vocal proponent and active practitioner of realism. As a result, it is easy to assume that a seemingly offhand commentary made by a character in one of his story carries great metaphorical meaning beyond the narrative. Howells worked hard to go against the tide of mechanical writing such as that described:
"It is like an old-fashioned story, where things are operated by accident instead of motive"
"The perfection of reason"
The stimulus behind this pronouncement of inviolate truth as simile was the performance of Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Hamlet. What was unreasonable was that an actress should try to play Hamlet as a man when it would have been perfectly reasonable and artistic to play Hamlet as a woman.
"Art, like law, is the perfection of reason, and whatever is unreasonable in the work of an artist is inartistic."
"Choice is a curse"
Another metaphorical pronouncement made with vigorous belief. In fact, so assured is the author that choice is not a gift, but a curse that he goes on to also claim that given the choice between making a choice and leaving things to chance, he would rather take a chance on chance.
