Bramen, Carrie Tirado. “The Americanization of Theron Ware.” Novel 31.3 (1997): 63-86.

Campbell, Donna M. “Frederic, Norris, and the Fear of Effeminacy.” Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1997. 75-108.

Carter, Everett. “Naturalism and Introspection.” Howells and the Age of Realism. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1966. 239-45.

Coale, Samuel. “Frederic and Hawthorne: The Romantic Roots of Naturalism.” American Literature 48.1 (March 1976): 29-45.

Coale, Samuel Chase. “Harold Frederic: Naturalism as Romantic Snarl.” In Hawthorne’s Shadow: American Romance from Melville to Mailer. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1985. 46-62.

Donaldson, Scott. Introduction. The Damnation of Theron Ware. By Harold Frederic. 1896. New York: Penguin, 1986. vii-xxx.

Garner, Stanton. “The Other Harold Frederic.” Upstate Literature: Essays in Memory of Thomas F. O’Donnell. Ed. Frank Bergmann. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1985. 129-41.

Klopfenstein, Glenn D. “‘The Flying Dutchman of American Literature’: Harold Frederic and the American Canon, a Centenary Overview.” American Literary Realism 30.1 (1997): 34-46.

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Fall From Grace.” Rev. of The Damnation of Theron Ware, by Harold Frederic. The New York Times Book Review 17 Dec. 1995: 24+.

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Rediscovering Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Where I’ve Been, and Where I’m Going. New York: Penguin, 1999. 304-10.

Strout, Cushing. “In Hawthorne’s Shadow: The Minister and the Woman in Howells, Adams, Frederic, and Updike.” Making American Tradition: Visions and Revisions from Ben Franklin to Alice Walker. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1990. 22-39.

Vanderbeets, Richard. “The Ending of The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 36 (1964): 358-59.

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Bramen, Carrie Tirado. “The Americanization of Theron Ware.” Novel 31.3 (1997): 63-86.

Bramen’s analysis of The Damnation of Theron Ware situates Frederic’s novel within a cultural and literary context. She notes in her article that for nearly twenty years after its publication, many critics and writers lauded The Damnation of Theron Ware as the “great American novel,” while others claimed that it was, in fact, Americanism that Frederic was criticizing. The Damnation of Theron Ware “can be read as Frederic’s attempt to prove that he was not just a local colorist [. . .], but a ‘national writer.’” Her essay is an exploration of how Frederic came “to signify a nationalist spirit of inviolate Americanism” with the publication of a novel that is clearly ambivalent in its representation of Theron Ware, an American who is assimilated by Irish Catholics. Bramen focuses on the “contrast between Americanism and alienism [read Protestantism and Catholicism], between the familiar and the unfamiliar” to demonstrate the subversive nature of Frederic’s novel. She offers an extended structural analysis of how Ware crosses cultural boundaries by simply walking in spaces such as roads, sidewalks, and the countryside as support for his reverse assimilation by the Catholics. According to Bramen, relocation to the “West”—a place where one need not worry about “foreignizing influences”—is the author’s remedy for countering Theron Ware’s reverse assimilation. (Note: The above is from WilsonSelect, an electronic database that does not include Novel’s page numbers.)

Campbell, Donna M. “Frederic, Norris, and the Fear of Effeminacy.” Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1997. 75-108.

Campbell combines feminist theory and genre criticism to analyze Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware. The opening paragraphs of the chapter address the ever-widening split between what James Lane Allen describes as the “Masculine” and “Feminine” principles in literature. Campbell argues that, alarmed at the growing “feminine ethic in literature,” naturalists embraced brutish masculinity as an “antidote” to feminine civilization (75). Campbell identifies “three different courses of thematic development [that] emerged in naturalistic fiction: the triumph of the brute, leading to the degeneration of the individual; the balance of the two opposing forces, leading to the perfect amalgamation of sensibility and ‘red-blooded’ vigor; and an excess of civilization, leading, ironically enough, to a degeneration similar to—and in some cases identical with—that which the emergence of the brute signals” (77). Campbell believes the title character in The Damnation of Theron Ware succumbs to this third possibility, becoming “a brute in taste and outlook” (79). Tracing “Frederic’s exploration of realism through his character’s progress from the conventions of sentimental and local color fiction to the harsh realities of naturalism” (80), Campbell notes that, as a minister, Theron Ware is a “hybrid female” (81). Subverting the “opposition between male authority and female community common in local color” fiction, Frederic instead focuses on the similarities between the roles of ministers and women (80-81). Powerless, Ware’s only options, according to the conventions of sentimental fiction, are to capitulate, threaten, or dissemble, and his only defenses are fainting, illness, and weeping—all feminine responses. Ware’s attempt at illumination results in degeneration when he begins “to see himself as a victim of impersonal forces [. . . which lead him] into a self-delusional justification of the naturalistic brute within” (91).

Carter, Everett. “Naturalism and Introspection.” Howells and the Age of Realism. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1966. 239-45.

Carter combines biographical and genre criticism in his chapter that examines Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware. According to Carter, Frederic “thought of himself as a realist,” a disciple of William Dean Howells. Howells preached “a fidelity to the life one knew, an immersion in one’s own experience, an unswerving loyalty to the truth and a hatred of the false and sentimental.” Like Howells, Frederic looked to his own life and region for inspiration. Unlike Howells, however, Frederic “found his interest going from the social to the individual, from the inequities in relations between men to the tormenting self-divisions within man, from an analysis of the normal and commonplace to a concern with those hidden recesses of the individual soul where cower lust and fear and primitive ignorance” (240). Frederic observed “a society in turmoil” due to social, economic, and scientific advances, which prompted a “struggle within the individual [. . .] attended by possibilities of evil as well as possibilities of good” (241). Theron Ware’s illumination results in his fall rather than his salvation. Because the characters of Ware, Father Forbes, and Celia Madden, as well as the scenes of New York State life, are “drawn from life,” Carter identifies The Damnation of Theron Ware as a work of “realism” (244-45). However, because Frederic also sought to explore a “psychological rather than a social truth” in his portrayal of Father Forbes, Celia Madden, Dr. Ledsmar, and the Soulsbys, he transforms the characters into archetypes (245).

Coale, Samuel. “Frederic and Hawthorne: The Romantic Roots of Naturalism.” American Literature 48.1 (March 1976): 29-45.

Coale’s article is a genre study of The Damnation of Theron Ware that examines Frederic’s literary roots—from melodrama to realism, romanticism to naturalism—with particular emphasis on Nathaniel Hawthorne as one of Frederic’s “literary parent[s]” (29). Coale notes that many critics have viewed Frederic’s best-seller as simply “another example of emerging American naturalism” (29), a genre that shared much in common with William Dean Howells’ realism, “although the overriding tone is determinedly pessimistic, not obdurately optimistic.” He asserts, however, that “[i]n turning from the abundant details of character in society to concentrate upon one soul or two and in bending their visions inward, [. . . Frederic] approached the psychological and allegorical territory that had appeared in Hawthorne’s fiction” (30). Coale offers several examples to support his claim: Theron Ware’s resemblance to Young Goodman Brown, another “American innocent”; the similarities between Damnation’s opening paragraphs and the forest scenes of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter; and the use of light and dark imagery. Even the character of Sister Soulsby seems to fit the “Hawthornian mold” in her correspondence to Westervelt in The Blithedale Romance—clearly “a representative of the modern manipulative world, not to be trusted, however practical and useful her tools of the trade” (41). In fact, Coale claims, Sister Soulsby may be “the Devil of the piece.” He concludes that Frederic does not succeed in fusing romantic and naturalistic elements in this novel: the “romantic or Hawthornesque touches can only be self-justifications on Theron’s part for his actions, as his comments on determinism must be, and we cannot take them seriously” (43).

Coale, Samuel Chase. “Harold Frederic: Naturalism as Romantic Snarl.” In Hawthorne’s Shadow: American Romance from Melville to Mailer. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1985. 46-62.

Coale’s chapter on Harold Frederic is a reworking of his earlier article entitled “Frederic and Hawthorne: The Romantic Roots of Naturalism,” published in American Literature 48.1 (March 1976): 29-45.

Donaldson, Scott. Introduction. The Damnation of Theron Ware. By Harold Frederic. 1896. New York: Penguin, 1986. vii-xxx.

Donaldson’s introduction to The Damnation of Theron Ware combines biographical and genre criticism with a brief character study. Part I is a biography of Harold Frederic: journalist, novelist, bon vivant, and polygamist. Part II opens with Donaldson’s acknowledgment that Frederic’s literary reputation generally rests upon a single novel, The Damnation of Theron Ware, a situation he regrets as unfortunate because Seth’s Brother’s Wife (1890), In the Valley (1890), and The Market-Place (1899) “represent major achievements” as well (xii). Donaldson states that Frederic’s novels “resist pigeonholing as works of realism, naturalism, or romance” and further asserts that Damnation “reveals traces of all three approaches” (xvi). Parts III, IV, and V explore the character development of Theron Ware, as well as of Father Forbes, Dr. Ledsmar, Celia Madden, and Sister Soulsby. The novel is described as a “subtle study of moral disintegration” (xviii), in which Ware “abandons his faith and seems at the end to have learned almost nothing from his ordeal” (xix).

Garner, Stanton. “The Other Harold Frederic.” Upstate Literature: Essays in Memory of Thomas F. O’Donnell. Ed. Frank Bergmann. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1985. 129-41.

Garner’s chapter is a biographical sketch of Frederic that acknowledges his achievements as an editor and a journalist, but concentrates upon Frederic’s literary contributions as a writer of fiction. Joseph Conrad characterized Frederic as “a notable journalist (who had written some novels).” Garner contends that Conrad’s comment is an example of how Frederic’s fiction has been, and continues to be, misunderstood and underappreciated (130). In Garner’s opinion, Frederic is a “fine stylist” who, “in the ease and fluency of his language [. . .], belongs in the camp of Mark Twain” (133). Garner examines genre in The Damnation of Theron Ware, Gloria Mundi, and The Market-Place to show Frederic’s growth as an author. Frederic’s early works set in upstate New York establish him as a regionalist; however, most of Frederic’s later works are set abroad and are a “fusion of types,” borrowing elements of regionalism, realism, and romance (135). For example, elements of realism and romance flavor The Damnation of Theron Ware, one of Frederic’s later novels (although set in New York), with provocative social and moral issues. The setting of Gloria Mundi and The Market-Place, Frederic’s last two novels, moves beyond the Mohawk Valley to “the ancient European cradle out of which [. . . Frederic’s regional American] culture had risen” and on to “the future of the West and of mankind” in the character of Joel Thorpe. Garner concludes “that in addition to the regionalist we know there was another Harold Frederic whose vision grew much broader” (140).

Klopfenstein, Glenn D. “‘The Flying Dutchman of American Literature’: Harold Frederic and the American Canon, a Centenary Overview.” American Literary Realism 30.1 (1997): 34-46.

Klopfenstein’s bibliographical article opens with a brief review of the state of Frederic scholarship since the 1950s. His reference to “the Flying Dutchman” is borrowed from Austin Briggs: “Harold Frederic, unless the interest of the 1960’s abides, seems doomed to play the Flying Dutchman of American literature. Over the decades he has been enthusiastically sighted again and again, only to disappear into the fogs of obscurity” (35). According to Klopfenstein, the exclusion of The Damnation of Theron Ware from the American canon can be attributed to “changing critical (aesthetic) standards and political (institutional) forces” (36); it has been exacerbated by Vernon Louis Parrington’s negative criticism of the novel in Main Currents in American Thought (1927). Klopfenstein further speculates that the novel and its author may have been marginalized prior to the work’s brief revival in the 1960s because Frederic, an expatriate living in England, was not American enough and his effeminate antihero was not masculine enough to appeal to critics. While lamenting that Frederic has been pigeonholed as a regionalist, a realist, and a naturalist, and that his novel has become “fodder for the reductions of literary theorists and specialists,” Klopfenstein praises Stanton Garner’s theory that Frederic’s “true descent” was from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville and holds out hope that The Damnation of Theron Ware may yet be resurrected in the coming years by a new generation of Frederic enthusiasts (43).

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Fall From Grace.” Rev. of The Damnation of Theron Ware, by Harold Frederic. The New York Times Book Review 17 Dec. 1995: 24+.

Oates’ book review focuses upon genre and influence as she recalls her discovery of Frederic’s novel in the 1960s. In her opinion, the novel is an “odd, unexpected link between the crude naturalism of the young Stephen Crane [. . .] and the elegant dissections of wealthy New York society of Edith Wharton”; it has less in common with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction than it does with Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel in which the “young, ingenuous hero is ‘poisoned’ by a book of amoral hedonism and by his friendship with a mentor whose disregard for convention completely unhinges him.” The title character in The Damnation of Theron Ware is also seduced by worldly desires, and he has not one mentor, but four. Oates argues Frederic’s novel inspired two 1920s novels by Sinclair Lewis, Main Street and Elmer Gantry, but believes that Frederic manages his narrative with more finesse than does Lewis. She asserts, The Damnation of Theron Ware “is American literary realism at its most accomplished” and is also a comedy (24). Her prediction of Ware’s future is optimistic: “he will live from now on without illusion” and he “will not only survive but succeed” (25).

Oates, Joyce Carol. “Rediscovering Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware.” Where I’ve Been, and Where I’m Going. New York: Penguin, 1999. 304-10.

Oates’ chapter is a close version of her review entitled “Fall From Grace,” which first appeared in The New York Times Book Review in December 1995.

Strout, Cushing. “In Hawthorne’s Shadow: The Minister and the Woman in Howells, Adams, Frederic, and Updike.” Making American Tradition: Visions and Revisions from Ben Franklin to Alice Walker. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1990. 22-39.

Strout’s Chapter 2 examines the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “marital triangle”—and more specifically, his “symbolic use of Hester Prynne”—in The Scarlet Letter (1850) on novels by William Dean Howells, Henry Adams, Harold Frederic, and John Updike. According to Strout, Hawthorne’s unlikely heroine is presented as a “female apostle [. . .] walking in the footsteps of the Puritan Anne Hutchinson” (22); symbolically, she poses a threat to established views about love, marriage, and Christian authority. Howells’ A Modern Instance (1882) treats the issue of divorce in its impartial portrayal of “a marriage without love and a love without marriage” (29). Adams’ title character in Esther (1884) is torn between her love for a minister and her scientific agnosticism; the romantic triangle “is defined by her relationship to a scientist and a minister” (30). In The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), argues Strout, “Frederic turned [. . . Hawthorne’s marital] triangle to the purposes of serious comedy” (33). The forest scene in which Celia Madden bestows upon Theron Ware a kiss is most reminiscent of the relationship between Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale; however, Frederic’s version is “comically ironical” because Ware’s dream of a future with Celia Madden is “inspired by a kiss that is ‘a swift, almost perfunctory caress’” and his dream is corrupted by his lust for Madden’s wealth (33). Ware’s fall is less significant than Dimmesdale’s because Ware was “deeply flawed” to begin with. Ware, as a representative of his generation of Methodist preachers, is a poor specimen of religious piety as compared to the older generation present at the Nedahma conference. Thus, suggests Strout, “[t]he fall that Frederic measures is not a moral one within the minister but an historical one in America. [. . .] Frederic has an accurate sense of the way in which modernist forms of Protestantism were, in fact, allying themselves with science, evolution, and historical criticism of the Bible, jettisoning traditional Christian doctrine in the process and presupposing a sentimental confidence that change is inevitably progress” (33-34). The last section of this chapter addresses Updike’s Roger’s Version (1986), a comic tale of adultery, in which Hawthorne’s triangle is expanded to a marital quadrangle, related from the cuckolded husband’s perspective.

Vanderbeets, Richard. “The Ending of The Damnation of Theron Ware.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography 36 (1964): 358-59.

Vanderbeets’ textual analysis of Frederic’s novel and working notes challenges earlier criticism labeling Frederic a “comic realist” (358). The ending of The Damnation of Theron Ware, Vanderbeets argues in his article, is not tragic: Theron Ware relocates to Seattle for a career in real estate and dreams of becoming a Senator. However, Frederic’s working notes read, “Soulsby & wife at deathbed—their words finish book.” Vanderbeets contends that since this note immediately follows references to Ware, it must refer to his deathbed. Furthermore, if Frederic intended to kill off his main character in some earlier version of the novel, then the ending “reveals an inconsistency incompatible with the picture of ‘comic realist’” (359).