Winesburg, Ohio (1919) (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• George Willard: A young man who works as a reporter in Winesburg, Ohio. Despite the fact that he is one of the least developed of the major characters, he occupies the central role in the book. As a result of either chance meetings or other people's decisions to confide in him, George is the figure who links many of the novel's disparate stories together.
• Jesse Bentley: A wealthy farmer, and a deeply religious man with a brutal, Old Testament sensibility and tendency to terrorize his family.
• David Hardy: Louise Bentley's son and Jesse Bentley's grandson. He goes to live on his grandfather's farm while an adolescent, and ends up terrorized by his grandfather's religious zeal and desire to make contact with God.
• Louise Hardy: Jesse and Katherine's daughter, Louise is unloved from the start. As a teenager she is sent to the Hardy family to attend school but alienates the Hardy daughters with her hard work. She turns to the son, John for companionship and love. After courting him for awhile, he responds and they become lovers. Louise had more wanted a friend but John wants sex. They marry because Louise may be pregnant but Louise feels trapped by her situation. After David's birth, she alternates between loving and hating her son. She spends half her time as a recluse and the other as a raving lunatic. She feels she was cheated from love because she was a woman.
• Helen White: A local girl, who is romantically connected to both Seth Richmond and George Willard.
• Tom Willard: George Willard's father, a middle-aged man with frustrated political ambitions.
• Kate Swift: A Winesburg schoolteacher. She sees a "spark of genius" in George Willard and tries to encourage it, but she is also looking for love, and briefly allows him to embrace her in the newspaper office.
• Wing Biddlebaum: Wing's former name before moving to Winesburg was Adolf Myers. As a schoolteacher, he had expressed his fervor to the boys he taught through his hands. His actions twisted by a boy of the town and he was condemned and driven out. In Winesburg, he tries to hide his hands and is viewed by the town as a novelty act. George Willard is the only person in Winesburg Wing feels somewhat comfortable expressing himself to.
• Seth Richmond: A sensitive, deep-thinking young man, and a friend of George Willard.
• John Hardy: The Hardy boy Louise marries, John becomes a banker in Winesburg. He is well respected in town and it is because of him that his wife has never been arrested. He is partly responsible for Louise's craziness as he cared much more for a physical relationship than an emotional one.
• Enoch Robinson: A lonely man who never grew up, Enoch moves to New York for art school. Nothing he does ever turns out right. His tires of his friends so creates imaginary friends which say the right things and allow him to be the cleverest. Getting lonely, Enoch marries, has a family, and holds a practical job until he grows tired again. He moves back to his apartment and his imaginary friends and is happy until a woman visitor drives them out. Telling George his story, he has grown old and lonely in Winesburg without his invented friends.
• Hal Winters: A farm hand with Ray, he is a fiery young man from a bad family. Hal has a reputation for getting women in trouble. He admits to Ray that he got Nell Gunther in trouble and wonders if Ray really believes he should do the right thing. After Ray cannot answer, he decides to be responsible because he wants to marry Nell.
• Ned Currie: Alice's lover when she is young, Ned promises to protect her but then makes love to her before he leaves. Even though he promises to return, he moves to Cleveland and then Chicago and makes new friends and lovers. Alice never forgets him or her loyalty to him because of the night they spent together before he left.
• Tom Foster: A quiet young man, Tom moves to Winesburg with his grandmother and fits in because he never asserts himself. In Cincinnati, he was exposed to sinful lives and thus tries to avoid any vice. However he falls in love with Helen White. Tom likes to experience things to learn how they feel but then does not need to do them again. In this manner, he gets very drunk. George Willard finds him and Tom says that he made love to Helen which makes George angry since it is a lie. Tom explains that he wanted to learn what it was like to suffer and that is like making love.
• Elmer Cowley: The son of Ebenezer, he helps his father run the store, Cowley & Sons, but is frustrated that he and his family act so queer. Elmer wishes he were normal like George Willard and the rest of town but when he tries to tell George he fails. He decides to leave Winesburg for a city where he can be indistinguishable. Trying to talk to George before he leaves, he still cannot express himself so finally punches George instead. He is proud that he showed George that he is not queer.
• Alice Hindman: As a girl, she had a love affair with Ned Currie and he promised to marry her. He left town and never came back but she was unable to give her body to anyone else and so lived in waiting and loneliness for years. She became so isolated she would talk to herself. She worked at the Dry Goods Store to keep busy and finally at twenty-five, joined some social and religious organizations. At twenty-seven, she was so restless for companionship, she ran outside naked. Finally she accepted being alone forever.
• Belle Carpenter: A strong dark woman, Belle loves Ed Handby, a bartender. She walks out with George Willard to make Ed suffer and to release her suppressed sexuality, often causing George to feel used though he does not know why. Belle finally goes off with Ed, which is what she wanted the most.
• Curtis Hartman: The Reverend of the Presbyterian Church of Winesburg for ten years, he enjoyed a good salary and prestige. He was a quiet man who would pray for God's help with his sermons. He wished he felt more passion for his job. After seeing Kate Swift's bare shoulders through his bell tower window, he becomes consumed by a passion he has never known and his sermons improve. He tries to resist thinking of sin but does break the window so he can watch Kate again. Finally deciding to give himself to sin, he wants her to appear through the window, but when she does, he sees her pray. He feels delivered by this view and thinks that Kate was God's messenger of truth.
• Will Henderson: Editor-in-chief of the Winesburg Eagle, he is George's boss. Most afternoons he leaves the office for Ed Griffith's saloon. He rarely wakes up early but does the day of George's departure.
• Adolph Myers: Add a description of this character.
• Wash Williams: An ugly bloated man, like a monkey, Wash hates the people of Winesburg, especially women. He tells George the story of his wife's betrayal so that George will not make the same mistake. His wife took three lovers during their marriage before he sent her home. He wanted to take her back until, while visiting her house, her mother sends her to him naked. He tries to kill her mother but is stopped.
• Tom Hard: Tandy's father, Tom is an agnostic who spends his time trying to destroy the religious views of his neighbors. He ignores his daughter largely but befriends the stranger in town and witnesses the prophecy. He soon forgets though and is surprised at his daughter's reaction.
• Elizabeth Willard: George's mother, Elizabeth owns the New Willard House but she is worn out and drab. An illness took the life out of her, though she had been passionate in youth and still retains some life inside. She and George have a deep bond which is rarely expressed. She nearly kills Tom Willard for pressing George to be ambitious and hopes that George will be able to express meaning for both of them. She had a brief love affair with Doctor Reefy. The two were similar souls who could meet and find release for their emotions and dreams.
• Joe Welling: An agent for the Standard Oil Company in Winesburg, Joe lived with his mother and suffered from verbal seizures. He was silent and polite except when his outbursts hit. He then would pounce on the nearest bystander and and spew on them a flood of words concerning some ludicrous theory he had thought up. He felt he should have George Willard's job. After his mother died, he moved into the New Willard House, began a love affair, and formed the Winesburg Baseball Club, coaching them to victory.
• Wesley Moyer
• Tom King
• Griffith
• Parcival
• Mary Hardy: One of the Hardy daughters who hated school, Mary has a gentleman caller come visit her. Louise Bentley witnesses this event, causing her to relate love to sex.
• Harriet
• Albert Hardy: The father in the family Louise is sent to live with, Albert was a stickler for education. He would use Louise's accomplishments to try to guilt his daughters into doing better but it always backfired.
• Ray Pearson: A quiet man who is a farm hand with Hal Winters. He is deeply affected by the beauty of the land and it reminds of life dreams he had lost or forgotten. He had never wanted to be a farm hand and resents his wife and children. He wants to tell Hal not to get trapped by the same life but loses his nerve. He then convinces himself that it would have been a lie if he told Hal that marriage was not worth the sacrifice.

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Winesburg
• Main Street
• Ohio
• Handby
• Cincinnati
• Cleveland
• New York City
• Dayton
• Columbus
• Chicago

First Sentence edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Winesburg as a microcosm of the universal: The figures of Winesburg were forced to handle issues and events which people universally underwent. Many common threads between man and between the self in relation to the world exist which the grotesque figures deal with in a manner to which any reader could relate. Winesburg then becomes Any Town, USA and the characters symbolize flaws and struggles in the universal human experience. Winesburg functions synecdochally for the typical human community.
• Rebellion against values dominating American culture: The degeneration of communal bonds between people - sexual, familial, friendship, ritual modes of religion - was a common theme first traced by Anderson and then by many of the next generation (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot). It originated after World War I because of a disillusionment toward a modern society which was materialistic and business/industry oriented. The senses of modern men were anesthetized and they lacked personal identity. The isolated human of modernity was unfit for the love of men or community.
• Failure of absolute truth: Anderson believed that one should keep separate the worlds of realism and fantasy. He did not believe that an author could not write about both or about the collision of these worlds but he feared that authors would become stuck on realism or naturalism and forget about the importance of dreams, idealism, surrealism, and fantasy. Each of his figures grasped at least one truth as absolute and made it their mantra. The decision to base all of one's existence on an absolute truth transformed the figure into a grotesque and the truth into a lie.
• The pastoral: The narrator often employs a theme of mock sentimentality toward the old, colloquial farmland that Winesburg represents as small town. More largely, it provides a background for examining the breakdown of the archetypal patterns of human existence: sacrifice, initiation, and rebirth.
• Life in death: Most of the figures share the similar history of a failed passion in life, of some kind or another. Many are lonely introverts who struggle with a burning fire which still smolders inside of them. The moments described by the short stories are usually the moments when the passion tries to resurface but no longer has the strength. The stories are brief glimpses of people failing.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by U.S.A. Trilogy, and followed by A Passage to India.

Preceded by Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, and followed by You Bright and Risen Angels.

Preceded by Sophie's Choice, and followed by The Fountainhead.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Sherwood Anderson (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Charles E. Modlin (Editor)
2. Ray Lewis White (Editor)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.52

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( A ) › Anderson, Sherwood
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Rowland Book Collections - Sherwood Anderson Series: Free Canonical Ebook, most of the collection were classics literature.
• About Sherwood Anderson: biography, his novels; Links to writers who influenced Anderson: Edgar Lee Masters, Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway; a list for further reading; selected works of Anderson
• Essay by F. Michael Kunz: entitled Direct Objects: "How Sherwood Anderson Treats Women in Winesburg, Ohio"
• Overviews of each short story in Winesburg, Ohio