The Story of a Country Town by Edgar W. Howe

First published: 1883

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social criticism

Time of work: Mid-nineteenth century

Locale: The Middle West

Principal Characters:

• Ned Westlock, a boy on the Middle Border
• Reverend John Westlock, his father
• Jo Erring, his uncle
• Mateel Shepherd, Jo Erring’s sweetheart
• Clinton Bragg, Jo Erring’s rival for Mateel

The Story:

The Westlocks had gone west to grow up with the country. They lived first on a farm near a church where the father acted as the volunteer preacher. It was a life of toil and privation on the bleak prairie. Days began early and ended soon after supper, when fatigue drove the Westlocks to bed. There were four of them, John Westlock and his wife, their son, Ned, and Mrs. Westlock’s younger brother, Jo Erring. The only real amusement Ned had was visiting a nearby miller with his young uncle. The miller, Mr. Barker, had been a sailor in early life, and he regaled the boys with stories of his travels.

When Ned was eleven years old, a minister was sent from the East to take charge of the country church where Mr. Westlock had been acting as preacher. Erring immediately fell in love with Mateel Shepherd, the daughter of the new preacher, but he found no favor in her eyes because he was uneducated and crude. With the miller’s help, he began to improve himself. The miller became so fond of Erring that he took him on as an apprentice who would some day take over the mill. This was a great opportunity for the seventeen-year-old boy. The only flaw in his happiness then was that Mateel Shepherd was being courted by a young lawyer named Clinton Bragg.

Shortly after Erring left the farm, Mr. Westlock sold his farm and bought the almost defunct paper in the town of Twin Mounds. When the Westlocks moved into town, Ned went to the office every day to learn the printing trade and to help his father in the newspaper office.

Twin Mounds was an unprepossessing village with a post office, several stores, a jail, and about six hundred people. The only pleasures in which the people seemed to indulge, so far as Ned could see, were drinking, gossiping, and fighting. Although the Westlocks lived in a large stone house, the father had Ned stay at the newspaper office in the company of one of the printers, under whom he was learning the trade.

Erring, apprenticed to the miller, made such excellent progress that after a year or so the community subscribed to a fund so that he could build a mill of his own, the growing population justifying a second mill in the district. He was also successful in his suit with Mateel Shepherd, who had promised to marry him when his mill was completed and in operation.

One day, the quiet life of the Westlock family was rudely shattered. Mr. Westlock left the deeds to all his property in the custody of Ned and his mother and ran away with another woman. Ned took over the newspaper, which became more profitable under his management than it had been under his father, for the people in the community had not liked Mr. Westlock. He had been too solitary and strange to suit their natures.

The family gradually began to grow out of the feeling of disgrace that had fastened itself upon them when the father disappeared. Their friends did what they could for them and rallied in support of Mrs. Westlock and her son. At times, it seemed as if the disappearance of Mr. Westlock was of more benefit than harm. Ned was left with some valuable property and a chance to make a name for himself at a very early age.

The following Christmas Eve, Erring married Mateel Shepherd. Just before the marriage, he and Ned had a long talk, in which he told Ned that in some way he was not as anxious for the marriage as he had been when he first met Mateel. What Erring did not realize was that he had been so zealous in getting an education that he had not only reached Mateel’s level, but he had already passed her. It was not a happy wedding. Only a handful of guests came to the wedding supper, and those who stayed away did not bother to send their regrets. The Shepherds were not popular in the community.

After the marriage of Mateel and Erring, life in the community of Twin Mounds settled into a quiet routine for everyone. Ned was more disappointed than ever in the town. Its people seldom thought out anything for themselves, and every opinion they had was made for them, often by Ned’s own editorials. Their shallowness and smugness irked him.

One cold winter night, Erring appeared at the door of the Westlock home. Nervous and disheveled, he had come because he felt the need to talk to someone whom he could trust. He had found a letter which his wife had written to his rival before her marriage, a letter disclosing Mateel’s belief that she could never love any man but Bragg. This idea rankled in Erring’s mind. He had been thoughtful and tender with his wife, but she had always been distant and cool to him, in keeping with the vow she had made in her letter to Bragg.

Ned listened to his uncle’s story and then took him back to the mill and Mateel. After Erring had confronted his wife with what he had discovered, he and Ned sat up all night, unable to sleep. Clinton Bragg disappeared from Twin Mounds within a few days, apparently afraid of Mateel’s husband.

That same winter Ned’s father returned to Twin Mounds and accidentally met his son on the street at a late hour. He told Ned that he had been faced with misfortune ever since he had left his wife and son. The woman with whom he had run away had not really loved him and had deserted him soon after she learned that he had left his money and property in Ned’s hands. John Westlock was a pathetic and broken figure, unwilling to face the wife he had deserted. Ned gave him the little money he happened to have in his pocket, and the older man then turned away into the snowy night and was soon lost to sight. Ned knew that he had seen his father for the last time.

Meanwhile, matters between Erring and his wife had gone from bad to worse. He had taken a vow never to speak to his wife or touch her again, and Mateel began to fade quickly under his harsh treatment. At last, she asked Erring to let her return to her father’s home. He agreed. A day later, Bragg drove up in a buggy to take the girl back to her father and mother. It was a bitter experience for Erring to see another man carry his wife away from his house. Ned was with his uncle and left only when the older man had fallen asleep, exhausted.

When Ned arrived home, he discovered that his mother had died in his absence. Always quiet and subdued, she had died as she had lived, asking nothing from anyone.

In the spring, Ned braved a heavy rainstorm to visit his uncle. He arrived to find the mill deserted. Suddenly the door opened, and Erring walked in, carrying Mateel, who was unconscious. In a calm voice, he told Ned how he had lain in wait along the road until Bragg and Mateel had come along in a buggy. He had dragged his rival from the vehicle and killed him with his bare hands while Mateel looked on. Then he had carried Mateel back to the mill. Unable to face the fact that Mateel had divorced him and married Bragg, he felt it was better to murder and then to die himself than to live with Mateel married to another.

Erring surrendered quietly to the authorities and was taken to jail. He was never tried, however, because one night he took poison. The jailer discovered him with a letter for Ned clutched in his hand.

After Erring’s burial, Ned stopped at the Shepherd home to ask about Mateel. The poor girl was demented. While he was in the house, she came into the room and mistook Ned for Erring. She drew a dagger from her dress and told Ned she had gone by the mill that day to have one last look at the place where she had been happy. Now she intended to kill herself. Her mother led her away. That same night she died, shortly after telling her father and mother she hoped to see Jo Erring soon.

Critical Evaluation:

Howells and Twain praised Edgar Watson Howe’s novel, and one early reviewer believed that at last someone had created the “great American novel.” For the modern reader, however, its interest is historical rather than literary. Howe’s style is often cumbersome with frequent errors of spelling, word usage, and construction.

Many reviewers have noted the novel’s Dickensian tones. The most obvious influence is in the characters’ names—Jo Erring, Ned’s tragic, misunderstood uncle; the Reverend Goode Shepherd; the worthless but wordy philosopher, Lytle Biggs; and the boastful villain, Clinton Bragg. There is also the sense of melancholy Dickens gives to his child heroes. Ned resembles Pip and David Copperfield in the dismal circumstances of his early life. Dominated by work, death, religion, and rejection, Ned comes to a fatalistic acceptance that life is a wretched experience.

Unfortunately, the adult Ned is less interesting. His story is submerged as the book sinks into trite melodrama, and Ned remains important only as narrator of the misfortunes of Jo and Mateel. Another departure from Dickens is that there is no humor to relieve the book’s starkness. The gray, wooden church with its graveyard dominates Fairview, and the Indian graves of Twin Mounds oversee the meanness of small-town culture.

Howe implies that country living makes men cruel. Trying desperately to wring an existence from the dry soil, the characters find the work ethic to be all-encompassing. Their only relief is religion, which is grimly Calvinistic. Ned begins his narrative by observing that his father’s religion would have been incomplete without a hell, for Mr. Westlock hoped that everyone who did not share his piety would be punished. It is ironic that through the church Mr. Westlock meets Mrs. Tremaine, a temperance fanatic, with whom he elopes. When last seen, he is a broken, guilt-ridden old man who returns to Twin Mounds on the snowy eve of his wife’s funeral.

This novel is the earliest of a number of books that sounded a revolt against the popular conception that the American small town was an idyllic place in which to live. In it, Howe drew a deadly picture of village life—the shallowness of thought, the materialism, the ever-present sense of failure and the underlying spirit of petty and mischievous enmity. Through all of the book rings a note of sincerity which makes Howe’s iconoclastic efforts valid, giving his novel depth and lasting value as a social document.

The melodrama and sketchy characterization weaken the novel, but the book is of definite value when seen as a precursor to WINESBURG, OHIO; MAIN STREET; and SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY.