Crane's Maggie & Sinclair's The Jungle

In "Expanding the Canon of American Realism," Elizabeth Ammons argues that the canon of American realism needs to reflect its social context of multiculturalism. The canon of realism is defined by teachers, who choose what texts they want to teach about; therefore, the canon has been composed of works that are considered highly teachable. In that respect, it is subjective and can just as easily be changed according to one teacher's idea of teachability as another's. Elizabeth Ammons takes the position that "àif American realism means anything, it means attention to the multiple realities figured in the work of the broadest possible range of authors writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries" (439).

Ammons contrasts her view of an expanded canon of American realism, a complexity, conflict, and contradictions of the nation itself," reflecting the melting-pot theory of the United States dating back to the nineteenth century. She sums up her position by stating multicultural one, with a monocultural view by pointing out that a monocultural view "does not begin to capture the multiplicity of cultural perspectives that literary production of the period--evincing what Warner Berthoff wisely called a ferment--brought into being," whereas a multicultural canon "yields no unified story about realism" (449). The expanded canon Ammons puts forth is "filled with characters who embody distinctly diverse cultur