ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers an ambitious reinterpretation and a counternarrative to prevailing narratives about the characteristics of early twentieth-century American Modernist fiction by demonstrating that canonized American works, like much of US society and culture of the early years of the twentieth century, were permeated by notions of racism and xenophobia, monopoly capitalism, and conflicts between materialistic and religious points of view. It reveals that these notions and sentiments deeply affected the American sense of identity, legacy, and values embodied in the literary representations of houses and homes. The illustration of immigrants as boosters of capitalism and a moral threat to the American home is verbalized both by fictional characters in the novels and by renowned politicians and religious leaders who were prominent and powerful individuals in the real world.
