Nature Meets Civilization: The Arcadian Myth in Harold Bell Wright’s Ozarks Novels

In Back to Nature (1969), Peter J. Schmitt explores the back-to-nature movement led by middle-class urbanites from the turn of the twentieth century to shortly after World War I. While the leaders of the movement viewed nature as a healer and restorer for humanity, they embraced a romanticized notion of it—one removed from the harsh realities of country living. The pastoral impulse also gave rise to what Schmitt terms wilderness fiction by authors such as Gene Stratton Porter, Dallas Sharp, and Harold Bell Wright. This paper analyzes Wright’s The Shepherd of the Hills (1907), The Re-Creation of Brian Kent (1919), and Ma Cinderella (1932), ultimately characterizing him as an Arcadian novelist who both harbors affection for and otherizes the Ozarks.