Social change and the way writers of the 19th century responded to it?

[petitechin725]

It depends on which writers you look at. You have writers like Hawthorne who write about other wars, so obliquely refer to the more current time. You have Gothic writers like Poe, who comment on the deterioration of the "nobility" as seen in stories like "Fall of the House of Usher" wherein corruption and decay are featured images. You have authors like Wharton who comments on the declining morality in society and changing class values. You have writers like Whitman and Twain, who inform through sweeping settings of the Mississippi river and the nation at large of what has been won and the independence and land which has been obtained.