'You Must Make Less Noise in Here, Mister Schouler': Acoustic Profiling in American Realism

Drawing on sound studies, this essay traces realist methods of characterization through sound and noise in William Dean Howells's A Hazard of New Fortunes, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, and Frank Norris's McTeague. Schweighauer introduces the concept of the 'audiograph,' defining it as "a characterization technique that endows fictional bodies with a set of distinctive acoustic properties designed to position characters with regard to the ensemble of social facts and practices that constitute the fictional world they inhabit."