After the Civil War the country began to repair itself and continued questioning some of its previously held values. From these questions come some of American literature's most influential essays and fiction. Women, too, began to write political essays and fiction which called for the equality of the sexes. Later, Kate Chopin's great novel The Awakening developed a similar theme, but with much more sophistication and characterizations, making it one of the best American novels ever written. For many Americans, the Civil War left a very bitter taste in the mouth.
All wars tend to make people question their previously held values.
For some post-war American writers, the war made them cynical. They began to believe that mankind had been given, by someone, a pretty rotten place in the universe. The Naturalist and Realist writers focused on the struggling person in a wretched universe. On the other hand, for many the war and the period just after the war proved to be a real boon. Industrialization made great strides forward, and the image of the self-made American entrepreneur began to take hold, a hold which has not yet lost its grip.