Journal for Bradford

"It would be hard to imagine a historian better prepared to write the history of this colony." (Norton Anthology, p.104)

William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation is a fascinating document. The "pilgrims" are so familiar to us in their cardboard-cutout iconic form, with their big hats and shoe-buckles that we don't think about the reality behind the myth. We all know that the ship they sailed in was called the Mayflower,and that the Indians helped them survive the first winter, which they celebrated in the first Thanksgiving. We rarely think of them outside the context of turkey and pumpkin pie. But Bradford's history makes us realize how unimaginably hard that journey was, how bleak the prospect that greeted them when they finally reached land after the grueling two month journey across the north Atlantic. As he says "they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor." (Norton, p. 115). It is clear from Bradford's account that the Puritans themselves did have a grand sense of destiny, of manifesting God's will. Indeed it is hard to imagine them undertaking their dangerous journey into the unknown without such a sense.
Bradford's omissions are as interesting as his revelations. He does in the end acknowledge that the Indians were very instrumental in their survival, but that doesn't stop him from describing them as merciless savages bent on destroying them. Another thing I fond interesting was the treatment they got from the crew of the Mayflower, which hints at the contempt with which they were regarded in England. One of the sailors kept taunting them that they were going to perish on the voyage and that he looked forward to throwing them overboard. As fate would have it that sailor turns out to be the first to die and get thrown overboard. The Puritans, of course, see the hand of God: "Thus his curses landed on his own head; and it was an astonishment to all his fellows, for they noted it to be the just hand of God upon them." (p. 114). That is their belief system, but I think it reveals too the helpless rage of a people accustomed to persecution.

Ann Bradstreet was a member of the party that founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, leaving England to start a new life on an unknown continent at the age of eighteen. In spite of her frail health she bore eight children and endured the hardships of frontier life, often managing the household alone as her husband was involved in the administration of the colony and was frequently away.

She was carefully educated by her doting father and proved to be a very accomplished poet. Her work was published in England without her knowledge in 1650, making her the first published American woman, no small distinction for a colonial, Puritan woman in the middle of the seventeenth century.

"Although she may have seemed to some a strange aberration of womanhood at the time, she evidently took herself very seriously as an intellectual and a poet. She read widely in history, science, and literature, especially the works of Guillame du Bartas, studying her craft and gradually developing a confident poetic voice. Her "apologies" were very likely more a ironic than sincere, responding to those Puritans who felt women should be silent, modest, living in the private rather than the public sphere." http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/Bradstreet/bradbio.htm

Though there is much in her poetry that reflects her Puritan beliefs, what strikes me about her work is the universality of the emotional content. Her subject matter is the stuff of daily life in the feminine sphere: children and marriage and home and the death of loved ones. Her work contradicts the stereotype many of us have of the Puritans as stern and full of loathing for all that concerns the temporal world. Her poems humanize the Puritans. She expresses a love of life and joyfulness that we do not expect and reminds us of the universality of human emotions. "In Here Follows some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666" she describes her grief and anger at the loss of her possessions, and her struggle to accept her loss.

"Here stood that trunk, and there that chest,
There lay that store I counted best.
My pleasant things in ashes lie,
And them behold no more shall I." (p.212)

She expresses her resolve to accept her loss in terms that we would characterize as typical of her Puritan beliefs:

"I blest his name that gave and took,
That laid my goods now in the dust.
Yea, so it was, and so it's just." (p.212)

But after all, we all have to accept loss, Puritan or not.

Journal for Edwards

The picture that Jonathan Edwards paints in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is a truly terrifying one. It almost seems blasphemous because God is portrayed not as loving and compassionate but as a ruthless and sadistic tormentor, devising a multitude of horrible punishments against which sinful mortals have no hope whatsoever of protecting themselves.
In this sermon the Devil is not the source of evil but a mere functionary, awaiting the orders of God to proceed with the torment of any particular human soul. "The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him." (Edwards, p. 427)


"This sermon has been widely reprinted as an example of "fire and brimstone" preaching in the colonial revivals, though the majority of Edwards's sermons were not this dramatic. Indeed, he used this style deliberately. As historian George Marsden put it, "Edwards could take for granted...that a New England audience knew well the Gospel remedy. The problem was getting them to seek it."[19]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Edwards_(theologian)


This is an important observation. Edwards is not in fact sadistically tormenting his listeners but trying to arouse their repentance with a rhetorical device that they would recognize as such. The parishioners that he is addressing know very well that they have an opportunity to escape the horrors he describes by accepting Christ as their Savior. What is puzzling to me about born-again theology, not being familiar with it beyond what I have seen in the media, is that it does not seem to be a voluntary experience. The believer must be somehow emotionally overcome, affected directly by the liberating truth. It seems like that also would be something that was dependent on grace, rather than an experience that you can will to happen because you are afraid of damnation.

Journal for Jefferson

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/thomasjefferson

Thomas Jefferson was undoubtedly an exceptionally talented and accomplished man. His stature in American history is unparalleled, greater even than that of George Washington. Apart from authoring the Declaration of Independence, he founded the University of Virginia. He designed his beautiful residence at Monticello, as well as the Virginia State Capitol and the original buildings of the University of Virginia. He was a knowledgeable horticulturalist who was closely involved in the cultivation of his lands. He was an able statesman, serving as governor of Virgina, congressman, secretary of state, ambassador to France, vice president and president.

In the Declaration of Independence Jefferson eloquently and beautifully proclaimed that all men are fundamentally equal and possess certain rights that are God-given and inalienable. Yet as a major landholder Jefferson was the owner of hundreds of slaves. He was a typical slaveowner too, treating his slaves with the customary cruelty. To me this is such a fundamental flaw that it cannot be laid aside when looking at Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps if were only going to admire Jefferson for his talents as an architect or statesman, we could separate his slaveowning from his achievements and regard each separately. But when his greatness lies in his position regarding human rights, I don't think we can do that. What he set forth in the Declaration of Independence was a radical departure from the custom of allegiance to a monarch. We cannot then excuse the fact that he owned and sold slaves on the basis of custom or "the times". It is in direct contradiction to his passionately expressed convictions, and in my opinion it would be hypocrisy in us not to hold it against him. I think it taints his legacy in a very profound and serious way.

The White House web site tells us that "although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803." It seems Thomas Jefferson was skilled at suppressing his qualms when it was in his interest to do so.

Journal for Paine

"Common Sense was one of the first decisive calls in the Colonies for independence and revolution. The logic and language influenced the writing of the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. The sixteen essays collected in The American Crisis rallied the public and the demoralized army during the dark period of the revolution between 1776 and 1780. George Washington, knowing that Paine’s potent voice could lend persuasion and articulation to the cause of independence, ordered the pamphlet to be read to all the troops. Paine was the most influential propagandist of the American Revolution."
Thomas Paine Cyclopedia of World Authors, Fourth Revised Edition


"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will, arise which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all mankind are affected, and in the event of which their affections are interested." (Norton, p. 631)

Paine was in some ways a perfect candidate for emigration to America. A disaffected and talented man who had failed at all the pursuits available to him, he arrived in Philadelphia in middle age at precisely the moment when his uncompromising political vision and his rousing eloquence were most needed. He was able to step off the boat and remake himself immediately.

The American quarrel with Britain was largely an aristocratic one. The landowning elites who sat on the colonial legislatures did not want to be subservient to the British Parliament or subject to their taxes. The working poor were largely removed from this contest, and the American population in general was quite divided on the issue of loyalty to the Crown. A leader was needed who could bring the fight to the ordinary people and enlist their support in the struggle. The landed elites were not going to fight a war on their own. Paine was the perfect voice for rousing the populace and stirring their indignation.

It is interesting that Paine's language deals in the general and the universal. A lifetime of intelligent inquisitiveness and discontent had led him to develop general ideas about justice and authority which were applicable to the American situation. In the end he was not a typical American immigrant who settled in the new country to make a new life. He did not stay in America, he moved on to the next struggle, the next fight for liberation.

Journal for Wheatley

"Once Phillis Wheatley demonstrated her abilities, the Wheatleys, clearly a family of culture and education, allowed Phillis time to do study and write. Her situation allowed her time to learn and, as early as 1765, to write poetry. Phillis Wheatley had fewer restrictions than most slaves experienced -- but she was still a slave. Her situation was unusual. She was not quite part of the white Wheatley family, nor did she quite share the place and experiences of other slaves."
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/aframerwriters/a/philliswheatley.htm

It is tempting to say that Phillis Wheatley was very fortunate. She was treated kindly by her owners, who recognized her intelligence and ability and saw that she was well educated at a time when most white women were not. She was even sent to England by the Wheatleys for her health. She was emancipated by her master and married the man of her choice. She had the confidence to write to George Washington and Benjamin Franklin came to pay her respects when she was in London. Compare her with Harriet Jacobs and she was blessed by fortune.

We cannot forget, however, that she was kidnapped at the age of eight and sold into slavery. She endured the terror of the slave ships that Equiano describes so vividly in his autobiography. She must have felt terribly torn between anger and gratitude, bearing the scars of that trauma amid circumstances that she could not fail to see were remarkably fortunate for a slave. It seems to me that she decided to dedicate her talents to gently and artfully making white people see the humanity of blacks, and to remind them of the teachings of their own religion:

"Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain
May be refined, and join the angelic train."
from "On Being Brought from Africa to America", (Wheatley, p. 753)

I know that many readers react negatively to her work, feeling that she is over-assimilated, that her mind is colonized. I read an article that made the case that her Christian imagery was actually subversive. I don't have enough Biblical knowledge for that kind of reading, but it was certainly a very interesting thesis. In any case I think that given the circumstances of her life and the constraints that we she was under to publish her work at all, as a woman, let alone a slave, the conciliatory tone and character of her work is understandable.

Journal for Equiano

"Equiano's personal account of slavery and of his experiences as an 18th-century black immigrant caused a sensation when published in 1789. The book fueled a growing anti-slavery movement in England." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaudah_Equiano

"Their complexions, differing so much from ours, their long hair and the language they spoke, which was different from any I had ever heard, united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave of my own country. When I looked around the ship and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate. Quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little, I found some black people about me, and I believe some were those who had brought me on board and had been receiving their pay. They talked to me in order to cheer me up, but all in vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces and long hair. They told me I was not." (Equiano, p. 683)

This paragraph reminded me of all the countless images that have been created in the Western mind, through various forms, from novels and stories and cartoons to films and even humorous commercials, of Africans as cannibals. The innocent white men have been captured in deepest darkest Africa, they are in a big pot suspended over a raging fire, surrounded by frightening and incomprehensible savages who are preparing to eat them. This piece of writing from Equiano's autobiography takes that image and turns it on its head, where it belongs, and shows us exactly who was barbarously terrorizing whom. It is like the image of the black man as a sexual menace to the white woman, whereas it was the black female who was at the mercy of the white master.

Equiano's narrative shows the horrors of slavery through the innocent eyes of a cherished and happy child who is plucked away from his family, and carried further and further into an unimaginable and incomprehensible world of increasing terror and despair. His description of the Middle Passage is particularly horrific and unforgettable. It is no wonder that this book was instrumental in the success of the abolitionist movement in England.

journal for Apess

"Apess, a Pequot, used his position as a Methodist preacher to reach white audiences, both in speech and in print. Although he defended the virtues of native oral traditions, he was acutely aware of the damage inflicted by a written historical record devoted entirely to the victors' version of events."
http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/kislak/print/williamapes.html


"Assemble all nations together in your imagination, and then let the whites be seated among them, and then let us look for the whites, and I doubt not it would be hard finding them; for to the rest of the nations they are still but a handful. Now suppose these skins were put together, and each skin had its national crimes written upon it - which skin do you think would have the greatest? I will ask one question more. Can you charge the Indians with robbing a nation almost of their whole continent, and murdering their women and children, and then robbing the remainder of their lawful rights, that nature and God require them to have? And to cap the climax, rob another nation to till their grounds and welter out their days under the lash with hunger and fatigue under the scorching rays of a burning sun?" (Apess, p. 1054-55).

How eloquent and succinct that is. It makes the entire argument for not only the Indian but also the African case against the white settlers of the United States who claim racial and cultural superiority and entitlement to the land and toil of others.
Apess has the clarity of vision and skill in expression that we saw in Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, the ability to master rhetorical expression and rise above adversity to become a powerful voice for the oppressed and dispossessed. As a minister and believer, he is well versed in Christian teaching, and he is able to frame his appeal in religious terms in a way that there is no arguing with. His argument is so straightforward and so just that there is isn't much to say about it. He asks how can you claim to be a Christian and treat the Indians as you have done. He is also very generous in his willingness to put the past aside and continue forward on a different course. One of the interesting points that he makes, continuing along the racial lines in the passage quoted above, is that Jesus was more similar in appearance and racial characteristics to those the white man deems inferior than to the white man himself; that Christ himself was a man of color.

Journal for Irving

"The story of Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving is about a man, a country who is longing to be free. Rip Van Winkle also depicts the life of a town before and after "liberty." Rip Van Winkle's character portrays the society of America as it was seen by England at the time, as lazy and unproductive, "rather starve on a penny than work for a pound." (128) England is represented by Rip's wife, Dame Van Winkle, orderly and productive, "Everything he said or did was sure to produce a torrent of household eloquence." (128) The villagers stand for the American society in general and how it changed after becoming a free country."
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1861369/brief_analysis_of_rip_van_winkle.html?cat=2



I have read that Rip Van Winkle was Washington Irving's attempt to lend respectability and credibility to American literature in the eyes of European, and especially English, readers. He was interested in folklore and wanted to establish a folklore for the new American nation in order to give it a cultural pedigree. "Rip Van Winkle" is based on a German folktale called Peter Klaus, which also features a character who falls asleep for twenty years. Much has been said about the symbolism in the story, with dame Van Winkle representing tyrannical Britain and Rip being the freedom-loving American. But, as others have pointed out, if Rip is to represent America, he hardly embodies the qualities that America values. He is a lazy and timid man who prefers to escape his responsibilities.

"His fences were continually falling to pieces; his cow would either go astray, or go among the cabbages; weeds were sure to grow quicker in his fields than anywhere else; the rain always made a point of setting in just as he had some outdoor work to do. So that though his patrimonial estate had dwindled away under his management, acre by acre, until there was little more left than a mere patch of Indian corn and potatoes, yet it was the worst conditioned farm in the neighborhood." (Norton, p. 955)

Meanwhile he is "obsequious and conciliating abroad" (p.954) and always willing to help his neighbors mend their broken fences and even cheerfully running errands for other men's wives. Dame Van Winkle is the stereotypical folk tale shrew, but it is hard not to sympathize with her. As for Rip symbolizing the American desire for freedom, there is this:
"Rip, in fact, was no politician; the changes of states and empires made but little impression on him." (p.964). In short Rip is simply happy that his wife is dead, and he has arrived at a carefree retirement that he has done nothing to earn. An endearing good-natured fellow, perhaps, but American folk hero?

Henry David Thoreau

"one of his first memories was of staying awake at night "looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them." One might say he never stopped looking into nature for ultimate Truth."http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/

I thought this was a very interesting quote about Henry David Thoreau; it is an image that captures the unflinching and piercing quality of his gaze and the depth of his thinking when contemplating the big truths about man and God and justice and duty that he examines in his essay "Resistance to Civil Government."

In this essay he is taking the principles and ideals laid out in his friend Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" and applying them very passionately to a practical matter. He makes the argument that principled people have not only a right, but a duty to resist a government that is guilty of immoral acts. The immoral acts which concern him in this essay are the war on Mexico, and the issue of slavery, which in fact are very closely related, as the war is understood by him and others as an attempt to expand the territory in which slavery is tolerated. He lays out a very carefully constructed and scathing condemnation of the machinations that the government uses to justify and promote its evil deeds. But he makes it clear that if the citizens would stand up for what they profess to believe the government would be powerless to subvert the will of the people. There is so much that could be quoted from this essay as examples of the powerful and uncompromising exhortation for people to stand up for what is true and right. I really like this description of the timid, passive citizen, which is so apt today as well:

"There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves to be children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of a patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret." (p. 1861)

Journal for Emerson

"It contains the most solid statement of one of Emerson's repeating themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Reliance

Reading Emerson's 1841 essay, "Self-Reliance", one is struck by how seminal his message was in the shaping of American culture and identity. The idea of individualism as an American ideal is commonplace today, almost a worn out cliche. We live in an age of corporate brands with global reach,celebrity worship and self-help "gurus" to teach us how to approach every situation, yet we adhere to our sense of uniqueness, of being self-made and self-defined.

Often this sought-for sense of a unique and independent self in a homogenized world is expressed in the most trivial and self-indulgent ways, such as customizing our Starbucks coffee order (soy milk, half-decaf!) What Emerson is calling for, however, is the opposite of this kind of delusional self-aggrandizement. He demands a very rigorous and thoughtful dedication to essential truths that we can discover within ourselves. When he says "I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency" (p.1169) he is not urging us to dye our hair pink!

So great is the influence of Emerson's ideas on our culture that everyone is acquainted with certain phrases from this essay - ("To be great is to be misunderstood." "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"). I think the danger of a superficial interpretation of this message is that it can lead to arrogance, irresponsibility and anti-intellectualism. To read him carefully is to realize that what he is preaching is anything but easy and self-indulgent:

"Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense wit the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day." (p. 1174)

Journal for Jacobs

"Jacobs criticized the religion of the Southern United States as being un-Christian and as emphasizing the value of money ("If I am going to hell, bury my money with me," says a particularly brutal and uneducated slaveholder). She described another slaveholder with, "He boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though Satan never had a truer follower." Jacobs argued that these men were not exceptions to the general rule." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Ann_Jacobs


"The 'bill of sale!' Those words struck me like a blow. So I was sold at last! A human being sold in the free city of New York! The bill of sale is on record, and future generations will learn from it that women were articles of traffic in New York, late in the nineteenth century of the Christian religion. It may hereafter prove a useful document to antiquaries, who are seeking to measure the progress of civilization in the United States." (Jacobs, p. 1828)


Harriet Jacobs's searing account of her life in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is suffused with a quiet fury that is bitter, ironic and mostly under the surface. When describing the relentless sexual aggressiveness of the master it is heartbreaking to see the shame felt by the young victim, a shame she carries with her into freedom. Her endurance and resolve when hiding seven years in her grandmother's attic crawl place is unimaginable. We feel the anger seething beneath the entire narrative, but when it comes to the "Bill of Sale" section quoted above, the rage breaks through the sorrow and blazes on the surface.

There are numerous instances of broken contracts in this story. Her grandmother is left free by her dying master as a child, but they are captured on their passage north (during the Revolutionary War) and sold back into slavery. Her grandmother works at night baking crackers and saves her money to buy back her children, but the mistress borrows her life savings and never pays her back. Harriet is denied the covenant of marriage by her jealous and abusive master. But the Bill of Sale that finally ends her bondage symbolizes all the cruelty and oppression and hypocrisy of the institution of slavery in a society that professes to be Christian and democratic.

Journal for Douglass

"Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. Douglass provided a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice."
http://www.history.rochester.edu/class/douglass/home.html


Abraham Lincoln could not have been more fortunate in his adviser. We learned from "Lies My Teacher Told Me" that Abraham Lincoln came slowly to his commitment to the abolition of slavery. Frederick Douglass's ability to speak so powerfully about the subject must have had a lot do with it.
The exposition of the evil of slavery is not what astonishes the twenty first century reader of Frederick Douglass's "Narrative of the Life." What is astonishing is the intelligence, the courage, the strength, and the eloquence of the man himself. As a young boy he is taken to Baltimore to serve another master. His new mistress treats him kindly and starts teaching the child to read. When the master discovers this he is furious with his wife and takes her to task in front of the boy. The young boy hears the master explaining to his wife that slaves would not remain slaves if they were taught to read. The ten year old Douglass takes this unintentional revelation as the key to his liberation and grasps it with all the strength of his spirit. He teaches himself to read by lengthening his errands and cunningly enlists the help of some white boys he has befriended. He is profuse in his gratitude to these boys, with whom he shared affection.He continues his self-education with the same resourcefulness and perseverance and in this way he acquires a mastery over the written word that is impressive centuries later.
Nowhere is the intelligence of the voice, the incisive analysis of the institution, and the intricate multiplicity of his themes so brilliantly displayed as in the following paragraph, where he has been sent to be "broken" by Edward Covey.

"Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could have had it done with out such a reputation. Some slaveholders thought it not much loss to allow Mr. Covey to have their slaves one year, for the sake of training to which they were subjected, without any other compensation. He could hire young help with great ease, in consequence of this reputation. Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion - a pious soul - a member and class-leader in the Methodist Church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a "nigger-breaker." I was aware of all the facts, having been acquainted with them by a young man who had lived there. I nevertheless made the change gladly; for I was sure of getting enough to eat, which is not the smallest consideration to a hungry man." (Douglass, p. 2097.)

Journal for Poe

"The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literacy pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction

"I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable doom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible." p 1553

The opening of "The Fall of the House of Usher" is ironic in the way that it distances itself from the typical Dark Romantic tale. The narrator is saying, in effect, I know there are a lot of stories where there is a poetic sort of thrill in a creepy atmosphere like the one I am describing, but this is not one of those stories, believe me. He then goes on to employ every traditional element of the gothic story: the decaying mansion, the dark corridors and secret passages, ghosts, mysterious sounds, deep secrets, ancestral curses, a bloody demise on a stormy night under a full moon. He heightens the horror of the story by distancing himself from the mere conventions of horror. He gives his story a cloak of believability by referring to the pleasures of terrifying fiction, and preparing us for something truly horrible. He likens it to the "bitter lapse into common life" (p.1553) after an opium-induced dream, whereas in fact, of course, it is clearly nothing of the sort. This itself has become a convention of horror fiction. The narrator is one who is well-versed in the genre and acknowledges its pleasures, but is still wholly unprepared for the horrors that await him. He tries to explain away the shudder the appearance of the place induces in him, by saying that a different arrangement of the particulars of the scene would probably have a completely different effect. This way he makes us feel that we are in the hands of a rational narrator.

Journal for Hawthorne

"The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"A few shook their sagacious heads, intimating that they could penetrate the mystery; while one or two affirmed that there was no mystery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper's eyes were so weakened by the midnight lamp, as to require a shade."

"The obvious meaning of ["The Minister's Black Veil"] will be found to smother its insinuated one. The moral put into the mouth of the dying minister will be supposed to convey the true import of the narrative; and that a crime of dark dye (having reference to the "young lady") has been committed, is a point which only minds congenial with that of the author will perceive."

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-120253/Narrative-suppression-sin-secrecy-and.html

Upon first reading "The Minister's Black Veil" I got the impression that the story was really about the reaction of the Puritan townspeople to the minister's veil, and the power of group perceptions in a homogeneous population who is anxious to appear pious. There were things that were puzzling in the story, but I didn't stop to think about them, taking the minister's own explanation for his veil at face value.

Hawthorne says it is a parable, and I decided it must be a symbolic treatment of the consciousness of sin and guilt and the secrets that all humans harbor, especially New England Calvinists in the nineteenth century. But the article containing the above quote made me reread the story and pay attention to the details that belie the minister's own purported motives. The article writer's thesis is that the narrator of the story is seeking to conceal the real crime of the minister by generalizing it and treating his penance as a symbol for the sins of all of us. The assertion is based on a claim by Poe to have discovered that the minister's sin was a sexual transgression with the young lady whose funeral is held the afternoon of the day Hooper first appears veiled. A second reading revealed much that was at odds with the simple explanation that the minister gives for his decision to don a veil. Almost everything that the writer of the article mentions is something I had noted as odd, but I didn't dwell on.I was reacting to the discrepancies in the narrative the same way that the townspeople were, by ignoring them. The footnote at the beginning relating the story of a real -life minister seems curiously gratuitous at first. The narrator's account is full of oddities. He tells us that Hooper was supposed to have changed places with a minister from another parish, but that minister had canceled because he was to officiate at a funeral. But Hooper himself was due to conduct a funeral, so he had just as much reason to cancel. If the parishioners are such fools to be afraid of a mere piece of cloth, why does his reflected image cause such terror in Hooper himself? If he is trying to make a simple point about the sin in everyone's heart, why persist for a lifetime in a symbolic act whose impact was felt at once?

There is much in the story to suggest that the "parable" about the sins of all of us is hiding something that has to do with the young lady of the funeral. His sorrow at the young lady's funeral is "tender and heart-dissolving," but there is no such sentiment associated with his loss of Elizabeth, who is described very unromantically as his "plighted wife". The bride at the wedding is conflated by the minister's presence with the dead woman of the funeral.

In a broader sense the story can be seen as a parable about language itself, and the fact that any revealing is also of necessity at the same time a concealing. The quote from the story, about some people attributing the veil to the minister's problems with his eyes, is interesting when we look at the narrative itself as a veil covering the minister's very particular secret sin. The "sagacious" ones are making excuses for the minister, just as the whole story is serving as an elaborate obfuscation.

Journal for Davis

Rebecca Harding Davis - "Life in the Iron Mills"


"Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen Saviour was a key-note to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong,-even this social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler grappled with madly tonight." Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume B, p.2608

"There have been a number of commentaries written on the life of Rebecca Harding Davis, but it is remarkable that few make mention of her Christian faith, and none have recognized the considerable influence that her faith has had in the formation of her stories. Raised in a middle-class Christian family, educated in a conservative women’s seminary, and influenced by the social conscious coming from the Second Great Awakening, Rebecca Harding Davis’ works are clearly address with the problems that Christians of her day were concerned with: Slavery, worker exploitation, equal education, and justice for women locked in the bondage of prostitution or sexual discrimination. "

http://www.nuis.ac.jp/~hadley/publication/rhd/RHD.htm

The influence of Rebecca Harding Davis's Christian faith is very difficult to miss in this story. "Life in the Iron Mills"is full of Biblical quotations and references, both by the narrator, and ironically also by the factory owner's son and his companions who visit the mill on the fateful night the story describes. The iron mill is depicted as the very picture of hell, with its ranging inferno and the pale multitudes who toil there day and night. The author takes on directly and head-on the contradiction between the profession of Christian faith and the inhuman conditions suffered by the miserable workers.

This is a picture of capitalism and progress that is very grim indeed. Davis takes the reader firmly by the hand right from the beginning of the story. She points out the horrors and the contradictions of class inequality and exploitation in a very direct way, making sure that she does not allow the reader to turn away from disturbing contraditions between the reality she is depicting and the teachings of Christianity as well the principles of American Democracy. The consciousness of the terrible wrongness of the social order is also perceptible to Hugh Wolfe, dimly and vaguely at first, but increasingly clearly and in religious terms as the story reaches its climax. The fact that Hugh has unfulfilled spiritual longings is expressed by the fact that he makes sculptures out of the korl, a by-product of the iron-milling process. He is isolated from the community of the workers because of his artistic stirrings, and is troubled wordlessly at first, but the sight of the rich gentlemen begins to clarify the issue in his mind.

The gentlemen are affected by the sight of Hugh's sculpture,and they sit down and have an extensive discussion about class and equality and social mobility, both in political terms and religious. The owner's son is even compared to Pontius Pilate, and the condemned figure becomes a martyr whose similarity to Christ is underlined by the author, who points out that Hugh's was the social class the carpenter's son belonged to. The story ends with a very clear religious message, with the Quaker woman who takes under her care both Hugh's body and Deborah's soul.

Journal for Melville

Sally Doane
English 48A
Journal for Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener
September 28, 2009

Author Quote:
"I can readily imagine that to some sanguine sentiments, it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet, Byron, would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of say, five hundred pages, closely written in a crimpy hand."

Internet quote:
"Turkey and Nippers, although we may identify with them more easily, are no less mechanistic than Bartleby in the regularity, the predictability of their responses. With clockwork precision they "complement" one another's shifting moods, performing their tasks in equally servile, puppet-like fashion."
http://brainstorm-services.com/wcu-2005/bartleby-culturalcontext.html

Brief Summary:
"Bartleby the Scrivener" is the story of a lonely and miserable law clerk narrated by an elderly lawyer who has eschewed the drama and tumult of the courts in favor of doing "a snug business among rich men's bonds and mortgages and title deeds." The narrator has two other scriveners who have their limitations and inconsistencies which are humorously described in terms of their digestive predilections. He is at first very glad to have found the utterly genteel and unobtrusive Bartleby, who works without intrusions resulting from his personality. Gradually though, Bartleby refuses to perform more and more tasks, with the simple statement that he "would prefer not to." The simple emotionless passive resistance of the clerk completely unnerves and unmans the employer, to the point that he not only pays him for doing nothing but moves out of his offices himself rather than expel the man, and finally invites him to live with him at his own house. The narrator's compassion for the man threatens his livelihood as well as his professional reputation, but he cannot help himself. In the end Bartleby is evicted from the offices by the new tenants whereupon he continues to haunt the hallways and is finally taken to jail where he dies. The lawyer is completely unsuccessful at achieving any communication or connection with the man and fails to find out anything about him other than that his previous job was at the "Dead Letter Office", which he seems to feel accounts for his unaccountable depression and alienation.

Personal Response:
"Bartleby the Scrivener" can be described as an "absurdist" tale about industrial capitalism and the dehumanization of the worker. The building itself is a lifeless tower whose windows look onto walls. Bartleby and the other scriveners are little more than human copy machines. Indeed Bartleby is scarcely human at all; he doesn't eat, leave the office, have any relations or home or history - he doesn't seem to have any existence outside of the job. The other two scribes are human only by virtue of certain pecularities of temperament that, though related in a very entertaining manner, are really little more than tics. They too are nothing more than cogs in the capitalist machine, albeit cogs that stop and sputter at predictable intervals. The description of those two fellows and their approach to their work actually reminded me of a "de-duping" job I had as a temp when I first started working, where I had to scour huge galleys of mailing lists for duplicates, and the small rebellions and rituals that were necessary to maintain a sense of individuality and aliveness.

The thing that struck me the most in this story was the humor. Without the delicious humor it would simply be a dry allegory. The very first line alerts us that this is going to a be a quirky tale with a funny and personal viewpoint: "I am a rather elderly man."

I think the understatement of the above quote from the story referring to Byron is hilarious, granting that the scrivener's job probably would not be to everyone's liking, implying that it would take a soul as tempestuous and romantic as Byron's to be repelled by the tediousness of the task of proofreading a legal document of five hundred pages, and "closely written in a crimpy hand" at that. The hasty conclusion of the story is somewhat farcical too. The job at the Dead Letter Office does not really sound any more deadening than the copying job with the narrator.

I find the narrator's humanity touching. He himself is mystified by his compassion, justifying his indulgence as an attempt to "cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval." But in the very beginning of the story he says that he is going to write about an "interesting and somewhat singular set of men." It strikes me that not too many business associates of the Astors would find that particular set of men terribly interesting.