Harper's New Monthly Magazine February 1893

            I chose to look at the February 1893 issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. I thought about looking up one of the periodicals online but decided to go to the library instead. Although I have done something similar to this research before, I can never get over how much better it is to have a concrete volume of the magazine or newspaper in your hands rather than looking at it on a computer screen. The library research assignment is one of my favorite things about this class because it gives you the unique experience of looking at writing as a piece of history from the American past; I honestly doubt I would have ever thought to go look up an old newspaper on my own.  

            I skimmed through a few issues of the magazine before I settled on one. The front page of the February edition caught my attention because it was a background piece on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. As I was reading through it, one line was without a doubt my favorite of the entire issue: “I cannot believe that Shakespeare was ever one of those lugubrious poets and romancers who see everything draped in black, and insist on fixing their dreary smoke spectacles over the eyes of the public.” I cannot help but hope the same thing myself! I thought that the author of this piece expressed his sentiment so perfectly; I could see exactly what his point was. After reading this issue of Harper’s and reflecting on some of the other pieces we have read this semester, it seems to me that we have lost a lot of the beauty that used to be in our language. The precision that Americans use in choosing their words has faltered considerably in the last hundred years or so.

            After the article on Shakespeare, there was a well written obituary-type piece on John Whittier, the poet. Although the piece was clearly a commemoration of John Whittier post-mortem, it did not read like an obituary at all. In describing his death, the author wrote, “His last illness was brief…and thus the waves of time passed over him and swept him from our sight.” Had you not realized that this was about an actual person, the “obituary” would have seemed like an ending to a work of fiction! Later on in the issue, there was another piece about George William Curtis that was comparable to the one on Whittier because it followed the same type of commemorative style. I also noticed that in both pieces, the works of these men were set up alongside those of Emerson, Thoreau, and Longfellow when discussing their worth. I thought it was interesting that the authors saw it necessary to include that. It goes to show that these authors were all widely recognized by the audience who read Harper’s Magazine because they all would have published their pieces in it.

            Interspersed throughout the magazine were works of both fiction and non-fiction, accompanied by sketches of aspiring artists. I went from reading a piece called “New Orleans, Our Southern Capital,” which seemed like a ten page long advertisement, to a piece called “Tio Juan,” which was clearly a fictional short story. After “Tio Juan” there were eight chapters of “The Refugees” by A. Conan Doyle which seemed to be a novel that was subsequently printed in each new issue of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. I found the first chapters in the January issue, and the end of the February issue stated “to be continued.” The idea of publishing a novel in a magazine seems crazy now. I cannot imagine an author being successful by publishing their works in that manner in today’s society, but Doyle must have had a following audience for the magazine to keep publishing his work. Besides the writing, the sketches were something that you never see in contemporary magazines; the illustrations were entrancing because of the sheer amount of detail that was put into each one.

            Just before the editor’s notes, I saw a small section titled “Monthly Record of Events.” Underneath, there was a detailed account of the recent presidential election in 1892 of which Grover Cleveland was pronounced the winner from the Democratic Party. Just after this was an account of a natural disaster, an earthquake, that had also occurred in November with a statement that victims were still recovering. In light of our recent election and Hurricane Sandy, I thought it was an interesting parallel. Although writing styles and magazine structures have changed, some things in America have clearly not changed as much as others.

Challenging Norms: Chopin and Chesnutt

            The elements that the Chopin and Chesnutt pieces brought to the ideas of slavery and the post-slavery world were really interesting to me. Since they describe the stories of white or partially white people, they have a unique perspective that you do not often read about in the accounts of slavery. I liked that each of the stories had their own twist at the end also; the endings served to challenge the norms of the societies that the characters operated within and make the audience think.

            “Desiree’s Baby” was my favorite of the two pieces. Armand Aubigny is quick to jump to the conclusion that his wife is mulatto when their son turns out to have some physical aspects of African American descent. Since Desiree has no knowledge of her own personal background, she is forced to accept his criticisms and leave with her baby to live with her adopted mother. Chopin really uses the piece to show how society discriminated against people with African American descent during this time. Armand does not even hesitate to throw her out when she asks if she should leave and he seems disgusted with having married her. It seems to wound his pride and he can no longer feel the love and happiness for her that he once had. When it turns out at the end that Armand is actually the one with African American descent, and not his wife who he has shut out, there is a sort of irony since he was so certain that his well-to-do family would have nothing to do with mixing races. Looking back on the passage, I thought it was incredibly ironic that Desiree comments, “Look at my hand; whiter than yours, Armand” as she tries to prove to him that it is not her fault.

            I felt that Chesnutt’s piece was a little more predictable but still with the same sort of ending. Mr. Ryder was getting along in society just fine pretending that he was a white man as the head of the Blue Vein society. However, in contrast with the Chopin piece, when the wife of his youth shows up at his door, he acknowledges her in the end. He recognizes her as his wife and gives up any prospects of moving up in society by marrying Mrs. Dixon. Even though this piece is set in a post-war society, the attitudes of racism are still apparent and the idea that only those with whiter skin can have any chance of doing well for themselves remains.

            Both of these pieces deal with the attitudes of society toward people who were of a mixed race during the time at the end of the civil war and directly after. Even though many people of mixed race were not slaves, they were still treated badly because they were not purely white. This type of prejudice disgusts me and I think the authors did great jobs of challenging this belief in their pieces by showing that skin color has nothing to do with affluence in society or morality. The reasoning for racism is all made up.

Less Than Lucky: Bret Harte

            I can’t think of a less lucky character than Thomas Luck. Even though the campsite improved during the time that all the men were caring for and looking after baby Luck, overall I thought that the story was kind of depressing. His mother, Cherokee Sal, is described as a dirty “Ingin” and feels “dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaimable” while giving birth because the town is filled with men and there is not a single woman to help her deliver her baby. To make matters worse, she dies just after giving birth to the baby and Luck is left an orphan in a town full of men! Then, at the end of the short story, Luck is killed in a random natural disaster that sweeps away the house that he was living in and he dies, still an infant. Despite the name of the baby, I think that the settlement of Roaring Camp imagined their luck during the time they have the small boy in their possession.

            One thing I really enjoyed about the story was the imagery that Harte uses to describe nature scenes. When he is telling the audience about the setting of the village, he paints the scene as he describes the only outlet of the settlement as “a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon.” There are several references to pine boughs throughout the story that “add sociability” and the river is described often, although ironically it is that river that steals their Luck away. I thought Harte captured the natural images of the west quite beautifully in this piece, even if the actual topic of the piece was less than beautiful.

            Another thing that really stood out to me while I was reading was the non-adherence to the typical story line of the American Western frontier. There is hardly any mention of what the men are actually doing out in the middle of California by themselves (although I expect they are part of the gold rush). The men in the story are not your typical rugged heroes that steal everyone’s heart, but just a bunch of men who cuss and don’t know how to raise a baby in the slightest. Finally, the only woman in the piece is Cherokee Sal who is not described to be a perfect specimen of female beauty with a personality to boot, as most western tales display, but rather as a “course and…rather sinful woman” who doesn’t even know the father of her child. I liked that Harte strayed from the norm in producing his tale and gave the characters an atypical path to follow, even if it didn’t turn out so well for them in the end.

Madness is Divinest Sense: Emily Dickinson

            I enjoyed Emily Dickinson’s poetry because it had a different quality and taste compared to some of the other works we have discussed. She points out some of the ironies of life and contemplates some of the aspects of death and despair. Because most of her poems are incredibly short, she does a wonderful job being concise and getting to the point within two or three stanzas. I haven’t read much of her poetry but I thoroughly appreciated her style in writing her poems.

            I was intrigued by the poem “I like a look of Agony.” It seems that often people hide their emotions and you can never really tell what they are feeling. People smile when they are happy; they smile when they are angry. You can fake a smile, but it is much harder to fake an emotion like agony. If you see someone who convulses their face while experiencing an emotion as strong as anguish, you know exactly what they are feeling because “men do not sham Convulsion.” The poem is interesting because it has a sense of morbidity but I think it has a quality that most of us can identify with.

            The other poem that I liked quite a bit was “Much Madness is divinest Sense.” It seems illogical that madness could be sensible or sense could be madness, but Dickinson gives us evidence on the contrary. Dickinson seems to be advocating some aspects of nonconformity in this short poem. Society often calls people mad if they break away from the norm. But it is also most often the people that break away from the norm who discover the most important advances or create the works of art that we revere today. If no one were to break away and risk being called “mad,” we would not be able to take strides in advancement. Under this assumption, it becomes the “sane” that have the “starkest Madness” because they never challenge themselves. Unfortunately, the majority of people continue to operate under the idea: “Demur – you’re straightway dangerous.”

            I liked Dickinson’s work because of the sardonic insight and irony that she utilizes throughout her various pieces. Although there is the definite sense of morbidity in many of the poems about death, the morbid ideas have a purpose in proving Dickinson’s point about life and the finality that lies in death. Dickinson’s ideas challenge the societal norms and go against the grain.

Treated Like Animals: Frederick Douglass

            There is no reasoning on earth that could justify the amount of suffering that Frederick Douglass went through as a child and a young man. One of the most shocking images to me was that of the children running around with nearly no clothes on in the middle of winter! How can you let small children live with so much pain by freezing them for the simple lack of a blanket and some decent clothes? Douglass refers to the fact that most children were provisioned two shirts a year and pants were considered a luxury they did not need. The slave owners treated these children like filthy miscreants that were no better than the lowest animal! Douglass described many a child stealing scraps from the pigs in order to get something to eat so that they simply would not starve to death. The anguish that these people were subject to from sheer hunger disgusts me, especially when there was quite clearly a surplus of food at the plantation owner’s house.

            The act of whipping that pervades the story makes my stomach churn as well. The overseers and slave owners seem to whip the slaves merely because they have the ability to do so. Captain Anthony whips Aunt Hester for visiting a friend at night and he relishes the whipping by whipping her harder based on how loud she screams. The cold-bloodedness of this scene broke my heart and I felt as if I was standing with Frederick Douglass as a child when he witnessed all of this. In the city, Douglass describes the deplorable situation of his neighbors, Mary and Henrietta. Mrs. Hamilton whipped them in the head and on the shoulders nearly every minute and referred to Mary as a “black gip.” I’m blown away at how these women ever survived after the loss of so much blood and I wanted to slap Mrs. Hamilton after this description. When Douglass finally rises up against Mr. Covey towards the end of the chapters, I almost jumped out of my chair and yelled at the prospect of his success. No longer would he stand to be whipped like a common animal and treated with less respect than dirt on the road.

            Frederick Douglass’s narrative showed the inhumane practices of slavery that were acceptable in the 1830s. My emotions were like a roller coaster throughout all of the chapters that we read. I felt disgust towards the slave owners, despair for Douglass and the other slaves, anger at the whippings of innocent people, and triumph for Douglass as he finally harnesses some way to stop the cycle of violence for himself. The power that learning to read and write had on Douglass is clear throughout his piece and it seems to have given him the courage to move forward and pursue his freedom from slavery. His narrative is well written and deeply moving. I am sure that I will not be able to get rid of the images of starving, half-naked children for quite a while.