Author: Aubrey Wallen

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Apparently it’s perfectly fine for Winterbourne to offer to take Daisy Miller on late evening excursions, but should any other man attempt such cruel notions, he will soon find himself the worst type of human in the eyes of Winterbourne. Winterbourne takes immense issue with the late night excursion Daisy takes with Giovanni in Rome and blames her death upon it, but this blame and judgment disregards that Winterbourne wished to do almost the same thing. Upon meeting Ms. Miller, Winterbourne desired to take her on a midnight boat ride before it had even been a full day knowing each other. The love story or tragedy of “Daisy Miller: A Study,” by Henry James, relies on the hypocrisy of social etiquette and the leniency versus judgment offered to different individuals on the basis of prejudice.

Winterbourne cultivated an affection for Ms. Miller in the story, but paralleling every feature of hers that he adored was his constant acknowledgement, judgment, and beration of her lack of mind for social customs, or her wildness as he described it. He never truly loved or cared for Daisy, but rather cared to critique her and to control her. Everything about her that he found intriguing, her carefree manner, her spontaneity, her openness, were the very assets of her personality that he constantly sought to dismantle. Arguably, it would have been more of a tragedy should Daisy have returned Winterbourne’s feelings before death because should she have entered a relationship with him, I firmly believe that he would have crushed her.

Clearly, Winterbourne and Giovanni weren’t that different in their affection for Daisy and it is doubtful that Giovanni intended to get her ill and eventually cause her death. Other suitors who did the same were simply fortunate enough to not suffer the consequences. If anything, Giovanni was shown to impose less on Daisy’s personality. She could be free with him and explore Rome without fear for judgment of walking too long or in the wrong area. He offered her freedom with his affections. In addition, the primary argument against his character seemed to criticize him for not being of a high enough social standing. Winterbourne, who spent much time criticizing him, could only critique his class, intellect, and not his cruelty because there was none. Winterbourne was the one who wished to change Daisy.

I find this connection of ideas in a text written in the 19th century fascinating. It almost seems to argue against social conventions and in the valuing of character over someone’s willingness or ability to follow arbitrary standards. Daisy may have died, but Winterbourne will always love a woman that he wanted only to change. He will suffer the torment of losing the idealized version of Daisy that he wished to crush her into. Giovanni, however, while missing the real Daisy, will at least have the memory of her as more than a flirt or an American, but as the woman he loved. I believe the memories that each suitor is left with say much more about their characters than anything else.

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“Mars Dugal’,’ sezee, ‘I knows I’s be’n monst’us bad -, but befo’ I go I wanter git sump’n off’n my mine. Dave didn’t steal dat bacon w’at wuz tuk out’n de smoke-’ouse. I stole it all, en I hid de Ham under Dave’s cabin fer ter th’ow de blame on him-en may de good Lawd fer-gib me fer it.” (Chesnutt; Dave’s Neckliss 29).

In the section “David’s Neckliss,” of Tales of Conjure and the Color Line by Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Uncle Julius tells the story about an enslaved man, David, who was driven to kill himself by a punishment and humiliation inflicted over a theft of ham that David did not commit. David was the scapegoat, and in the passage above another enslaved person admits to stealing the ham and hiding it under David’s house. David bore the punishment for her actions, which though they weren’t actually wrong were treated as such. David suffered for actions or sins he did not commit due to false blame and died as a result. 

I thought this story line seemed familiar however. Who else suffered for sins that weren’t their own and died as a result while hanging, not by a rope as David was, but on a cross. This made me curious if Chesnutt might have intended to compare the character David to christ because he suffered so the other slaves wouldn’t face consequences from cruel masters. Supporting this observation, is David’s name. Although this could be wrong as I’m not a very religious person, I believe that David was the only character, especially out of the black characters that had a religious name. This seems to make the connections that can be drawn from David and Christ more overt as why else would David be the only slave with a name from the bible. 

The introduction to Chesnutt’s stories claims that Chesnutt wanted to generate more equality through his writing, but I found this hard to absorb while reading. He only gives accents to black speakers. His characters make comments about why slaves shouldn’t be able to read. The overall characterization of Uncle Julian makes him seem manipulative and stupid all at once somehow. And this is what makes the possible connection between David and Christ so interesting. Despite being told his writing works to argue against slavery by the book introduction, I struggled to understand how while reading. This makes the godliness and righteousness of David seem so contrary to the rest of the reading. I would be really curious to know if Chesnutt interpreted David’s righteousness as an argument against slavery, especially considering the constant white savior complex and blatant racism and stereotypes his writing implements.

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Upon realizing that George has been killed, Editha rushes to see Mrs. Gearson, his mother as she promised she would. However, she finds no sympathy for the death of the lover who she sent off to war, claiming she could only love a man who loved her country, America. Mrs. Gearson declares, “No, you didn’t expect him to get killed,” Mrs. Gearson repeated in a voice which was startlingly like George’s again. “You just expected him to kill someone else, some of those foreigners, that weren’t there because they had any say about it, but because they had to be there, poor wretches–conscripts, or whatever they call ‘em. You thought it would be all right for my George, your George, to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls that you would never see the face of” (Adams 362).

Many interesting points are raised in this speech that contradict the readings prior over-enunciated patriotic tone, that went so far as to claim Editha could only love a soldier of her country, a hero. Mrs. Gearson accuses Editha of attempting to force George to become a murder to men who would be just as complacent or resistant even to the war as he. She claims that Editha’s pressures would have led to the downfall of George’s character, and that she is glad that he died, for at least being murdered he was not forced to murder. In addition to critiquing the intense war-mongering in the United States prior to the Spanish-American War, this speech also attributes much of said war-mongering to women. The story “Editha” contains no blood thirsty men, but rather Editha pushing her partner to go to war so she can have the pride of him being a hero when he returns. The story critiques the role of women, who would not personally be sent to a war-front, for their roles in persuading and pressuring men into the turmoils of war. I would be curious to know if there was an actual discrepancy between the level of support for the war between men and women at this time. Was there a valid reason to attribute the blame for the deaths of men to women, or did the writer simply dislike women? Was this an isolated incident to this family or was it a wide-spread phenomenon to blame women for the deaths of men that they encouraged to go to war.

I find this particularly interesting because it shifts the blame from the government that declared the war to the women, who at this point in time had little to no say on how a war progressed. The story almost seems to treat Editha as a scape-goat. And while I disagree with Editha’s actions, I believe this representation that women receive in 19th century America is interesting enough to examine further.

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Upon the discovery of Tom’s death, George decides to liberate the slaves residing on his plantation evoking a series of cries from those he has enslaved about what they are now to do. In reaction, George gives the following speech:

“My good friends,” said George, as soon as he could get a silence, “there’ll be no need for you to leave me. The place wants as many hands to work it as it did before. We need the same about the house that we did before. But, you are now free men and women. I shall pay you wages for your work, such as we shall agree on. The advantage is, that in case of my getting in debt, or dying,–things that might happen,–you cannot now be taken up and sold. I expect to carry on the estate, and to teach you what, perhaps it will take you some time to learn,–how to use the rights I give you as free men and women. I expect you to be good and willing to learn; and I trust in God that I shall be faithful, and willing to teach. And now, my friends, look up and thank God for the blessing of freedom” (Stowe 447). 

While Uncle Tom’s Cabin significantly forwarded the abolitionist movement, it still fails to fully condemn slavery by modern standards. Justifications are offered for slaveholders who practiced slavery in a christian way. George, one of these aforementioned slaveholders, seems to be praised for the book for not only freeing his slaves, but also for offering to continue guiding them into freedom. It was common through the book for certain slave owners to attempt to take on a parental or guiding role to those they enslaved, but the unequal power dynamic, immorality of slavery, and the constant condescension to black people caused it to seem more like they viewed them as pets. All George is offering in this scene is what would in modern standards be considered less than the bare minimum or as the bar is on the floor, and as a result he receives praise. He claims their freedom comes from God giving him the authority of a god in his choice to free them. 

Also, I have a hard time believing that George intends to pay these slaves he’s freeing an actual, living wage, and that they weon;t just get caught in a cycle of sharecropping as was common practice after the abolition of slavery. Even though he no longer “owns” them he still has an immoral authority over them. George is in a sense the white savior of the novel. And, while I understand that this was written in a different time period, I believe it’s still important to acknowledge that his actions weren’t heroic by any means. The novel helped progress abolition forward, but it by no means, likely due to the need to please a white audience, can fully express the grossness of all slave owners, even those you can argue are “good, christian people.”

Loading Likes... When reading the poetry of Whiteman, I couldn’t help, but observe his focus on the portrayal of the everyday mundane. He wrote of the natural world and of average people whom actually occupy it, but despite the content’s ordinariness his work created a beautiful image in “Song to Myself.” It was an image that placed Whitman among nature and connected him to the world around him without the restriction of society’s warriors from natural order. He shows every living thing to be equal no matter their profession by placing them in the same world that applies the same rules to each of them.

In section 15, Whitman writes,
“The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,
The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of the foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,
The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready…”

This section of his work equalizes the mentioned people. It compares a pilot and a contralto, a carpenter and a mate on a whale boat. Each individual is simply doing what they do and there is no judgment, just acute observation of their livelihoods by Whitman.

I found this simplistic view of the world and the people in it as just beings reminiscent of the philosophies of Emerson who saw man’s pursuits to align with nature. He believed that as long as man had the world god gave them that there should be no reason to be unhappy for they have fields to grow food in and work to do that was a gift from God. Whiteman is writing of everyday life as it’s a beautiful thing, a part of the song in him, a part of what makes him him. His livelihood can be expressed in ordinary words because his poetry reacts to Whiteman’s call for a return to nature and embraces the ordinary over the extravagance of previous western ideals.

Loading Likes... When Hester first removes the scarlet letter while planning her escape with the minister in the woods she seems to miraculously transform from a wearied hag into a tremendously beautiful maiden. She takes her hair out from her hat, allowing its thick strands to fall upon her shoulders and the youth she once possessed seems to reinvigorate her as her womanly passions come flowing back in. Hawthorne writes, “Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow” (536). I found the reinvigoration of Hester’s beauty as a result of the removal of the letter fascinating. This book was written within a Puritan society that would have condemned passion as sinful, and thus, I would have assumed that the blossoming of passions, as this scene demonstrates, would tamper Hester’s beauty. Instead it does the opposite. THis scene almost crafts the Scarlet Letter to be not just a stain on Hester’s virtue, but a weight that drains her of her life, when the punishment, if anything, should be guiding her towards godliness and repentance. I would be curious to know if this was Hawthorne’s intention to show Hester as sinful without the letter, but rather as free and youthful with a life in front of her due to the condemning connotations it attributes to their society’s punishments rather than to Hester’s wanton sinfulness.

Loading Likes... The norton’s excerpt from “My Bondage and My Freedom,” offers a much closer and personal examination of Frederick Douglass’s experiences. It tells about the time he was sent to stay with an overseer, Mr. Coven’s, and his time resisting his abuse which was his first major act of open rebellion.

He writes, “Covey at length (2 hours had lapsed) gave up the contest. Letting me go he said, –puffing and blowing at a great rate–“now you, scoundrel, go to your work; I would not have whipped you half as so much as I have had you not resisted.” The fact was, he had not whipped me at all. He had not, in all the scuffle, drawn a single drop of blood from me. I had drawn blood from him: and even without this satisfaction, I should have been victorious, because my aim had not been to injure him, but to prevent his injuring me.”

This excerpt from the text shows the increased closeness and vulnerability shown by Douglass than in comparison to his writing in Narrative of the Life, in which he recollects his memories in a more distant writing style. This same event of his life was briefly mentioned in the narrative, but with much less distinct detail. When reading this account of his experience however, the writing felt much more vivid and haunting due to the quantity of details and the closeness to Douglass who tells the reader of his thoughts in addition to just the events of his life. The much closer narrative style that reads more like a journal than a biography creates a more impertinent emotional impact that led me to check the dates each piece was published. I found that My Bondage and My freedom was published ten years after a Narrative Life which would account for a higher amount of detail and emotional vulnerability as Douglas was further separated from slavery and further immersed in the abolitionist movement. This assumption is further supported by the appendix that he added to the Narrative of the Life after its initial publication in which he writes more intense poetry about abolitionism. I would be curious to know more about the historical context between 1945 and 1955 when the two pieces were published. Was there a surge in abolitionism that made it possible for more passionate abolitionism pieces to be published or was Douglas more bold with time.

Loading Likes... It is known that Emerson found himself traveling across Europe and engaging with the ideas of the great European thinkers. This influence appears in his writing style that reads as a poetic, philosophical text. He utilizes occasional verses to emphasize his points and relies on descriptions of natural scenery to bring out the wisdom he attributes to it. In this eloquently designed lecture, Emerson argues that the poet functions as the sayer or the son of the holy trinity. He is immersed in nature that he patiently observes allowing for him to participate in art which he defines as the creation of beauty.

Emerson writes, “And this hidden truth, that the foundation whence all this river of Time, and its creatures, floweth, are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of nature and functions of the poet, or the man of beauty” (255). He believes that art is created by man as he stands still and observes nature and its movement as it changes or as the river flows, that beauty is found in the successful imitation of nature, and that only the poet is truly capable of this unity with nature. This ideology seems to draw heavily from the philosophical rhetoric of Germany, particularly the works of Heidegger and Winckelman.

Johannes Winckelman, the father of art history argues that true beauty comes from the successful imitation of nature after a careful study and examination of it, a feat that was only ever accomplished by the ancient Greeks in his view. This idea became the basis of the future philosophical cannon that was uptaken by Lessing, Hegel, Goethe, Heidegger and so forth. It is also apparent in the writing of Emerson who views nature as the source of wisdom and ideal beauty. In addition, his work seems to overlap with the ideas generated later on by Heidegger in his university lectures in which he claimed a river flowed in all directions in time and space to the acutely observational eyes of a poet. Only the poet was capable of seeing the true beauty and art in the world, similarly to how Emerson depicts the poet in his own work.

Loading Likes... In Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, the Native American characters, particularly those allied with a tribe that opposed the British Settlers were ruthlessly described as savages and constantly characterized by their foolish and violent acts without accounting for the role of retribution against the devastation of white colonization. However, Cooper also offers these characters brief moments of redemption through the thread of music which brought true feeling and retribution to these characters. The initial singer is a white man, David Gamut, who is seen to be foolish for singing, but who then protects Alice and Cora by singing them a lullaby during a massacre. While the scenario is unlikely it offers value to the godly, healing power of music in Cooper’s work.

This positive characterization is attributed to Native Americans in various scenes throughout the book. For example, Cooper writes, “It is impossible to describe the music of their language, while thus engaged in laughter and endearments in such a way as to render it intelligible to those whose ears have never listened to its melody” (200). Despite his constantly racist descriptions of Native Americans, he still acknowledges the indescribable beauty and musicality of their language. He still can not totally withhold their humanness from them.