As stated in Blackstone ’ s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765): “ By marriage,
the husband and wife are one person in the law; that is, the very being and legal
existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage. ” 12 Not only did a woman ’ s
premarital property become her husband ’ s, but also any property accumulated subse-
quently, including wages and inheritances. Furthermore, until 1850, wife beating
with a “ reasonable instrument ” was legal in nearly all states – the parallels to slavery
are quite clear.
Similarly, as suggested by our earlier discussion of temperance fi ction, women ’ s
experience in the temperance movement led them to feel that the safety of women
and children necessitated the former ’ s independence. 13 Such conclusions, derived from
experience with both abolitionism and temperance, contributed signifi cantly to the
development of the Women ’ s Rights movement, whose fi rst major achievement was
the Seneca Falls Convention. Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott,
this gathering culminated in a “ Declaration of Sentiments, ” signed by 300 women
and men, which was essentially a plea – modeled on the Declaration of Independence
– for an end to discrimination against women in all spheres of society. 14 (Subsequently,
after 1850, annual national conventions were held.) While such activists as Margaret
Fuller turned out powerful non - fi ction tracts such as Woman in the Nineteenth Century
(1845), others, such as Betsey Chamberlain and Jane Sophia Appleton, used fi ction
to urge a reform of gender roles.
In Chamberlain ’ s “ A New Society ” (1840) the narrator falls into a daydream, and
then is handed a paper titled “ Annual Meeting of the Society for the Promotion of
Industry, Virtue, and Knowledge ” (91). Among the resolutions of this society are: “ 1.
Resolved. That every father of a family who neglects to give his daughters the same
advantages for an education which he gives his sons, shall be expelled from this
society, and be considered a heathen ” (91), and “ 4. … That the wages of females shall
be equal to that of males, that they may be enabled to maintain proper independence
of character ” (91). Chamberlain thus advocates an economic gender equality that still
has not been achieved a century and a half later, while urging a gender - blind attitude
toward education, whose full success was not achieved until the passing of Title IX
Short Fiction and Social Change
193
in 1972. 15 The narrator subsequently reads in the document that, as of 1860 (two
decades in the future, of course), two - thirds of America ’ s population belongs to this
Society, projecting Chamberlain ’ s hopes for the rapid attainment of a just relation
between the genders.
In Appleton ’ s “ Sequel to the ‘ Vision of Bangor in the Twentieth Century ’ ” (1848) ,
published the same year as the Seneca Falls Conference, the narrator, as in “ A New
Society, ” begins to dream, and fi nds herself in a utopia among whose qualities is a
markedly more egalitarian attitude toward women than that evidenced during the
Victorian era, as her “ guide ” states:
“ Woman is no longer considered as a mere object for caresses and pretty words. … Your
age fondled woman. Ours honors her: You gave her compliments. We have given her rights.
Your contemporaries … looked upon woman as a mere adjunct to man. As merely the
… ‘ angel to soothe his sorrows, the wife to adorn his fi reside ’ . … We regard her as
complete in herself. ” (Appleton 251 – 2)
Again, we see a radical emphasis on female autonomy and independence at the height
of the era of the Cult of True Womanhood. Anticipating Charlotte Perkins Gilman ’ s
ideas in such works as Women and Economics (1898) , The Home: Its Work and Infl uence
(1903), and
The Man Made World or Our Androcentric Culture
(1911), Appleton,
through her utopia ’ s “ eating houses, ” among other innovations, suggests that shared
domestic duties and collective kitchens and laundries would allow women to improve
their intellectual powers and help them achieve economic independence. Her narrator
observes that in this twentieth - century utopia, “ no fear of the world ’ s smile cramped
… [women ’ s] vigorous intellect, and no visions of ‘ blue stockings ’ repressed the soul
that would be free ” (263). Such freedom, however, in reality would not be achieved
for some time, as the fate of Kate Chopin ’ s Progressive Era heroine in “ Story of an
Hour ” (1894) reveals, as we shall see below.
As these two examples suggest, mid
-
nineteenth
-
century literary agitation for
women ’ s rights found utopian fi ction a congenial genre, a tradition continued much
later in Gilman
’
s
Herland
(1915). Here is thus another moment of overlapping
agendas, as such antebellum visionary texts also engage with broader reform issues
encapsulated in the utopian experiments of the era. Appleton ’ s story, for example,
exemplifi es such Fourieristic ideas as communal living, which was among those that
motivated the Brook Farm founders (ideas later satirized in Hawthorne ’ s A Blithedale
Romance [1852]).
Women
’
s Rights, temperance and utopian fi ction continue in the postwar
period, often persisting in the use of domestic tropes of social change, as we have
already seen in Alcott ’ s “ Silver Pitchers, ” for example. Nonetheless, after 1880, new
sub - genres of social change stories began to become popular, such as pro - labor fi ction.
Interestingly, however, even this industrial genre has its roots in the earlier period.
A few years before the Civil War, Herman Melville struck two blows for workers ’
rights, though characteristically complex and ambiguous: the highly canonical
194
Andrew J. Furer
“ Bartleby the Scrivener ” (1853) , and the lesser known “ The Paradise of Bachelors and
the Tartarus of Maids ” (1855) .
Scholars have provided many readings of Bartleby, from the economic and episte-
mological to the ethical (nihilism) and even the biological (Bartleby as anorexic). 16 It
seems clear that even though Bartleby ’ s occupation is technically white - collar, scriven-
ing is a repetitive, tedious endeavor, differing little from industrial factory work in
its soul - destroying effects. Thus, Bartleby ’ s refrain of “ I would prefer not to ” (112)
suggests, among other things, a critique of and resistance to the relentless, mindless
work imposed on the masses by industrial capitalism, and the diffi culty of effective
resistance. Bartleby ultimately withers away in jail – his only route of opposition leads
to isolation and self - destruction.
Two years later, Melville continued his critique in “ The Paradise of Bachelors and
the Tartarus of Maids, ” inspired by a visit to a paper mill near Pittsfi eld in January
of 1851. Though characteristically Melvillean in its symbolic complexity, the story ’ s
sympathy for the worker is evident: the fi rst factory denizen the narrator meets has a
face “ pale with work, ” and an eye “ supernatural with unrelated misery ” (219). Antici-
pating both Rebecca Harding Davis ’ s and Jack London ’ s portrayals of the dehuman-
izing effects of industrial labor, Melville, through the dull rhythm of repetitious
diction, shows us workers who have become their product, as London
’ s Johnny
becomes the machine he works on in “ The Apostate ” (1906/1911) (see p. xxx, below):
the narrator soon encounters rows of “ blank - looking girls, with blank, white folders
in their blank hands, all blankly folding paper ” (220). Echoing Emerson – “ Things
are in the saddle, / And ride mankind ” ( “ Ode, Inscribed to William Ellery Channing ”
[1846, ll. 50 – 1]) – and anticipating Thoreau – “ But men labor under a mistake ”
( Walden 261) – Melville tells us that, “ Machinery – that vaunted slave of humanity
– here stood menially served by human beings. … The girls … [were] … mere cogs
to the wheels ” of this mechanized edifi ce that turns rags into paper (221). Fear of
what machines will to do humanity in an industrial age permeate the text. “ The
Tartarus of Maids ” continually associates the factory with the devil and death – it is
located in “ Devil ’ s Dungeon, ” and is described as a “ whited sepulcher ” (216). The
narrator is quite direct about what the factory girls ’ work is doing to them, telling
us with Melvillean dark irony and punning that, “ through consumptive pallors of this
blank, raggy life, go these white girls to death ” (223).
A few years later, Rebecca Harding Davis, in Life in the Iron Mills; or, The Korl
Woman (1861), took up the cause of workers ’ rights. 17 According to Jane Atteridge
Rose, Davis ’ s story, initially published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly , “ con-
fronted readers with their own ignorance and challenged their complacency ” (35).
Unlike the often genteel, or at least genteelly represented, subjects of much temper-
ance fi ction, Davis ’ s subjects are likely to repel her middle - class readers. However,
she boldly attacks her topic head - on, inviting the reader into the steelworkers ’ horrifi c
lives, challenging them not to fl inch at the spectacle of their twisted bodies and dis-
fi gured souls: “ This is what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust, take
no heed to your clean clothes, and come right down with me, – here, into the thickest
Short Fiction and Social Change
195
of the fog … and foul effl uvia ” (13). The narrator describes the lives of the workers
as “ incessant labor, sleeping in kennel - like rooms, eating rank pork and molasses,
drinking – God and the distillers only know what; with an occasional night in jail,
to atone for some drunken excess ” (15). Depicting the main female character, Deborah,
the narrator states that she looks like a “ limp, dirty rag, – yet not an unfi tting fi gure
to crown the scene of hopeless discomfort and veiled crime: more fi tting, if one looked
deeper into the heart of things, at her thwarted woman ’ s form, her colorless life, her
waking stupor ” (21). Using rhetorical questions (as revealed by the plot), Davis asks
the reader, “ was there nothing worth reading in this wet, faded, thing … ? no [ sic ]
story of a soul fi lled with groping passionate love, heroic unselfi shness, fi erce jeal-
ousy? ” (21). Combining the techniques of realism, sentimentalism, and the classic
strategy in slave narratives of using personal, emotional, and familial identifi cation to
engage her readers
’
sympathies, thus refamiliarizing the apparent
“
Other,
”
Davis
equates Deborah
’
s expression of unrequited love to that on the
“
rarest, fi nest of
women ’ s faces ” (22). She then asks the reader, “ Are pain and jealousy less savage reali-
ties down here in this place I am taking you to than in your own house or your own
heart … ? The note is the same, I fancy, be the octave high or low ” (22, 23; emphasis added).
Similarly, Davis presents us with a working - class fi gure, Wolfe, whose korl sculptures
reveal that exceptional, artistic natures can be hidden amidst the grim and “ hard,
grinding labor ” (25) of the workers ’ quotidian existence. 18 She thereby bridges the
gap between middle - class reader and working - class subject, yet never lets the former
forget the malformed body and spirit infl icted on the latter:
Think that God put into this man ’ s soul a fi erce thirst for beauty, – to know it, to create
it; to be [original emphasis] – something, he knows not what, – other than he is. There
are moments when a passing cloud … a kindly smile, a child ’ s face, will rouse him to
a passion of pain, – when his nature starts up with a mad cry of rage against God, man,
whoever it is that forced this vile, slimy life upon him. With all this groping, this mad
desire, a great blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet ’ s heart, the man
was by habit only a coarse, vulgar laborer. … Be just: when I tell you about this night,
see him as he is. (25)
Nonetheless, through the mouth of one of her upper - class characters, Davis warns that
if conditions do not change, the working classes, out of need, “ will [throw] up their
own light - bringer … their Cromwell, their Messiah ” (39). A man like Wolfe, she
implies, could lead a revolution, or found a new faith.
Twenty years later, with millions more workers like Wolfe and Deborah having
entered the labor force, perhaps the most signifi cant period of reform in the United
States began. 19 During the Progressive Era, a multiplicity of reform movements fl our-
ished, as society underwent rapid urbanization and industrialization. The population
doubled to 100 million, of whom close to 20 million were immigrants (mostly from
Southern and Eastern Europe), the largest infl ux in American history. In 1907 alone
1.25 million immigrants arrived; by 1910, nearly 15 percent of all Americans were
foreign - born, and in some Eastern cities, more than half the population consisted of
196
Andrew J. Furer
immigrants and their children. In 1900, one - third of all Americans lived in cities of
8,000 or more; by 1910, nearly half the population lived in urban areas. The number
of urban areas of 100,000 or more increased from twenty - fi ve during the fi nal decades
of the nineteenth century to nearly three times as many by 1916.
Such expansion, however, was accompanied by signifi cant growing pains. In 1890,
11 million of the nation ’ s 12 million families earned less than $1,200 per year; of
this group, the average annual income was $380, well below the poverty line. Over
the next decade, the economy was shaken by two major panics, in 1893 and 1897,
even as “ trustifi cation ” proceeded; by 1900 there were seventy - fi ve trusts worth 10
million dollars or more, with as many as a thousand mergers a year at the turn of the
century. This period was also the era of American Imperialism, during which conti-
nental Manifest Destiny was extended overseas, leading to the Spanish - American War
; (including the takeover of Cuba and the Philippines) and the annexation of Hawaii. 20
Such changes led to both reform and violent resistance, including the rise of unionism,
exemplifi ed by the founding of the American Federation of Labor (1881), the United
Mine Workers (1899), and the International Workers of the World (1905), as well
as by the Haymarket riot (1886), the Pullman railroad (1894), and Lawrence textile
workers ’ (1912) strikes, and the Ludlow massacre (1914), during which the National
Guard fi red machine guns at a workers ’ encampment in Colorado. Between 1881 and
1905, over 37,000 strikes occurred throughout the country; by 1911, union member-
ship was fi ve times what it had been in 1897. This period also saw the founding of
signifi cant anti - racist organizations such as the NAACP (1909), which accompanied
the beginning of the Great Migration (mass movement of blacks from rural South to
urban North), the Society of the American Indian (1911) and the Japanese Association
of America (1908).
The era ’ s reform movements, in addition to trade unionism and the pursuit of
minorities ’
rights, included the Anti
-
Saloon League (a continuation of the mid
-
nineteenth - century temperance movement); 21 the Settlement House Movement (Hull
House opened in 1889); Regulationism (dedicated to controlling prostitution; over
200 of the largest cities closed their red - light districts between 1912 and 1920);
hygiene reform, including the pure food and birth control movements; socialism
(Eugene V. Debs
’
s tally in presidential elections went from 402,283 in 1904 to
900,672 in 1912, reaching the largest total ever for a socialist candidate in American
history, at a time when the population was only 90 million); Women ’ s Suffrage/
women ’ s rights; anti - trust agitation; anti - imperialism; anti - lynching; slum reform;
the conservation movement (e.g. the establishment of the National Park system under
Teddy Roosevelt); and the City Beautiful Movement.
Among the many successes of Progressive Age reform were the 190 million acres
of land added to national forests and protected from development between 1900 and
1908; the opening of higher education to women (47 percent of college students were
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 43