Inner Feeling Projection

In Mark Twain’s The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today he, in short, critiques his society and it’s infamous façade. The Gilded Age was entitled so because on the surface it appeared beautiful, full of potential for the common man and wealth for the rich, but under the golden surface was a much more base material—the dark secrets, child labor, racism, and hopelessness, of the time. Much like Mr. Twain, Rebecca Harding Davis uses her short story The Yares of Black Mountain to answer the Horatio Alger story, to pry the veneers off of Reconstruction culture. Davis uses a perversion of the common ‘quest’ style story to make subtle swipes at falsely optimistic literature. After being told that a change in scenery would cure her dying son, Mistress Denby travels to place where “civilization stops,” projecting her optimism falsely on her surroundings all the way. As stated by other travelers the scenery, at best “lacks the element of grandeur” and yet Denby looks upon everything with awe. She has put herself into a delusional environment, just like the rest of America has created a delusion of easy upward mobility.

Disclaimer I suppose: In the end of the story it turns out that the boy survives. The mother’s hopes come true. Though this is not to say that her delusion is less delusional, she allowed herself to be influenced by baseless hope.

Alger and Ragged Dick

One of our first hypotheses on the role of children in literature was that children function as an image of the future. Children, in a matter of twenty to thirty years, will be fully functioning adults, running the nation, writing, etc. By using children in literature the author can express his hopes and fears for the country, or for humanity in general. In Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger, I think that Dick is Alger’s ideal future American. He is stubborn, self reliant, hardworking, but not uptight about his funds. He is clever, funny and puts his superiors to shame. He stands up for those weaker than him; he is moral and is not afraid to start trouble for the sake of justice. But why must he be male, why must the representatives of future generations be presented to nineteenth century audiences as young men. As much as I hate to say it, it boils down to gender roles. Young women were too busy making toast and learning to take care of the family to represent a generation. In fact, as society stood, there was really no purpose in thinking of a woman as representative of the time. A woman’s job was the same no matter when she was born; she must take care of her family. That is a universal and timeless responsibility of woman of this time. Essentially, my point is that Alger used a young boy to give an image of the future because, let’s face it, the voice of the future must be young, and cannot be girl—there really wasn’t much choice involved. In the end, young boys like Dick represent the hopes of the author for society’s future. And what these young men in literature stand for shows much about the state of 19^th century society. The 19^th century was a time of excessive hope, but only because things were so dismal. The gilded age was a dishonest and oppressive time, a time when honest and fair heroes where created in literature as examples to the present society. In this way, all of this literature is pedagogical, in fact I would venture to say that most any literature worth reading is pedagogical in some way, shape or form.

'Oblivion to the Past

In no way do I feel that Sybil became any less of a reliable narrator once she entered the insane asylum. In fact, I find the very idea that a change setting, no matter how drastic, can invert our trust in a narrator is preposterous, if not offensive. The reader’s job, as we’ve addressed in class, is to actively make personal judgments as the text goes on. And, sure, it’s possible for an author to be deceptive, but just because we can be deceived as readers, does not mean that we blithely step in time with everything the author says.

Even in the story, there is overwhelming evidence that Dr. Karnac and Sybil’s uncle had been planning Sybil’s incarceration for some time. Simply at show of emotion that is, I might add, perfectly normal, Dr. Karnac says that Uncle is “perfectly justified in doing so;” So, in light of future events, obviously refers to incarcerating Sybil. These subtle hints in conversation (“take this quieting draft,” “virulence is a bad symptom” and “drink with me… I was unused to wine… proved too potent for me”) utterly prove that Sybil’s uncle has engineered the entire situation.

To conclude, when Sybil enters the insane asylum the readers should not change their opinions on her. With as much experience as we have with Sybil, the reader should have already known if they trust her or not. The reality is there is no real element of insanity that enters the story. Sure, there is mention of the word and a threat of becoming insane in the asylum, but that is not Sybil’s fault.