Modernism in the Early 20th Century

American Poet Amy Lowell, wrote the poem “September, 1918” during the height of Americas involvement in the first World War. The poem is also a great representation of modernism first appearing in poetry.

            This poem starts off with beautiful imagery. She’s describing a fall afternoon. The whole first stanza is filled with words that have positive connotation.

“The trees glittered…”

“The houses ran along them laughing…”

“The sidewalks shone…”

“the colour of water falling through sunlight…”

She then leads us to a park where two little boys are playing and gathering berries to put in their box. Everything is very light and happy. Then everything shifts in the next stanza. In the first line of the second stanza she immediately mentions war.

“Someday there will be no war”

That line alone changes the mood of the poem. Instead of being bombarded with beautiful, calming imagery, the mood changes to a sad, longing, defeated mood. The stanza goes on to express the feeling of hoping for a day without war. She’s hoping for a world like the one described in the first stanza. She saves the memories she has of a world full of beauty and hangs on to them.

“To-day I can only gather it

and put it into my lunch-box,

For I have time for nothing

But the endeavor to balance myself

Upon a broken world.”

She’s holding onto these memories but she understands that she isn’t living in that world anymore. The world that she lives in is broken. She lives in a world that is engulfed in war and despair. It’s not perfect and things don’t always make sense.

            After reading this I understood how it was an example of modernism. It is full of powerful imagery and it shares the idea of the world being chaotic instead of being perfect and full of order. As I went back to read it again I started to even notice in the first stanza that it isn’t as “happy” as I originally thought. There are darker ideas intertwined with the positive diction. Even though the poem depicts a beautiful fall scene, some words that she chooses are more negative.

“Water falling…”

“tumbling of the leaves…”

“dropped maple leaves…”

These negative words about things falling gives the impression that something is going to happen. She could be hinting at war that has started. Things are starting to fall apart. The fact that she even mentions two little boys playing may represent all the families being affected by the war. Men of all ages are being sent out to war. Young men are leaving, children’s fathers are leaving, families are changing. Apart from that, the actual idea of September represents change and death. September is the end of warm weather, leaves start falling, and everything becomes bare. The harshness of winter is right around the corner. Despite the positive imagery laced in the first stanza it is actually leading to the negativity and reality in the second stanza. The world is not perfect. Although there is beauty in this world there is also despair and depression. 

Final thoughts on Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

            After reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and looking at different essays providing additional context or critiques on the novel one primary theme that I am most interested is slavery. Of course the book is all about slavery. But I’m interested in how slavery is presented and how the different characters in the book react to slavery and how that in turn affects readers and the message that the book conveys.

            Uncle Tom’s Cabin presents us with several different depictions of slaves lives. We see positive and negative situations. Sometimes the slaves are in homes that they like and where they are treated well. Then suddenly they are ripped away and sold, or parts of their families are sold leaving them heartbroken and powerless. We see slaves risk their lives and attempt an escape to the north. Some slaves remain submissive, others commit suicide instead of remaining in a life of slavery. Some slaves are touched by the people around them and are given strength. Others are beaten down and left with almost nothing. Stowe really paints a wide picture of several different outcomes that happen in slaves lives. You never really know what life is going to put you through as a slave. Life is constant; it’s not stable. Stowe made it clear that life as a slave is not easy and day after day life tests their strength and faith.

            Not only does Stowe show us how slavery effects slaves but she also shows us several different white families and how they deal with slavery. Stowe shows us several different families that are in favor of slavery and treat slaves horribly, families that are anti-slavery and do their best to help slaves, or families that own slaves but treat them well. What interests me is that each type of family is still religious and use religion to explain their various viewpoints on slavery. There’s Christians that use the bible to prove that men are supposed to own slaves and there’s Christians who believe that if you believe in slavery you aren’t acting as a good Christian. As I was first reading the book I was curious as to why Stowe would have characters use religion to defend both sides of an argument. Stowe herself came from a religious family with several members of her family being in the ministry. So why would she depict religion as a force behind slavery and anti-slavery? In the White families the women are typically the ones preaching religion and the men don’t really have anything to do with religion. And then among the slaves a majority of them are faithful. I think this is done to show that the slaves are the ones that are relying on religion. They need someone to pray to in the hopes that life will get better for them. White people are not living in terrible conditions and being treated like animals.  It’s hard to read about characters that are slaves and are repeated being treated poorly but still try to keep faith. It’s uplifting and as a reader you just want their prayers to be answered and for them to have a happy ending. When looking at the white families in comparison you want all of them to find religion and to realize that owning other individuals is not something that the bible encourages. Everyone has their own schema for how Christians should act. But I think most people can agree that, at the very least, today, Christians are good to almost all people and are kind and respectable. They believe in being good to their neighbors.  Reading UTC today I don’t understand how people behaved the way they used to and I’m amazed that any slave was able to hang onto their faith. I think that is a one way UTC can still be interpreted today. I think it’s easier to look at how religion is presented in the book today.

            Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an American treasure that helped the anti-slavery moment in the 1800s. It’s a book that showcases several different characters and their involvement in slavery. Although the book was incredibly successful in its time, today the actual depiction of slavery is questioned and to me the book was clearly written for its intended purpose. I do believe that it is necessary to showcase events like slavery so that readers are “comfortable enough” reading about the difficult subject matter. I think today, we deserve to read pieces of literature that aren’t written for white people or so that it’s “readable”.  Literature shouldn’t be written because readers can’t handle harsh realities. I know Stowe wrote UTC the way she did because she wanted to convey the message that slavery should be stopped. I’m not saying the way she wrote it was bad or that she was unsuccessful. I just think that after reading the book and reading different critiques, that slavery shouldn’t be sugar coated. Slavery is a piece of all Americans history and is able to be written by all people, white or black, as long as it is done well and honestly.   

"Unspeakable things do remain unspoken and the worst of the slave experience continues to search for its words" - A critical take on the Representation of Slavery in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a very significant piece of American Literature. However, there are always critics out there that dig under the surface of a story to really look at what is happening and how the author expresses the novel. Sophia Cantave digs into Stowe’s novel in her critical essay “Who Gets to Create the Lasting Images? The Problem of Black Representation in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

            In Cantave’s essay she focuses on how black people are presented in Stowe’s novel and how that effects how the novel is interpreted in modern day context.  Harriet Beecher Stowe was a white woman living in the Midwest during the time of slavery. Her family was well-off and was highly religious. One argument that Cantave repeated brings up is how can someone like Stowe, a white, middle class, woman, write about the harshness and cruelty of slavery? How can that be an accurate interpretation? Cantave points out that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written the way it was so the topic could be readable. Josephine Donovan adds that Stowe once said that “the book is a very inadequate representation of slavery [because] slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purposes of art. A work which should represent it strictly as it is would be a work which could not be read; all works which ever mean to give pleasure must draw a veil somewhere, or they cannot succeed,” (585). Slavery is a very harsh subject. No one can adequately portray the cruel nature of slavery on a piece of paper. And if you could, who would read it? Who would want to? To write about slavery one needs to mix pain and pleasure; include both sides of any spectrum. “By mixing the tragic and the laughable, Uncle Tom’s Cabin gives white people and black people a way to read slavery together,” (585). To discuss such horrible events in time you almost have to joke about it. People do it for all different types of horrific events. People need comic relief moments. Cantave, who agrees with Stowe making slavery readable, also thinks that these comic moments reinforce black subordination. It also takes away from the actual slave experience. All of this as done so “the nation as a whole felt more comfortable reading [about slavery],” (585). But at what cost?

            Cantave narrows in on this representation of black people and how it has been used in modern times. She begins to question how useful this book is today and whether or not it should be used in classes or not. Pairing slavery and black people with comic moments has had repercussions on our society. “Stowe inadvertently provided a way for white people, when threatened or challenged, to regulate black achievement, black national mobility, and black cultural expression,” (586). Black culture is always being defined by slavery. When tragic events are paired with comic events it takes away from the actual tragedy. It allows the tragedy to be overlooked or not taken as seriously. It’s an outlet for white people who can’t read about what actually happened in the South.

            Cantave also discusses what Black people thought about the characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A general consensus was that Tom was unrealistic. In reality someone in Tom’s position wouldn’t speak out against their masters. Others thought that Stowe did a remarkable job is shedding “light upon the horrible and inhuman agency of slavery,” (589). Another former slave said that Stowe “didn’t know what slavery was so left out the worst of it” (589). Black people were either in favor of Stowe’s work or not. It’s still debated among white and black people whether or not Stowe’s representation was accurate or not. Regardless of the debate Stowe’s novel was very powerful for the time period. The main question is what effect does it have today?

            As Americans I personally feel like Black history and slavery is told by White people. If we just look at Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it was written by a white woman. I understand that she wrote it the way she did because slavery is impossible to describe down to each gruesome detail. And what white person would buy a book about slavery written by a black person (in that time)? To get Stowe’s point across and to the audience that could do something about it she needed to write the novel so white people would read it and interpret it the way she hoped for; to see that slavery should be stopped and that black lives matter. But I do agree with Cantave. What does this sugar-coated representation of slavery do for us today? We can’t keep giving ourselves comic relief moments because we are either too ashamed of our ancestors or because we can’t stomach the truth of what slavery was actually like. We can’t keep turning to white authors to interpret black lives. When studying slavery we shouldn’t look at how it affected white peoples’ lives or how it changed American life. Slavery is about African Americans and what they went through, not what Americans went through while watching the harsh ways of slavery. I think that Stowe did a remarkable job depicting slavery in a way that made white people empathize with slaves and showed slaves as strong, determined, individuals. She accomplished what she set out to do. But as we look onto the novel today it should be with a more observant eye. We can’t just look at the surface, there’s more to uncover about slavery. The words just haven’t come out yet. 

"It was a Mournful Scene Indeed" - A Slave Auction Described by a Slave - Textual Background and Context to Uncle Tom's Cabin

In the critical edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, there are several short essays and images following the novel to provide more background and context to the story. One short essay “A Slave Auction Described by a Slave, 1841” by Solomon Northup, provides more insight into what it actually felt like to be in a slave auction.  

            Slave auctions were very common during this time period. Slaves changed hands all the time. They were bought, sold and traded. It was all just a business for white families to make money. These slaves weren’t seen as human beings to the whites. Solomon Northup describes his experience in a slave auction. They were forced to clean themselves up to look presentable for the sale.      

        

            “We were then furnished with a new suit each, cheap, but clean. The men had hat, coat, shirt, pants, and shoes; the women frocks of calico, and handkerchief to bind about their heads.” (435).

It’s interesting that they were required to dress up and wear clothes to make them seem more human and respectable. They weren’t bought because of how nice they would look in a suit. They were picked based on size, muscle, weight, and whether or not they would work hard and be obedient. It seems to me that slaves were dressed up for two reasons. One it seems more degrading. White people are literally playing dress up with these other human beings. Slaves don’t have control over anything in their lives. This is just one more thing that they are forced to depend on white people for. I think they are dressed up for the convenience of White people. To me it could be for their conscious. It’s easier to buy human life when they are trying to represent white people. They try to look proper and were taught “the art of ‘looking smart’’” (435). All this is done to make white peoples’ lives easier.

            Northup goes on to depict what runs through his mind, and all slaves minds, when being picked over by Whites. Slaves hope to be bought by certain people more than others. Is this new master going to be a harsh master, kind, respectable, terrifying? Where would they be sent to? Would their family be bought with them? Are they going to be separated? And of course slaves have no control over any of the various outcomes. Northup wanted to be bought by a particular man because he was from the city and Northup “conceived with would not be difficult to make [his] escape from New Orleans on some northern vessel” (436). Some slaves just want that chance to escape. It’s sad that they are hoping and praying to be bought by particular people when they shouldn’t have to be in situations to be bought in the first place. Northup is concerned with escaping from his next master as he watches other slaves at this auction just pray that they won’t be separated from their families. He watched one family get ripped apart.

            “What has become of the lad, God knows. It was a mournful scene indeed. I would have cried myself if I had dared,” (437).

If you got separated in an auction you almost never saw your family again. You didn’t hear from them, you didn’t know where they went. It was over. But White people didn’t care. They didn’t understand why slaves would be crying over something like that. They would threaten the slaves to stop crying. Saying that they “would soon give [them] something to cry about,” (437). Apparently losing your children, or husband, or siblings wasn’t something to cry about. White people had their own agenda at slave auctions and didn’t care about the slaves or what they could possibly be putting them through. It was all just business.

            When reading this essay and thinking about “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, it makes you just relish the slave market and that period of time. In “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” there are several examples of slaves being taken from their “home” and sold to new masters. Tom is sold away from his family and Eliza and George are fighting to escape together. It’s terrible to realize that white people didn’t care that they were responsible for breaking up a family. In this day and age it doesn’t make sense to me how human beings couldn’t understand what they were doing. How would anyone feel to be torn away from their family forever without knowing what may happen to each other? Slavery was brutal. The disregard for human life and it’s capacity for cruelty was evident throughout the south. I think that how Stowe depicted different slave families and the hardships they were forced to go through help her get through to people that what Americans are doing to Blacks is wrong. Human life is human life. 

"There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind That Outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day" - The Yellow Wallpaper

           Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is a commentary on mental health in the late 1800s. You can connect the story to how mental health was treated, how women in general were treated, and different themes dealing with isolation or confinement. There are countless discussion points one could make about this story. I want to take a closer look into the actual wallpaper and what it symbolizes throughout the story.

            Before Gilman even brings us into the room with yellow wallpaper we get the sense that there is something off in this house. The house is surprisingly available for John and his wife to live in. The narrator explains that “there was some legal trouble… anyhow, the place has been empty for years” (486). Even when the narrator is describing the house in a positive way I got the sense that there was more to the story.

“The Most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock…” (486).

            So it’s a beautiful old house. But it’s secluded from everything around them. Even on the grounds the landscaping and the architecture is closing you in and keeping you away from the outside world. The hedges act as a barriers, the walls close you in, things lock you out, or most likely, in. It gives the reader an uneasy feeling and the narrator is left feeling uneasy about it.

“There is something strange about the house – I can feel it.” (486).

 As we move into the house we are introduced to the room upstairs where John and the narrator will be sleeping. The narrator implies that it used to be a nursery and that’s why the windows have bars over them. That may be true, it may be some lie she tells herself to better her situation. Regardless, the bars over the window add to the isolation of the house and can contain her in her room easier. But what stands out to the narrator is the wallpaper in the room.

“The paint and paper look as if a boys’ school had used it. It is stripped off – the paper – in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.” (487).

She goes onto describe is as patterns that “[commit] every artistic sin” (487), “smoldering unclean yellow” (487), and patterns that look like “they suddenly commit suicide” (487). It is not a pleasant wallpaper. It seems that the wallpaper is really distracting her from his sickness, whatever it may be, and the fact that she is stuck in this secluded house in a room with bars on the window. She begins to think that wallpaper is growing on her and that she likes her room so much because of it. It starts to become an obsession of hers. And soon it starts to mirror her own situation.

            She starts to see this woman in the wallpaper. The woman moves around in the wallpaper; she is “stooping down and creeping about behind the pattern” (491). She starts to think that the woman wants to get out from behind the paper. As the story progresses the woman in the wallpaper becomes clearer and clearer to the narrator. It sort of has an inverse relationship with the narrators mental health. As she digresses the hallucinations progress. She starts to notice at night that the patterns “becomes bars! The outside pattern… and the woman behind it is as plain as could be.” (492). I feel that this reflects the narrators actual situation. She is barred into her room. The outside of the house could be like the outside pattern that keeps her trapped in this room. And she’s the woman stuck in there wanting to get out. More and more the narrator starts to draw parallels with the woman in the wallpaper. “By daylight she is subdued, quiet…. It keeps me quiet by the hour.” (493). Both the wallpaper woman and the narrator are active at night and quiet during the day. As the story goes on it seems that the two merge to become one. By the end of the story the two are indistinguishable. The narrator becomes her hallucination. It makes me wonder if the whole time she has been this woman in the wallpaper. Maybe she just didn’t realize what she was doing at night and she created this other woman to explain everything. This just goes to explain how difficult mental health problems can be to the individual. When reality is out of the question what does someone have left? Should someone in this state of mind be left alone in an old house at all? No one should feel like they are trapped behind anything forced to “creep” around in the hopes of getting out one day. People shouldn’t be forced to feel this way. There needs to be other ways to help people who are not in the right state of mind.