Alvaro Rodriguez
American Romanticism/LITR 5535
Research Journal
Dr. Craig White
June 2002
Revised: July 3, 2002

THE END OF INNOCENCE:

A Research Journal on Rebecca Harding Davis

and the Transition from Romanticism to Realism

            This journal includes a compendium of secondary sources on Rebecca Harding Davis and her opera prima, LIFE IN THE IRON MILLS (1861).

Research proposal

Rebecca Harding Davis can be seen as a transitional figure between full-blown Romanticism and nascent Realism. Who were her influences and what were her achievements, even after death? Can certain elements of the Romantic be found in her protofeminist, abolitionist and humanist attitudes? 

Synopsis and summary 

            Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910) remains, and perhaps rightfully so, a footnote in the annals of American literature. Overshadowed in stature by her dashing war correspondent-son (at least in his own day, where he was praised by Booth Tarkington as the kind of man college boys yearn to be), many critics claim RHD failed to live up to the measure of her earliest work, Life in the Iron Mills, a book which introduces a Zola-like realism in American fiction years before Zola himself would write his first “experimental novel.” The republication of the book more than a century later by the Feminist Press, complete with a “biographical interpretation” by Tillie Olsen (1972), renewed interest in RHD as a transitional and therefore pioneering figure in the uneasy time around the Civil War that bridges the Romantic and Realist periods in American literature; also, and more tellingly, RHD becomes a protofeminist as her writings are scoured by critics and students seeking signs that will equate sensual, strong-willed feminine characters with an empowerment agenda. But a decade before Olsen brings Iron Mills back into print, biographer Gerald Langford writes a dual biography of mother and son, The Richard Harding Davis Years, which serves as the primary source material for biographical information for years to come (Olsen relies heavily on this for biography and continuity). Some criticism, particularly Walter Hesford’s scholarly article “Literary Contexts of Life in the Iron Mills,” published the year before the Feminist Press reprint, signals that RHD was not as forgotten as some may think, though the view of her writing tended more towards a historical rather than literary perspective. This journal pieces together highlights from and commentary on books, journal articles, biographical entries and websites relating to RHD and Life in the Iron Mills.

RHD on the web: 

http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl311/davis.htm

            This is an excellent site to start from, even though some of its links to RHD materials are fruitless. It does contain an excellent bibliography of works by and about RHD, including several online selections by RHD.

http://www.samford.edu/schools/artsci/english/lasseter/introrhd.htm

            This site offers a concise biography of RHD, although it relies heavily on the early chapters in Langford. It does, however, make reference to a fault in both the Langford text and in Olsen’s essay, which attributes authorship of an archconservative tract to RHD.

http://www.scribblingwomen.org/rdhist.cfm

            This is an extremely rich source, detailing the historical and literary contexts of RHD and LITIM. A critical essay explores RHD as the transitional figure between romanticism and realism, and classifies LITIM as a work at “the end of agrarianism as a national ideal” and “the dawning of industrial America.” RHD’s influences (ranging from Hawthorne to Harriet Beecher Stowe) are cited and discussed; LITIM is given context in terms of art and literature movements of the time (from impressionism and symbolism to Zola’s “experimental novel”). The site also discusses the new feminist cooption of LITIM, particularly in terms of the Feminist Press reprint and Tillie Olson’s “slant on it.” The article closes thus: “Poised between two worlds at the beginning of the Civil War, … Davis saw beyond that war to a time when other national conflicts—between industry and farm, between sentiment and abstraction, between religion and science, between rich and poor, between laborers and managers—would be decided increasingly on the basis of economic speculation and greed.”

http://www.etsu.edu/writing/studentsamlit/davis.htm

This student-created site offers criticism and commentary on RHD and her short piece, "The Yares of the Black Mountains." Some of the information (RHD's age at entrance and exit of seminary, for example) may be slightly off, and the links to web resources do not work for anyone other than an East Tennessee State University student. Otherwise, a fair review of information relating to RHD with a bibliography included.

http://www.library.arizona.edu/users/buchwaln/despair.html

This student-created site is of interest because it points out the flaws and faults in RHD scholarship as discovered by a graduate student in 1992 attempting to piece together a fair appraisal of RHD and her work for a paper. An interesting aside, making for entertaining reading, especially when the author chastises Tillie Olsen for perpetrating a hoax about the quality of writing of RHD’s post-LITIM work. This essayist claims Olsen misleads all who read her to believe that there is little or nothing to be gleaned from anything written after Margret Howth.
Books about RHD:

Langford, Gerald. “Book I: Rebecca.” The Richard Harding Davis Years: A Biography of Mother and Son. New York: Holt, 1961.

            Langford’s biography is the source from which many subsequent critics (including Tillie Olsen) draw their information. In concise terms, Langford recounts what is known about RHD’s early life. Davis was homeschooled by her mother until age 14, when she entered a girls’ seminary in Pennsylvania. She graduated valedictorian but RHD herself had little to say about the education she earned there. She did not develop strong friendships there, and upon graduation returned home to Wheeling, VA, “where, as the eldest child, she settled down to helping her mother manage the household.” But the young RHD was far from an indentured servant; she was able to read much during this time, including her brother’s college texts on subjects to which she had not been exposed at seminary. Langford draws a striking parallel between RHD’s female characters and her own personal image; “a quiet, dark girl, coarsely dressed in brown” is how RHD describes her character Margret Howth, reflecting in turn her own lifestyle and persona as homebound homebody. Here, then, is RHD’s Romantic Eden, the garden of her home, where she whiles away the days immersed in tomes of study and literature, not the hustle and bustle of society but the quiet fantasy of the imagination. The same year RHD publishes LITIM (1861), she writes Hawthorne, and receives a reply, requesting a visit. The visit is thwarted by the Civil War and the shutdown of the rails, but RHD will meet Boston society figures like Hawthorne, Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Branson and Louisa Alcott the following year. In 1861, the Atlantic Monthly accepts LITIM, which is published in April anonymously (as per RHD’s request); at this time, RHD is 30 years old and “a spinster in a provincial town,” Langford writes. RHD “wrote out of no literary theory but out of compassion for the harsh, blighted lives of the millworkers in her own community.” Among RHD’s influences, Langford lists humanist writers Charles Kingsley, Charles Reade and Elizabeth Gaskell (particularly her novel, Mary Barton). Awed by her instant success (RHD receives $50 for LITIM and a $100 advance on her next work from the Atlantic Monthly), RHD writes “A Story of To-Day” for the October 1861 issue. RHD receives a fan letter from a young law student named L. Clarke Davis, who later becomes her beau and husband. He is similar to her in personality, a homebody and bookworm but nevertheless an enterprising young man. During her courtship with Davis, RHD travels to Boston where she meets Hawthorne a few months before his death. Hawthorne tells her, “I am sorry you are going away. It seems as if we had known you always.” RHD is known as a bit of a firebrand at this time; she shocks partygoers one evening with the assertion that women are as desirous of men as men are of women. Her later prose contains many sensual images. But with marriage and motherhood comes the tear in her writing that lowers it from strong fiction to lurid potboiler stuff. By 1862, RHD has begun publishing “under-the-counter” stories anonymously at other magazines, stories that become more and more hackneyed, with little of the flair of her earlier work. The new, lesser work brings some monetary reward, but RHD finds greater recompense in the care of her son, Richard. She watches, also, as L. Clarke Davis earns success as a writer/editor. Langford states that RHD will “never fulfill the promise of” LITIM.

Essays and articles on RHD:

Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. Intro. “Rebecca Harding Davis.” The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. New York: Norton, 1985: 903-34.

This brief biographical sketch includes some political thought and recontextualization of Davis’ work. To fit the agenda of the anthology, RHD is presented as a protofeminist, and her domestic romances seen as champions of a cause.

Baym, Nina, et al. Intro. “Rebecca Harding Davis.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Shorter Fifth Edition. New York: Norton, 1999: 1211-1213.

This biographical sketch is much better drawn that the previous Norton edition of women’s literature. A finer description of contemporary criticism is offered and a context is given for RHD’s life and work. “The historical importance of LITIM is partly as a record of the underside of American industrial prosperity, partly is what study of it and the rest of Davis’ life and career can reveal about being both a writer and a woman in America.” The sketch also addresses how RHD’s life and work were overshadowed by her husband’s and son’s successes.

Olsen, Tillie. “A Biographical Interpretation.” Life in the Iron Mills and Other Stories. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1985: 69-174.

Olsen’s “biographical interpretation” is a politically loaded recasting of biographical data relating to RHD which examines the protofeminism of Davis, revealed by the sensuality of her female characters, their desires and their notions of self. Olsen acknowledges the lack of information relating to RHD’s early years (especially the formative time between graduation and the publication of LITIM). She seeks to answer the question: What shaped the author from the age of 17 to 30? Olsen remarks upon some very interesting points relating to the Romantic element in RHD’s work (and life). Olsen points out that very early in the work, the female character looks out the window; later in the book, the perambulation and long walks that occur also lend credence to the notion of author as observer. How much of LITIM is fantasy? The story obviously has a factual basis, but how much of it was created in the author’s imagination—seeing, and this is my own point, not Olsen’s, the workingclass men and women like Millet painted them, is a romanticized way? “She chose to live in the commonplace,” Olsen writes. Here, perhaps, we have the romanticization of the proletariat, the huddled masses imbued with dignity by a youngish writer colored but not overwhelmingly gung-ho about abolition, transcendentalism, etc. This search, however, forces RHD to ask, according to Olsen, “What is happening here? What does this mean?” Using her “resources of intellect and imagination” coupled with what Olsen calls a “trespass vision,” RHD creates a new style in American literature, and LITIM crosses the bridge between the romanticism of her elders and the realism of her progeny. One fault in the Olsen piece is that is follows quite closely to the Langford chapters, repeating the same misinformation attributing authorship of an archconservative tract to RHD. But Olsen’s piece is important as it accompanied the first reprint of LITIM in over a century, and reintroduced her and the work to a new generation of feminists, American studies devotees, and students of American literature.

Harris, Sharon M. “Rebecca Harding Davis: From Romanticism to Realism.” American Literary Realism 21 (1989) 4-20.

The introduction of this journal article recounts the criticism of RHD’s LITIM, and addresses the failure to respond to the book’s nascent Realism. Harris states her thesis thus: “Our failure to understand ‘Life’ as a  forthright challenge to prevailing literary genres and our failure to recognize Davis’ awareness of how resistant readers would be to such changes.” Harris calls LITIM “a work of pure naturalism,” working on many levels, and possessed of an often unacknowledged sense of irony which Davis uses “to undermine any sense of panacean solution to industrial ills perpetrated upon American society, and an especially strong rejection of Transcendentalism.” RHD is a transitional figure between literary schools because of her “juxtaposition of romantic imagery and realistic detail,” Harris writes. “Davis’ ironic use of the language of romance in narrator’s frame is juxtaposed against the vernacular and naturalistic language of the inner stories.” Harris goes on to discuss some of the pioneering realist conventions Davis introduces, namely the “capitalists’ intentional use of language for control,” etc. Harris also states that RHD makes a radical connection between the Emersonian club and the evolution of capitalism. “Concord-training, with its elevation of the Self ‘over’ nature and others, could transmogrify into complete disregard for the humanity of others when it was coupled with the nation’s current onset of industrialization.” Another element of LITIM’s realism is in RHD’s “denial of traditional Christianity as a means for alleviating the nation’s social ills.” “Davis’ movement from romanticism to realism also involves truly ‘seeing’ reality and education others to do the same,” Harris concludes.

Hesford, Walter. “Literary Contexts of Life in the Iron Mills.” American Literature 49 (1971): 70-85.

This piece of scholarship predates the Feminist Press reprint of LITIM, suggesting that RHD was not an entirely forgotten figure, albeit one that was examined more in terms of historical significance rather than literary merit. However, Hesford calls LITIM “the first notable work of fiction to concern itself with the life of the factory worker in an industrial American town.” RHD “seems a pioneer exploring a territory which … would be recognized as the new American wilderness.” Hesford explains LITIM’s significance in the context of Hawthorne, the tradition of the social novel and a religious and apocalyptic bias of mid-19^th century American literature. “Davis’ story comes to life not as a work which is admirable because it is almost realistic,” Hesford writes, “but as a work which astonishes … because it shares in and extends the accomplishments of the romance.” Hesford draws a parallel between the wandering ramblings of the characters in LITIM and the influence of some lesser Hawthorne stories that RHD acknowledges she read and enjoyed. “A child—or writer—might explore, observe, assimilate the phenomenal world, develop and sympathize understanding of it, then testify to its importance and discuss its meaning. … Davis writes on the border of her world—the middle-class world shared by the majority of her readers—and the unknown, mysterious world of the workers.” Hesford also notes the similarities between LITIM and certain social novels such as Mary Barton and the works of Dickens. LITIM might be called a realistic romance. Hesford also addresses the anti-panacea nature of the work, illustrating how RHD is against any sort of transcendental “cure.” This article touches on many of the elements of RHD and LITIM that will be further studied by scholars in the decades following.

Recap: Researching RHD

In my proposal for this assignment, I wondered: Who were RHD’s influences and what were her achievements, even after death? Could certain elements of the Romantic be traced in her protofeminist, abolitionist and humanist attitudes? It seems clear from the research that Davis took a great deal of influence from Hawthorne’s writings, as particularly evidenced in the Hesford article. Simultaneously, RHD was influenced by the humanist novelists (Kingsley and Reade) and the social novels of Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskill. Her background immersed in literacy obviously provided her with myriad sources from which to draw her inspiration. It’s clear from the research that many see RHD as a protofeminist, and some of the critics are clear-eyed enough to place certain conditions on affixing that label to RHD, even Olsen. What is seen as Romantic in RHD’s work, particularly in LITIM, is the pioneering individualist spirit, even as the shift from Romanticism to Realism occurs, that spirit of the individual becomes humanized to address itself to the uplifting of entire populations of downtrodden, and not just the one.

Conclusion and A Look Ahead

Rebecca Harding Davis, time has proven, is not a writer easily penned into a particular literary style or school. Like many of the American women writing in the 19^th century, Davis was a pioneer on many levels; her early success, both critical and financial, must have been astonishing to a spinsterish homebody. Her legacy has come to be appreciated only within my lifetime, it seems, due in part to Davis’ own failure to live up to her original promise. I suppose she is proof that even pioneers can turn out hackwork. Misinformation that has been perpetuated and disseminated in scholarly study of her and her writings also clouds the picture of Davis’ attitudes. But in a cultural context, it is perhaps unfair to lambast Davis for her shortcomings after the early works. Few women writers of her era are truly considered the equal of the men; it’s only fair to say that many of the women writers of this time are read only by graduate students in American literature and women’s studies. It’s not hard to see, therefore, how writers like Davis have been seized upon as feminist icons by some, who see her later work as hampered by the smothering elements of marriage and motherhood. None of this lessens the impact of her work for the conscientious student, however. It is clear that Davis is a writer of talent, ingenuity, grace and skill. That her work bridges the gap between two schools of thought, rides both horses, so to speak, only attests to her vigor. Her descendents would include Crane, Norris, Dreiser, London and other realists whose names are better remembered now than her own, including her own biological descendent, Richard Harding Davis. At the end of this research journal, I find myself wanting to read LITIM and Margret Howth to see what other pearls may be lying there dormant. Perhaps a comparative essay paralleling the lives and writing of Davis and Dickinson would be interesting, or Davis and Margaret Fuller. Even perhaps, to parallel Davis (who never worked in an iron mill) with Crane, who wrote The Red Badge of Courage without ever having been in battle, and finding the romantic imagination evident in both.