Nava Atlas's Blog, page 66

Mary Hunter Austin

Mary Hunter Austin (September 9, 1868 – August 13, 1934) was an American novelist and essayist who focused her writing on cultural and social problems within the Native American community. In addition to spending seventeen years making a special study of Indian life in the Mojave Desert, Austin was also an early feminist and defended the rights of Native Americans and Spanish Americans. 

Austin was born in Carlinville, Illinois and was the fourth of six siblings whose parents were Savannah and George Hunter. In 1888, her family moved to Bakersfield, California, where they established a homestead in the San Joaquin Valley. That same year, Austin also graduated from Blackburn College.

 A love for the desert

Two years after, Austin married Stafford Wallace Austin on May 18, 1891 in Bakersfield, California.  He was from Hawaii and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. They had one child, Ruth, on October 31, 1891, but unfortunately, she died of birth injuries.

For many years they lived in various towns in California’s Owens Valley, where Austin’s love for the desert and the Native Americans who lived there began to grow. This led to the creation of her first and best known book, The Land of Little Rain (1903), a tribute to California’s deserts.

After the success of her first book, she created a collection of stories,The Basket Woman (1904), a romance novel, Isidro (1905), as well as a collection of regional sketches, The Flock (1906).

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Success after a failed marriage

Austin and her husband were involved in the local California Water Wars, a series of political conflicts between the city of Los Angeles and ranchers and farmers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California over water rights. When their battle was lost, they decided to divorce in 1905. Stafford Austin went to live in Death Valley, California, and she moved to the art colony at Carmel, California.

In Carmel, she became part of a social circle that included Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, and George Sterling. In addition, she was also one of the founders of the Forest Theater where she premiered and directed her three-act play Fire in 1913. She was involved in all aspects of Carmel’s Bohemian society, which included unencumbered sexual and homoerotic attachments.

Austin later traveled to Italy, France, and England where she met H.G Wells and other intellectuals. These encounters fueled her ideas of feminism and commitment to socialism to her personal form of mysticism.

After these travels, Austin arrived in New York City and became associated with a group of writers and artists that included Mabel Dodge Luhan, John Reed, and Walter Lippmann. Her play, The Arrow Maker (1911), and her best novel, A Woman of Genius (1912), were products of her time in New York. In addition, she wrote articles on socialism, women’s rights, and numerous other topics, as well as her novels The Ford (1917) and No. 26 Jayne Street (1920).

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Tragedy in Carmel

In July of 1914 she joined the distinguished New York painter, William Merritt Chase, at several “teas” as well as privately in his studio where he finished her portrait. At the time, he was teaching his final summer class in Carmel.

Well-known artist Jennie V. Cannon claimed that he began the portrait of Austin as a class demonstration after Austin claimed that two of her portraits, which were done by famous artists in the Latin Quarter of Paris, were already accepted to the Salon. Chase then became unnerved by Austin’s “pushiness and claims to extra-sensory perceptions,” but had more of an interest in her appointment as director of East Coast publicity for San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

On July 25, 1914, Chase attended her Indian melodrama, The Arrow Maker, in the Forest International Exposition, and confessed to Cannon that she believed the play was dreary. It was said that Dr. Daniel MacDougall, head of the local Carnegie Institute, paid for most of Austin’s production costs because of their evident love affair.

Around this time, Helena Wood Smith, one of Chase’s students, was brutally murdered by her Japanese lover. Austin joined the mob that belittled authorities for their incompetence. As a result of the horrific event, Austin’s visits to Carmel after 1914 dwindled.

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Taos Pueblo 

After a trip to Santa Fe in 1918, Austin took part in establishing The Santa Fe Little Theatre (now operating as The Santa Fe Playhouse) and directed their first production held in February 14, 1919 at the art museum’s St. Francis Auditorium. She also took part in preserving the local culture of New Mexico and established the Spanish Colonial Arts Society in 1925 with artist Frank Applegate. 

Four years later, while living in New Mexico in 1929, Austin co-authored a book with photographer Ansel Adams titled Taos Pueblo. A year later it was published and printed in a limited edition of just 108 copies. It was unique because it included actual photographic prints by Adams as opposed to reproductions.

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Mary Hunter Austin page on Amazon
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Themes of Mary Hunter Austin’s work

Much of Austen’s work focused on cultural and social problems within the Native American community, a result of devoting several years of her life to studying Indian life in the Mojave Desert. The Land of Little Rain, her best known work, goes into detail about the land and its inhabitants as she writes, “Trust Indians not to miss any virtues of the plant world! Nothing.”

In addition to her focus on Native American issues, Austin developed an interest in political themes of her day, including racism, segregation, feminism, the environment, and the injustices of governmental power. In some of her work, Austin offered a glimpse into her own troubled personal life— especially pertaining to men. She also expressed her love for California through her work..

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Awards and Honors; the legacy of Mary Hunter Austin

After her death in 1934, Mount Mary Austin in the Sierra Nevada was named in the writer’s honor. It is located just 8.5 miles away from the house she built and designed with her estranged husband in Independence, California. Today, the home is a historical landmark. 

A 1950 edition of The Land of Little Rain and a 1977 edition of Taos Pueblo each included photographs by Ansel Adams. In 1989, Doris Baizley wrote and presented a teleplay of The Land of Little Rain on American Playhouse starring Helen Hunt.

In 2018, the Port Yonder Press created a Mary Hunter Austin Book Award in honor of her and her multitude of accomplishments.

On August 13, 1934, Austin passed away at age sixty five in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was cremated and her ashes were laid to rest in a crypt on Mount Picacho. 

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Mary Hunter Austin’s House in Independence, California 

Major Works

The Land of Little Rain (1903)The Basket Woman (1904)Isidro (1905)The Flock (1906)Lost Borders, the people of the desert (1909)The Arrow Maker – A Drama in Three Acts (1911)A Woman of Genius (1912)Fire: a drama in three acts (1914)The Ford (1917)The Trail Book (1918)The Young Woman Citizen (1918)No. 26 Jayne Street (1920)The American Rhythm (1923)The Land of Journeys’ Ending (1924)Everyman’s Genius (1925)Lands of the Sun (1927)Taos Pueblo (1930)Experiences Facing Death (1931)Starry Adventure (1931)Earth Horizon (1932)Can Prayer Be Answered? (1934)One-Smoke Stories (1934)One Hundred Miles on Horseback (1887)Cactus Thorn (1927)

Biographies

Mary Hunter Austin: Song of a Maverick by Esther F. Lanigan (1997)
Beyond Nature’s Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History by Nancy C. Unger (2012)

More Information 

Wikipedia Britannica Everipedia

Skyler Isabella Gomez is a 2019 SUNY New Paltz graduate with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in Black Studies. Her passions include connecting more with her Latin roots by researching and writing about legendary Latina authors.

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*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Mary Hunter Austin appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot (1861)

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe was the third novel of George Eliot (1819 – 1880). Published in 1861, this novel, like others written by the esteemed British author (whose real name was Mary Ann Evans), addresses a number of social themes while telling a compelling story.

Silas Marner, a rather simple man, is betrayed by a trusted friend who accuses him of a crime he didn’t commit. This leads to his expulsion from a religious community that he has loved being a part of. He relocates to a remote village called Raveloe where he has no friends or family, and where the community eyes him suspiciously due to his odd nature.

Marner works tirelessly at his trade as a weaver and amasses a pile of gold, which he practically worships. When his gold is stolen, he goes into a tailspin. A little golden-haired girl wanders into his cottage, rescuing him from despair. Marner raises her with the assistance of his new neighbors, learning the value of love and community. Grounded in the tradition of realism, the novel encompasses the following themes:

Human relationships, individual and communityBetrayal and deceit Religion and its role in societySocietal customs and traditionsIndustrialization and the upheaval it causes

 

An 1861 review of Silas Marner by George Eliot

From the original review in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 26, 1861: Silas Marner, we believe, will have many friends. The poor weaver of Reveloe will be a welcome guest in English homes and his simple tale will touch the hearts of “gentle readers.”

George Eliot’s heroes and heroines do not usually belong to the class familiar to ordinary novel readers. “Marner was highly thought of,” we are told at the outset, “in that little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in Lantern-Yard, he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centered in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer meeting, into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death.”

A betrayal by a friend and sweetheart
A member of a narrow religious community, and subject to epileptic fits, poor Silas does not at the first blush, appear to be quite the person to carry away our sympathies, or excite in our hearts any large amount of interest. But we soon begin to feel compassion for him for his undeserved misfortunes, and before we have reached the last page of the narrative we cannot fail to regard and esteem his genuine humanity.

In the lantern-yard congregation Silas Marner, found a friend named William Dane. “One of the most frequent topics of conversation between the two friends was assurance of salvation Silas confessed that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of concentration, he had dreamed that he saw the words ‘calling and election sure,’ standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible.”

Besides the friend, Silas had a sweetheart; and by both, he was betrayed. A false accusation was made against him; lots were cast, after earnest prayer, and “the lots declared Silas Marner guilty.” Silas went forth with a shaken trust in God and man, and soon afterward learned that his false friend was engaged to marry the young servant girl he had once fondly loved.

Exile to Raveloe
A blight now had fallen over Marner’s life. He left the old town where he had been a conspicuous member of the Lantern-yard congregation, and took up his abode in a rural district called Raveloe. Here he pursued his labors at the loom, and so successfully that the solitary weaver’s money began to accumulate.

“Cut off from faith and love,” nothing seemed left to him but money and his loom. Though not yet forty, he was called “Old Master Marner.” Prematurely aged, he had also contracted the sordid vice of old age — he was a miser. His long course of labor were unrelieved by intervals of relaxation or pleasant conversation; his money was his idol, friend, and companion.

The weaver and his money
This is the history of Silas Marner until the fifteenth year after he came to Raveloe. The livelong day he sat at his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web. His muscles moved with such even repetition that their pulse seemed almost as much a constant as the holding of his breath.

At night came his revelry; at night he closed his shutters and made fast his doors and drew out his gold. Long since, the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to hold them, and he had made for them too thick leather bags, which wasted no room in their resting place but bent themselves flexibly to every corner.

How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of dark leather! The silver bore no large proportion to the gold because the long pieces of linen which formed Marner’s chief work were always partly paid for in gold and out the silver he supplied his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpence pieces to spend in this way.

He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver — the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labor — he loved them all He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in regular piles and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned by the work in his loom, as if they’d been unborn children.

No wonder his thoughts were still with his loom and his money when he made his journey through the fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his steps never wandered to the lane-side in search of the once-familiar herbs; these too belonged to the past from which his life had shrunk away.

Robbed of his treasure; a child wanders in
At length, another great calamity befell the poor weaver. He was robbed — robbed of all his hoarded treasure! By this unexpected blow, Marner was utterly prostrated. For what had he now to live? Who or what would supply the place of his beloved money?

A little child finds its way into Silas’s cottage, having strayed over the snow from the embrace of a dead mother. That poor creature — the profligate wife of a gentleman’s son — had perished in the cold from an overdose of laudanum. The weaver soon becomes conscious that he has found a fresh treasure, and his emotions when he first awakens to a send of its value are beautifully described:

Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart, and sent forth only a red uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on his fireside chair, and was stooping to push his logs together, when, to his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the hearth. Gold!—his own gold—brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!

He felt his heart begin to beat violently, and for a few moments, he was unable to stretch out his hand and grasp the restored treasure. The heap of gold seemed to glow and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last, and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees and bent his head low to examine the marvel: it was a sleeping child—a round, fair thing, with soft yellow rings all over its head.

Could this be his little sister come back to him in a dream—his little sister whom he had carried about in his arms for a year before she died, when he was a small boy without shoes or stockings? That was the first thought that darted across Silas’s blank wonderment. Was it a dream?

He rose to his feet again, pushed his logs together, and, throwing on some dried leaves and sticks, raised a flame; but the flame did not disperse the vision—it only lit up more distinctly the little round form of the child, and its shabby clothing. It was very much like his little sister. Silas sank into his chair powerless, under the double presence of an inexplicable surprise and a hurrying influx of memories. How and when had the child come in without his knowledge?

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Silas Marner by George Eliot on Amazon
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Continuing the plot summary

Once these passages are excerpted in the review above, it ends abruptly — as if the reviewer ran out of stamina or space. So let’s briefly tie up the loose ends of the plot.

The child who has wandered into Marner’s cottage is a little girl who he names Eppie after his mother and sister, who were both named Hepzibah. As might be predicted, the golden-haired child becomes a much more meaningful form of treasure than the golden coins that were robbed from him.

A kind neighbor, Dolly Winthrop, helps Marner raise Eppie, and enables them to become more a part of the community life of the village. Godfrey Cass, the eldest son of the local squire, helps Marner by providing financial support. He has been blackmailed by his brother Dunstan over his secret first marriage to Molly Farren, a poor opium addict.

Eppie grows up to be a fine young woman who is loved by Marner and is a darling of the entire village. Through Eppie, Marner has also become a respected member of the community.

A shocking development happens when the skeleton of Dunstan Cass is found at the bottom of the stone quarry near Marner’s cottage. In the bones of his hand is Silas’s bag of gold, which is now returned to him.

Godfrey, meanwhile, has been married to Nancy Lammeter, but has kept his first marriage and child a secret from her. Now, he confesses to her that he was married to Molly and that Eppie was their daughter. He also reveals the same to Eppie and offers her a more elegant home with himself and Nancy. Eppie declines, choosing to stay with Marner, to whom she is devoted: “I can’t think o’ no happiness without him.”

Marner realizes what a satisfying life he has had in Raveloe with Eppie and their neighbors and friends. Eppie marries Dolly’s son Aaron, who has been her friend as she grew up, and they move into Marner’s cottage — which has been greatly expanded by Godfrey for the comfort of all.

Silas Marner is a Victorian novel that is sentimental yet satisfying. It rewards the reader with a happy ending, though in George Eliot’s capable hands it manages to remain wonderfully complex.

Over the years, Silas Marner has been adapted for the screen a number of times. It was adapted at least five times into silent films in the years 1911 – 1926, and was produced by Masterpiece Theatre (BBC) in 1985 with Ben Kingsley starring as Silas Marner.

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You might also like: Romola by George Eliot

More about Silas Marner by George Eliot Wikipedia Reader discussion on Goodreads Cliff’s Notes: The Themes in Silas Marner
Full text on Project Gutenberg

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*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe by George Eliot (1861) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Ravenloe by George Eliot (1861)

Silas Marner: The Weaver of Ravenloe was the third novel of George Eliot (1819 – 1880). Published in 1861, this novel, like others written by the esteemed British author (whose real name was Mary Ann Evans), addresses a number of social themes while telling a compelling story.

Silas Marner, a rather simple man, is betrayed by a trusted friend who accuses him of a crime he didn’t commit. This causes his explosion from a religious community that he has loved and felt part of. He relocates to a remote village called Raveloe where he has no friends or family, and where the community eyes him suspiciously due to his odd nature.

Marner works tirelessly at his trade as a weaver and amasses a pile of gold, which he practically worships. When his gold is stolen, he goes into a tailspin. A little golden-haired girl wanders into his cottage, rescuing him from despair. Marner raises her lovingly with the assistance of his new neighbors, learning that love, family, and community are lasting, whereas wealth can be fleeting. Grounded in the tradition of realism, the novel encompasses the following themes:

Human relationships, individual and communityBetrayal and deceit Religion and its role in societySocietal customs and traditionsIndustrialization and the upheaval it causes

It was fascinating to come across an American review of Silas Marner, which appeared in the same year of its publication:

 

An 1861 review of Silas Marner by George Eliot

From the original review in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 26, 1861: Silas Marner, we believe, will have many friends. The poor weaver of Reveloe will be a welcome guest in English homes and his simple tale will touch the hearts of “gentle readers.”

George Eliot’s heroes and heroines do not usually belong to the class familiar to ordinary novel readers. “Marner was highly thought of,” we are told at the outset, “in that little hidden world, known to itself as the church assembling in Lantern-Yard, he was believed to be a young man of exemplary life and ardent faith; and a peculiar interest had been centered in him ever since he had fallen, at a prayer meeting, into a mysterious rigidity and suspension of consciousness, which, lasting for an hour or more, had been mistaken for death.”

A betrayal by a friend and sweetheart
A member of a narrow religious community, and subject to epileptic fits, poor Silas does not at the first blush, appear to be quite the person to carry away our sympathies, or excite in our hearts any large amount of interest. But we soon begin to feel compassion for him for his undeserved misfortunes, and before we have reached the last page of the narrative we cannot fail to regard and esteem his genuine humanity.

In the lantern-yard congregation Silas Marner, found a friend named William Dane. “One of the most frequent topics of conversation between the two friends was assurance of salvation Silas confessed that he could never arrive at anything higher than hope mingled with fear, and listened with longing wonder when William declared that he had possessed unshaken assurance ever since, in the period of concentration, he had dreamed that he saw the words ‘calling and election sure,’ standing by themselves on a white page in the open Bible.”

Besides the friend, Silas had a sweetheart; and by both, he was betrayed. A false accusation was made against him; lots were cast, after earnest prayer, and “the lots declared Silas Marner guilty.” Silas went forth with a shaken trust in God and man, and soon afterward learned that his false friend was engaged to marry the young servant girl he had once fondly loved.

Exile to Ravenloe
A blight now had fallen over Marner’s life. He left the old town where he had been a conspicuous member of the Lantern-yard congregation, and took up his abode in a rural district called Ravenloe. Here he pursued his labors at the loom, and so successfully that the solitary weaver’s money began to accumulate.

“Cut off from faith and love,” nothing seemed left to him but money and his loom. Though not yet forty, he was called “Old Master Marner.” Prematurely aged, he had also contracted the sordid vice of old age — he was a miser. His long course of labor were unrelieved by intervals of relaxation or pleasant conversation; his money was his idol, friend, and companion.

The weaver and his money
This is the history of Silas Marner until the fifteenth year after he came to Ravenloe. The livelong day he sat at his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web. His muscles moved with such even repetition that their pulse seemed almost as much a constant as the holding of his breath.

At night came his revelry; at night he closed his shutters and made fast his doors and drew out his gold. Long since, the heap of coins had become too large for the iron pot to hold them, and he had made for them too thick leather bags, which wasted no room in their resting place but bent themselves flexibly to every corner.

How the guineas shone as they came pouring out of dark leather! The silver bore no large proportion to the gold because the long pieces of linen which formed Marner’s chief work were always partly paid for in gold and out the silver he supplied his own bodily wants, choosing always the shillings and sixpence pieces to spend in this way.

He loved the guineas best, but he would not change the silver — the crowns and half-crowns that were his own earnings, begotten by his labor — he loved them all He spread them out in heaps and bathed his hands in them; then he counted them and set them up in regular piles and felt their rounded outline between his thumb and fingers, and thought fondly of the guineas that were only half-earned by the work in his loom, as if they’d been unborn children.

No wonder his thoughts were still with his loom and his money when he made his journey through the fields and the lanes to fetch and carry home his work, so that his steps never wandered to the lane-side in search of the once-familiar herbs; these too belonged to the past from which his life had shrunk away.

Robbed of his treasure; a child wanders in
At length, another great calamity befell the poor weaver. He was robbed — robbed of all his hoarded treasure! By this unexpected blow, Marner was utterly prostrated. For what had he now to live? Who or what would supply the place of his beloved money?

A little child finds its way into Silas’s cottage, having strayed over the snow from the embrace of a dead mother. That poor creature — the profligate wife of a gentleman’s son — had perished in the cold from an overdose of laudanum. The weaver soon becomes conscious that he has found a fresh treasure, and his emotions when he first awakens to a send of its value are beautifully described:

Turning towards the hearth, where the two logs had fallen apart, and sent forth only a red uncertain glimmer, he seated himself on his fireside chair, and was stooping to push his logs together, when, to his blurred vision, it seemed as if there were gold on the floor in front of the hearth. Gold!—his own gold—brought back to him as mysteriously as it had been taken away!

He felt his heart begin to beat violently, and for a few moments, he was unable to stretch out his hand and grasp the restored treasure. The heap of gold seemed to glow and get larger beneath his agitated gaze. He leaned forward at last, and stretched forth his hand; but instead of the hard coin with the familiar resisting outline, his fingers encountered soft warm curls. In utter amazement, Silas fell on his knees and bent his head low to examine the marvel: it was a sleeping child—a round, fair thing, with soft yellow rings all over its head.

Could this be his little sister come back to him in a dream—his little sister whom he had carried about in his arms for a year before she died, when he was a small boy without shoes or stockings? That was the first thought that darted across Silas’s blank wonderment. Was it a dream?

He rose to his feet again, pushed his logs together, and, throwing on some dried leaves and sticks, raised a flame; but the flame did not disperse the vision—it only lit up more distinctly the little round form of the child, and its shabby clothing. It was very much like his little sister. Silas sank into his chair powerless, under the double presence of an inexplicable surprise and a hurrying influx of memories. How and when had the child come in without his knowledge?

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Silas Marner by George Eliot on Amazon
. . . . . . . . . . .

Continuing the plot summary

Once these passages are excerpted in the review above, it ends abruptly — as if the reviewer ran out of stamina or space. So let’s briefly tie up the loose ends of the plot.

The child who has wandered into Marner’s cottage is a little girl who he names Eppie after his mother and sister, who were both named Hepzibah. As might be predicted, the golden-haired child becomes a much more meaningful form of treasure than the golden coins that were robbed from him.

A kind neighbor, Dolly Winthrop, helps Marner raise Eppie, and enables them to become more a part of the community life of the village. Godfrey Cass, the eldest son of the local squire, helps Marner by providing financial support. He has been blackmailed by his brother Dunstan over his secret first marriage to Molly Farren, a poor opium addict.

Eppie grows up to be a fine young woman who is loved by Marner and is a darling of the entire village. Through Eppie, Marner has also become a respected member of the community.

A shocking development happens when the skeleton of Dunstan Cass is found at the bottom of the stone quarry near Marner’s cottage. In the bones of his hand is Silas’s bag of gold, which is now returned to him.

Godfrey, meanwhile, has been married to Nancy Lammeter, but has kept his first marriage and child a secret from her. Now, he confesses to her that he was married to Molly and that Eppie was their daughter. He also reveals the same to Eppie and offers her a more elegant home with himself and Nancy. Eppie declines, choosing to stay with Marner, to whom she is devoted: “I can’t think o’ no happiness without him.”

Marner realizes what a satisfying life he has had in Ravenloe with Eppie and their neighbors and friends. Eppie marries Dolly’s son Aaron, who has been her friend as she grew up, and they move into Marner’s cottage — which has been greatly expanded by Godfrey for the comfort of all.

Silas Marner is a Victorian novel that is sentimental yet satisfying. It rewards the reader with a happy ending, though in George Eliot’s capable hands it manages to remain wonderfully complex.

Over the years, Silas Marner has been adapted for the screen a number of times. It was adapted at least five times into silent films in the years 1911 – 1926, and was produced by Masterpiece Theatre (BBC) in 1985 with Ben Kingsley starring as Silas Marner.

. . . . . . . . .

You might also like: Romola by George Eliot

More about Silas Marner by George Eliot Wikipedia Reader discussion on Goodreads Cliff’s Notes: The Themes in Silas Marner
Full text on Project Gutenberg

. . . . . . . . . . .

*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!

The post Silas Marner: The Weaver of Ravenloe by George Eliot (1861) appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

South Moon Under by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1933)

South Moon Under by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was this author’s first novel, published in 1933. She struggled to gain any traction in her writing career until she and her first husband bought an orange grove in Cross Creek, Florida.

She was fascinated by the locals of Cross Creek,  poor white natives of the area who were called “crackers” in the vernacular of the time. At first wary of this Northerner, they eventually warmed to her as she gained their trust. Once she began weaving the dialect,  flora and fauna, and foodways of the people of the “big scrub” into her writing, she finally found success.

The story centers on Lant, a young man who supports himself and his mother by making and selling moonshine. It captures the flavor of Cross Creek and the life of moonshine makers. South Moon Under was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, an honor Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings would achieve just a few years later with The Yearling (1938), her most famous novel.

South Moon Under was generally well received; the admiring review just below is typical of its reception. Some reviewers were put off by the harsh descriptions of the backwoods life described in the novel, an example of which is in the second review in this post.

 

A 1933 review of South Moon Under

From  original review in The Tampa Bay Times, March 12, 1933: We who live in Florida cities, and along the sea shore, know little or nothing of the life of the natives in the scrub. the Florida scrub is unique, and has a life all its own which is described with singular power in this novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

This is an area practically untouched in writing, though it resembles the mountain stories of Maristan Chapman and Elizabeth Maddox Roberts, as it deals with primitive people on their native soil. They are simple and uncouth perhaps, but with a certain dignity. They’re unlearned, slow, and peaceful, but gallant and brave.

The book is only a picture of their everyday life, their rich and picturesque individualities, and of the sights and sounds of nature which surround them. Mrs. Rawlings renders her scenes with a profound knowledge of the people and their habitation. Evidently she has lived among them and loves  the “Big Scrub.”

Rawlings has a most interesting style, her short, crisp sentences carrying no wasted words, and yet, having an almost poetic rhythm.

The story concerns one Lantry and his family, who live in a clearing  in the scrub, wresting a meagre existence from the sandy soil. It’s a picture of American life that will be a lovely to the reader of fiction in that this strange, enchanting setting and its primitive people have never yet been presented. And to Floridians, of course, it will have a special appeal.

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See also: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1938)
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A more critical 1933 review of South Moon Under

From the original review of South Moon Under by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in the Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal, March 12, 1933: A regional novel, introducing in fiction an unfamiliar part of the American scene, the Florida “scrub,” and the “Crackers” — illiterate, poor white natives of the isolated sections of the Deep South.

It is a first novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, full of detail, teeming with backwoods crudities in dialect: bearing the star of first-hand acquaintance with the Crackers and the plant and “varmint” life of their surroundings. It belongs to the unvarnished statement of fact school of American writing, a school that has had many recent recruits — regional books by writers who see a great deal, and record it all, camera-like. It’s all true but singularly unbeautiful — somehow diminishing life and making it seem paltry.

Here are shrill voices, strong epithets, further additions to the dreary literary trope of women in childbirth.

One family, the Lantrys — father, daughter, and grandson — is depicted for a genera in the pine scrub, with the woman working in the fields, cooking longing for tender words that never come; the men trapping in winter, ‘gator hunting in summer, moonshining when crops are bad, obeying their own clan code and flogging the transgressor.

“South Moon Under” refers to a stage of the moon, the stage when it is directly under the earth. The Crackers, who believe in the zodiac signs and live principally by hunting, think that game stirs at the four moon stages, moon-rise and moon-down, south-moon-over and south-moon-under.

Young Lant, the grandson, a great woodsman, understands all but the influence of south-moon-under. That “the creatures” should obey an invisible call from another planet is to him strange and eerie. In his halting way he reasons that a Power shapes our destinies, “rough-hew them how we will.”

He was born, he hunts for food, in the end he slays a “revenooer’s” spy, all in the south-moon-under; so the major events of his life seem beyond his control.

The boy’s mother especially, Piety (pronounced Py-tee), has pathetic dignity and commands respect but often this reviewers reaction to the story is distaste, revulsion at being brought to read about the trapped “varmints” boiling for the chickens. “their bodies looking like newborn babies.”

One is emotionally depressed, as if the tragic muse, Melpomene, were being seen on a spring wagon, driving through the scrub, corn pone beside her in a tin pail.

As a revelation of how the other half lives, it’s all significant and interesting. But it’s not the particular province of fiction to explain unfamiliar people. That is, rather, the function of ethnography, the branch of science that is purely descriptive of people and races. To this reviewer, at least, South Moon Under seems to be merely ethnography humanized.

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South Moon Under by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings on Amazon
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Quotes from South Moon Under

“Perhaps all men were moved against their will. A man ordered his life, and then an obscurity of circumstance sent him down a road that was not of his own desire or choosing. Something beyond a man’s immediate choice and will reached through the earth and stirred him. He did not see how any man might escape it.” 

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“The worst things I knows of is rattlesnakes and some kinds o’ people. And a rattlesnake minds his own matters if he ain’t bothered. A man’s got a right to kill ary thing, snake or man, comes messin’ up with him.” 

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“Hit don’t make no difference what a man perfesses. I been in a heap o’ churches. There’s the Nazarene Church and the Pentecost and the Holy Rollers and the Baptists and I don’t know what-all. I cain’t see much difference to nary one of ‘em. There’s a good to all of ‘em and there’s a bad.”

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“Men had reached into the scrub and along its boundaries, had snatched what they could get and had gone away, uneasy in that vast indifferent peace; for a man was nothing, crawling ant-like among the myrtle bushes under the pines.”

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The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1938)

The Yearling, a 1938 novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896 – 1953), was the most successful work by this American author. It was an immediate bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939.

Rawlings struggled to gain a foothold in the literary world and made no secret that she found writing to be a difficult task. After buying an orange grove in Cross Creek, Florida, where she subsequently lived for many decades, she found the inspiration she had long sought from the people and local culture.

The Yearling might now be considered more of a young adult novel, though at the time, this was not yet a separate genre. However, it’s a book for readers of all ages. It can be enjoyed as a great narrative coming-of-age story, or read as a parable.

The Yearling came out as a major Metro-Goldwyn Mayer film in 1946, and starred Gregory Peck as Penny Baxter, Claude Jarman, Jr. as Jody, and Jane Wyman as Ma Baxter.

It can be argued that The Yearling has lost status in the American literary canon. A reconsideration in Harper’s Magazine in 2014, the book’s 75th anniversary, argued for its preservation. This lengthy article by Lauren Groff is worth reading if you’re an admirer of Rawlings’ work, or want to be. It describes succinctly the stature that Rawlings and her most famous book enjoyed (hard-won though it was) in her time: 

“The Yearling was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. It was the best-selling novel of 1938, and it has sold millions of copies since. The book remains familiar in a vague way to many American adults, who probably read it in school or have seen the 1946 film based on it. But it is more than a bestseller, and certainly more than a dated children’s book. It is a genuine classic, influenced by Hemingway’s declarative simplicity and edited by Hemingway’s legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins.

For a time, its author was a literary figure to rival the rest of Perkins’s stable, which included F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was friends with Zora Neale Hurston, Martha Gellhorn, and Robert Frost. She corresponded with John Steinbeck, Thornton Wilder, and Eleanor Roosevelt. She was Margaret Mitchell’s guest at the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind. Her house in Cross Creek, about twenty miles from Gainesville, is a state park.”

Following is a wonderfully descriptive review of The Yearling from 1938, the year it came out. Note that it reveals key plot points, none of which are secret, and often discussed in reviews. So if you prefer to be surprised, read the it before consuming  reviews.

 

A 1938 review of The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

From the original review of The Yearling in The Detroit Free Press, April 10, 1938:  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Tells a Powerful Story of a Boy Growing into Manhood

A novel of Florida, the story has nothing in common with the Florida of Palm Beach and Miami. It is a tale of the virtual pioneering which goes on in the heart of that peninsula state, in its swamp land and “hammocks,” its higher, drier spots like the fictional Baxter’s Island.

The title refers to the young boy, Jody Baxter, who approaches manhood in the single year of the story’s compass; although there is another yearling, the orphan fawn that Jody brings in from the wilderness. The affection for the fawn, Flag, is regarded by some readers as too sentimental in its treatment by Rawlings.

While we may agree that Jody’s devotion to Flag has moments that are a little tiresome, this very reaction proves the soundness of Rawlings’ emphasis. What adult in real life can maintain unfailing interest in any adolescent passion, whatever it may be? The best many a parent can achieve is a polite tolerance.

It’s not enough to dismiss the fawn’s existence in the story as a pretty device. As the baby fawn grows into a yearling, according to its nature, it becomes a menace to the hard-won livelihood of the Baxters, Pa, Ma, and Jody.

Twice, Flag eats the succulent green shoots of the new corn and ruins the crop. Twice, Jody’s faith in Flag is put to the test. The boy works harder than he ever has in his young life to protect Flag from the judgment of his understanding father and his more matter-of-fact mother.

Throughout the story the point is made that Penny Baxter, a confederate veteran who is Jody’s father is a wise huntsman who never kills game except to meet his own needs. He has always sympathized with Jody’s wish for something alive for his very own, to com at his call as the hold hound, Julia, has tagged Penny’s footsteps.

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Quotes from The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
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But the laws of human need and survival are stern. The moment comes, at the end, when Penny insists that Jody kill his pet. Jody refuses. Penny is ailing and cannot hold a gun. Ma Baxter, a poor shot, wounds Flag, and Jody is forced to end the animal’s misery. Then he runs away, convinced that even his father has betrayed him.

In a few days of Jody’s futile attempt at escape, he experiences hunger that is akin to starvation, not mere appetite. Rescued from a cockle-shell boat and set down at the home landing, Jody wanders home because he can go nowhere else, only to find that home was where he was wanted as well as needed.

“I’m goin’ to talk to you, man to man,” Penny tells Jody. “You figgered I went back on you. Now there’s a thing ever’ man has got to know. Mebbe you know it a’ready. Twa’nt only me. Twa’nt only your yearlin’deer havin’ to be destroyed. Boy, life goes back on you.”

Penny had done what many another parent has tried to do — shield a beloved child from the sorrows and hardships of life. But when thing was no longer possible, he could only tell the boy that “life knocked a man down and he gets up and it knocks him down agin’ … But ever’ man’s lonesome. What’s he to do then? What’s he to do what he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”

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The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings on Amazon
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The Yearling is a superb study of adolescence, which should deepen the sympathies of all who have any dealings with the young.

Beyond that, it’s a detailed and often exciting narrative of a hardscrabble way of American life. For its minutia of daily living, it reminds one of Della Lutes’ The Country Kitchen. We know what the Baxters had to eat — the bear meat, the cracklin’ bread, the pork and greens, and how they traded game for staples at the store at Volusia Landing.

Their neighbors in the scrub are the Forresters, great strapping fellows who have a rollicking, roving live. Lem is the mean one, who added to Jody’s education in the low-down ways of human nature. Buck and Mill-wheel are kinder, with Buck helping on the Baxter land when Penny is bitten by a rattler.

Fodder-wing, the little crippled Forrester,  and Jody’s only friend, makes pets of all the wild creatures and, in death, brings another human experience close to Jody.

Jody and Penny almost miss the Christmas “doin’s” at Volusia for the showdown hunt after old Slewfoot, the marauding bear. That Christmas Eve, the Forresters write the final chapter in their feud with Oliver Hutto, who takes is new wife, Twink, the troublemaker, and Grandma Hutto away with him, out of Jody’s life.

To sum up, The Yearling is an acutely real story an existence at once contemporary and utterly alien. Even the dialect is alien, but it’s one that clearly has its roots in the old English, not a dialect of ignorance. What is contemporary, timeless, and universal is the bittersweet story of lost youth.

“Somewhere beyond the sinkhole past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever.”

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Learn more about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
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More about The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Wikipedia Reader discussion on Goodreads The Lost Yearling: An American Classic Fades Away

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6 Poems by Julia de Burgos about Love and Identity

Julia de Burgos, born Julia Constanza Burgos Garcia (February 17, 1914 – July 6, 1953), was a Puerto Rican poet and civil rights activist for women and African/Afro-Caribbean writers.

After Burgos was awarded a scholarship to attend University High School in 1928, her family moved to Rio Piedras, which would influence her later on to write her first work, Rio Grande de Loiza. The writings of Luis Llorens Torres, Clara Lair, Rafael Alberti, and Pablo Neruda were among some of the people who influenced her career as a young poet.

By the early 1930s, Burgos had already become a published writer in journals and newspapers and she traveled all over Puerto Rico to give book readings. Much of her work contained a collection of the intimate, land, and social struggles of those oppressed on the island as well as her work personal struggles concerning her complicated love life.

Here are six poems by Julia de Burgos in both their original Spanish (poemas de Julia de Burgos) and English translation about the small yet vibrant island of Puerto Rico and her struggles with love and identity.

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A Julia de Burgos (To Julia de Burgos)

Ya las gentes murmuran que yo soy tu enemiga
porque dicen que en verso doy al mundo mi yo.

Mienten, Julia de Burgos. Mienten, Julia de Burgos.
La que se alza en mis versos no es tu voz: es mi voz
porque tú eres ropaje y la esencia soy yo; y el más
profundo abismo se tiende entre las dos.

Tú eres fria muñeca de mentira social,
y yo, viril destello de la humana verdad.
Tú, miel de cortesana hipocresías; yo no;
que en todos mis poemas desnudo el corazón.
Tú eres como tu mundo, egoísta;
yo no; que en todo me lo juego a ser lo que soy yo.

“>Tú eres sólo la grave señora señorona; yo no,
yo soy la vida, la fuerza, la mujer.
Tú eres de tu marido, de tu amo; yo no;
yo de nadie, o de todos, porque a todos, a
todos en mi limpio sentir y en mi pensar me doy.

“>Tú te rizas el pelo y te pintas; yo no;
a mí me riza el viento, a mí me pinta el sol.
Tú eres dama casera, resignada, sumisa,
atada a los prejuicios de los hombres; yo no;
que yo soy Rocinante corriendo desbocado
olfateando horizontes de justicia de Dios.

Tú en ti misma no mandas;
a ti todos te mandan; en ti mandan tu esposo, tus
padres, tus parientes, el cura, el modista,
el teatro, el casino, el auto,
las alhajas, el banquete, el champán, el cielo
y el infierno, y el que dirán social.
En mí no, que en mí manda mi solo corazón,
mi solo pensamiento; quien manda en mí soy yo.

Tú, flor de aristocracia; y yo, la flor del pueblo.
Tú en ti lo tienes todo y a todos se
lo debes, mientras que yo, mi nada a nadie se la debo.
Tú, clavada al estático dividendo ancestral,
y yo, un uno en la cifra del divisor
social somos el duelo a muerte que se acerca fatal.

Cuando las multitudes corran alborotadas
dejando atrás cenizas de injusticias
quemadas, y cuando con la tea de las siete virtudes,
tras los siete pecados, corran las multitudes,
contra ti, y contra todo lo injusto
y lo inhumano, yo iré en medio de
ellas con la tea en la mano.

 To Julia de Burgos

People now murmur that I am your enemy
For they claim that in verses
I reveal your essence to the world. 

They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie Julia de Burgos.
The voice uplifted in my verses is not your own: it is mine,
For you are garment and I essence;
And the greatest abyss lies between the two.

You are the cold-blooded puppet of social deceit,
And I, the driving splendour of human truth.
You, of courtesan hypocrisies…the honey; not I;
Whose heart is revealed in my poems…all.
You are like your world, selfish; not I;
Who dares all to be what I truly am.

You are merely the implacable, elegant lady;
Not I; I am life, I am strength, I am woman.
You belong to your husband, to your master; not I;
I belong to no one, or to everyone, because to all,
everyone,
In wholesome feeling and thought, I give myself.

You curl your locks and paint yourself, not I;
I am curled by the wind; brightened by the sun.
You are homebound, resigned, submissive,
Confined to the whims of men; not I;
I am Rocinante galloping recklessly
Wandering through the boundaries of God’s justice.

You are not in command of self; everyone rules you:
You are ruled by your husband, your parents, relatives,
The priest, the seamstress, theatre, club,
The car, jewels, the banquet, champagne,
Heaven and hell and… social hearsay.
But not me, I am ruled by my heart alone,
My sole thought; it is “I” who rules myself.

You, aristocratic blossom; and I, the people’s blossom.
You are well provided for, but are indebted to everyone,
While I, my nothingness to no one owe.
You, nailed to the stagnant ancestral dividend;
And I, but one digit in the social cipher.
We are the encroaching, inevitable duel to the death.

When the multitude uncontrolled runs,
The ashes of injustices, burnt, left behind,
And when with the torch of the seven virtues,
The throng to the seven sins gives chase,
I will be against you and against all
That is unjust and inhuman.
Upholding the torch… I shall be among the throng.

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Learn more about Julia de Burgos
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 Ay ay ay de La Grifa Negra (Ay ay ay of the Black Grif)

Ay ay ay, que soy grifa y pura negra;
grifería en mi pelo, cafrería en mis labios;
y mi chata nariz mozambiquea.

Negra de intacto tinte, lloro y río
la vibración de ser estatua negra;
de ser trozo de noche,
en que mis blancos dientes relampaguean;
y ser negro bejuco
que a lo negro se enreda
y comba el negro nido
en que el cuervo se acuesta.

Negro trozo de negro en que me esculpo,
ay ay ay, que mi estatua es toda negra.
Dícenme que mi abuelo fue el esclavo
por quien el amo dio treinta monedas.

Ay ay ay, que el esclavo fue mi abuelo
es mi pena, es mi pena.
Si hubiera sido el amo,
sería mi vergüenza;
que en los hombres, igual que en las naciones,
si el ser el siervo es no tener derechos,
el ser el amo es no tener conciencia.

Ay ay ay, los pecados del rey blanco
lávelos en perdón la reina negra.
Ay ay ay, que la raza se me fuga
y hacia la raza blanca zumba y vuela
hundirse en su agua clara;
tal vez si la blanca se ensombrará en la negra.

Ay ay ay, que mi negra raza huye
y con la blanca corre a ser trigueña;
¡a ser la del futuro,
fraternidad de América!

 

Ay, Ay, Ay of the Black Grif  

Ay, ay, ay, that am kinky-haired and pure black
kinks in my hair, Kafir in my lips;
and my flat nose Mozambiques.

Black of pure tint, I cry and laugh
the vibration of being a black statue;
a chunk of night, in which my white
teeth are lightning;
and to be a black vine
which entwines in the black
and curves the black nest in which the raven lies.

Black chunk of black in which I sculpt myself,
ay, ay, ay, my statue is all black.
They tell me that my grandfather was the slave
for whom the master paid thirty coins.

Ay, ay, ay, that the slave was my grandfather
is my sadness, is my sadness.
If he had been the master
it would be my shame:
that in men, as in nations,
if being the slave is having no rights
being the master is having no conscience.

Ay, ay, ay wash the sins of the white King
in forgiveness black Queen.
Ay, ay, ay, the race escapes me
and buzzes and flies toward the white race,
to sink in its clear water;
or perhaps the white will be shadowed in the black.

Ay, ay, ay my black race flees
and with the white runs to become bronzed;
to be one for the future,
fraternity of America!

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“Remembering Julia” by Manny Vega, 2006
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El Mar y Tú (The Sea and You), 1981

La carrera del mar sobre mi puerta
es sensación azul entre mis dedos,
y tu salto impetuoso por mi espíritu
es no menos azul, me nace eterno.

Todo el color de aurora despertada
el mar y tú lo nadan a mi encuentro,
y en locura de amarme
hasta el naufragio
van rompiendo los puertos y los remos.

¡Si tuviera yo un barco de gaviotas,
para sólo un instante detenerlos,
y gritarle mi voz a que se batan
en un sencillo duelo de misterio!

Que uno en el otro encuentren
su voz propia,
que entrelacen sus sueños en el viento,
que se ciñan estrellas en los ojos
para que den, unidos, sus destellos.

Que sea un duelo de música en el aire
las magnolias abiertas de sus besos,
que las olas se vistan de pasiones
y la pasión se vista de veleros.

Todo el color de aurora despertada
el mar y tú lo estiren en un sueño
que se lleve mi barco de gaviotas
y me deje en el agua de dos cielos.

 

 

The Sea and You

The stroke of the sea upon my door
is blue sensation between my toes,
and your impetuous leap through my spirit
is no less blue, an eternal birth.

All the color of awakened aurora
the sea and you swim to my encounter,
and in the madness of loving me
until the shipwreck
you both go breaking the ports and the oars.

If I just had a ship of seagulls,
and could for an instant stop them,
and shout my voice that they fight
in a simple duel of mystery!

That one in the other might find
his own voice,
interweave their dreams in the wind,
bind stars in their eyes
so that they give, united, their beams.

May there be a duel of music in the air
the opened magnolias of their kisses,
that the waves dress in passions
and the passion dress in sailboats.

All the color of awakened aurora
may the sea and you expand it into a dream
that it carry my ship of seagulls
and leave me in the water of two skies.

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Yo Misma Fui Mi Ruta (I Was My Own Route), 1986

—Yo quise ser como los hombres quisieron que yo fuese:
un intento de vida;
un juego al escondite con mi ser.
Pero yo estaba hecha de presentes,
y mis pies planos sobre la tierra promisora
no resistían caminar hacia atrás,
y seguían adelante, adelante,
burlando las cenizas para alcanzar el beso
de los senderos nuevos.

—A cada paso adelantado en mi ruta hacia el frente
rasgaba mis espaldas el aleteo desesperado
de los troncos viejos.

—Pero la rama estaba desprendida para siempre,
y a cada nuevo azote la mirada mía
se separaba más y más y más de los lejanos
horizontes aprendidos:
y mi rostro iba tomando la espresión que le venía de adentro,
la expresión definida que asomaba un sentimiento
de liberación íntima;
un sentimiento que surgía
del equilibrio sostenido entre mi vida
y la verdad del beso de los senderos nuevos.

—Ya definido mi rumbo en el presente,
me sentí brote de todos los suelos de la tierra,
de los suelos sin historia,
de los suelos sin porvenir,
del suelo siempre suelo sin orillas
de todos los hombres y de todas las épocas.

—Y fui toda en mí como fue en mí la vida…
—Yo quiese ser como los hombres quisieron que yo fuese:
un intento de vida;
un juego al escondite con mi ser.
Pero yo estaba hecha de presentes;
cuando ya los heraldos me anunciaban
en el regio desfile de los troncos viejos,
se me torció el deseo de seguir a los hombres,
y el homenaje se quedó esperándome.

 

I Was My Own Route

I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life;
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows,
and my feet level on the promissory earth
would not accept walking backwards
and went forward, forward,
mocking the ashes to reach the kiss
of new paths.

At each advancing step on my route forward
my back was ripped by the desperate flapping wings
of the old guard.

But the branch was unpinned forever,
and at each new whiplash my look
separated more and more and more from the distant
familiar horizons;
and my face took the expansion that came from within,
the defined expression that hinted at a feeling
of intimate liberation;
a feeling that surged
from the balance between my life
and the truth of the kiss of the new paths.

Already my course now set in the present,
I felt myself a blossom of all the soils of the earth,
of the soils without history,
of the soils without a future,
of the soil always soil without edges
of all the men and all the epochs.

And I was all in me as was life in me .. . .
I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life;
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows;
when the heralds announced me
at the regal parade of the old guard,
the desire to follow men warped in me,
and the homage was left waiting for me.

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 Canción amarga (Bitter Song)

Nada turba mi ser, pero estoy triste.
Algo lento de sombra me golpea,
aunque casi detrás de esta agonía,
he tenido en mi mano las estrellas.

Debe ser la caricia de lo inútil,
la tristeza sin fin de ser poeta,
de cantar y cantar, sin que se rompa
la tragedia sin par de la existencia.

Ser y no querer ser… esa es la divisa,
la batalla que agota toda espera,
encontrarse, ya el alma moribunda,
que en el mísero cuerpo aún quedan fuerzas.

¡Perdóname, oh amor, si no te nombro!
Fuera de tu canción soy ala seca.
La muerte y yo dormimos juntamente…
Cantarte a ti, tan sólo, me despierta.

 

Bitter song

Nothing troubles my being, but I am sad.
Something slow and dark strikes me,
though just behind this agony,
I have held the stars in my hand.

It must be the caress of the useless,
the unending sadness of being a poet,
of singing and singing, without breaking
the greatest tragedy of existence.

To be and not want to be … that’s the motto,
the battle that exhausts all expectation,
to find, when the soul is almost dead,
that the miserable body still has strength.

Forgive me, oh love, if I do not name you!
Apart from your song I am dry wing.
Death and I sleep together . . .
Only when I sing to you, I awake.

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 Rio Grande De Loiza (Big River of Loiza)

¡Río Grande de Loíza!… Alárgate en mi espíritu
y deja que mi alma se pierda en tus riachuelos,
para buscar la fuente que te robó de niño
y en un ímpetu lo te devolvió al sendero.
Enróscate en mis labios y deja que te beba,
para sentirte mío por un breve momento,
y esconderte del mundo, y en ti mismo esconderte,
y oir voces de asombro, en la boca del viento.
Apéate un instante del lomo de la tierra,
y busca de mis ansias el íntimo secreto;
confúndeme en el vuelo de mi ave fantasía,
y déjame una rosa de agua en mis ensueños.

¡Río Grande de Loiza!.. Mi manantial, mi río,
desde que alzóse al mundo el pétalo materno;
contigo se bajaron desde las rudas cuestas
a buscar nuevos surcos, mis pálidos anhelos;
y mi niñez fue toda un poema en el río,
y un río en el poema de mis primeros sueños.
Llegó la adolescencia. Me sorprendió la vida
prendida en lo más ancho de tu viajar eterno;
y fui tuya mil veces, y en un bello romance
me despertaste el alma y me besaste el cuerpo.

¿Adónde te Ilevaste las aguas que bañaron
mis formas, en espiga del sol recién abierto?
¡Quién sabe en qué remoto país mediterráneo
alguien fauno en la playa me estará poseyendo!
¡Ouién sabe en qué aguacero de qué tierra lejana
me estaré derramando para abrir surcos nuevos;
o si acaso, cansada de morder corazones,
me estaré congelando en cristales de hielo!

¡Río Grande de Loíza! Azul, Moreno, Rojo.
Espejo azul, caído pedazo azul del cielo;
desnuda carne blanca que se te vuelve negra
cada vez que la noche se te mete en el lecho;
roja franja de sangre, cuando baja la lluvia
a torrentes su barro te vomitan los cerros.
Río hombre, pero hombre con pureza de río,
porque das tu azul alma cuando das tu azul beso.
Muy señor río mío. Río hombre. Único hombre
que ha besado en mi alma al besar en mi cuerpo.

¡Río Grande de Loiza!… Río grande. Llanto grande.
El más grande de todos nuestros llantos isleños,
si no fuera más grande el que de mi se sale
por los ojos del alma para mi esclavo pueblo.

 

Big River of Loiza

Rio Grande de Loiza!… Elongate yourself in my spirit
and let my soul lose itself in your rivulets,
finding the fountain that robbed you as a child
and in a crazed impulse returned you to the path.
Coil yourself upon my lips and let me drink you,
to feel you mine for a brief moment,
to hide you from the world and hide you in yourself,
to hear astonished voices in the mouth of the wind.
Dismount for a moment from the loin of the earth,
and search for the intimate secret in my desires;
confuse yourself in the flight  of my bird fantasy,
and leave a rose of water in my dreams.

Rio Grande de Loiza!… My wellspring, my river
since the maternal petal lifted me to the world;
my pale desires came down in you from the craggy hills
to find new furrows;
and my childhood was all a poem in the river,
and a river in the poem of my first dreams.
Adolescence arrived. Life surprised me
pinned to the widest part of your eternal voyage;
and I was yours a thousand times, and in a beautiful romance
you awoke my soul and kissed my body.

Where did you take the waters that bathed
my body in a sun blossom recently opened?
Who knows on what remote Mediterranean shore
some faun shall be possessing me!
Who knows in what rainfall of what far land
I shall be spilling to open new furrows;
or perhaps, tired of biting hearts
I shall be freezing in icicles!

Rio Grande de Loiza!… Blue. Brown. Red.
Blue mirror, fallen piece of blue sky;
naked white flesh that turns black
each time the night enters your bed;
red stripe of blood, when the rain falls
in torrents and the hills vomit their mud.
Man river, but man with the purity of river,
because you give your blue soul when you give your blue kiss.
Most sovereign river mine. Man river. The only man
who has kissed my soul upon kissing my body.

Rio Grande de Loiza!… Great river. Great flood of tears.
The greatest of all our island’s tears
save those greater that come from the eyes
of my soul for my enslaved people.

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Julia de Burgos page on Amazon

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Skyler Isabella Gomez is a 2019 SUNY New Paltz graduate with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in Black Studies. Her passions include connecting more with her Latin roots by researching and writing about legendary Latina authors. 

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Quotes from The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1938)

For many years, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings desperately wanted to break into the literary world, she tried writing the kinds of stories she thought editors were looking for. Mostly, she racked up rejections. The Yearling, published in 1938, was the result of a radical change in her lifestyle and locale, as she immersed herself in an environment that was quite different from where she came from. Here, we’ll sample a selection of quotes from The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ crowning literary achievement.

After moving to Florida and buying a remote and rustic orange grove in Cross Creek in the late 1920s, she began to follow the well-worn dictate to “write what you know.” She wrote about the hardscrabble life Florida’s backwoods and her characters were inspired by her neighbors — though it must be said that they regarded this interloper warily.

Finally, after years of rejection, Scribner’s Magazine published two of her short stories in 1931: “Cracker Chidlings” and “Jacob’s Ladder.” A series of modest successes preceded her writing of The Yearling, with her editor, the famed Max Perkins, encouraging her to continue writing from her life.

The Yearling tells the story of 12-year-old Jody Baxter, who is forced to shoot his pet fawn after it’s caught eating his family’s much-needed food crops. The book became an instant bestseller, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. Before we get to the quotes, here’s a brief review of the book that appeared in 1938, the year it was published.

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A brief 1938 review of The Yearling

From the original review of The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in the Cincinnati Enquirer, April 7, 1938: In that wild, swampy, near-jungle country that is inland Florida, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings has set another enchanting story. Palmettos, sweet gums, magnolias, cypress, and Spanish moss, form the backdrop for the activities of bears, deer, wolves, alligators, panthers, raccoons, rattlesnakes, and an occasional human being.

The Baxters — Ma, Pa, and their son Jody, age 12, live not far from the sea. Their little clearing in the scrub country is known as Baxter’s Island; in the surrounding terrain wild animals abound The year which the story is encompassed is crammed with conflict, tragedy, beauty, and drama.

The land reluctantly yields a subsistence of corn, cane, cowpeas, and garden goods; the fires more readily supplies venison, bear steaks, and squirrel for the table. A horse, a cow, and a brood sow are invaluable in the struggle for a living, but hey must at all times be protected from the raids of hungry wolves and meddlesome bears.

It is around Jody and his pet fawn that the story centers. Today is a kind of Huck Finn, with the woods for a river, and his father, Penny Baxter, for a kind of Jim. Penny shields both his son and the fawn from the deserved wrath of Ma Baxter. Besides these three and their bearded, lawless neighbors the Forresters, there are incidents which will linger long in the reader’s memory.

Despite the grace and clarity of the style and simplicity of the story itself, this is a generously written book into which the author has poured a wealth of emotion and understanding as well as the results of keep and sympathetic observation.

 

Quotes from The Yearling 

“He lay down beside the fawn. He put one arm across its neck. It did not seem to him that he could ever be lonely again.”

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“You kin tame anything, son, excusin’ the human tongue.” 

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“The wild animals seemed less predatory to him than people he had known.”

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“She drew gallantry from men as the sun drew water. Her pertness enchanted them. Young men went away from her with a feeling of bravado. Old men were enslaved by her silver curls. Something about her was forever female and made all men virile.”

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“Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer.” 

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“Eulalie in a remote fashion belonged to him, Jody, to do with as he pleased, if only to throw potatoes at her.”

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“All of us is somehow lonesome.”

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“He lay down on his pallet and drew the fawn down beside him. He often lay so with it in the shed, or under the live oaks in the heat of the day. He lay with his head against its side. its ribs lifted and fell with its breathing. It rested its chin on his hand. It had a few short hairs there that prickled him. He had been cudgeling his wits for an excuse to bring the fawn inside at night to sleep with him, and now he had one that could not be disputed. He would smuggle it in and out as long as possible, in the name of peace.” 

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“He had perhaps been bruised too often. The peace of the vast aloof scrub had drawn him with the beneficence of its silence. Something in him was raw and tender. The touch of men was hurtful upon it, but the touch of pines was healing.” 

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“A mark was on him from the day’s delight, so that all his life, when April was a thin green and the flavor of rain was on his tongue, an old wound would throb and a nostalgia would fill him for something he could not quite remember.”

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“Ever’ man wants life to be a fine thing, and easy. ‘Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but ‘taint easy.”

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“He was addled with April. He was dizzy with Spring. He was as drunk as Lem Forrester on a Saturday night.” 

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“The sunrise brought a wild, free sadness; the sunset, a lonely yet a comforting one. He indulged his agreeable melancholy until the earth under him turned from gray to lavender and then to the color dried corn husks.” 

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“Don’t go gittin’ faintified on me.” 

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“Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin”

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“‘Move close, son. I’ll warm you.’ He edged closer to his father’s bones and sinews. Penny slipped an arm around him and he lay close against the lank thigh. His father was the core of safety. His father swam the swift creek to fetch back his wounded dog. The clearing was safe, and his father fought for it, and for his own.”

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The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings on Amazon
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The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin (1894) – full text

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin (1850 – 1904) is a short story that was originally published on December 6, 1894 in Vogue magazine under the title “The Dream of an Hour.” This story, which appeared in St. Louis Life the following year as “The Story of an Hour,” has been much anthologized and is still studied. Like Chopin’s best-known work, the 1899 novella The Awakening, this story was controversial when it first appeared.

The story’s main character, Louise Mallard, who has a weak heart, learns that her husband has died in an accident. The hour referred to in the title is the time that elapses after she receives this news. At first, Louise collapses into her sister’s arms, but then, when she is alone with her thoughts, she whispers, “Free! Body and soul free!” Rather than feeling devastated, she feels quite liberated.

Louise’s honest reaction to her husband’s purported death allows the reader to see this dark side of her. It is her escape route from an unhappy marriage. But Louise has a weak heart, and her husband did not actually die in an accident. What happens when he walks in the door after this hour of contemplating freedom? To reveal more would be to give away a major spoiler. Literary critic Emily Toth put the story in context:

“In the mid- to late 1890s, Vogue was the place where Chopin published her most daring and surprising stories [‘The Story of an Hour’ and eighteen others]. . . . Because she had Vogue as a market—and a well-paying one—Kate Chopin wrote the critical, ironic, brilliant stories about women for which she is known today. Alone among magazines of the 1890s, Vogue published fearless and truthful portrayals of women’s lives.”

So without going into any more detail about this brief classic story, once you read it, you’ll find links to analyses of it at the end of this post.

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You may also enjoy:
The Awakening (1899) – full text
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“The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

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See also: Desirée’s Baby (1893) by Kate Chopin – full text
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Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will — as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the breath: “free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door — you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”

“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease — of the joy that kills.

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More about “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin Analysis of “The Story of an Hour” on ThoughtCo. Kate Chopin Official Website Wikipedia

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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) known professionally as Adrienne Rich, was an American poet and essayist known for her radical feminism and activism.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, she was raised in a family that included a younger sister. Her father who worked as a pathologist at John Hopkins, and her mother was a classical concert pianist. It was her father who first encouraged her literary leanings.

After graduating from Roland Park Country School, Rich attended Radcliffe College (the former women’s college of Harvard University), from which she graduated in 1951. Right before she graduated, Rich received the Yale Series of Younger Poets award for her first collection of poetry, A Change of World. The esteemed poet W.H. Auden selected Rich for the prestigious prize.

 The development of a poet

Two years after she received her diploma from Radcliffe College, Rich married Alfred H. Conrad, an economist at Harvard. Two years later, she published a collection of poems called The Diamond Cutters. In the next few years, Rich became busy with not only her writing career but with motherhood, having three children in the next six years.

It was during this time that Rich’s poetry became darker, exploring topics like racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War. She also published the poetry collections Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law in 1963, as well as Leaflets in 1969. In these collections, Rich’s poetic style went from carefully metered poems to free verse. While her literary star was rising by leaps and bounds, she left her husband in 1970. Later that year, Alfred Conrad took his own life.

Early on in her career, The Penguin Companion to American Literature (1971) noted the evolution of her poetry:

“Her early verse is marked by a delicacy of insight, but her precocious talent has deepened and darkened in recent years. Her themes are those of personal and family relationships, and the nature of subjective life. The poems in Necessities of Life (1966) have an extraordinary brevity and compassion of feeling.”

A more radical shift took hold in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as noted by Sarah Wyman in her analysis of Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974 – 1977: 

“These poems, about and for women, envision an alternative to a patriarchal system in which men control the avenues of power and the definitions of female existence … At this point in Rich’s evolving process — separatist, radical feminist — she reserves dialogue for the shared experience of women. Although they may remain only dreams, such creative acts can bring forth new realities in the face of a damaging, male-dominated culture where women are not full participants.”

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Political Activism

When Rich and her family moved to New York in the late 1960s, the poet became involved in activist causes such as racism, feminism, and the anti-war movement. Rich even signed a pledge that stated that she would not pay her taxes in order to protest the Vietnam War.

In the late 1960s, Rich gave lectures at Swarthmore College as well as the Columbia University School of the Arts. In the early 1970s, Rich was awarded the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award. She also spent some time teaching at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

In 1974, Rich received the National Book Award for Diving Into the Wreck, an honor she shared with Allen Ginsberg. Rich decided to share her award with the two other feminist poets nominated, Audre Lorde and Alice Walker. In her acceptance speech, Rich accepted the National Book Award for the women who go “unheard” in a patriarchal world that often works hard to dismiss them.

Rich started a relationship with the Caribbean-born writer Michelle Cliff in 1974. This relationship lasted until Rich’s death in 2012. For the remainder of her career, Rich wrote about lesbian sexuality and desire in a frank and direct manner.

With collections such as Twenty One Love Poems, Dream of a Common Language, and A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, Rich cemented her reputation as a poet who broke new ground in exploring the sexual attitudes of women.

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Adrienne Rich page on Amazon
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Adrienne Rich’s Later Years

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Rich continued to gain accolades for her teaching, poetry, and activism. Rich refused the honor of the National Medal of Arts in 1997. In her official notice of refusal, she stated that she was protesting Congress’ move to shut down the National Endowment of the Arts, as well as the Clinton administration’s unfriendly moves towards the arts community in general.

From the late 1990s until her death in 2012, Rich continued to publish a mixture of poetry and nonfiction. Some of the work that came from this period include these volumes: Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995 – 1998; Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations (1991); and  Fox: Poems 1998 – 2000.

As she grew older, Rich’s political activism didn’t slow down. In the 2000s, she participated in protests of the impending Iraq War. She also got appointed to the board of the Academy of American Poets in 2002. A year later, She got another literary award from Yale University, this one being the Yale Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. During this same time period, the Equality Forum honored her for her work in the LGBTQIA+ activist movement, calling Rich an “icon”.

On March 27, 2012, the esteemed poet Adrienne Rich died at her Santa Cruz home. Rich was survived by her three children from her first marriage, two grandchildren, and her life partner Michelle Cliff.

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An analysis of Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich
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The legacy of Adrienne Rich

Rich is remembered and respected not only for her blistering poetry but for her impassioned activist activities. She was also fervently dedicated to the social justice issues of her time. She had a unique ability to blend the arts with a need to teach future generations of women and artists how to navigate a world that will often be hostile to them. Many modern poets have taken up these battles through poetry and activism. Rich was an important trailblazer for these literary activists.

Adrienne Rich’s poetry has earned her a well-deserved place in the genre, but it must be noted that she was also a fiercely articulate essayist. Her output, though not as prodigious as that of her poetry, was impressive. Of Woman Born (1976), for instance, is a collection that is a second-wave feminist classic. In a 2018 Paris Review essay, The Treasures That Prevail: On the Prose of Adrienne Rich, Sandra M. Gilbert wrote:

“To reread and rethink Rich’s prose as a complete oeuvre is to encounter a major public intellectual—responsible, self-questioning, and morally passionate. For those of us who came of age during feminism’s fabled second wave in the seventies, texts like “When We Dead Awaken” and “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” were key proclamations of ideas that we desperately needed to guide us on our way. Equally important to us was the powerful blend of research, theory, and self-reflection that she produced in her landmark study Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution.”

This essay, well worth reading for admirers of Adrienne Rich, sums up the poet’s legacy beautifully.

More about Adrienne Rich

On this site

The Dream of a Common Language, an analysis

Poetry Collections (Selected)

A Change of World (1951)The Diamond Cutters, and Other Poems (1955)Necessities of life: Poems, 1962-1965 (1966)Leaflets (1969)The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970 (1971)Diving into the Wreck (1973)Twenty-one Love Poems (1976)The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974 – 1977) (1978)A Wild Patience Has Taken Me this Far: Poems 1978-1981 (1982)The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984 (1984)Time’s Power: Poems, 1985-1988 (1989)An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (1991)Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems, 1991-1995 (1995)Midnight Salvage: Poems, 1995-1998. (1999)Fox: Poems 1998-2000. (2001)The School Among the Ruins: Poems, 2000-2004 (2004)Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004–2007 (2007)Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010 (2010)

Essays and Prose (Selected)

Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience And Institution (1976)On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966 – 1978 (1979)Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979–1985 (1986)What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993)Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations (1991)A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997–2008 (2009)Essential Essays: Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry (2018)

Critical studies and biographies

Cooper, Jane Roberta, ed. 1984. Reading Adrienne Rich: Reviews and Re-Visions, 1951-81. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Gelpi, Barbara Charlesworth and Albert Gelpi, eds. 1993. Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose: Poems, Prose, Reviews and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton.Keyes, Claire. 1986. The Aesthetics of Power: The Poetry of Adrienne Rich. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.Langdell, Cheri Colby. 2004.Adrienne Rich: The Moment of Change. Westport, CT: Praeger.Martin, Wendy. 1984. An American Triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Nelson, Cary. 1981. “Meditative Aggressions: Adrienne Rich’s Recent Transactions with History.” In Our Last First Poets: Vision and History in Contemporary American Poetry. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

More information and sources

Wikipedia Poetry Foundation Adrienne Rich: Feminist and Political Poet Academy of Poets The Treasures That Prevail: On the Prose of Adrienne Rich

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A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell (1917) – full text

A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell (1876 – 1948), a 1917 short story, is arguably this American author’s most enduring work. Certainly, it’s one of her most anthologized. It grew from her 1916 one-act play, Trifles (you can also read the full text of Trifles here), also a widely anthologized work.

Both Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers were inspired by a true crime story that Glaspell covered as a reporter for theDes Moines Daily News in 1900. The murder of John Hossack, a 59-year-old Iowa farmer, was a local sensation because the suspect was his wife Margaret. Because it was suspected that Mrs. Hossack was abused by her husband, it was also assumed that she had motive, and so she was arrested and charged.

Margaret Hossack claimed that John had been murdered with an axe by an intruder. She was found guilty, but on an appeal, the verdict was later overturned. Here is a fascinating reprint of Glaspell’s coverage of the actual case.

Soon after reporting on this story, Glaspell quit journalism to write fiction, and some years later, the incident came back to her mind. She quickly wrote Trifles, and a year later, turned it into this short story. Both are based loosely on the Hossack case and both are considered feminist works because the leading female characters gain an understanding of the case that eludes the men in the story.

The story had an impact beyond the page. It was adapted into an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the 1950s, and in 1980, it was made into an Academy Award-nominated short film by Sally Heckel, which you can watch here. Here is the full text of A Jury of Her Peers:

 A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell

When Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got a cut of the north wind, she ran back for her big woolen scarf. As she hurriedly wound that round her head her eye made a scandalized sweep of her kitchen. It was no ordinary thing that called her away—it was probably farther from ordinary than anything that had ever happened in Dickson County. But what her eye took in was that her kitchen was in no shape for leaving: her bread all ready for mixing, half the flour sifted and half unsifted.

She hated to see things half done; but she had been at that when the team from town stopped to get Mr. Hale, and then the sheriff came running in to say his wife wished Mrs. Hale would come too—adding, with a grin, that he guessed she was getting scary and wanted another woman along. So she had dropped everything right where it was.

“Martha!” now came her husband’s impatient voice. “Don’t keep folks waiting out here in the cold.”

She again opened the storm-door, and this time joined the three men and the one woman waiting for her in the big two-seated buggy.

After she had the robes tucked around her she took another look at the woman who sat beside her on the back seat. She had met Mrs. Peters the year before at the county fair, and the thing she remembered about her was that she didn’t seem like a sheriff’s wife. She was small and thin and didn’t have a strong voice.

Mrs. Gorman, sheriff’s wife before Gorman went out and Peters came in, had a voice that somehow seemed to be backing up the law with every word. But if Mrs. Peters didn’t look like a sheriff’s wife, Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He was to a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff—a heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if to make it plain that he knew the difference between criminals and non-criminals. And right there it came into Mrs. Hale’s mind, with a stab, that this man who was so pleasant and lively with all of them was going to the Wrights’ now as a sheriff.

“The country’s not very pleasant this time of year,” Mrs. Peters at last ventured, as if she felt they ought to be talking as well as the men.

Mrs. Hale scarcely finished her reply, for they had gone up a little hill and could see the Wright place now, and seeing it did not make her feel like talking. It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It had always been a lonesome-looking place. It was down in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were lonesome-looking trees. The men were looking at it and talking about what had happened. The county attorney was bending to one side of the buggy, and kept looking steadily at the place as they drew up to it.

“I’m glad you came with me,” Mrs. Peters said nervously, as the two women were about to follow the men in through the kitchen door.

Even after she had her foot on the door-step, her hand on the knob, Martha Hale had a moment of feeling she could not cross that threshold. And the reason it seemed she couldn’t cross it now was simply because she hadn’t crossed it before. Time and time again it had been in her mind, “I ought to go over and see Minnie Foster”—she still thought of her as Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs. Wright. And then there was always something to do and Minnie Foster would go from her mind. But now she could come.

The men went over to the stove. The women stood close together by the door. Young Henderson, the county attorney, turned around and said, “Come up to the fire, ladies.”

Mrs. Peters took a step forward, then stopped. “I’m not—cold,” she said.

And so the two women stood by the door, at first not even so much as looking around the kitchen.

The men talked for a minute about what a good thing it was the sheriff had sent his deputy out that morning to make a fire for them, and then Sheriff Peters stepped back from the stove, unbuttoned his outer coat, and leaned his hands on the kitchen table in a way that seemed to mark the beginning of official business. “Now, Mr. Hale,” he said in a sort of semi-official voice, “before we move things about, you tell Mr. Henderson just what it was you saw when you came here yesterday morning.”

The county attorney was looking around the kitchen.

“By the way,” he said, “has anything been moved?” He turned to the sheriff. “Are things just as you left them yesterday?”

Peters looked from cupboard to sink; from that to a small worn rocker a little to one side of the kitchen table.

“It’s just the same.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Scene from the 1980 film version of A Jury of Her Peers 
by Susan Glaspell, directed by Sally Heckel
. . . . . . . . . .

“Somebody should have been left here yesterday,” said the county attorney.

“Oh—yesterday,” returned the sheriff, with a little gesture as of yesterday having been more than he could bear to think of. “When I had to send Frank to Morris Center for that man who went crazy—let me tell you, I had my hands full yesterday. I knew you could get back from Omaha by to-day, George, and as long as I went over everything here myself—”

“Well, Mr. Hale,” said the county attorney, in a way of letting what was past and gone go, “tell just what happened when you came here yesterday morning.”

Mrs. Hale, still leaning against the door, had that sinking feeling of the mother whose child is about to speak a piece. Lewis often wandered along and got things mixed up in a story. She hoped he would tell this straight and plain, and not say unnecessary things that would just make things harder for Minnie Foster. He didn’t begin at once, and she noticed that he looked queer—as if standing in that kitchen and having to tell what he had seen there yesterday morning made him almost sick.

“Yes, Mr. Hale?” the county attorney reminded.

“Harry and I had started to town with a load of potatoes,” Mrs. Hale’s husband began.

Harry was Mrs. Hale’s oldest boy. He wasn’t with them now, for the very good reason that those potatoes never got to town yesterday and he was taking them this morning, so he hadn’t been home when the sheriff stopped to say he wanted Mr. Hale to come over to the Wright place and tell the county attorney his story there, where he could point it all out. With all Mrs. Hale’s other emotions came the fear now that maybe Harry wasn’t dressed warm enough—they hadn’t any of them realized how that north wind did bite.

“We come along this road,” Hale was going on, with a motion of his hand to the road over which they had just come, “and as we got in sight of the house I says to Harry, ‘I’m goin’ to see if I can’t get John Wright to take a telephone.’ You see,” he explained to Henderson, “unless I can get somebody to go in with me they won’t come out this branch road except for a price I can’t pay. I’d spoke to Wright about it once before; but he put me off, saying folks talked too much anyway, and all he asked was peace and quiet—guess you know about how much he talked himself. But I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked about it before his wife, and said all the women-folks liked the telephones, and that in this lonesome stretch of road it would be a good thing—well, I said to Harry that that was what I was going to say—though I said at the same time that I didn’t know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John—”

Now, there he was!—saying things he didn’t need to say. Mrs. Hale tried to catch her husband’s eye, but fortunately the county attorney interrupted with:

“Let’s talk about that a little later, Mr. Hale. I do want to talk about that, but I’m anxious now to get along to just what happened when you got here.”

When he began this time, it was very deliberately and carefully:

“I didn’t see or hear anything. I knocked at the door. And still it was all quiet inside. I knew they must be up—it was past eight o’clock. So I knocked again, louder, and I thought I heard somebody say, ‘Come in.’ I wasn’t sure—I’m not sure yet. But I opened the door—this door,” jerking a hand toward the door by which the two women stood, “and there, in that rocker”—pointing to it—”sat Mrs. Wright.”

Every one in the kitchen looked at the rocker. It came into Mrs. Hale’s mind that that rocker didn’t look in the least like Minnie Foster—the Minnie Foster of twenty years before. It was a dingy red, with wooden rungs up the back, and the middle rung was gone, and the chair sagged to one side.

“How did she—look?” the county attorney was inquiring.

“Well,” said Hale, “she looked—queer.”

“How do you mean—queer?”

As he asked it he took out a note-book and pencil. Mrs. Hale did not like the sight of that pencil. She kept her eye fixed on her husband, as if to keep him from saying unnecessary things that would go into that note-book and make trouble.

Hale did speak guardedly, as if the pencil had affected him too.

“Well, as if she didn’t know what she was going to do next. And kind of—done up.”

“How did she seem to feel about your coming?”

“Why, I don’t think she minded—one way or other. She didn’t pay much attention. I said, ‘Ho’ do, Mrs. Wright? It’s cold, ain’t it?’ And she said, ‘Is it?’—and went on pleatin’ at her apron.

“Well, I was surprised. She didn’t ask me to come up to the stove, or to sit down, but just set there, not even lookin’ at me. And so I said: ‘I want to see John.’

“And then she—laughed. I guess you would call it a laugh.

“I thought of Harry and the team outside, so I said, a little sharp, ‘Can I see John?’ ‘No,’ says she—kind of dull like. ‘Ain’t he home?’ says I. Then she looked at me. ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘he’s home.’ ‘Then why can’t I see him?’ I asked her, out of patience with her now. ”Cause he’s dead,’ says she, just as quiet and dull—and fell to pleatin’ her apron. ‘Dead?’ says I, like you do when you can’t take in what you’ve heard.

“She just nodded her head, not getting a bit excited, but rockin’ back and forth.

“‘Why—where is he?’ says I, not knowing what to say.

“She just pointed upstairs—like this”—pointing to the room above.

“I got up, with the idea of going up there myself. By this time I—didn’t know what to do. I walked from there to here; then I says: ‘Why, what did he die of?’

“‘He died of a rope round his neck,’ says she; and just went on pleatin’ at her apron.”

Hale stopped speaking, and stood staring at the rocker, as if he were still seeing the woman who had sat there the morning before. Nobody spoke; it was as if every one were seeing the woman who had sat there the morning before.

“And what did you do then?” the county attorney at last broke the silence.

“I went out and called Harry. I thought I might—need help. I got Harry in, and we went upstairs.” His voice fell almost to a whisper. “There he was—lying over the—”

“I think I’d rather have you go into that upstairs,” the county attorney interrupted, “where you can point it all out. Just go on now with the rest of the story.”

“Well, my first thought was to get that rope off. It looked—”

He stopped, his face twitching.

“But Harry, he went up to him, and he said, ‘No, he’s dead all right, and we’d better not touch anything.’ So we went downstairs.

“She was still sitting that same way. ‘Has anybody been notified?’ I asked. ‘No,’ says she, unconcerned.

“‘Who did this, Mrs. Wright?’ said Harry. He said it businesslike, and she stopped pleatin’ at her apron. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘You don’t know?’ says Harry. ‘Weren’t you sleepin’ in the bed with him?’ ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘but I was on the inside.’ ‘Somebody slipped a rope round his neck and strangled him, and you didn’t wake up?’ says Harry. ‘I didn’t wake up,’ she said after him.

“We may have looked as if we didn’t see how that could be, for after a minute she said, ‘I sleep sound.’

“Harry was going to ask her more questions, but I said maybe that weren’t our business; maybe we ought to let her tell her story first to the coroner or the sheriff. So Harry went fast as he could over to High Road—the Rivers’ place, where there’s a telephone.”

“And what did she do when she knew you had gone for the coroner?” The attorney got his pencil in his hand all ready for writing.

“She moved from that chair to this one over here”—Hale pointed to a small chair in the corner—”and just sat there with her hands held together and looking down. I got a feeling that I ought to make some conversation, so I said I had come in to see if John wanted to put in a telephone; and at that she started to laugh, and then she stopped and looked at me—scared.”

At sound of a moving pencil the man who was telling the story looked up.

“I dunno—maybe it wasn’t scared,” he hastened; “I wouldn’t like to say it was. Soon Harry got back, and then Dr. Lloyd came, and you, Mr. Peters, and so I guess that’s all I know that you don’t.”

He said that last with relief, and moved a little, as if relaxing. Every one moved a little. The county attorney walked toward the stair door.

“I guess we’ll go upstairs first—then out to the barn and around there.”

He paused and looked around the kitchen.

“You’re convinced there was nothing important here?” he asked the sheriff. “Nothing that would—point to any motive?”

The sheriff too looked all around, as if to re-convince himself.

“Nothing here but kitchen things,” he said, with a little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things.

The county attorney was looking at the cupboard—a peculiar, ungainly structure, half closet and half cupboard, the upper part of it being built in the wall, and the lower part just the old-fashioned kitchen cupboard. As if its queerness attracted him, he got a chair and opened the upper part and looked in. After a moment he drew his hand away sticky.

“Here’s a nice mess,” he said resentfully.

The two women had drawn nearer, and now the sheriff’s wife spoke.

“Oh—her fruit,” she said, looking to Mrs. Hale for sympathetic understanding. She turned back to the county attorney and explained: “She worried about that when it turned so cold last night. She said the fire would go out and her jars might burst.”

Mrs. Peters’ husband broke into a laugh.

“Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worrying about her preserves!”

The young attorney set his lips.

“I guess before we’re through with her she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about.”

“Oh, well,” said Mrs. Hale’s husband, with good-natured superiority, “women are used to worrying over trifles.”

The two women moved a little closer together. Neither of them spoke. The county attorney seemed suddenly to remember his manners—and think of his future.

“And yet,” said he, with the gallantry of a young politician, “for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies?”

The women did not speak, did not unbend. He went to the sink and began washing his hands. He turned to wipe them on the roller towel—whirled it for a cleaner place.

“Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?”

He kicked his foot against some dirty pans under the sink.

“There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm,” said Mrs. Hale stiffly.

“To be sure. And yet”—with a little bow to her—”I know there are some Dickson County farm-houses that do not have such roller towels.” He gave it a pull to expose its full length again.

“Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men’s hands aren’t always as clean as they might be.”

“Ah, loyal to your sex, I see,” he laughed. He stopped and gave her a keen look. “But you and Mrs. Wright were neighbors. I suppose you were friends, too.”

Martha Hale shook her head.

“I’ve seen little enough of her of late years. I’ve not been in this house—it’s more than a year.”

“And why was that? You didn’t like her?”

“I liked her well enough,” she replied with spirit. “Farmers’ wives have their hands full, Mr. Henderson. And then—” She looked around the kitchen.

“Yes?” he encouraged.

“It never seemed a very cheerful place,” said she, more to herself than to him.

“No,” he agreed; “I don’t think any one would call it cheerful. I shouldn’t say she had the home-making instinct.”

“Well, I don’t know as Wright had, either,” she muttered.

“You mean they didn’t get on very well?” he was quick to ask.

“No; I don’t mean anything,” she answered, with decision. As she turned a little away from him, she added: “But I don’t think a place would be any the cheerfuller for John Wright’s bein’ in it.”

“I’d like to talk to you about that a little later, Mrs. Hale,” he said. “I’m anxious to get the lay of things upstairs now.”

He moved toward the stair door, followed by the two men.

“I suppose anything Mrs. Peters does’ll be all right?” the sheriff inquired. “She was to take in some clothes for her, you know—and a few little things. We left in such a hurry yesterday.”

The county attorney looked at the two women whom they were leaving alone there among the kitchen things.

“Yes—Mrs. Peters,” he said, his glance resting on the woman who was not Mrs. Peters, the big farmer woman who stood behind the sheriff’s wife. “Of course Mrs. Peters is one of us,” he said, in a manner of entrusting responsibility. “And keep your eye out Mrs. Peters, for anything that might be of use. No telling; you women might come upon a clue to the motive—and that’s the thing we need.”

Mr. Hale rubbed his face after the fashion of a show man getting ready for a pleasantry.

“But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” he said; and, having delivered himself of this, he followed the others through the stair door.

The women stood motionless and silent, listening to the footsteps, first upon the stairs, then in the room above them.

Then, as if releasing herself from something strange, Mrs. Hale began to arrange the dirty pans under the sink, which the county attorney’s disdainful push of the foot had deranged.

“I’d hate to have men comin’ into my kitchen,” she said testily—”snoopin’ round and criticizin’.”

“Of course it’s no more than their duty,” said the sheriff’s wife, in her manner of timid acquiescence.

“Duty’s all right,” replied Mrs. Hale bluffly; “but I guess that deputy sheriff that come out to make the fire might have got a little of this on.” She gave the roller towel a pull. “Wish I’d thought of that sooner! Seems mean to talk about her for not having things slicked up, when she had to come away in such a hurry.”

She looked around the kitchen. Certainly it was not “slicked up.” Her eye was held by a bucket of sugar on a low shelf. The cover was off the wooden bucket, and beside it was a paper bag—half full.

Mrs. Hale moved toward it.

“She was putting this in there,” she said to herself—slowly.

She thought of the flour in her kitchen at home—half sifted, half not sifted. She had been interrupted, and had left things half done. What had interrupted Minnie Foster? Why had that work been left half done? She made a move as if to finish it,—unfinished things always bothered her,—and then she glanced around and saw that Mrs. Peters was watching her—and she didn’t want Mrs. Peters to get that feeling she had got of work begun and then—for some reason—not finished.

“It’s a shame about her fruit,” she said, and walked toward the cupboard that the county attorney had opened, and got on the chair, murmuring: “I wonder if it’s all gone.”

It was a sorry enough looking sight, but “Here’s one that’s all right,” she said at last. She held it toward the light. “This is cherries, too.” She looked again. “I declare I believe that’s the only one.”

With a sigh, she got down from the chair, went to the sink, and wiped off the bottle.

“She’ll feel awful bad, after all her hard work in the hot weather. I remember the afternoon I put up my cherries last summer.”

She set the bottle on the table, and, with another sigh, started to sit down in the rocker. But she did not sit down. Something kept her from sitting down in that chair. She straightened—stepped back, and, half turned away, stood looking at it, seeing the woman who had sat there “pleatin’ at her apron.”

The thin voice of the sheriff’s wife broke in upon her: “I must be getting those things from the front room closet.” She opened the door into the other room, started in, stepped back. “You coming with me, Mrs. Hale?” she asked nervously. “You—you could help me get them.”

They were soon back—the stark coldness of that shut-up room was not a thing to linger in.

“My!” said Mrs. Peters, dropping the things on the table and hurrying to the stove.

“Wright was close!” she exclaimed, holding up a shabby black skirt that bore the marks of much making over. “I think maybe that’s why she kept so much to herself. I s’pose she felt she couldn’t do her part; and then, you don’t enjoy things when you feel shabby. She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively—when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls, singing in the choir. But that—oh, that was twenty years ago.”

With a carefulness in which there was something tender, she folded the shabby clothes and piled them at one corner of the table. She looked up at Mrs. Peters and there was something in the other woman’s look that irritated her.

“She don’t care,” she said to herself. “Much difference it makes to her whether Minnie Foster had pretty clothes when she was a girl.”

Then she looked again, and she wasn’t so sure; in fact, she hadn’t at any time been perfectly sure about Mrs. Peters. She had that shrinking manner, and yet her eyes looked as if they could see a long way into things.

“This all you was to take in?” asked Mrs. Hale.

“No,” said the sheriff’s wife; “she said she wanted an apron. Funny thing to want,” she ventured in her nervous little way, “for there’s not much to get you dirty in jail, goodness knows. But I suppose just to make her feel more natural. If you’re used to wearing an apron—. She said they were in the bottom drawer of this cupboard. Yes—here they are. And then her little shawl that always hung on the stair door.”

She took the small gray shawl from behind the door leading upstairs, and stood a minute looking at it.

Suddenly Mrs. Hale took a quick step toward the other woman.

“Mrs. Peters!”

“Yes, Mrs. Hale?”

“Do you think she—did it?”

A frightened look blurred the other thing in Mrs. Peters’ eyes.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, in a voice that seemed to shrink away from the subject.

“Well, I don’t think she did,” affirmed Mrs. Hale stoutly. “Asking for an apron, and her little shawl. Worryin’ about her fruit.”

“Mr. Peters says—.” Footsteps were heard in the room above; she stopped, looked up, then went on in a lowered voice: “Mr. Peters says—it looks bad for her. Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech, and he’s going to make fun of her saying she didn’t—wake up.”

For a moment Mrs. Hale had no answer. Then, “Well, I guess John Wright didn’t wake up—when they was slippin’ that rope under his neck,” she muttered.

“No, it’sstrange,” breathed Mrs. Peters. “They think it was such a—funny way to kill a man.”

She began to laugh; at sound of the laugh, abruptly stopped.

“That’s just what Mr. Hale said,” said Mrs. Hale, in a resolutely natural voice. “There was a gun in the house. He says that’s what he can’t understand.”

“Mr. Henderson said, coming out, that what was needed for the case was a motive. Something to show anger—or sudden feeling.”

“Well, I don’t see any signs of anger around here,” said Mrs. Hale. “I don’t—”

She stopped. It was as if her mind tripped on something. Her eye was caught by a dish-towel in the middle of the kitchen table. Slowly she moved toward the table. One half of it was wiped clean, the other half messy. Her eyes made a slow, almost unwilling turn to the bucket of sugar and the half empty bag beside it. Things begun—and not finished.

After a moment she stepped back, and said, in that manner of releasing herself:

“Wonder how they’re finding things upstairs? I hope she had it a little more red up up there. You know,”—she paused, and feeling gathered,—”it seems kind ofsneaking: locking her up in town and coming out here to get her own house to turn against her!”

“But, Mrs. Hale,” said the sheriff’s wife, “the law is the law.”

“I s’pose ’tis,” answered Mrs. Hale shortly.

She turned to the stove, saying something about that fire not being much to brag of. She worked with it a minute, and when she straightened up she said aggressively:

“The law is the law—and a bad stove is a bad stove. How’d you like to cook on this?”—pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster trying to bake in that oven—and the thought of her never going over to see Minnie Foster—.

She was startled by hearing Mrs. Peters say: “A person gets discouraged—and loses heart.”

The sheriff’s wife had looked from the stove to the sink—to the pail of water which had been carried in from outside. The two women stood there silent, above them the footsteps of the men who were looking for evidence against the woman who had worked in that kitchen. That look of seeing into things, of seeing through a thing to something else, was in the eyes of the sheriff’s wife now. When Mrs. Hale next spoke to her, it was gently:

“Better loosen up your things, Mrs. Peters. We’ll not feel them when we go out.”

Mrs. Peters went to the back of the room to hang up the fur tippet she was wearing. A moment later she exclaimed, “Why, she was piecing a quilt,” and held up a large sewing basket piled high with quilt pieces.

Mrs. Hale spread some of the blocks out on the table.

“It’s log-cabin pattern,” she said, putting several of them together. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

They were so engaged with the quilt that they did not hear the footsteps on the stairs. Just as the stair door opened Mrs. Hale was saying:

“Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just knot it?”

The sheriff threw up his hands.

“They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or just knot it!”

There was a laugh for the ways of women, a warming of hands over the stove, and then the county attorney said briskly:

“Well, let’s go right out to the barn and get that cleared up.”

“I don’t see as there’s anything so strange,” Mrs. Hale said resentfully, after the outside door had closed on the three men—”our taking up our time with little things while we’re waiting for them to get the evidence. I don’t see as it’s anything to laugh about.”

“Of course they’ve got awful important things on their minds,” said the sheriff’s wife apologetically.

They returned to an inspection of the block for the quilt. Mrs. Hale was looking at the fine, even sewing, and preoccupied with thoughts of the woman who had done that sewing, when she heard the sheriff’s wife say, in a queer tone:

“Why, look at this one.”

She turned to take the block held out to her.

“The sewing,” said Mrs. Peters, in a troubled way. “All the rest of them have been so nice and even—but—this one. Why, it looks as if she didn’t know what she was about!”

Their eyes met—something flashed to life, passed between them; then, as if with an effort, they seemed to pull away from each other. A moment Mrs. Hale sat her hands folded over that sewing which was sounlike all the rest of the sewing. Then she had pulled a knot and drawn the threads.

“Oh, what are you doing, Mrs. Hale?” asked the sheriff’s wife, startled.

“Just pulling out a stitch or two that’s not sewed very good,” said Mrs. Hale mildly.

“I don’t think we ought to touch things,” Mrs. Peters said, a little helplessly.

“I’ll just finish up this end,” answered Mrs. Hale, still in that mild, matter-of-fact fashion.

She threaded a needle and started to replace bad sewing with good. For a little while she sewed in silence. Then, in that thin, timid voice, she heard:

“Mrs. Hale!”

“Yes, Mrs. Peters?”

“What do you suppose she was so—nervous about?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Hale, as if dismissing a thing not important enough to spend much time on. “I don’t know as she was—nervous. I sew awful queer sometimes when I’m just tired.”

She cut a thread, and out of the corner of her eye looked up at Mrs. Peters. The small, lean face of the sheriff’s wife seemed to have tightened up. Her eyes had that look of peering into something. But next moment she moved, and said in her thin, indecisive way:

“Well, I must get those clothes wrapped. They may be through sooner than we think. I wonder where I could find a piece of paper—and string.”

“In that cupboard, maybe,” suggested Mrs. Hale, after a glance around.

One piece of the crazy sewing remained unripped. Mrs. Peters’ back turned, Martha Hale now scrutinized that piece, compared it with the dainty, accurate sewing of the other blocks. The difference was startling. Holding this block made her feel queer, as if the distracted thoughts of the woman who had perhaps turned to it to try and quiet herself were communicating themselves to her.

Mrs. Peters’ voice roused her.

“Here’s a bird-cage,” she said. “Did she have a bird, Mrs. Hale?”

“Why, I don’t know whether she did or not.” She turned to look at the cage Mrs. Peter was holding up. “I’ve not been here in so long.” She sighed. “There was a man round last year selling canaries cheap—but I don’t know as she took one. Maybe she did. She used to sing real pretty herself.”

Mrs. Peters looked around the kitchen.

“Seems kind of funny to think of a bird here.” She half laughed—an attempt to put up a barrier. “But she must have had one—or why would she have a cage? I wonder what happened to it.”

“I suppose maybe the cat got it,” suggested Mrs. Hale, resuming her sewing.

“No; she didn’t have a cat. She’s got that feeling some people have about cats—being afraid of them. When they brought her to our house yesterday, my cat got in the room, and she was real upset and asked me to take it out.”

“My sister Bessie was like that,” laughed Mrs. Hale.

The sheriff’s wife did not reply. The silence made Mrs. Hale turn round. Mrs. Peters was examining the bird-cage.

“Look at this door,” she said slowly. “It’s broke. One hinge has been pulled apart.”

Mrs. Hale came nearer.

“Looks as if some one must have been—rough with it.”

Again their eyes met—startled, questioning, apprehensive. For a moment neither spoke nor stirred. Then Mrs. Hale, turning away, said brusquely:

“If they’re going to find any evidence, I wish they’d be about it. I don’t like this place.”

“But I’m awful glad you came with me, Mrs. Hale,” Mrs. Peters put the bird-cage on the table and sat down. “It would be lonesome for me—sitting here alone.”

“Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?” agreed Mrs. Hale, a certain determined naturalness in her voice. She had picked up the sewing, but now it dropped in her lap, and she murmured in a different voice: “But I tell you what I do wish, Mrs. Peters. I wish I had come over sometimes when she was here. I wish—I had.”

“But of course you were awful busy, Mrs. Hale. Your house—and your children.”

“I could’ve come,” retorted Mrs. Hale shortly. “I stayed away because it weren’t cheerful—and that’s why I ought to have come. I”—she looked around—”I’ve never liked this place. Maybe because it’s down in a hollow and you don’t see the road. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a lonesome place, and always was. I wish I had come over to see Minnie Foster sometimes. I can see now—” She did not put it into words.

“Well, you mustn’t reproach yourself,” counseled Mrs. Peters. “Somehow, we just don’t see how it is with other folks till—something comes up.”

“Not having children makes less work,” mused Mrs. Hale, after a silence, “but it makes a quiet house—and Wright out to work all day—and no company when he did come in. Did you know John Wright, Mrs. Peters?”

“Not to know him. I’ve seen him in town. They say he was a good man.”

“Yes—good,” conceded John Wright’s neighbor grimly. “He didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him—.” She stopped, shivered a little. “Like a raw wind that gets to the bone.” Her eye fell upon the cage on the table before her, and she added, almost bitterly: “I should think she would’ve wanted a bird!”

Suddenly she leaned forward, looking intently at the cage. “But what do you s’pose went wrong with it?”

“I don’t know,” returned Mrs. Peters; “unless it got sick and died.”

But after she said it she reached over and swung the broken door. Both women watched it as if somehow held by it.

“You didn’t know—her?” Mrs. Hale asked, a gentler note in her voice.

“Not till they brought her yesterday,” said the sheriff’s wife.

“She—come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself. Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—fluttery. How—she—did—change.”

That held her for a long time. Finally, as if struck with a happy thought and relieved to get back to every-day things, she exclaimed:

“Tell you what, Mrs. Peters, why don’t you take the quilt in with you? It might take up her mind.”

“Why, I think that’s a real nice idea, Mrs. Hale,” agreed the sheriff’s wife, as if she too were glad to come into the atmosphere of a simple kindness. “There couldn’t possibly be any objection to that, could there? Now, just what will I take? I wonder if her patches are in here—and her things.”

They turned to the sewing basket.

“Here’s some red,” said Mrs. Hale, bringing out a roll of cloth. Underneath that was a box. “Here, maybe her scissors are in here—and her things.” She held it up. “What a pretty box! I’ll warrant that was something she had a long time ago—when she was a girl.”

She held it in her hand a moment; then, with a little sigh, opened it.

Instantly her hand went to her nose.

“Why—!”

Mrs. Peters drew nearer—then turned away.

“There’s something wrapped up in this piece of silk,” faltered Mrs. Hale.

“This isn’t her scissors,” said Mrs. Peters, in a shrinking voice.

Her hand not steady, Mrs. Hale raised the piece of silk. “Oh, Mrs. Peters!” she cried. “It’s—”

Mrs. Peters bent closer.

“It’s the bird,” she whispered.

“But, Mrs. Peters!” cried Mrs. Hale. “Look at it! Its neck—look at its neck! It’s all—other side to.”

She held the box away from her.

The sheriff’s wife again bent closer.

“Somebody wrung its neck,” said she, in a voice that was slow and deep.

And then again the eyes of the two women met—this time clung together in a look of dawning comprehension, of growing horror. Mrs. Peters looked from the dead bird to the broken door of the cage. Again their eyes met. And just then there was a sound at the outside door.

Mrs. Hale slipped the box under the quilt pieces in the basket, and sank into the chair before it. Mrs. Peters stood holding to the table. The county attorney and the sheriff came in from outside.

“Well, ladies,” said the county attorney, as one turning from serious things to little pleasantries, “have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?”

“We think,” began the sheriff’s wife in a flurried voice, “that she was going to—knot it.”

He was too preoccupied to notice the change that came in her voice on that last.

“Well, that’s very interesting, I’m sure,” he said tolerantly. He caught sight of the bird-cage. “Has the bird flown?”

“We think the cat got it,” said Mrs. Hale in a voice curiously even.

He was walking up and down, as if thinking something out.

“Is there a cat?” he asked absently.

Mrs. Hale shot a look up at the sheriff’s wife.

“Well, not now,” said Mrs. Peters. “They’re superstitious, you know; they leave.”

She sank into her chair.

The county attorney did not heed her. “No sign at all of any one having come in from the outside,” he said to Peters, in the manner of continuing an interrupted conversation. “Their own rope. Now let’s go upstairs again and go over it, piece by piece. It would have to have been some one who knew just the—”

The stair door closed behind them and their voices were lost.

The two women sat motionless, not looking at each other, but as if peering into something and at the same time holding back. When they spoke now it was as if they were afraid of what they were saying, but as if they could not help saying it.

“She liked the bird,” said Martha Hale, low and slowly. “She was going to bury it in that pretty box.”

“When I was a girl,” said Mrs. Peters, under her breath, “my kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—before I could get there—” She covered her face an instant. “If they hadn’t held me back I would have”—she caught herself, looked upstairs where footsteps were heard, and finished weakly—”hurt him.”

Then they sat without speaking or moving.

“I wonder how it would seem,” Mrs. Hale at last began, as if feeling her way over strange ground—”never to have had any children around?” Her eyes made a slow sweep of the kitchen, as if seeing what that kitchen had meant through all the years. “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird,” she said after that—”a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too.” Her voice tightened.

Mrs. Peters moved uneasily.

“Of course we don’t know who killed the bird.”

“I knew John Wright,” was Mrs. Hale’s answer.

“It was an awful thing was done in this house that night, Mrs. Hale,” said the sheriff’s wife. “Killing a man while he slept—slipping a thing round his neck that choked the life out of him.”

Mrs. Hale’s hand went out to the bird-cage.

“His neck. Choked the life out of him.”

“We don’t know who killed him,” whispered Mrs. Peters wildly. “We don’t know.”

Mrs. Hale had not moved. “If there had been years and years of—nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful—still—after the bird was still.”

It was as if something within her not herself had spoken, and it found in Mrs. Peters something she did not know as herself.

“I know what stillness is,” she said, in a queer, monotonous voice. “When we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby died—after he was two years old—and me with no other then—”

Mrs. Hale stirred.

“How soon do you suppose they’ll be through looking for the evidence?”

“I know what stillness is,” repeated Mrs. Peters, in just that same way. Then she too pulled back. “The law has got to punish crime, Mrs. Hale,” she said in her tight little way.

“I wish you’d seen Minnie Foster,” was the answer, “when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons, and stood up there in the choir and sang.”

The picture of that girl, the fact that she had lived neighbor to that girl for twenty years, and had let her die for lack of life, was suddenly more than she could bear.

“Oh, I wish I’d come over here once in a while!” she cried. “That was a crime! That was a crime! Who’s going to punish that?”

“We mustn’t take on,” said Mrs. Peters, with a frightened look toward the stairs.

“I might ‘a’ known she needed help! I tell you, it’s queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together, and we live far apart. We all go through the same things—it’s all just a different kind of the same thing! If it weren’t—why do you and I understand? Why do we know—what we know this minute?”

She dashed her hand across her eyes. Then, seeing the jar of fruit on the table, she reached for it and choked out:

“If I was you I wouldn’t tell  her her fruit was gone! Tell her it ain’t. Tell her it’s all right—all of it. Here—take this in to prove it to her! She—she may never know whether it was broke or not.”

She turned away.

Mrs. Peters reached out for the bottle of fruit as if she were glad to take it—as if touching a familiar thing, having something to do, could keep her from something else. She got up, looked about for something to wrap the fruit in, took a petticoat from the pile of clothes she had brought from the front room, and nervously started winding that round the bottle.

“My!” she began, in a high, false voice, “it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a—dead canary.” She hurried over that. “As if that could have anything to do with—with—My, wouldn’t they laugh?”

Footsteps were heard on the stairs.

“Maybe they would,” muttered Mrs. Hale—”maybe they wouldn’t.”

“No, Peters,” said the county attorney incisively; “it’s all perfectly clear, except the reason for doing it. But you know juries when it comes to women. If there was some definite thing—something to show. Something to make a story about. A thing that would connect up with this clumsy way of doing it.”

In a covert way Mrs. Hale looked at Mrs. Peters. Mrs. Peters was looking at her. Quickly they looked away from each other. The outer door opened and Mr. Hale came in.

“I’ve got the team round now,” he said. “Pretty cold out there.”

“I’m going to stay here awhile by myself,” the county attorney suddenly announced. “You can send Frank out for me, can’t you?” he asked the sheriff. “I want to go over everything. I’m not satisfied we can’t do better.”

Again, for one brief moment, the two women’s eyes found one another.

The sheriff came up to the table.

“Did you want to see what Mrs. Peters was going to take in?”

The county attorney picked up the apron. He laughed.

“Oh, I guess they’re not very dangerous things the ladies have picked out.”

Mrs. Hale’s hand was on the sewing basket in which the box was concealed. She felt that she ought to take her hand off the basket. She did not seem able to. He picked up one of the quilt blocks which she had piled on to cover the box. Her eyes felt like fire. She had a feeling that if he took up the basket she would snatch it from him.

But he did not take it up. With another little laugh, he turned away, saying:

“No; Mrs. Peters doesn’t need supervising. For that matter, a sheriff’s wife is married to the law. Ever think of it that way, Mrs. Peters?”

Mrs. Peters was standing beside the table. Mrs. Hale shot a look up at her; but she could not see her face. Mrs. Peters had turned away. When she spoke, her voice was muffled.

“Not—just that way,” she said.

“Married to the law!” chuckled Mrs. Peters’ husband. He moved toward the door into the front room, and said to the county attorney:

“I just want you to come in here a minute, George. We ought to take a look at these windows.”

“Oh—windows,” said the county attorney scoffingly.

“We’ll be right out, Mr. Hale,” said the sheriff to the farmer, who was still waiting by the door.

Hale went to look after the horses. The sheriff followed the county attorney into the other room. Again—for one final moment—the two women were alone in that kitchen.

Martha Hale sprang up, her hands tight together, looking at that other woman, with whom it rested. At first she could not see her eyes, for the sheriff’s wife had not turned back since she turned away at that suggestion of being married to the law. But now Mrs. Hale made her turn back. Her eyes made her turn back. Slowly, unwillingly, Mrs. Peters turned her head until her eyes met the eyes of the other woman. There was a moment when they held each other in a steady, burning look in which there was no evasion nor flinching. Then Martha Hale’s eyes pointed the way to the basket in which was hidden the thing that would make certain the conviction of the other woman—that woman who was not there and yet who had been there with them all through that hour.

For a moment Mrs. Peters did not move. And then she did it. With a rush forward, she threw back the quilt pieces, got the box, tried to put it in her handbag. It was too big. Desperately she opened it, started to take the bird out. But there she broke—she could not touch the bird. She stood there helpless, foolish.

There was the sound of a knob turning in the inner door. Martha Hale snatched the box from the sheriff’s wife, and got it in the pocket of her big coat just as the sheriff and the county attorney came back into the kitchen.

“Well, Henry,” said the county attorney facetiously, “at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going to—what is it you call it, ladies?”

Mrs. Hale’s hand was against the pocket of her coat.

“We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson.”

The post A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell (1917) – full text appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.