Annette Ranald's Blog: Annette's History Reads - Posts Tagged "monk-and-the-hangman-s-daughter"

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was an American author, journalist and social critic. He's famous for his tales that often have a tragic, ironic or sardonic ending. Bierce was born in Ohio, the tenth child of a family of thirteen kids whose names all started with A. His family was poor but did provide for his education. Like many young men of that time, he saw service in the Civil War, and some of his stories reflect his experiences.

One of these stories is Incident at Owl Creek Bridge. The scene opens as a Confederate straggler and spy is about to be hanged from the side of a bridge. From there, the narrative goes into the man's thoughts as he life and last sensations flash before his eyes. Just as he's fantasizing about a miraculous escape, his neck snaps and he dies.

After the War, Bierce moved to San Francisco, where he became a freelance writer. His stories become progressively more dark. One such example is The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter. Why hanging is a common theme here, I have no idea. The book opens with the scene of a hangman's daughter, Benedicta, encountering a young Franciscan monk, incidentally named Ambrosius. Ambrosius develops a passion for Benedicta, who is also seeing the son of a local owner of a salt mine. Ambrosius struggles with his passions for Benedicta, not realizing that while she appreciates his kindness toward her, does not feel the same way about him. In the end, when he discovers that she loves the other man, he kills her and is himself hanged.

Bierce's biting satire made him many enemies in his career. When two railroad companies schemed with a Congressman to avoid repaying a Government loan, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst dispatched Bierce to investigate the matter and call out those responsible. Bierce was confronted by the Congressman and bluntly asked to name his price. Bierce published his reply, that his price was 130 million dollars and that, if he were not in D.C. to accept the bribe, the money could be handed over to the Secretary of the Treasury, thus blowing the scheme out of the water. Bierce's dark poetry also got him into trouble. In 1900, then Governor William Goebel of Kentucky was assassinated. Bierce wrote a poem commemorating the event but, in 1901 when President William McKinley was shot, people took the poem as being a foreshadowing of the event. A line in the poem about a bullet piercing McKinley's breast and stretching him upon his bier was seen by some as Hearst's call for McKinely's assassination. Years later, when Hearst himself would run for President, political opponents used this poem against him, dashing his hopes. Hearst never revealed the Bierce had written the poem, nor did he fire him for doing so.

Ambrose Bierce's end was as enigmatic as his writing. In 1913, he left for Mexico to either cover, or maybe participate in, the Mexican Revolution, and disappeared without a trace.



Works of Ambrose Bierce