Sense and sensibility

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Sense and sensibility


Context
In 1811, Sense and Sensibility became the first published novel of the
English author Jane Austen (1775-1817). The first version of the novel
was probably written in 1795 as an epistolary novel (novel in letters)
entitled "Elinor and Marianne." At this point, Austen was still living
in the home of her father, George Austen, a local Anglican rector and
the father of eight children. She rewrote the early manuscript in
1797-98 as a narrated novel and then further revised it in 1809-10,
shortly after she moved with her mother and sister Cassandra to a
small house in Chawton on her brother Edward's estate. In 1811, Thomas
Egerton of the Military Library in Whitehall accepted the manuscript
for publication in three volumes. Austen published on commission,
meaning she paid the expenses of printing the book and took the
receipts, subject to a commission paid to the publisher. The cost of
publication was more than a third of her household's 460-pound annual
income, so the risk was substantial. Nonetheless, the novel received
two favorable reviews upon its publication, and Austen made a profit
of 140 pounds off the first edition.

When the first edition of Sense and Sensibility was published, it sold
out all 750 copies by July 1813, and a second edition was advertised
in October 1813. The first edition was said only to be "by a lady."
The second edition, also anonymous, contained on the title page the
inscription "by the author of Pride and Prejudice," which had been
issued in January 1813 (though Austen had not been credited on the
title page of this novel either). Only Austen's immediate family knew
of her authorship of these novels. And although publishing anonymously
prevented her from acquiring an authorial reputation, it also enabled
her to preserve her privacy at a time when entering the public sphere
was associated with a reprehensible loss of femininity. Indeed, Austen
used to write at Chawton behind a door that creaked when visitors
approached; she would avail herself of this warning to hide her
manuscript before they entered. Austen may have wanted anonymity not
only because of her gender and a desire for privacy, but because of
the more general atmosphere of repression pervading her era: her early
writing of Sense and Sensibility coincided with the treason trial of
Thomas Hardy and the proliferation of government censors as the
Napoleonic War progressed. Whatever the reasons behind it, Austen's
anonymity would persist until her death until 1817.
Contemporary critics of Austen's novels tended to overlook Sense and
Sensibility in favor of the author's later works. Mansfield Park was
read for moral edification; Pride and Prejudice was read for its irony
and humor; and Emma was read for its subtle craft as a novel. Sense
and Sensibility did not fall neatly into any of these categories, and
critics approached it less eagerly. However, although the novel did
not attract much critical attention, it sold well, and helped to
establish "the author of Pride and Prejudice" as a respected writer.
Only in the twentieth century have scholars and critics come to
address Sense and Sensibility's great passion, its ethics, and its
social vision. In recent years, the book has been adapted into feature
films. Today, the three-volume novel by an anonymous lady has become a
famed and timeless favorite









Summary
When Mr. Henry Dashwood dies, leaving all his money to his first
wife's son John Dashwood, his second wife and her three daughters are
left with no permanent home and very little income. Mrs. Dashwood and
her daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret) are invited to stay
with their distant relations, the Middletons, at Barton Park. Elinor
is sad to leave their home at Norland because she has become closely
attached to Edward Ferrars, the brother-in-law of her half-brother
John. However, once at Barton Park, Elinor and Marianne discover many
new acquaintances, including the retired officer and bachelor Colonel
Brandon, and the gallant and impetuous John Willoughby, who rescues
Marianne after she twists her ankle running down the hills of Barton
in the rain. Willoughby openly and unabashedly courts Marianne, and
together the two flaunt their attachment to one another, until
Willoughby suddenly announces that he must depart for London on
business, leaving Marianne lovesick and miserable. Meanwhile, Anne and
Lucy Steele, two recently discovered relations of Lady Middleton's
mother, Mrs. Jennings, arrive at Barton Park as guests of the
Middletons. Lucy ingratiates herself to Elinor and informs her that
she (Lucy) has been secretly engaged to Mr. Ferrars for a whole year.
Elinor initially assumes that Lucy is referring to Edward's younger
brother, Robert, but is shocked and pained to learn that Lucy is
actually referring to her own beloved Edward.
In Volume II of the novel, Elinor and Marianne travel to London with
Mrs. Jennings. Colonel Brandon informs Elinor that everyone in London
is talking of an engagement between Willoughby and Marianne, though
Marianne has not told her family of any such attachment. Marianne is
anxious to be reunited with her beloved Willoughby, but when she sees
him at a party in town, he cruelly rebuffs her and then sends her a
letter denying that he ever had feelings for her. Colonel Brandon
tells Elinor of Willoughby's history of callousness and debauchery,
and Mrs. Jennings confirms that Willoughby, having squandered his
fortune, has become engaged to the wealthy heiress Miss Grey.
In Volume III, Lucy's older sister inadvertently reveals the news of
Lucy's secret engagement to Edward Ferrars. Edward's mother is
outraged at the information and disinherits him, promising his fortune
to Robert instead. Meanwhile, the Dashwood sisters visit family
friends at Cleveland on their way home from London. At Cleveland,
Marianne develops a severe cold while taking long walks in the rain,
and she falls deathly ill. Upon hearing of her illness, Willoughby
comes to visit, attempting to explain his misconduct and seek
forgiveness. Elinor pities him and ultimately shares his story with
Marianne, who finally realizes that she behaved imprudently with
Willoughby and could never have been happy with him anyway. Mrs.
Dashwood and Colonel Brandon arrive at Cleveland and are relieved to
learn that Marianne has begun to recover.
When the Dashwoods return to Barton, they learn from their manservant
that Lucy Steele and Mr. Ferrars are engaged. They assume that he
means Edward Ferrars, and are thus unsurprised, but Edward himself
soon arrives and corrects their misconception: it was Robert, not
himself, whom the money-grubbing Lucy ultimately decided to marry.
Thus,x Edward is finally free to propose to his beloved Elinor, and
not long after, Marianne and Colonel Brandon become engaged as well.
The couples live together at Delaford and remain in close touch with
their mother and younger sister at Barton Cottage.

Characters
Colonel Brandon - A retired officer and friend of Sir John Middleton
who falls in love with Marianne Dashwood and acts kindly, honorably,
and graciously towards the Dashwoods throughout the novel
Mrs. Dashwood - The kind and loving mother of Elinor, Marianne, and
Margaret and second wife to Henry Dashwood. She has inherited no
fortune of her own but wants the best for her daughters and shares
Marianne's romantic sensibilities.
Elinor Dashwood - The nineteen-year-old eldest daughter of Mr. and
Mrs. Henry Dashwood and the heroine of Austen's novel. Elinor is
composed but affectionate, both when she falls in love with Edward
Ferrars and when she comforts and supports her younger sister
Marianne.
Henry Dashwood - The father of John Dashwood and, by a second
marriage, of Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret Dashwood. He dies in the
opening chapter of the novel and bequeaths his estate at Norland to
his son, leaving his wife and daughters impoverished.
Fanny Dashwood - The selfish, snobbish, and manipulative wife of John
Dashwood and the sister of Edward and Robert Ferrars.
John Dashwood - The weak-minded and money-grubbing heir to the
Norland estate. At his wife Fanny's suggestion, he leaves his mother
and sisters with very little money and remains largely unconcerned for
their welfare.
Margaret Dashwood - The thirteen-year-old, good-humored youngest
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood, Margaret shares her sister
Marianne's romantic tendencies.
Marianne Dashwood - The seventeen-year-old second daughter of Mr. and
Mrs. Henry Dashwood. Marianne's spontaneity, excessive sensibility,
and romantic idealism lead her to fall in love with the debaucherous
John Willoughby, though he painfully spurns her, causing her to
finally recognize her misjudgment of him. After this turn of heart,
she ultimately marries her long-standing admirer, Colonel Brandon.
Mrs. Ferrars - The wealthy, manipulative mother of Edward and Robert
who disinherits her first son when he refuses to marry a rich
heiress.
Edward Ferrars - The sensible and friendly older brother of Fanny
Dashwood and Robert Ferrars. Edward develops a close relationship with
Elinor while staying at Norland and ultimately marries her, after he
is freed from a four-year secret engagement to Lucy Steele.
Robert Ferrars - A conceited coxcomb and the younger brother of
Edward and Fanny. Robert inherits his mother's fortune after she
disinherits Edward. Ironically, he ultimately marries Lucy Steele,
even though it was Edward's engagement to this same woman that caused
his mother to disinherit him.
Miss Sophia Grey - The wealthy heiress whom Willoughby marries after
abandoning Marianne.
Mrs. Jennings - Lady Middleton's gossipy but well-intentioned mother
who invites the Dashwood sisters to stay with her in London and makes
it her "project" to marry them off as soon as possible.
Lady Middleton - A distant relation of the Dashwoods who lives at
Barton Cottage with her husband Sir John Middleton and their four
spoiled children
Sir John Middleton - The jovial but vulgar distant relation of the
Dashwoods who invites Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters to stay at
Barton Cottage after Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood inherit Norland,
leaving the women homeless.
Mr. Thomas Palmer - Mrs. Palmer's gruff, unemotional husband.
Mrs. Charlotte Palmer - Mrs. Jennings' talkative and foolish
daughter who invites the Dashwood sisters to stay at her home in
Cleveland on their way from London to Barton.
Anne Steele - Lucy Steele's older, unmarried sister who accidentally
reveals her sister's secret engagement to Edward Ferrars.
Lucy Steele - Mrs. Jennings' cousin and a sly, selfish, and insecure
young woman. She has been secretly engaged to Edward Ferrars for four
years but she ultimately marries his brother, Robert, once Edward is
disinherited.
John Willoughby - An attractive but deceitful young man who wins
Marianne Dashwood's heart but then abandons her (greedily) in favor of
the wealthy Miss Sophia Grey.

The last of Mohicans
Context
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER was one of the first popular American novelists.
Born in September 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey, Cooper grew up in
Cooperstown, New York, a frontier settlement that he later dramatized
in his novels. Cooper had a rambling and unpredictable early life. He
attended Yale when he was only thirteen but was expelled for
instigating a practical joke. His father forced him to join the Navy.
Cooper began writing almost by accident. When reading a popular
English novel aloud to his wife one day, Cooper suddenly tossed the
book aside and said, “I could write you a better book myself!” He
lived up to his claim by writing Precaution in 1820 and The Spy, his
first popular success, the following year. For the rest of his life,
Cooper attracted a massive readership on both sides of the Atlantic, a
following rivaled in size only by that of Sir Walter Scott. When he
died in 1851, Cooper was one of the most famous writers in the world.
After achieving success as a novelist, Cooper spent seven years living
in Europe, during which time he wrote many of his most memorable
stories. Cooper drew on his memories of his childhood on the American
frontier, writing high-spirited, often sentimental adventure stories.
These frontier romances feature his best-known character, the woodsman
Natty Bumppo, also known as “Hawkeye” or “Leatherstocking.” This
heroic scout was featured in five novels, known collectively as the
Leatherstocking Tales: The Pioneers, The Prairie, The Pathfinder, The
Deerslayer, and, most famously, The Last of the Mohicans.
Written in 1826, The Last of the Mohicans takes place in 1757 during
the French and Indian War, when France and England battled for control
of the American and Canadian colonies. During this war, the French
often allied themselves with Native American tribes in order to gain
an advantage over the English, with unpredictable and often tragic
results. Descriptions of certain incidents in the novel, such as the
massacre of the English soldiers by Huron Indians, embellish accounts
of real historical events. Additionally, certain characters in the
novel, General Montcalm in particular, are based on real individuals.
Creating historically inspired stories was common in nineteenth-
century adventure tales. In writing The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper
followed the example of his contemporaries Sir Walter Scott and the
French writer Alexandre Dumas, whose novel The Three Musketeers takes
even greater liberties with historical events and characters than The
Last of the Mohicans.
Since his death, Cooper’s reputation has fluctuated wildly. Victor
Hugo and D. H. Lawrence admired him, but Mark Twain considered him a
national embarrassment. Twain wrote harsh, humorous criticism of
Cooper’s stylistic excesses, inaccuracies, and sentimental scenes.
Even The Last of the Mohicans, widely considered Cooper’s best work,
is an implausible story narrated in a fashion that can seem
overwrought to modern readers. Cooper’s work remains important for its
portrait of frontier life and its exploration of the traumatic
encounters between races and cultures poised on opposite sides of a
shrinking frontier.

Plot Overview
IIT IS THE LATE 1750S, and the French and Indian War grips the wild
forest frontier of western New York. The French army is attacking Fort
William Henry, a British outpost commanded by Colonel Munro. Munro’s
daughters Alice and Cora set out from Fort Edward to visit their
father, escorted through the dangerous forest by Major Duncan Heyward
and guided by an Indian named Magua. Soon they are joined by David
Gamut, a singing master and religious follower of Calvinism. Traveling
cautiously, the group encounters the white scout Natty Bumppo, who
goes by the name Hawkeye, and his two Indian companions, Chingachgook
and Uncas, Chingachgook’s son, the only surviving members of the once
great Mohican tribe. Hawkeye says that Magua, a Huron, has betrayed
the group by leading them in the wrong direction. The Mohicans attempt
to capture the traitorous Huron, but he escapes.
Hawkeye and the Mohicans lead the group to safety in a cave near a
waterfall, but Huron allies of Magua attack early the next morning.
Hawkeye and the Mohicans escape down the river, but Hurons capture
Alice, Cora, Heyward, and Gamut. Magua celebrates the kidnapping. When
Heyward tries to convert Magua to the English side, the Huron reveals
that he seeks revenge on Munro for past humiliation and proposes to
free Alice if Cora will marry him. Cora has romantic feelings for
Uncas, however, and angrily refuses Magua. Suddenly Hawkeye and the
Mohicans burst onto the scene, rescuing the captives and killing every
Huron but Magua, who escapes. After a harrowing journey impeded by
Indian attacks, the group reaches Fort William Henry, the English
stronghold. They sneak through the French army besieging the fort,
and, once inside, Cora and Alice reunite with their father.
A few days later, the English forces call for a truce. Munro learns
that he will receive no reinforcements for the fort and will have to
surrender. He reveals to Heyward that Cora’s mother was part “Negro,”
which explains her dark complexion and raven hair. Munro accuses
Heyward of racism because he prefers to marry blonde Alice over dark
Cora, but Heyward denies the charge. During the withdrawal of the
English troops from Fort William Henry, the Indian allies of the
French indulge their bloodlust and prey upon the vulnerable retreating
soldiers. In the chaos of slaughter, Magua manages to recapture Cora,
Alice, and Gamut and to escape with them into the forest.
Three days later, Heyward, Hawkeye, Munro, and the Mohicans discover
Magua’s trail and begin to pursue the villain. Gamut reappears and
explains that Magua has separated his captives, confining Alice to a
Huron camp and sending Cora to a Delaware camp. Using deception and a
variety of disguises, the group manages to rescue Alice from the
Hurons, at which point Heyward confesses his romantic interest in her.
At the Delaware village, Magua convinces the tribe that Hawkeye and
his companions are their racist enemies. Uncas reveals his exalted
heritage to the Delaware sage Tamenund and then demands the release of
all his friends but Cora, who he admits belongs to Magua. Magua
departs with Cora. A chase and a battle ensue. Magua and his Hurons
suffer painful defeat, but a rogue Huron kills Cora. Uncas begins to
attack the Huron who killed Cora, but Magua stabs Uncas in the back.
Magua tries to leap across a great divide, but he falls short and must
cling to a shrub to avoid tumbling off and dying. Hawkeye shoots him,
and Magua at last plummets to his death.
Cora and Uncas receive proper burials the next morning amid ritual
chants performed by the Delawares. Chingachgook mourns the loss of his
son, while Tamenund sorrowfully declares that he has lived to see the
last warrior of the noble race of the Mohicans.
Character List
Hawkeye - The novel’s frontier hero, he is a woodsman, hunter, and
scout. Hawkeye is the hero’s adopted name; his real name is Natty
Bumppo. A famous marksman, Hawkeye carries a rifle named Killdeer and
has earned the frontier nickname La Longue Carabine, or The Long
Rifle. Hawkeye moves more comfortably in the forest than in
civilization. His closest bonds are with Indians, particularly
Chingachgook and Uncas, but he frequently asserts that he has no
Indian blood. As a cultural hybrid—a character who mixes elements of
different cultures—Hawkeye provides a link between Indians and
whites.
Hawkeye (In-Depth Analysis)
Magua - The novel’s villain, he is a cunning Huron nicknamed Le
Renard Subtil, or the Subtle Fox. Once a chief among his people, Magua
was driven from his tribe for drunkenness. Because the English Colonel
Munro enforced this humiliating punishment, Magua possesses a burning
desire for retaliation against him.
Magua (In-Depth Analysis)
Major Duncan Heyward - A young American colonist from the South who
has risen to the rank of major in the English army. Courageous, well-
meaning, and noble, Heyward often finds himself out of place in the
forest, thwarted by his lack of knowledge about the frontier and
Indian relations. Heyward’s unfamiliarity with the land sometimes
creates problems for Hawkeye, the dexterous woodsman and leader.
Major Duncan Heyward (In-Depth Analysis)
Uncas - Chingachgook’s son, he is the youngest and last member of the
Indian tribe known as the Mohicans. A noble, proud, self-possessed
young man, Uncas falls in love with Cora Munro and suffers tragic
consequences for desiring a forbidden interracial coupling. Noble
Uncas thwarts the evil Magua’s desire to marry Cora. Uncas also
functions as Hawkeye’s surrogate son, learning about leadership from
Hawkeye.
Uncas (In-Depth Analysis)
Chingachgook - Uncas’s father, he is one of the two surviving members
of the Mohican tribe. An old friend of Hawkeye, Chingachgook is also
known as Le Gros Serpent—The Great Snake—because of his crafty
intelligence.
David Gamut - A young Calvinist attempting to carry Christianity to
the frontier through the power of his song. Ridiculously out of place
in the wilderness, Gamut is the subject of Hawkeye’s frequent mockery.
Gamut matures into Hawkeye’s helpful ally, frequently supplying him
with important information.
Cora Munro - Colonel Munro’s eldest daughter, a solemn girl with a
noble bearing. Cora’s dark complexion derives from her mother’s
“Negro” background. Cora attracts the love of the Mohican warrior
Uncas and seems to return his feelings cautiously. She suffers the
tragic fate of the sentimental heroine.
Cora Munro (In-Depth Analysis)
Alice Munro - Colonel Munro’s younger daughter by his Scottish second
wife, and Cora’s half-sister. Girlish and young, she tends to faint at
stressful moments. Alice and Heyward love each other. Alice’s blonde
hair, fair skin, and weakness make her a conventional counterpart to
the racially mixed and fiery Cora.
Colonel Munro - The commander of the British forces at Fort William
Henry and father of Cora and Alice. As a young man, Munro traveled to
the West Indies, where he married a woman of “Negro” descent, Cora’s
mother. When Munro’s first wife died, he returned to Scotland and
married his childhood sweetheart, who later gave birth to Alice.
Although Munro is a massive, powerful man, circumstances in the war
eventually leave him withdrawn and ineffectual.
General Montcalm - Marquis Louis Joseph de Saint-Veran, known as
Montcalm, is the commander of the French forces fighting against
England during the French and Indian War. He enlists the aid and
knowledge of Indian tribes to help his French forces navigate the
unfamiliar forest combat setting. After capturing Fort William Henry,
though, he is powerless to prevent the Indian massacre of the English
troops.
Tamenund - An ancient, wise, and revered Delaware Indian sage who has
outlived three generations of warriors.
General Webb - The commander of the British forces at Fort Edward.

Analysis of Major Characters
Hawkeye
Hawkeye, the protagonist of the novel, goes by several names: Natty
Bumppo, La Longue Carabine (The Long Rifle), the scout, and Hawkeye.
Hawkeye stars in several of Cooper’s novels, which are known
collectively as the Leatherstocking Tales. Hawkeye’s chief strength is
adaptability. He adapts to the difficulties of the frontier and
bridges the divide between white and Indian cultures. A hybrid,
Hawkeye identifies himself by his white race and his Indian social
world, in which his closest friends are the Mohicans Chingachgook and
Uncas.
Hawkeye’s hybrid background breeds both productive alliances and
disturbingly racist convictions. On one hand, Hawkeye cherishes
individuality and makes judgments without regard to race. He cherishes
Chingachgook for his value as an individual, not for a superficial
multiculturalism fashionably ahead of its time. On the other hand,
Hawkeye demonstrates an almost obsessive investment in his own
“genuine” whiteness. Also, while Hawkeye supports interracial
friendship between men, he objects to interracial sexual desire
between men and women. Because of his contradictory opinions, the
protagonist of The Last of the Mohicans embodies nineteenth-century
America’s ambivalence about race and nature. Hawkeye’s most racist
views predict the cultural warfare around the issue of race that
continues to haunt the United States.
Magua
Magua, an Indian of the Huron tribe, plays the crafty villain to
Hawkeye’s rugged hero. Because of his exile by Colonel Munro, Magua
seeks revenge. He does not want to do bodily harm to Munro but wants
to bruise the colonel’s psyche. Magua has a keen understanding of
whites’ prejudices, and he knows that threatening to marry the
colonel’s daughter will terrify Colonel Monroe. Magua’s threat to
marry a white woman plays on white men’s fears of interracial
marriage. When Magua kidnaps Cora, the threat of physical violence or
rape hangs in the air, although no one ever speaks of it. Whereas the
interracial attraction between Uncas and Cora strikes us as sweet and
promising for happier race relations in the future, the violent
unwanted advances of Magua to Cora show an exaggerated fulfillment of
white men’s fears. However, while anger originally motivates Magua,
affection eventually characterizes his feelings for Cora. He refuses
to harm her, even when in one instance his actions put himself in
danger. Magua’s psychology becomes slightly more complicated by the
end of the novel, when sympathy tempers his evil.
Major Duncan Heyward
Heyward plays a well-meaning but slightly foolish white man, the
conventional counterpart to the ingenious, diverse Hawkeye. While
Hawkeye moves effortlessly throughout the wild frontier, Heyward never
feels secure. He wants to maintain the swagger and confidence he
likely felt in all-white England, but the unfamiliar and unpredictable
landscape does him in. Some of Heyward’s difficulties stem from his
inability to understand the Indians. Still, despite Heyward’s
failings, Cooper does not satirize Heyward or make him into a buffoon.
Heyward does demonstrate constant integrity and a well-meaning nature,
both of which mitigate his lack of social understanding. Cooper also
treats Heyward gently because Heyward plays the most typical romantic
hero in the novel, and so he must appear strong and handsome, not
ridiculous and inept. Heyward and Alice, although presented as a bland
couple, make up the swooning, cooing pair necessary to a sentimental
novel.
Cora Munro
The raven-haired daughter of Colonel Munro, Cora literally embodies
the novel’s ambivalent opinion about mixed race. She is part “Negro,”
a racial heritage portrayed as both unobjectionable and a cause for
vitriolic defensiveness in her father. She becomes entangled with the
Indian Uncas, a romantic complication portrayed both as passionate and
natural and as doomed to failure. Dark and stoic in comparison to her
sister Alice’s blonde girlishness, Cora is not the stereotypical
nineteenth-century sentimental heroine. Though she carries the weight
of the sentimental novel, she also provides the impetus for the
adventure narrative, since her capture by Magua necessitates rescue
missions. Cora brings together the adventure story’s warfare and
intrigue and the sentimental novel’s romance and loss. With Cora,
Cooper makes two genres intersect, creating the frontier romance.


Uncas
Uncas changes more than any other character over the course of the
novel. He pushes the limits of interracial relationships, moving
beyond Hawkeye’s same-sex interracial friendships and falling in love
with Cora, a white woman. Whereas Cooper values interracial friendship
between men, he presents interracial sexuality as difficult and
perhaps always doomed. In the end, Uncas is punished for his taboo
desires, perhaps because Cooper thinks he should be punished, or
perhaps because Cooper wants to show that Uncas’s close-minded society
will punish racial mixing. Hawkeye becomes a father figure for Uncas,
and Uncas eventually becomes a natural leader of men by combining the
skill of Hawkeye with the spirituality of a revered Indian leader.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
Interracial Love and Friendship
The Last of the Mohicans is a novel about race and the difficulty of
overcoming racial divides. Cooper suggests that interracial mingling
is both desirable and dangerous. Cooper lauds the genuine and longtime
friendship between Hawkeye, a white man, and Chingachgook, a Mohican
Indian. Hawkeye and Chingachgook’s shared communion with nature
transcends race, enabling them to team up against Huron enemies and to
save white military leaders like Heyward. On the other hand, though,
Cooper shows his conviction that interracial romances are doomed and
undesirable. The interracial love of Uncas and Cora ends in tragedy,
and the forced interracial relationship between Cora and Magua is
portrayed as unnatural. Through Cora, Cooper suggests that interracial
desire can be inherited; Cora desires Indian men because her mother
was part black.
Literal and Metaphorical Nature
Nature functions both literally and metaphorically in The Last of the
Mohicans. In its literal form, nature is the physical frontier that
surrounds the characters and complicates their battles and their
chances for survival. In the opening paragraphs of Chapter I, Cooper
describes the unpredictability of the colonial terrain, pointing out
that the cleared, flat battlefields of Europe are no longer the
setting for war. The New World has a new set of natural difficulties,
and the men at war must contend not just with each other but with the
unfriendly land. The forbidding landscape seems even more daunting to
the English because their adversaries, the Indians loyal to France,
know the land so well. The skills of the English have no place in the
forests of America. David Gamut’s religious Calvinism, a European
religion, becomes ridiculous in the wilderness.
Metaphorically, the land serves as a blank canvas on which the
characters paint themselves. Cooper defines characters by their
relationships to nature. Hawkeye establishes his claim to heroism by
respecting the landscape. The English Major Heyward establishes his
incompetence by misunderstanding the landscape. While he means well,
his unfamiliarity with the wilderness thwarts him. Magua uses the
landscape to carry out his villainy, hiding women in caves, jumping
wildly over abysses, and hiding behind rocks.
The Role of Religion in the Wilderness
The character David Gamut allows Cooper to explore the relevance of
religion in the wilderness. In theory at least, the American frontier
is untouched by human culture. It is a fresh start, a piece of land
not ruled by the conventions of European high culture, a place without
a firm government or social code. Gamut’s aggressive Calvinism
symbolizes the entrance of religion, a European model that enters the
blank slate of the New World. We know Gamut is a Calvinist because he
talks about predestination, the idea that God has a plan for each
person and no amount of human effort can change that plan. Hawkeye’s
frequent mockery of Gamut’s psalmody provides the novel’s comic
relief. The mockery, which comes from the mouth of the hero, also
suggests that institutional religion should not attempt to penetrate
the wilderness and convert its inhabitants. Because Cooper makes Gamut
ridiculous and Hawkeye heroic, it seems that, like Hawkeye, Cooper
scoffs at Calvinism’s tenets.
Gamut’s fatalism contrasts with Hawkeye’s pragmatism. Hawkeye adapts
to his surroundings and helps the other characters to achieve
improbable survivals, all of which suggests that Cooper believes
humans do have the ability to determine their own fates. By the end of
the novel the Calvinist Gamut learns to move beyond the rigidity of
his religion and become a helpful and committed ally. He succeeds when
he finds the ability to leave behind his fatalistic passivity and
adapt to the demands of the forest. Cooper’s exploration of Calvinism
sets the stage for many American writers of subsequent generations.
For example, Herman Melville’s tragic hero Ahab subscribes to the
rigid belief in fate that Calvinism endorses.
The Changing Idea of Family
Cooper uses the frontier setting to explore the changing status of the
family unit. Cooper posits that the wilderness demands new definitions
of family. Uncas and Hawkeye, for example, form a makeshift family
structure. When Uncas’s real father, Chingachgook, disappears without
explanation in the middle portion of the novel, Hawkeye becomes a
symbolic father for Uncas. As Uncas develops his leadership qualities
and emerges as a hero at the Delaware council of Tamenund, he takes on
some of the charisma and skill of Hawkeye, just as a son would inherit
behavior from his father. Not only do Uncas and Hawkeye form a family
not related by blood, they form a family that transcends race. Despite
this redefinition, however, the novel does not allow new family
formations that mix race, for Uncas and Cora do not get to act on
their interracial attraction. The tragedy of this sentimental novel is
that Cora and Uncas cannot redefine the notion of family according to
their desires.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Hybridity
The concept of hybridity is central to the novel’s thematic
explorations of race and family. Hybridity is the mixing of separate
elements into one whole, and in the novel it usually occurs when
nature and culture intersect, or when two races intersect. For
example, Cora is a hybrid because her mother was black and her father
white. Hawkeye is a hybrid because he is white by blood and Indian by
habit. Part of Hawkeye’s success comes from his ability to combine
elements of the European and Indian worlds. With Hawkeye, Cooper
challenges the idea that essential differences separate the two
cultures. Cooper’s depictions of hybridity predate the nineteenth
century’s extensive debate on the term’s cultural and scientific
meanings. The term “hybridity” became popular at the end of the
nineteenth century, when rapid developments in genetics occurred.
Disguise
Cooper uses the motif of disguise to resolve plot difficulties and to
provide comic relief. The fantastical nature of the disguises also
detracts from the believability of Cooper’s story. Indians who have
known the land their whole life, for example, mistake a man disguised
in a beaver costume as an actual beaver. These unrealistically
convincing costumes are part of Cooper’s move away from realism.
Disguise is characteristic of the romantic genre, which favors
excesses of imagination over the confinements of reason. The Last of
the Mohicans wants to be simultaneously a historically specific
narrative, an adventure novel, and a romance. Cooper plays with the
comic possibilities of romance, especially by exaggerating human
appearances. Disguise therefore proves not only a practical solution
to plot dilemmas but an indication that Cooper intends to make his
novel partly an amusing romance.
Inheritance
Inheritance informs the novel’s thematic portrayals of family
redefinition. The idea of inheritance frequently recurs in the father-
son relationship of Hawkeye and Uncas. When Chingachgook disappears in
the middle of the novel, Hawkeye becomes a father figure for Uncas and
oversees Uncas’s coming-of-age. Hawkeye gives Uncas a valuable
inheritance, teaching him and showing him how to become a man and a
leader.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
Hawkeye
Hawkeye is both a character and a symbol. Cooper uses Hawkeye to
symbolize colonial hybridity, the mixing of European and Indian
cultures. Hawkeye also symbolizes the myth of the hero woodsman. He
demonstrates perfect marksmanship in the shooting contest held by the
Delawares, for example. Hawkeye also becomes a symbolic father.
Excluded from the novel’s love plots, Hawkeye takes part in a
different sort of human relationship by creating a father-son dynamic
with Uncas.
“The Last of the Mohicans”
The recurring description of Uncas as “the last of the Mohicans”
symbolizes the death of Indian culture at the hands of the encroaching
European civilization. The title anticipates the ultimate tragedy of
the novel’s plot. Although the title specifically refers to Uncas, it
also alludes to a larger historical event: the genocidal removal of
the Indians by President Andrew Jackson’s policies of the 1830s. The
phrase “the last of the Mohicans” laments the extermination of the
ways of life native to America.

The scarlet letter
Context
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE WAS BORN in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. His
family descended from the earliest settlers of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony; among his forebears was John Hathorne (Hawthorne added the “w”
to his name when he began to write), one of the judges at the 1692
Salem witch trials. Throughout his life, Hawthorne was both fascinated
and disturbed by his kinship with John Hathorne. Raised by a widowed
mother, Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College in Maine, where he met two
people who were to have great impact upon his life: Henry Wadsworth
Long-fellow, who would later become a famous poet, and Franklin
Pierce, who would later become president of the United States.
After college Hawthorne tried his hand at writing, producing
historical sketches and an anonymous novel, Fanshawe, that detailed
his college days rather embarrassingly. Hawthorne also held positions
as an editor and as a customs surveyor during this period. His growing
relationship with the intellectual circle that included Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Margaret Fuller led him to abandon his customs post for
the utopian experiment at Brook Farm, a commune designed to promote
economic self-sufficiency and transcendentalist principles.
Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement of the
early nineteenth century that was dedicated to the belief that
divinity manifests itself everywhere, particularly in the natural
world. It also advocated a personalized, direct relationship with the
divine in place of formalized, structured religion. This second
transcendental idea is privileged in The Scarlet Letter.
After marrying fellow transcendentalist Sophia Peabody in 1842,
Hawthorne left Brook Farm and moved into the Old Manse, a home in
Concord where Emerson had once lived. In 1846 he published Mosses from
an Old Manse, a collection of essays and stories, many of which are
about early America. Mosses from an Old Manse earned Hawthorne the
attention of the literary establishment because America was trying to
establish a cultural independence to complement its political
independence, and Hawthorne’s collection of stories displayed both a
stylistic freshness and an interest in American subject matter. Herman
Melville, among others, hailed Hawthorne as the “American
Shakespeare.”
In 1845 Hawthorne again went to work as a customs surveyor, this time,
like the narrator of The Scarlet Letter, at a post in Salem. In 1850,
after having lost the job, he published The Scarlet Letter to
enthusiastic, if not widespread, acclaim. His other major novels
include The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance
(1852), and The Marble Faun (1860). In 1853 Hawthorne’s college friend
Franklin Pierce, for whom he had written a campaign biography and who
had since become president, appointed Hawthorne a United States
consul. The writer spent the next six years in Europe. He died in
1864, a few years after returning to America.
The majority of Hawthorne’s work takes America’s Puritan past as its
subject, but The Scarlet Letter uses the material to greatest effect.
The Puritans were a group of religious reformers who arrived in
Massachusetts in the 1630s under the leadership of John Winthrop
(whose death is recounted in the novel). The religious sect was known
for its intolerance of dissenting ideas and lifestyles. In The Scarlet
Letter, Hawthorne uses the repressive, authoritarian Puritan society
as an analogue for humankind in general. The Puritan setting also
enables him to portray the human soul under extreme -pressures.
Hester, Dimmesdale, and Chillingworth, while unquestionably part of
the Puritan society in which they live, also reflect universal
experiences. Hawthorne speaks specifically to American issues, but he
circumvents the aesthetic and thematic limitations that might
accompany such a focus. His universality and his dramatic flair have
ensured his place in the literary canon.
Plot Overview
THE SCARLET LETTER opens with a long preamble about how the book came
to be written. The nameless narrator was the surveyor of the
customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. In the customhouse’s attic, he
discovered a number of documents, among them a manuscript that was
bundled with a scarlet, gold-embroidered patch of cloth in the shape
of an “A.” The manuscript, the work of a past surveyor, detailed
events that occurred some two hundred years before the narrator’s
time. When the narrator lost his customs post, he decided to write a
fictional account of the events recorded in the manuscript. The
Scarlet Letter is the final product.
The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan
settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison
with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter
“A” on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that
Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester’s husband, a scholar
much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he never
arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea.
While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as
she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lover’s
identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public
shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day
Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers,
but she again refuses to identify her child’s father.
The elderly onlooker is Hester’s missing husband, who is now
practicing medicine and calling himself Roger Chillingworth. He
settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity to
no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years pass.
Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl grows
into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the community, they live in a
small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt
to take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur
Dimmesdale, a young and eloquent minister, the mother and daughter
manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting
away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by
psychological distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing
minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can provide his
patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that
there may be a connection between the minister’s torments and Hester’s
secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can learn. One
afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers a mark
on the man’s breast (the details of which are kept from the reader),
which convinces him that his suspicions are correct.
Dimmesdale’s psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new
tortures for himself. In the meantime, Hester’s charitable deeds and
quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the
community. One night, when Pearl is about seven years old, she and her
mother are returning home from a visit to a deathbed when they
encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish himself
for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands.
Dimmesdale refuses Pearl’s request that he acknowledge her publicly
the next day, and a meteor marks a dull red “A” in the night sky.
Hester can see that the minister’s condition is worsening, and she
resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop
adding to Dimmesdale’s self-torment. Chillingworth refuses.
Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she
is aware that Chillingworth has probably guessed that she plans to
reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. The former lovers decide to flee to
Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a
ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense of release,
and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. Pearl,
playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter. The
day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday
and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile,
Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan and has
booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after
his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold.
He impulsively mounts the scaffold with his lover and his daughter,
and confesses publicly, exposing a scarlet letter seared into the
flesh of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses him.
Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and
Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Many
years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter,
to live in her old cottage and resume her charitable work. She
receives occasional letters from Pearl, who has married a European
aristocrat and established a family of her own. When Hester dies, she
is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a single tombstone, which
bears a scarlet “A.”

Character List
Hester Prynne - Hester is the book’s protagonist and the wearer of
the scarlet letter that gives the book its title. The letter, a patch
of fabric in the shape of an “A,” signifies that Hester is an
“adulterer.” As a young woman, Hester married an elderly scholar,
Chillingworth, who sent her ahead to America to live but never
followed her. While waiting for him, she had an affair with a Puritan
minister named Dimmesdale, after which she gave birth to Pearl. Hester
is passionate but also strong—she endures years of shame and scorn.
She equals both her husband and her lover in her intelligence and
thoughtfulness. Her alienation puts her in the position to make acute
observations about her community, particularly about its treatment of
women.
Hester Prynne (In-Depth Analysis)
Pearl - Hester’s illegitimate daughter Pearl is a young girl with a
moody, mischievous spirit and an ability to perceive things that
others do not. For example, she quickly discerns the truth about her
mother and Dimmesdale. The townspeople say that she barely seems human
and spread rumors that her unknown father is actually the Devil. She
is wise far beyond her years, frequently engaging in ironic play
having to do with her mother’s scarlet letter.
Pearl (In-Depth Analysis)
Roger Chillingworth - “Roger Chillingworth” is actually Hester’s
husband in disguise. He is much older than she is and had sent her to
America while he settled his affairs in Europe. Because he is captured
by Native Americans, he arrives in Boston belatedly and finds Hester
and her illegitimate child being displayed on the scaffold. He lusts
for revenge, and thus decides to stay in Boston despite his wife’s
betrayal and disgrace. He is a scholar and uses his knowledge to
disguise himself as a doctor, intent on discovering and tormenting
Hester’s anonymous lover. Chillingworth is self-absorbed and both
physically and psychologically monstrous. His single-minded pursuit of
retribution reveals him to be the most malevolent character in the
novel.
Roger Chillingworth (In-Depth Analysis)
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale - Dimmesdale is a young man who achieved
fame in England as a theologian and then emigrated to America. In a
moment of weakness, he and Hester became lovers. Although he will not
confess it publicly, he is the father of her child. He deals with his
guilt by tormenting himself physically and psychologically, developing
a heart condition as a result. Dimmesdale is an intelligent and
emotional man, and his sermons are thus masterpieces of eloquence and
persuasiveness. His commitments to his congregation are in constant
conflict with his feelings of sinfulness and need to confess.
Arthur Dimmesdale (In-Depth Analysis)
Governor Bellingham - Governor Bellingham is a wealthy, elderly
gentleman who spends much of his time consulting with the other town
fathers. Despite his role as governor of a fledgling American society,
he very much resembles a traditional English aristocrat. Bellingham
tends to strictly adhere to the rules, but he is easily swayed by
Dimmesdale’s eloquence. He remains blind to the misbehaviors taking
place in his own house: his sister, Mistress Hibbins, is a witch.
Mistress Hibbins - Mistress Hibbins is a widow who lives with her
brother, Governor Bellingham, in a luxurious mansion. She is commonly
known to be a witch who ventures into the forest at night to ride with
the “Black Man.” Her appearances at public occasions remind the reader
of the hypocrisy and hidden evil in Puritan society.
Reverend Mr. John Wilson - Boston’s elder clergyman, Reverend Wilson
is scholarly yet grandfatherly. He is a stereotypical Puritan father,
a literary version of the stiff, starkly painted portraits of American
patriarchs. Like Governor Bellingham, Wilson follows the community’s
rules strictly but can be swayed by Dimmesdale’s eloquence. Unlike
Dimmesdale, his junior colleague, Wilson preaches hellfire and
damnation and advocates harsh punishment of sinners.
Narrator - The unnamed narrator works as the surveyor of the Salem
Custom House some two hundred years after the novel’s events take
place. He discovers an old manuscript in the building’s attic that
tells the story of Hester Prynne; when he loses his job, he decides to
write a fictional treatment of the narrative. The narrator is a rather
high-strung man, whose Puritan ancestry makes him feel guilty about
his writing career. He writes because he is interested in American
history and because he believes that America needs to better
understand its religious and moral heritage.

Analysis of Major Characters
Hester Prynne
Although The Scarlet Letter is about Hester Prynne, the book is not so
much a consideration of her innate character as it is an examination
of the forces that shape her and the transformations those forces
effect. We know very little about Hester prior to her affair with
Dimmesdale and her resultant public shaming. We read that she married
Chillingworth although she did not love him, but we never fully
understand why. The early chapters of the book suggest that, prior to
her marriage, Hester was a strong-willed and impetuous young woman—she
remembers her parents as loving guides who frequently had to restrain
her incautious behavior. The fact that she has an affair also suggests
that she once had a passionate nature.
But it is what happens after Hester’s affair that makes her into the
woman with whom the reader is familiar. Shamed and alienated from the
rest of the community, Hester becomes contemplative. She speculates on
human nature, social organization, and larger moral questions.
Hester’s tribulations also lead her to be stoic and a freethinker.
Although the narrator pretends to disapprove of Hester’s independent
philosophizing, his tone indicates that he secretly admires her
independence and her ideas.
Hester also becomes a kind of compassionate maternal figure as a
result of her experiences. Hester moderates her tendency to be rash,
for she knows that such behavior could cause her to lose her daughter,
Pearl. Hester is also maternal with respect to society: she cares for
the poor and brings them food and clothing. By the novel’s end, Hester
has become a protofeminist mother figure to the women of the
community. The shame attached to her scarlet letter is long gone.
Women recognize that her punishment stemmed in part from the town
fathers’ sexism, and they come to Hester seeking shelter from the
sexist forces under which they themselves suffer. Throughout The
Scarlet Letter Hester is portrayed as an intelligent, capable, but not
necessarily extraordinary woman. It is the extraordinary circumstances
shaping her that make her such an important figure.
Roger Chillingworth
As his name suggests, Roger Chillingworth is a man deficient in human
warmth. His twisted, stooped, deformed shoulders mirror his distorted
soul. From what the reader is told of his early years with Hester, he
was a difficult husband. He ignored his wife for much of the time, yet
expected her to nourish his soul with affection when he did condescend
to spend time with her. Chillingworth’s decision to assume the
identity of a “leech,” or doctor, is fitting. Unable to engage in
equitable relationships with those around him, he feeds on the
vitality of others as a way of energizing his own projects.
Chillingworth’s death is a result of the nature of his character.
After Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth no longer has a victim.
Similarly, Dimmesdale’s revelation that he is Pearl’s father removes
Hester from the old man’s clutches. Having lost the objects of his
revenge, the leech has no choice but to die.
Ultimately, Chillingworth represents true evil. He is associated with
secular and sometimes illicit forms of knowledge, as his chemical
experiments and medical practices occasionally verge on witchcraft and
murder. He is interested in revenge, not justice, and he seeks the
deliberate destruction of others rather than a redress of wrongs. His
desire to hurt others stands in contrast to Hester and Dimmesdale’s
sin, which had love, not hate, as its intent. Any harm that may have
come from the young lovers’ deed was unanticipated and inadvertent,
whereas Chillingworth reaps deliberate harm.
Arthur Dimmesdale
Arthur Dimmesdale, like Hester Prynne, is an individual whose identity
owes more to external circumstances than to his innate nature. The
reader is told that Dimmesdale was a scholar of some renown at Oxford
University. His past suggests that he is probably somewhat aloof, the
kind of man who would not have much natural sympathy for ordinary men
and women. However, Dimmesdale has an unusually active conscience. The
fact that Hester takes all of the blame for their shared sin goads his
conscience, and his resultant mental anguish and physical weakness
open up his mind and allow him to empathize with others. Consequently,
he becomes an eloquent and emotionally powerful speaker and a
compassionate leader, and his congregation is able to receive
meaningful spiritual guidance from him.
Ironically, the townspeople do not believe Dimmesdale’s protestations
of sinfulness. Given his background and his penchant for rhetorical
speech, Dimmesdale’s congregation generally interprets his sermons
allegorically rather than as expressions of any personal guilt. This
drives Dimmesdale to further internalize his guilt and self-punishment
and leads to still more deterioration in his physical and spiritual
condition. The town’s idolization of him reaches new heights after his
Election Day sermon, which is his last. In his death, Dimmesdale
becomes even more of an icon than he was in life. Many believe his
confession was a symbolic act, while others believe Dimmesdale’s fate
was an example of divine judgment.
Pearl
Hester’s daughter, Pearl, functions primarily as a symbol. She is
quite young during most of the events of this novel—when Dimmesdale
dies she is only seven years old—and her real importance lies in her
ability to provoke the adult characters in the book. She asks them
pointed questions and draws their attention, and the reader’s, to the
denied or overlooked truths of the adult world. In general, children
in The Scarlet Letter are portrayed as more perceptive and more honest
than adults, and Pearl is the most perceptive of them all.
Pearl makes us constantly aware of her mother’s scarlet letter and of
the society that produced it. From an early age, she fixates on the
emblem. Pearl’s innocent, or perhaps intuitive, comments about the
letter raise crucial questions about its meaning. Similarly, she
inquires about the relationships between those around her—most
important, the relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale—and offers
perceptive critiques of them. Pearl provides the text’s harshest, and
most penetrating, judgment of Dimmesdale’s failure to admit to his
adultery. Once her father’s identity is revealed, Pearl is no longer
needed in this symbolic capacity; at Dimmesdale’s death she becomes
fully “human,” leaving behind her otherworldliness and her
preternatural vision.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition
Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The
Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from
the Garden of Eden for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and
evil. As a result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of
their humanness, that which separates them from the divine and from
other creatures. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are
forced to toil and to procreate—two “labors” that seem to define the
human condition. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the
story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion
and suffering. But it also results in knowledge—specifically, in
knowledge of what it means to be human. For Hester, the scarlet letter
functions as “her passport into regions where other women dared not
tread,” leading her to “speculate” about her society and herself more
“boldly” than anyone else in New England. As for Dimmesdale, the
“burden” of his sin gives him “sympathies so intimate with the sinful
brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with
theirs.” His eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this sense of
empathy. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a
daily basis and try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. The
Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on seeing earthly experience
as merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. Thus, they view sin as a
threat to the community that should be punished and suppressed. Their
answer to Hester’s sin is to ostracize her. Yet, Puritan society is
stagnant, while Hester and Dimmesdale’s experience shows that a state
of sinfulness can lead to personal growth, sympathy, and understanding
of others. Paradoxically, these qualities are shown to be incompatible
with a state of purity.
The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the
“Black Man,” the embodiment of evil. Over the course of the novel, the
“Black Man” is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Mistress
Hibbins, and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devil’s child.
The characters also try to root out the causes of evil: did
Chillingworth’s selfishness in marrying Hester force her to the “evil”
she committed in Dimmesdale’s arms? Is Hester and Dimmesdale’s deed
responsible for Chillingworth’s transformation into a malevolent
being? This confusion over the nature and causes of evil reveals the
problems with the Puritan conception of sin. The book argues that true
evil arises from the close relationship between hate and love. As the
narrator points out in the novel’s concluding chapter, both emotions
depend upon “a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each
renders one individual dependent . . . upon another.” Evil is not
found in Hester and Dimmesdale’s lovemaking, nor even in the cruel
ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its most poisonous form, is
found in the carefully plotted and precisely aimed revenge of
Chillingworth, whose love has been perverted. Perhaps Pearl is not
entirely wrong when she thinks Dimmesdale is the “Black Man,” because
her father, too, has perverted his love. Dimmesdale, who should love
Pearl, will not even publicly acknowledge her. His cruel denial of
love to his own child may be seen as further perpetrating evil.
Identity and Society
After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to
wear a badge of humiliation, her unwillingness to leave the town may
seem puzzling. She is not physically imprisoned, and leaving the
Massachusetts Bay Colony would allow her to remove the scarlet letter
and resume a normal life. Surprisingly, Hester reacts with dismay when
Chillingworth tells her that the town fathers are considering letting
her remove the letter. Hester’s behavior is premised on her desire to
determine her own identity rather than to allow others to determine it
for her. To her, running away or removing the letter would be an
acknowledgment of society’s power over her: she would be admitting
that the letter is a mark of shame and something from which she
desires to escape. Instead, Hester stays, refiguring the scarlet
letter as a symbol of her own experiences and character. Her past sin
is a part of who she is; to pretend that it never happened would mean
denying a part of herself. Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates
her sin into her life.
Dimmesdale also struggles against a socially determined identity. As
the community’s minister, he is more symbol than human being. Except
for Chillingworth, those around the minister willfully ignore his
obvious anguish, misinterpreting it as holiness. Unfortunately,
Dimmesdale never fully recognizes the truth of what Hester has
learned: that individuality and strength are gained by quiet self-
assertion and by a reconfiguration, not a rejection, of one’s assigned
identity.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Civilization versus the Wilderness
In The Scarlet Letter, the town and the surrounding forest represent
opposing behavioral systems. The town represents civilization, a rule-
bound space where everything one does is on display and where
transgressions are quickly punished. The forest, on the other hand, is
a space of natural rather than human authority. In the forest,
society’s rules do not apply, and alternate identities can be assumed.
While this allows for misbehavior— Mistress Hibbins’s midnight rides,
for example—it also permits greater honesty and an escape from the
repression of Boston. When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods,
for a few moments, they become happy young lovers once again. Hester’s
cottage, which, significantly, is located on the outskirts of town and
at the edge of the forest, embodies both orders. It is her place of
exile, which ties it to the authoritarian town, but because it lies
apart from the settlement, it is a place where she can create for
herself a life of relative peace.
Night versus Day
By emphasizing the alternation between sunlight and darkness, the
novel organizes the plot’s events into two categories: those which are
socially acceptable, and those which must take place covertly.
Daylight exposes an individual’s activities and makes him or her
vulnerable to punishment. Night, on the other hand, conceals and
enables activities that would not be possible or tolerated during the
day—for instance, Dimmesdale’s encounter with Hester and Pearl on the
scaffold. These notions of visibility versus concealment are linked to
two of the book’s larger themes—the themes of inner versus socially
assigned identity and of outer appearances versus internal states.
Night is the time when inner natures can manifest themselves. During
the day, interiority is once again hidden from public view, and
secrets remain secrets.
Evocative Names
The names in this novel often seem to beg to be interpreted
allegorically. Chillingworth is cold and inhuman and thus brings a
“chill” to Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s lives. “Prynne” rhymes with
“sin,” while “Dimmesdale” suggests “dimness”—weakness, indeterminacy,
lack of insight, and lack of will, all of which characterize the young
minister. The name “Pearl” evokes a biblical allegorical device—the
“pearl of great price” that is salvation. This system of naming lends
a profundity to the story, linking it to other allegorical works of
literature such as Pilgrim’s Progress and to portions of the Bible. It
also aligns the novel with popular forms of narrative such as fairy
tales.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
The Scarlet Letter
The scarlet letter is meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it
becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The letter’s meaning
shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as an
adulterer, the “A” eventually comes to stand for “Able.” Finally, it
becomes indeterminate: the Native Americans who come to watch the
Election Day pageant think it marks her as a person of importance and
status. Like Pearl, the letter functions as a physical reminder of
Hester’s affair with Dimmesdale. But, compared with a human child, the
letter seems insignificant, and thus helps to point out the ultimate
meaninglessness of the community’s system of judgment and punishment.
The child has been sent from God, or at least from nature, but the
letter is merely a human contrivance. Additionally, the instability of
the letter’s apparent meaning calls into question society’s ability to
use symbols for ideological reinforcement. More often than not, a
symbol becomes a focal point for critical analysis and debate.
The Meteor
As Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in Chapter
XII, a meteor traces out an “A” in the night sky. To Dimmesdale, the
meteor implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester
does. The meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the
community, which thinks that it stands for “Angel” and marks Governor
Winthrop’s entry into heaven. But “Angel” is an awkward reading of the
symbol. The Puritans commonly looked to symbols to confirm divine
sentiments. In this narrative, however, symbols are taken to mean what
the beholder wants them to mean. The incident with the meteor
obviously highlights and exemplifies two different uses of symbols:
Puritan and literary.
Pearl
Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the
novel is as a symbol. Pearl is a sort of living version of her
mother’s scarlet letter. She is the physical consequence of sexual sin
and the indicator of a transgression. Yet, even as a reminder of
Hester’s “sin,” Pearl is more than a mere punishment to her mother:
she is also a blessing. She represents not only “sin” but also the
vital spirit and passion that engendered that sin. Thus, Pearl’s
existence gives her mother reason to live, bolstering her spirits when
she is tempted to give up. It is only after Dimmesdale is revealed to
be Pearl’s father that Pearl can become fully “human.” Until then, she
functions in a symbolic capacity as the reminder of an unsolved
mystery.
The Rosebush Next to the Prison Door
The narrator chooses to begin his story with the image of the rosebush
beside the prison door. The rosebush symbolizes the ability of nature
to endure and outlast man’s activities. Yet, paradoxically, it also
symbolizes the futility of symbolic interpretation: the narrator
mentions various significances that the rosebush might have, never
affirming or denying them, never privileging one over the others.
Uncle Tom’s cabin
Context
UPON MEETING HARRIET BEECHER STOWE for the first time, Abraham Lincoln
reportedly said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.”
Stowe was little—under five feet tall—but what she lacked in height,
she made up for in influence and success. Uncle Tom’s Cabin became one
of the most widely read and deeply penetrating books of its time. It
sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was translated into numerous
languages. Many historians have credited the novel with contributing
to the outbreak of the Civil War.
The daughter of an eminent New England preacher, Stowe was born into a
family of eccentric, intelligent people. As a child, she learned Latin
and wrote a children’s geography book, both before she was ten years
old. Throughout her life, she remained deeply involved in religious
movements, feminist causes, and the most divisive political and moral
issue of her time: the abolition of slavery.
Stowe grew up in the Northeast but lived for a time in Cincinnati,
which enabled her to see both sides of the slavery debate without
losing her abolitionist’s perspective. Cincinnati was evenly split for
and against abolition, and Stowe wrote satirical pieces on the subject
for several local papers there. She often wrote pieces under
pseudonyms and with contrasting styles, and one can see a similar
attention to voice in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in which dialects and
patterns of speech contrast among characters. Though Stowe absorbed a
great deal of information about slavery during her Cincinnati years,
she nonetheless conducted extensive research before writing Uncle
Tom’s Cabin. She wrote to Frederick Douglass and others for help in
creating a realistic picture of slavery in the Deep South. Her black
cook and household servants also helped by telling her stories of
their slave days.
Stowe’s main goal with Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to convince her large
Northern readership of the necessity of ending slavery. Most
immediately, the novel served as a response to the passage of the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal to give aid or
assistance to a runaway slave. Under this legislation, Southern slaves
who escaped to the North had to flee to Canada in order to find real
freedom. With her book, Stowe created a sort of exposé that revealed
the horrors of Southern slavery to people in the North. Her radical
position on race relations, though, was informed by a deep
religiosity. Stowe continually emphasizes the importance of Christian
love in eradicating oppression. She also works in her feminist
beliefs, showing women as equals to men in intelligence, bravery, and
spiritual strength. Indeed, women dominate the book’s moral code,
proving vital advisors to their husbands, who often need help in
seeing through convention and popular opinion.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in episodes in the National Era in
1851 and 1852, then published in its entirety on March 20, 1852. It
sold 10,000 copies in its first week and 300,000 by the end of the
year, astronomical numbers for the mid-nineteenth century. Today,
analysis of both the book’s conception and reception proves helpful in
our understanding of the Civil War era. Within the text itself, the
reader finds insights into the mind of a Christian, feminist
abolitionist. For example, in the arguments Stowe uses, the reader
receives a glimpse into the details of the slavery debate. Looking
beyond the text to its impact on its society, the reader gains an
understanding of the historical forces contributing to the outbreak of
war.

Plot Overview
HAVING RUN UP LARGE DEBTS, a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby faces
the prospect of losing everything he owns. Though he and his wife,
Emily Shelby, have a kindhearted and affectionate relationship with
their slaves, Shelby decides to raise money by selling two of his
slaves to Mr. Haley, a coarse slave trader. The slaves in question are
Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children on the farm, and
Harry, the young son of Mrs. Shelby’s maid Eliza. When Shelby tells
his wife about his agreement with Haley, she is appalled because she
has promised Eliza that Shelby would not sell her son.
However, Eliza overhears the conversation between Haley and his wife
and, after warning Uncle Tom and his wife, Aunt Chloe, she takes Harry
and flees to the North, hoping to find freedom with her husband George
in Canada. Haley pursues her, but two other Shelby slaves alert Eliza
to the danger. She miraculously evades capture by crossing the half-
frozen Ohio River, the boundary separating Kentucky from the North.
Haley hires a slave hunter named Loker and his gang to bring Eliza and
Harry back to Kentucky. Eliza and Harry make their way to a Quaker
settlement, where the Quakers agree to help transport them to safety.
They are joined at the settlement by George, who reunites joyously
with his family for the trip to Canada.
Meanwhile, Uncle Tom sadly leaves his family and Mas’r George,
Shelby’s young son and Tom’s friend, as Haley takes him to a boat on
the Mississippi to be transported to a slave market. On the boat, Tom
meets an angelic little white girl named Eva, who quickly befriends
him. When Eva falls into the river, Tom dives in to save her, and her
father, Augustine St. Clare, gratefully agrees to buy Tom from Haley.
Tom travels with the St. Clares to their home in New Orleans, where he
grows increasingly invaluable to the St. Clare household and
increasingly close to Eva, with whom he shares a devout Christianity.
Up North, George and Eliza remain in flight from Loker and his men.
When Loker attempts to capture them, George shoots him in the side,
and the other slave hunters retreat. Eliza convinces George and the
Quakers to bring Loker to the next settlement, where he can be healed.
Meanwhile, in New Orleans, St. Clare discusses slavery with his cousin
Ophelia, who opposes slavery as an institution but harbors deep
prejudices against blacks. St. Clare, by contrast, feels no hostility
against blacks but tolerates slavery because he feels powerless to
change it. To help Ophelia overcome her bigotry, he buys Topsy, a
young black girl who was abused by her past master and arranges for
Ophelia to begin educating her.
After Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very
ill. She slowly weakens, then dies, with a vision of heaven before
her. Her death has a profound effect on everyone who knew her: Ophelia
resolves to love the slaves, Topsy learns to trust and feel attached
to others, and St. Clare decides to set Tom free. However, before he
can act on his decision, St. Clare is stabbed to death while trying to
settle a brawl. As he dies, he at last finds God and goes to be
reunited with his mother in heaven.
St. Clare’s cruel wife, Marie, sells Tom to a vicious plantation owner
named Simon Legree. Tom is taken to rural Louisiana with a group of
new slaves, including Emmeline, whom the demonic Legree has purchased
to use as a sex slave, replacing his previous sex slave Cassy. Legree
takes a strong dislike to Tom when Tom refuses to whip a fellow slave
as ordered. Tom receives a severe beating, and Legree resolves to
crush his faith in God. Tom meets Cassy, and hears her story.
Separated from her daughter by slavery, she became pregnant again but
killed the child because she could not stand to have another child
taken from her.
Around this time, with the help of Tom Loker—now a changed man after
being healed by the Quakers—George, Eliza, and Harry at last cross
over into Canada from Lake Erie and obtain their freedom. In
Louisiana, Tom’s faith is sorely tested by his hardships, and he
nearly ceases to believe. He has two visions, however—one of Christ
and one of Eva—which renew his spiritual strength and give him the
courage to withstand Legree’s torments. He encourages Cassy to escape.
She does so, taking Emmeline with her, after she devises a ruse in
which she and Emmeline pretend to be ghosts. When Tom refuses to tell
Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers
to beat him. When Tom is near death, he forgives Legree and the
overseers. George Shelby arrives with money in hand to buy Tom’s
freedom, but he is too late. He can only watch as Tom dies a martyr’s
death.
Taking a boat toward freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harris’s
sister and travel with her to Canada, where Cassy realizes that Eliza
is her long-lost daughter. The newly reunited family travels to France
and decides to move to Liberia, the African nation created for former
American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm, where,
after his father’s death, he sets all the slaves free in honor of
Tom’s memory. He urges them to think on Tom’s sacrifice every time
they look at his cabin and to lead a pious Christian life, just as Tom
did.
Character List
Uncle Tom - A good and pious man, Uncle Tom is the protagonist of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Even under the worst conditions, Uncle Tom always
prays to God and finds a way to keep his faith. As the novel
progresses, the cruel treatment that Tom suffers at the hands of Simon
Legree threatens his belief in God, but Tom withstands his doubts and
dies the death of a Christian martyr.
Uncle Tom (In-Depth Analysis)
Aunt Chloe - Uncle Tom’s wife and the Shelbys’ cook. Chloe often acts
like a jovial simpleton around the Shelbys to mask her more complex
feelings.
Arthur Shelby - The owner of Uncle Tom in Kentucky, Shelby sells Tom
to the cruel Mr. Haley to pay off his debts. An educated, kind, and
basically good-hearted man, Shelby nonetheless tolerates and
perpetuates slavery. Stowe uses him to illustrate that the immorality
inherent in slavery makes villains of all its practitioners—not just
the most cruel masters.
Emily Shelby - Mr. Shelby’s wife, Emily Shelby is a loving, Christian
woman who does not believe in slavery. She uses her influence with her
husband to try to help the Shelbys’ slaves and is one of the novel’s
many morally virtuous and insightful female characters.
George Shelby - Called “Mas’r George” by Uncle Tom, George is the
Shelbys’ good-hearted son. He loves Tom and promises to rescue him
from the cruelty into which his father sold him. After Tom dies, he
resolves to free all the slaves on the family farm in Kentucky. More
morally committed than his father, George not only possesses a kind
heart but acts on his principles.
George Harris - Eliza’s husband and an intellectually curious and
talented mulatto, George loves his family deeply and willingly fights
for his freedom. He confronts the slave hunter Tom Loker and does not
hesitate to shoot him when he imperils the family.
Eliza Harris - Mrs. Shelby’s maid, George’s wife, and Harry’s mother,
Eliza is an intelligent, beautiful, and brave young slave. After Mr.
Shelby makes known his plans to sell Eliza’s son to Mr. Haley, she
proves the force of her motherly love as well as her strength of
spirit by making a spectacular escape. Her crossing of the Ohio River
on patches of ice is the novel’s most famous scene.
Harry Harris - Eliza and George’s son, a young boy.
Augustine St. Clare - Tom’s master in New Orleans and Eva’s father,
St. Clare is a flighty and romantic man, dedicated to pleasure. St.
Clare does not believe in God, and he carouses and drinks every night.
Although he dotes on his daughter and treats his slaves with
compassion, St. Clare shares the hypocrisy of Mr. Shelby in that he
sees the evil of slavery but nonetheless tolerates and practices it.
Eva - St. Clare and Marie’s angelic daughter. Eva, also referred to
in the book as Little Eva (her given name is Evangeline) is presented
as an absolutely perfect child—a completely moral being and an
unimpeachable Christian. She laments the existence of slavery and sees
no difference between blacks and whites. After befriending Tom while
still a young girl, Eva becomes one of the most important figures in
his life. In death, Eva becomes one of the text’s central Christ
figures.
Miss Ophelia - St. Clare’s cousin from the North (Vermont) who comes
to help him manage the household, Ophelia opposes slavery in the
abstract. However, she finds actual slaves somewhat distasteful and
harbors considerable prejudice against them. After Eva’s death, and
through her relationship with Topsy, Ophelia realizes her failings and
learns to see slaves as human beings. Stowe hoped that much of her
Northern audience might recognize themselves in Ophelia and reconsider
their views on slavery.
Marie - St. Clare’s wife, a self-centered woman. Petty, whining, and
foolish, she is the very opposite of the idealized woman figure that
appears repeatedly throughout the novel.
The Quakers - The Quakers, a Christian group that arose in mid-
seventeenth-century England, dedicated themselves to achieving an
inner understanding of God, without the use of creeds, clergy, or
outward rites. The Quakers have a long history of contributing to
social reform and peace efforts. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, many Quaker
characters appear who help George and Eliza, as well as many other
slaves. Stowe uses them to portray a Christianity free of hypocrisy,
self-righteous display, or bigoted conventions. This kind of
Christianity, she implies, can play a crucial role in the abolition of
slavery.
Senator and Mrs. Bird - Mrs. Bird is another example of the virtuous
woman. She tries to exert influence through her husband. Senator Bird
exemplifies the well-meaning man who is sympathetic to the
abolitionist cause but who nonetheless remains complacent or resigned
to the status quo.
Tom Loker - A slave hunter hired by Mr. Haley to bring back Eliza,
Harry, and George, Tom Loker first appears as a gruff, violent man.
George shoots him when he tries to capture them, and, after he is
healed by the Quakers, Loker experiences a transformation and chooses
to join the Quakers rather than return to his old life.
Mr. Haley - The slave trader who buys Uncle Tom and Harry from Mr.
Shelby. A gruff, coarse man, Haley presents himself as a kind
individual who treats his slaves well. Haley, however, mistreats his
slaves, often violently.
Topsy - A wild and uncivilized slave girl whom Miss Ophelia tries to
reform, Topsy gradually learns to love and respect others by following
the example of Eva.
Simon Legree - Tom’s ruthlessly evil master on the Louisiana
plantation. A vicious, barbaric, and loathsome man, Legree fosters
violence and hatred among his slaves.
Simon Legree (In-Depth Analysis)
Cassy - Legree’s (slave) mistress and Eliza’s mother, Cassy proves a
proud and intelligent woman and devises a clever way to escape
Legree’s plantation.
Emmeline - A young and beautiful slave girl whom Legree buys for
himself, perhaps to replace Cassy as his mistress. She has been raised
as a pious Christian.
Analysis of Major Characters
Uncle Tom
History has not been kind to Uncle Tom, the hero of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
and one of the most popular figures of nineteenth-century American
fiction. After its initial burst of sensational popularity and
influence, Uncle Tom’s Cabin fell into neglect. Its circulation
declined following the end of the Civil War and Stowe’s death, and by
the mid-1900s, the book was virtually out of print. Not until the
early 1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement reawakened an interest in
anti-slavery fiction, did the novel again become widely read. More
than a hundred years after its initial publication, however, Uncle
Tom’s Cabin stood as a testament to a past set of standards and
expectations. The values and attributes that seemed admirable in its
characters in 1852 frequently appeared incomprehensible and even
contemptible to twentieth-century readers. In particular, the passive
acceptance of slavery practiced by the novel’s title character seemed
horrendously out of line with the resolve and strength of modern black
Civil Rights crusaders. The term “Uncle Tom” became an insult,
conjuring an image of an old black man eager to please his white
masters and happy to accept his own position of inferiority.
Although modern readers’ criticisms hold some validity, the notion of
an “Uncle Tom” contains generalizations not found within the actual
character in the novel. First, Tom is not an old man. The novel states
that he is eight years older than Shelby, which probably places him in
his late forties at the start of the novel. Moreover, Tom does not
accept his position of inferiority with happiness. Tom’s passivity
owes not to stupidity or to contentment with his position, but to his
deep religious values, which impel him to love everyone and selflessly
endure his trials. Indeed, Tom’s central characteristic in the novel
is this religiosity, his strength of faith. Everywhere Tom goes in the
novel, he manages to spread some of the love and goodwill of his
religious beliefs, helping to alleviate the pain of slavery and
enhance the hope of salvation. And while this religiosity translates
into a selfless passivity on Tom’s part, it also translates into a
policy of warm encouragement of others’ attempts at freedom. Thus, he
supports Eliza’s escape, as well as that of Cassy and Emmeline from
the Legree plantation. Moreover, while Tom may not actively seek his
own freedom, he practices a kind of resistance in his passivity. When
Legree orders him to beat the slave girl in Chapter XXXIII, he
refuses, standing firm in his values. He will submit to being beaten
for his beliefs, but he will not capitulate or run away.
Moreover, even in recognizing Tom’s passivity in the novel, and
Stowe’s approving treatment of it, one should note that Stowe does not
present this behavior as a model of black behavior, but as a heroic
model of behavior that should be practiced by everyone, black and
white. Stowe makes it very clear that if the villainous white
slaveholders of the novel were to achieve Tom’s selfless Christian
love for others, slavery would be impossible, and Tom’s death never
would have happened. Because Stowe believes that a transformation
through Christian love must occur before slavery can be abolished
successfully, she holds up Tom’s death as nobler than any escape, in
that it provides an example for others and offers the hope of a more
generalized salvation. Through this death, moreover, Tom becomes a
Christ figure, a radical role for a black character to play in
American fiction in 1852. Tom’s death proves Legree’s fundamental
moral and personal inferiority, and provides the motivating force
behind George Shelby’s decision to free all the slaves. By practicing
selflessness and loving his enemy, Tom becomes a martyr and affects
social change. Although contemporary society finds its heroes in
active agents of social change and tends to discourage submissiveness,
Stowe meant for Tom to embody noble heroic tendencies of his own. She
portrayed his passivity as a virtue unconnected to his minority
status. Within the world of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Tom is presented as
more than a black hero—he is presented as a hero transcending race.
Ophelia St. Clare
Probably the most complex female character in the novel, Ophelia
deserves special attention from the reader because she is treated as a
surrogate for Stowe’s intended audience. It is as if Stowe conceived
an imaginary picture of her intended reader, then brought that reader
into the book as a character. Ophelia embodies what Stowe considered a
widespread Northern problem: the white person who opposes slavery on a
theoretical level but feels racial prejudice and hatred in the
presence of an actual black slave. Ophelia detests slavery, but she
considers it almost necessary for blacks, against whom she harbors a
deep-seated prejudice—she does not want them to touch her. Stowe
emphasizes that much of Ophelia’s racial prejudice stems from
unfamiliarity and ignorance rather than from actual experience-based
hatred. Because Ophelia has seldom spent time in the presence of
slaves, she finds them uncomfortably alien.
However, Ophelia is one of the only characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin
who develops as the story progresses. Once St. Clare puts Topsy in her
care, Ophelia begins to have increased contact with a slave. At first
she tries to teach Topsy out of a sense of mere duty. But Stowe
suggests that duty alone will not eradicate slavery—abolitionists must
act out of love. Eva’s death proves the crucial catalyst in Ophelia’s
transformation, and she comes to love Topsy as a human being,
overcoming her racial prejudice and offering a model to Stowe’s
Northern readers.
Simon Legree
Although largely a uniformly evil villain, Simon Legree does possess
some psychological depth as a character. He has been deeply affected
by the death of his angelic mother and seems to show some legitimate
affection for Cassy. Nonetheless, Legree’s main purpose in the book is
as a foil to Uncle Tom, and as an effective picture of slavery at its
worst. Often associated with firelight and flames, Legree demonstrates
literally infernal qualities, and his devilishness provides an
effective contrast with the angelic qualities of his passive slave.
Legree’s demoniacally evil ways also play an important role in shaping
the end of the book along the lines of the traditional Christian
narrative. Above all, Legree desires to break Tom’s religious faith
and to see him capitulate to doubt and sin. In the end, although Tom
dies and Legree survives, the evil that Legree stands for has been
destroyed. Tom dies loving the men who kill him, proving that his
faith prevails over Legree’s evil.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
The Evil of Slavery
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written after the passage of the Fugitive Slave
Act of 1850, which made it illegal for anyone in the United States to
offer aid or assistance to a runaway slave. The novel seeks to attack
this law and the institution it protected, ceaselessly advocating the
immediate emancipation of the slaves and freedom for all people. Each
of Stowe’s scenes, while serving to further character and plot, also
serves, without exception, to persuade the reader—especially the
Northern reader of Stowe’s time—that slavery is evil, un-Christian,
and intolerable in a civil society.
For most of the novel, Stowe explores the question of slavery in a
fairly mild setting, in which slaves and masters have seemingly
positive relationships. At the Shelbys’ house, and again at the St.
Clares’, the slaves have kindly masters who do not abuse or mistreat
them. Stowe does not offer these settings in order to show slavery’s
evil as conditional. She seeks to expose the vices of slavery even in
its best-case scenario. Though Shelby and St. Clare possess kindness
and intelligence, their ability to tolerate slavery renders them
hypocritical and morally weak. Even under kind masters, slaves suffer,
as we see when a financially struggling Shelby guiltily destroys Tom’s
family by selling Tom, and when the fiercely selfish Marie, by
demanding attention be given to herself, prevents the St. Clare slaves
from mourning the death of her own angelic daughter, Eva. A common
contemporary defense of slavery claimed that the institution benefited
the slaves because most masters acted in their slaves’ best interest.
Stowe refutes this argument with her biting portrayals, insisting that
the slave’s best interest can lie only in obtaining freedom.
In the final third of the book, Stowe leaves behind the pleasant
veneer of life at the Shelby and St. Clare houses and takes her reader
into the Legree plantation, where the evil of slavery appears in its
most naked and hideous form. This harsh and barbaric setting, in which
slaves suffer beatings, sexual abuse, and even murder, introduces the
power of shock into Stowe’s argument. If slavery is wrong in the best
of cases, in the worst of cases it is nightmarish and inhuman. In the
book’s structural progression between “pleasant” and hellish
plantations, we can detect Stowe’s rhetorical methods. First she
deflates the defense of the pro-slavery reader by showing the evil of
the “best” kind of slavery. She then presents her own case against
slavery by showing the shocking wickedness of slavery at its worst.
The Incompatibility of Slavery & Christian Values
Writing for a predominantly religious, predominantly Protestant
audience, Stowe takes great pains to illustrate the fact that the
system of slavery and the moral code of Christianity oppose each
other. No Christian, she insists, should be able to tolerate slavery.
Throughout the novel, the more religious a character is, the more he
or she objects to slavery. Eva, the most morally perfect white
character in the novel, fails to understand why anyone would see a
difference between blacks and whites. In contrast, the morally
revolting, nonreligious Legree practices slavery almost as a policy of
deliberate blasphemy and evil. Christianity, in Stowe’s novel, rests
on a principle of universal love. If all people were to put this
principle into practice, Stowe insists, it would be impossible for one
segment of humanity to oppress and enslave another. Thus, not only are
Christianity and slavery incompatible, but Christianity can actually
be used to fight slavery.
The slave hunter Tom Loker learns this lesson after his life is spared
by the slaves he tried to capture, and after being healed by the
generous-hearted and deeply religious Quakers. He becomes a changed
man. Moreover, Uncle Tom ultimately triumphs over slavery in his
adherence to Christ’s command to “love thine enemy.” He refuses to
compromise his Christian faith in the face of the many trials he
undergoes at Legree’s plantation. When he is beaten to death by Legree
and his men, he dies forgiving them. In this way, Tom becomes a
Christian martyr, a model for the behavior of both whites and blacks.
The story of his life both exposes the evil of slavery—its
incompatibility with Christian virtue—and points the way to its
transformation through Christian love.
The Moral Power of Women
Although Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin before the widespread growth of
the women’s rights movement of the late 1800s, the reader can
nevertheless regard the book as a specimen of early feminism. The text
portrays women as morally conscientious, committed, and courageous—
indeed, often as more morally conscientious, committed, and courageous
than men. Stowe implies a parallel between the oppression of blacks
and the oppression of women, yet she expresses hope for the oppressed
in her presentation of women as effectively influencing their
husbands. Moreover, she shows how this show of strength by one
oppressed group can help to alleviate the oppression of the other.
White women can use their influence to convince their husbands—the
people with voting
Throughout the novel, the reader sees many examples of idealized
womanhood, of perfect mothers and wives who attempt to find salvation
for their morally inferior husbands or sons. Examples include Mrs.
Bird, St. Clare’s mother, Legree’s mother, and, to a lesser extent,
Mrs. Shelby. The text also portrays black women in a very positive
light. Black women generally prove strong, brave, and capable, as seen
especially in the character of Eliza. In the cases where women do not
act morally—such as Prue in her drunkenness or Cassy with her
infanticide, the women’s sins are presented as illustrating slavery’s
evil influence rather than the women’s own immorality. Not all women
appear as bolsters to the book’s moral code: Marie acts petty and
mean, and Ophelia begins the novel with many prejudices. Nonetheless,
the book seems to argue the existence of a natural female sense of
good and evil, pointing to an inherent moral wisdom in the gender as a
whole and encouraging the use of this wisdom as a force for social
change.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Christ Figures
As befits its religious preoccupation, the novel presents two
instances of a sacrificial death linked to Christ’s. Eva and Tom, the
two most morally perfect characters in the novel, both die in
atmospheres of charged religious belief, and both die, in a sense, to
achieve salvation for others. Eva’s death leads to St. Clare’s
deathbed conversion to Christianity and to Ophelia’s recognition and
denunciation of her own racial prejudice. Tom’s death leads to
Emmeline and Cassy’s escape and to the freedom of all the slaves on
the Shelby farm in Kentucky. Both Tom and Eva are explicitly compared
to Christ: Ophelia says that Eva resembles Jesus, and the narrator
depicts Tom carrying his cross behind Jesus. This motif of Christ-like
sacrifice and death enables Stowe to underscore her basic point about
Christian goodness while holding up models of moral perfection for her
reader to emulate. It also enables her to create the emotionally
charged, sentimental death scenes popular in nineteenth-century
literature.
The Supernatural
Several supernatural instances of divine intervention in the novel
suggest that a higher order exists to oppose slavery. For instance,
when Eliza leaps over the Ohio river, jumping rapidly between blocks
of ice without fear or pain, the text tells us that she has been
endowed with a “strength such as God gives only to the desperate,”
facilitating her escape from oppression. Similarly, when Tom’s faith
begins to lapse at the Legree plantation, he is visited by religious
visions that restore it, thus sustaining him in his passive resistance
of Legree. Before Eva dies, she glimpses a view of heaven and
experiences a miraculous presentiment of her own death; these
occurrences reinforce Eva’s purity and add moral authority to her anti-
slavery stance.
Instances of supernaturalism thus support various characters in their
efforts to resist or fight slavery. But they also serve to thwart
other characters in their efforts to practice slavery. Thus, as Legree
pursues his oppression of Tom, he has an upsetting vision of his dead
mother and becomes temporarily paralyzed by an apparition of a ghost
in the fog. The fear caused by this apparition weakens Legree to the
point that Cassy and Emmeline can trick him into believing that ghosts
haunt the garret. This ploy enables them to escape.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Near the end of the book, after George Shelby frees his slaves, he
tells them that, when they look at Uncle Tom’s cabin, they should
remember their freedom and dedicate themselves to leading a Christian
life like Uncle Tom’s. The sight of Uncle Tom’s cabin on George
Shelby’s property serves as a persistent reminder to him of the
sufferings Tom experienced as a slave. The cabin also becomes a
metaphor for Uncle Tom’s willingness to be beaten and even killed
rather than harm or betray his fellow slaves—his willingness to suffer
and die rather than go against Christian values of love and loyalty.
The image of the cabin thus neatly encapsulates the main themes of the
book, signifying both the destructive power of slavery and the ability
of Christian love to overcome it.
Eliza’s Leap
The scene of Eliza’s leap across the half-frozen Ohio river
constitutes the most famous episode in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The scene
also serves as an important metaphor. The leap from the southern to
the northern bank of the river symbolizes in one dramatic moment the
process of leaving slavery for freedom. Indeed, Eliza’s leap from one
bank to the next literally constitutes a leap from the slave-holding
states to the non-slave-holding states, as the Ohio River served as
the legally recognized divide between South and North. The dangers
Eliza faces in her leap, and the courage she requires to execute it
successfully, represent the more general instances of peril and
heroism involved in any slave’s journey to freedom.
Geography
Uncle Tom’s Cabin uses the North to represent freedom and the South to
represent slavery and oppression. Obviously the opposition is rooted
in history. However, Stowe embellishes the opposition so as to
transform it from literal to literary. Two main stories dominate the
novel—the story of Eliza and George and the story of Uncle Tom. One
story serves as an escape narrative, chronicling Eliza and George’s
flight to freedom. The other story is a slavery narrative, chronicling
Uncle Tom’s descent into increasingly worse states of oppression. Not
surprisingly, the action in the escape narrative moves increasingly
northward, with Canada representing its endpoint and the attainment of
freedom by the escaped slaves. The action in the slavery narrative
moves increasingly southward, with Tom’s death occurring on Legree’s
plantation in rural Louisiana, far into the Deep South. This
geographical split represents the wide gulf between freedom and
slavery and plays into Stowe’s general use of parallelism and contrast
in making her political points.

Hard times
Context
CHARLES DICKENS WAS BORN on February 7, 1812, and spent the first nine
years of his life in Kent, a marshy region by the sea in the west of
England. Dickens’s father, John, was a kind and likable man, but he
was incompetent with money and piled up tremendous debts throughout
his life. When Dickens was nine, his family moved to London, and
later, when he was twelve, his father was arrested and taken to
debtors’ prison. Dickens’s mother moved his seven brothers and sisters
into prison with their father but arranged for Charles to live alone
outside the prison, working with other children at a nightmarish job
in a blacking warehouse, pasting labels on bottles. The three months
he spent apart from his family were highly traumatic for Dickens, and
his job was miserable—he considered himself too good for it, earning
the contempt of the other children.
After his father was released from prison, Dickens returned to school.
He tried his hand professionally as a law clerk and then a court
reporter before becoming a novelist. His first novel, The Pickwick
Papers, became a huge popular success when Dickens was only twenty-
five; he was a literary celebrity throughout England for the remainder
of his life. At about this time, he fell in love with Mary Beadnell,
the daughter of a banker. In spite of his ambition and literary
success, Dickens was considered her social inferior in terms of wealth
and family background, and Mary’s father prohibited the marriage.
Several years later, Dickens married Catherine Hogarth. Although they
had ten children, Dickens was never completely happy in this marriage,
and he and Catherine eventually separated.
Though the young blacking factory employee had considered himself too
good for his job, the older novelist retained a deep interest in and
concern for the plight of the poor, particularly poor children. The
Victorian England in which Dickens lived was fraught with massive
economic turmoil, as the Industrial Revolution sent shockwaves through
the established order. The disparity between the rich and poor, or the
middle and working classes, grew even greater as factory owners
exploited their employees in order to increase their own profits.
Workers, referred to as “the Hands” in Hard Times, were forced to work
long hours for low pay in cramped, sooty, loud, and dangerous
factories. Because they lacked education and job skills, these workers
had few options for improving their terrible living and working
conditions. With the empathy he gained through his own experience of
poverty, Dickens became involved with a number of organizations that
worked to alleviate the horrible living conditions of the London poor.
For instance, he was a speaker for the Metropolitan Sanitary
Organization, and, with his wealthy friend Angela Burdett-Coutts, he
organized projects to clear up the slums and build clean, safe, cheap
housing for the poor.
Though he was far too great a novelist to become a propagandist,
Dickens several times used his art as a lens to focus attention on the
plight of the poor and to attempt to awaken the conscience of the
reader. Hard Times is just such a novel: set amid the industrial
smokestacks and factories of Coketown, England, the novel uses its
characters and stories to expose the massive gulf between the nation’s
rich and poor and to criticize what Dickens perceived as the unfeeling
self-interest of the middle and upper classes. Indeed, Hard Times
suggests that nineteenth-century England itself is turning into a
factory machine: the middle class is concerned only with making a
profit in the most efficient and practical way possible. Hard Times is
not a delicate book: Dickens hammers home his point with vicious,
often hilarious satire and sentimental melodrama. It is also not a
difficult book: Dickens wanted all his readers to catch his point
exactly, and the moral theme of the novel is very explicitly
articulated time and again. There are no hidden meanings in Hard
Times, and the book is an interesting case of a great writer
subordinating his art to a moral and social purpose. Even if it is not
Dickens’s most popular novel, it is still an important expression of
the values he thought were fundamental to human existence.
Plot Overview
THOMAS GRADGRIND, A WEALTHY, RETIRED MERCHANT in the industrial city
of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism,
self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children, Louisa and
Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in
fanciful or imaginative pursuits. He founds a school and charitably
takes in one of the students, the kindly and imaginative Sissy Jupe,
after the disappearance of her father, a circus entertainer.
As the Gradgrind children grow older, Tom becomes a dissipated, self-
interested hedonist, and Louisa struggles with deep inner confusion,
feeling as though she is missing something important in her life.
Eventually Louisa marries Gradgrind’s friend Josiah Bounderby, a
wealthy factory owner and banker more than twice her age. Bounderby
continually trumpets his role as a self-made man who was abandoned in
the gutter by his mother as an infant. Tom is apprenticed at the
Bounderby bank, and Sissy remains at the Gradgrind home to care for
the younger children.
In the meantime, an impoverished “Hand”—Dickens’s term for the lowest
laborers in Coketown’s factories—named Stephen Blackpool struggles
with his love for Rachael, another poor factory worker. He is unable
to marry her because he is already married to a horrible, drunken
woman who disappears for months and even years at a time. Stephen
visits Bounderby to ask about a divorce but learns that only the
wealthy can obtain them. Outside Bounderby’s home, he meets Mrs.
Pegler, a strange old woman with an inexplicable devotion to
Bounderby.
James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate from London, arrives in
Coketown to begin a political career as a disciple of Gradgrind, who
is now a Member of Parliament. He immediately takes an interest in
Louisa and decides to try to seduce her. With the unspoken aid of Mrs.
Sparsit, a former aristocrat who has fallen on hard times and now
works for Bounderby, he sets about trying to corrupt Louisa.
The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named Slackbridge,
try to form a union. Only Stephen refuses to join because he feels
that a union strike would only increase tensions between employers and
employees. He is cast out by the other Hands and fired by Bounderby
when he refuses to spy on them. Louisa, impressed with Stephen’s
integrity, visits him before he leaves Coketown and helps him with
some money. Tom accompanies her and tells Stephen that if he waits
outside the bank for several consecutive nights, help will come to
him. Stephen does so, but no help arrives. Eventually he packs up and
leaves Coketown, hoping to find agricultural work in the country. Not
long after that, the bank is robbed, and the lone suspect is Stephen,
the vanished Hand who was seen loitering outside the bank for several
nights just before disappearing from the city.
Mrs. Sparsit witnesses Harthouse declaring his love for Louisa, and
Louisa agrees to meet him in Coketown later that night. However,
Louisa instead flees to her father’s house, where she miserably
confides to Gradgrind that her upbringing has left her married to a
man she does not love, disconnected from her feelings, deeply unhappy,
and possibly in love with Harthouse. She collapses to the floor, and
Gradgrind, struck dumb with self-reproach, begins to realize the
imperfections in his philosophy of rational self-interest.
Sissy, who loves Louisa deeply, visits Harthouse and convinces him to
leave Coketown forever. Bounderby, furious that his wife has left him,
redoubles his efforts to capture Stephen. When Stephen tries to return
to clear his good name, he falls into a mining pit called Old Hell
Shaft. Rachael and Louisa discover him, but he dies soon after an
emotional farewell to Rachael. Gradgrind and Louisa realize that Tom
is really responsible for robbing the bank, and they arrange to sneak
him out of England with the help of the circus performers with whom
Sissy spent her early childhood. They are nearly successful, but are
stopped by Bitzer, a young man who went to Gradgrind’s school and who
embodies all the qualities of the detached rationalism that Gradgrind
once espoused, but who now sees its limits. Sleary, the lisping circus
proprietor, arranges for Tom to slip out of Bitzer’s grasp, and the
young robber escapes from England after all.
Mrs. Sparsit, anxious to help Bounderby find the robbers, drags Mrs.
Pegler—a known associate of Stephen Blackpool—in to see Bounderby,
thinking Mrs. Pegler is a potential witness. Bounderby recoils, and it
is revealed that Mrs. Pegler is really his loving mother, whom he has
forbidden to visit him: Bounderby is not a self-made man after all.
Angrily, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit and sends her away to her
hostile relatives. Five years later, he will die alone in the streets
of Coketown. Gradgrind gives up his philosophy of fact and devotes his
political power to helping the poor. Tom realizes the error of his
ways but dies without ever seeing his family again. While Sissy
marries and has a large and loving family, Louisa never again marries
and never has children. Nevertheless, Louisa is loved by Sissy’s
family and learns at last how to feel sympathy for her fellow human
beings.

Character List
Thomas Gradgrind - A wealthy, retired merchant in Coketown, England;
he later becomes a Member of Parliament. Mr. Gradgrind espouses a
philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and cold, hard fact. He
describes himself as an “eminently practical” man, and he tries to
raise his children—Louisa, Tom, Jane, Adam Smith, and Malthus—to be
equally practical by forbidding the development of their imaginations
and emotions.
Thomas Gradgrind (In-Depth Analysis)
Louisa - Gradgrind’s daughter, later Bounderby’s wife. Confused by
her coldhearted upbringing, Louisa feels disconnected from her
emotions and alienated from other people. While she vaguely recognizes
that her father’s system of education has deprived her childhood of
all joy, Louisa cannot actively invoke her emotions or connect with
others. Thus she marries Bounderby to please her father, even though
she does not love her husband. Indeed, the only person she loves
completely is her brother Tom.
Louisa Gradgrind (In-Depth Analysis)
Thomas Gradgrind, Jr - . Gradgrind’s eldest son and an apprentice at
Bounderby’s bank, who is generally called Tom. Tom reacts to his
strict upbringing by becoming a dissipated, hedonistic, hypocritical
young man. Although he appreciates his sister’s affection, Tom cannot
return it entirely—he loves money and gambling even more than he loves
Louisa. These vices lead him to rob Bounderby’s bank and implicate
Stephen as the robbery’s prime suspect.
Josiah Bounderby - Gradgrind’s friend and later Louisa’s husband.
Bounderby claims to be a self-made man and boastfully describes being
abandoned by his mother as a young boy. From his childhood poverty he
has risen to become a banker and factory owner in Coketown, known by
everyone for his wealth and power. His true upbringing, by caring and
devoted parents, indicates that his social mobility is a hoax and
calls into question the whole notion of social mobility in nineteenth-
century England.
Josiah Bounderby (In-Depth Analysis)
Cecelia Jupe - The daughter of a clown in Sleary’s circus. Sissy is
taken in by Gradgrind when her father disappears. Sissy serves as a
foil, or contrast, to Louisa: while Sissy is imaginative and
compassionate, Louisa is rational and, for the most part, unfeeling.
Sissy embodies the Victorian femininity that counterbalances
mechanization and industry. Through Sissy’s interaction with her,
Louisa is able to explore her more sensitive, feminine sides.
Mrs. Sparsit - Bounderby’s housekeeper, who goes to live at the bank
apartments when Bounderby marries Louisa. Once a member of the
aristocratic elite, Mrs. Sparsit fell on hard times after the collapse
of her marriage. A selfish, manipulative, dishonest woman, Mrs.
Sparsit cherishes secret hopes of ruining Bounderby’s marriage so that
she can marry him herself. Mrs. Sparsit’s aristocratic background is
emphasized by the narrator’s frequent allusions to her “Roman” and
“Coriolanian” appearance.
Stephen Blackpool - A Hand in Bounderby’s factory. Stephen loves
Rachael but is unable to marry her because he is already married,
albeit to a horrible, drunken woman. A man of great honesty,
compassion, and integrity, Stephen maintains his moral ideals even
when he is shunned by his fellow workers and fired by Bounderby.
Stephen’s values are similar to those endorsed by the narrator.
Stephen Blackpool (In-Depth Analysis)
Rachael - A simple, honest Hand who loves Stephen Blackpool. To
Stephen, she represents domestic happiness and moral purity.
James Harthouse - A sophisticated and manipulative young London
gentleman who comes to Coketown to enter politics as a disciple of
Gradgrind, simply because he thinks it might alleviate his boredom. In
his constant search for a new form of amusement, Harthouse quickly
becomes attracted to Louisa and resolves to seduce her.
Mr. Sleary - The lisping proprietor of the circus where Sissy’s
father was an entertainer. Later, Mr. Sleary hides Tom Gradgrind and
helps him flee the country. Mr. Sleary and his troop of entertainers
value laughter and fantasy whereas Mr. Gradgrind values rationality
and fact.
Bitzer - Bitzer is one of the successes produced by Gradgrind’s
rationalistic system of education. Initially a bully at Gradgrind’s
school, Bitzer later becomes an employee and a spy at Bounderby’s
bank. An uncharacteristically pale character and unrelenting disciple
of fact, Bitzer almost stops Tom from fleeing after it is discovered
that Tom is the true bank robber.
Mr. McChoakumchild - The unpleasant teacher at Gradgrind’s school. As
his name suggests, McChoakumchild is not overly fond of children, and
stifles or chokes their imaginations and feelings.
Mrs. Pegler - Bounderby’s mother, unbeknownst as such to all except
herself and Bounderby. Mrs. Pegler makes an annual visit to Coketown
in order to admire her son’s prosperity from a safe distance. Mrs.
Pegler’s appearance uncovers the hoax that her son Bounderby has been
attesting throughout the story, which is that he is a self-made man
who was abandoned as a child.
Mrs. Gradgrind - Gradgrind’s whiny, anemic wife, who constantly
tells her children to study their “ologies” and complains that she’ll
“never hear the end” of any complaint. Although Mrs. Gradgrind does
not share her husband’s interest in facts, she lacks the energy and
the imagination to oppose his system of education.
Slackbridge - The crooked orator who convinces the Hands to unionize
and turns them against Stephen Blackpool when he refuses to join the
union.
Jane Gradgrind - Gradgrind’s younger daughter; Louisa and Tom’s
sister. Because Sissy largely raises her, Jane is a happier little
girl than her sister, Louisa.

Analysis of Major Characters
Thomas Gradgrind
Thomas Gradgrind is the first character we meet in Hard Times, and one
of the central figures through whom Dickens weaves a web of
intricately connected plotlines and characters. Dickens introduces us
to this character with a description of his most central feature: his
mechanized, monotone attitude and appearance. The opening scene in the
novel describes Mr. Gradgrind’s speech to a group of young students,
and it is appropriate that Gradgrind physically embodies the dry, hard
facts that he crams into his students’ heads. The narrator calls
attention to Gradgrind’s “square coat, square legs, square shoulders,”
all of which suggest Gradgrind’s unrelenting rigidity.
In the first few chapters of the novel, Mr. Gradgrind expounds his
philosophy of calculating, rational self-interest. He believes that
human nature can be governed by completely rational rules, and he is
“ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you
what it comes to.” This philosophy has brought Mr. Gradgrind much
financial and social success. He has made his fortune as a hardware
merchant, a trade that, appropriately, deals in hard, material
reality. Later, he becomes a Member of Parliament, a position that
allows him to indulge his interest in tabulating data about the people
of England. Although he is not a factory owner, Mr. Gradgrind evinces
the spirit of the Industrial Revolution insofar as he treats people
like machines that can be reduced to a number of scientific
principles.
While the narrator’s tone toward him is initially mocking and ironic,
Gradgrind undergoes a significant change in the course of the novel,
thereby earning the narrator’s sympathy. When Louisa confesses that
she feels something important is missing in her life and that she is
desperately unhappy with her marriage, Gradgrind begins to realize
that his system of education may not be perfect. This intuition is
confirmed when he learns that Tom has robbed Bounderby’s bank. Faced
with these failures of his system, Gradgrind admits, “The ground on
which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet.” His children’s
problems teach him to feel love and sorrow, and Gradgrind becomes a
wiser and humbler man, ultimately “making his facts and figures
subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity.”
Louisa Gradgrind
Although Louisa is the novel’s principal female character, she is
distinctive from the novel’s other women, particularly her foils,
Sissy and Rachael. While these other two embody the Victorian ideal of
femininity—sensitivity, compassion, and gentleness—Louisa’s education
has prevented her from developing such traits. Instead, Louisa is
silent, cold, and seemingly unfeeling. However, Dickens may not be
implying that Louisa is really unfeeling, but rather that she simply
does not know how to recognize and express her emotions. For instance,
when her father tries to convince her that it would be rational for
her to marry Bounderby, Louisa looks out of the window at the factory
chimneys and observes: “There seems to be nothing there but languid
and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out.”
Unable to convey the tumultuous feelings that lie beneath her own
languid and monotonous exterior, Louisa can only state a fact about
her surroundings. Yet this fact, by analogy, also describes the
emotions repressed within her.
Even though she does not conform to the Victorian ideals of
femininity, Louisa does her best to be a model daughter, wife, and
sister. Her decision to return to her father’s house rather than elope
with Harthouse demonstrates that while she may be unfeeling, she does
not lack virtue. Indeed, Louisa, though unemotional, still has the
ability to recognize goodness and distinguish between right and wrong,
even when it does not fall within the strict rubric of her father’s
teachings. While at first Louisa lacks the ability to understand and
function within the gray matter of emotions, she can at least
recognize that they exist and are more powerful than her father or
Bounderby believe, even without any factual basis. Moreover, under
Sissy’s guidance, Louisa shows great promise in learning to express
her feelings. Similarly, through her acquaintance with Rachael and
Stephen, Louisa learns to respond charitably to suffering and to not
view suffering simply as a temporary state that is easily overcome by
effort, as her father and Bounderby do.
Josiah Bounderby
Although he is Mr. Gradgrind’s best friend, Josiah Bounderby is more
interested in money and power than in facts. Indeed, he is himself a
fiction, or a fraud. Bounderby’s inflated sense of pride is
illustrated by his oft-repeated declaration, “I am Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown.” This statement generally prefaces the story of Bounderby’s
childhood poverty and suffering, a story designed to impress its
listeners with a sense of the young Josiah Bounderby’s determination
and self-discipline. However, Dickens explodes the myth of the self-
made man when Bounderby’s mother, Mrs. Pegler, reveals that her son
had a decent, loving childhood and a good education, and that he was
not abandoned, after all.
Bounderby’s attitude represents the social changes created by
industrialization and capitalism. Whereas birth or bloodline formerly
determined the social hierarchy, in an industrialized, capitalist
society, wealth determines who holds the most power. Thus, Bounderby
takes great delight in the fact that Mrs. Sparsit, an aristocrat who
has fallen on hard times, has become his servant, while his own
ambition has enabled him to rise from humble beginnings to become the
wealthy owner of a factory and a bank. However, in depicting
Bounderby, the capitalist, as a coarse, vain, self-interested
hypocrite, Dickens implies that Bounderby uses his wealth and power
irresponsibly, contributing to the muddled relations between rich and
poor, especially in his treatment of Stephen after the Hands cast
Stephen out to form a union.
Stephen Blackpool
Stephen Blackpool is introduced after we have met the Gradgrind family
and Bounderby, and Blackpool provides a stark contrast to these
earlier characters. One of the Hands in Bounderby’s factory, Stephen
lives a life of drudgery and poverty. In spite of the hardships of his
daily toil, Stephen strives to maintain his honesty, integrity, faith,
and compassion.
Stephen is an important character not only because his poverty and
virtue contrast with Bounderby’s wealth and self-interest, but also
because he finds himself in the midst of a labor dispute that
illustrates the strained relations between rich and poor. Stephen is
the only Hand who refuses to join a workers’ union: he believes that
striking is not the best way to improve relations between factory
owners and employees, and he also wants to earn an honest living. As a
result, he is cast out of the workers’ group. However, he also refuses
to spy on his fellow workers for Bounderby, who consequently sends him
away. Both groups, rich and poor, respond in the same self-interested,
backstabbing way. As Rachael explains, Stephen ends up with the
“masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he
only wantin’ to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right.”
Through Stephen, Dickens suggests that industrialization threatens to
compromise both the employee’s and employer’s moral integrity, thereby
creating a social muddle to which there is no easy solution.
Through his efforts to resist the moral corruption on all sides,
Stephen becomes a martyr, or Christ figure, ultimately dying for Tom’s
crime. When he falls into a mine shaft on his way back to Coketown to
clear his name of the charge of robbing Bounderby’s bank, Stephen
comforts himself by gazing at a particularly bright star that seems to
shine on him in his “pain and trouble.” This star not only represents
the ideals of virtue for which Stephen strives, but also the happiness
and tranquility that is lacking in his troubled life. Moreover, his
ability to find comfort in the star illustrates the importance of
imagination, which enables him to escape the cold, hard facts of his
miserable existence.

Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
The Mechanization of Human Beings
Hard Times suggests that nineteenth-century England’s overzealous
adoption of industrialization threatens to turn human beings into
machines by thwarting the development of their emotions and
imaginations. This suggestion comes forth largely through the actions
of Gradgrind and his follower, Bounderby: as the former educates the
young children of his family and his school in the ways of fact, the
latter treats the workers in his factory as emotionless objects that
are easily exploited for his own self-interest. In Chapter 5 of the
first book, the narrator draws a parallel between the factory Hands
and the Gradgrind children—both lead monotonous, uniform existences,
untouched by pleasure. Consequently, their fantasies and feelings are
dulled, and they become almost mechanical themselves.
The mechanizing effects of industrialization are compounded by Mr.
Gradgrind’s philosophy of rational self-interest. Mr. Gradgrind
believes that human nature can be measured, quantified, and governed
entirely by rational rules. Indeed, his school attempts to turn
children into little machines that behave according to such rules.
Dickens’s primary goal in Hard Times is to illustrate the dangers of
allowing humans to become like machines, suggesting that without
compassion and imagination, life would be unbearable. Indeed, Louisa
feels precisely this suffering when she returns to her father’s house
and tells him that something has been missing in her life, so much so
that she finds herself in an unhappy marriage and may be in love with
someone else. While she does not actually behave in a dishonorable
way, since she stops her interaction with Harthouse before she has a
socially ruinous affair with him, Louisa realizes that her life is
unbearable and that she must do something drastic for her own
survival. Appealing to her father with the utmost honesty, Louisa is
able to make him realize and admit that his philosophies on life and
methods of child rearing are to blame for Louisa’s detachment from
others.
The Opposition Between Fact and Fancy
While Mr. Gradgrind insists that his children should always stick to
the facts, Hard Times not only suggests that fancy is as important as
fact, but it continually calls into question the difference between
fact and fancy. Dickens suggests that what constitutes so-called fact
is a matter of perspective or opinion. For example, Bounderby believes
that factory employees are lazy good-for-nothings who expect to be fed
“from a golden spoon.” The Hands, in contrast, see themselves as
hardworking and as unfairly exploited by their employers. These sets
of facts cannot be reconciled because they depend upon perspective.
While Bounderby declares that “[w]hat is called Taste is only another
name for Fact,” Dickens implies that fact is a question of taste or
personal belief. As a novelist, Dickens is naturally interested in
illustrating that fiction cannot be excluded from a fact-filled,
mechanical society. Gradgrind’s children, however, grow up in an
environment where all flights of fancy are discouraged, and they end
up with serious social dysfunctions as a result. Tom becomes a
hedonist who has little regard for others, while Louisa remains unable
to connect with others even though she has the desire to do so. On the
other hand, Sissy, who grew up with the circus, constantly indulges in
the fancy forbidden to the Gradgrinds, and lovingly raises Louisa and
Tom’s sister in a way more complete than the upbringing of either of
the older siblings. Just as fiction cannot be excluded from fact, fact
is also necessary for a balanced life. If Gradgrind had not adopted
her, Sissy would have no guidance, and her future might be precarious.
As a result, the youngest Gradgrind daughter, raised both by the
factual Gradgrind and the fanciful Sissy, represents the best of both
worlds.
The Importance of Femininity
During the Victorian era, women were commonly associated with
supposedly feminine traits like compassion, moral purity, and
emotional sensitivity. Hard Times suggests that because they possess
these traits, women can counteract the mechanizing effects of
industrialization. For instance, when Stephen feels depressed about
the monotony of his life as a factory worker, Rachael’s gentle
fortitude inspires him to keep going. He sums up her virtues by
referring to her as his guiding angel. Similarly, Sissy introduces
love into the Gradgrind household, ultimately teaching Louisa how to
recognize her emotions. Indeed, Dickens suggests that Mr. Gradgrind’s
philosophy of self-interest and calculating rationality has prevented
Louisa from developing her natural feminine traits. Perhaps Mrs.
Gradgrind’s inability to exercise her femininity allows Gradgrind to
overemphasize the importance of fact in the rearing of his children.
On his part, Bounderby ensures that his rigidity will remain untouched
since he marries the cold, emotionless product of Mr. and Mrs.
Gradgrind’s marriage. Through the various female characters in the
novel, Dickens suggests that feminine compassion is necessary to
restore social harmony.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Bounderby’s Childhood
Bounderby frequently reminds us that he is “Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown.” This emphatic phrase usually follows a description of his
childhood poverty: he claims to have been born in a ditch and
abandoned by his mother; raised by an alcoholic grandmother; and
forced to support himself by his own labor. From these ignominious
beginnings, he has become the wealthy owner of both a factory and a
bank. Thus, Bounderby represents the possibility of social mobility,
embodying the belief that any individual should be able overcome all
obstacles to success—including poverty and lack of education—through
hard work. Indeed, Bounderby often recites the story of his childhood
in order to suggest that his Hands are impoverished because they lack
his ambition and self-discipline. However, “Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown” is ultimately a fraud. His mother, Mrs. Pegler, reveals that
he was raised by parents who were loving, albeit poor, and who saved
their money to make sure he received a good education. By exposing
Bounderby’s real origins, Dickens calls into question the myth of
social mobility. In other words, he suggests that perhaps the Hands
cannot overcome poverty through sheer determination alone, but only
through the charity and compassion of wealthier individuals.
Clocks and Time
Dickens contrasts mechanical or man-made time with natural time, or
the passing of the seasons. In both Coketown and the Gradgrind
household, time is mechanized—in other words, it is relentless,
structured, regular, and monotonous. As the narrator explains, “Time
went on in Coketown like its own machine.” The mechanization of time
is also embodied in the “deadly statistical clock” in Mr. Gradgrind’s
study, which measures the passing of each minute and hour. However,
the novel itself is structured through natural time. For instance, the
titles of its three books—“Sowing,” “Reaping,” and “Garnering”—allude
to agricultural labor and to the processes of planting and harvesting
in accordance with the changes of the seasons. Similarly, the narrator
notes that the seasons change even in Coketown’s “wilderness of smoke
and brick.” These seasonal changes constitute “the only stand that
ever was made against its direful uniformity.” By contrasting
mechanical time with natural time, Dickens illustrates the great
extent to which industrialization has mechanized human existence.
While the changing seasons provide variety in terms of scenery and
agricultural labor, mechanized time marches forward with incessant
regularity.
Mismatched Marriages
There are many unequal and unhappy marriages in Hard Times, including
those of Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind, Stephen Blackpool and his unnamed
drunken wife, and most pertinently, the Bounderbys. Louisa agrees to
marry Mr. Bounderby because her father convinces her that doing so
would be a rational decision. He even cites statistics to show that
the great difference in their ages need not prevent their mutual
happiness. However, Louisa’s consequent misery as Bounderby’s wife
suggests that love, rather than either reason or convenience, must be
the foundation of a happy marriage.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
Staircase
When Mrs. Sparsit notices that Louisa and Harthouse are spending a lot
of time together, she imagines that Louisa is running down a long
staircase into a “dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom.” This
imaginary staircase represents her belief that Louisa is going to
elope with Harthouse and consequently ruin her reputation forever.
Mrs. Sparsit has long resented Bounderby’s marriage to the young
Louisa, as she hoped to marry him herself; so she is very pleased by
Louisa’s apparent indiscretion. Through the staircase, Dickens reveals
the manipulative and censorious side of Mrs. Sparsit’s character. He
also suggests that Mrs. Sparsit’s self-interest causes her to
misinterpret the situation. Rather than ending up in a pit of shame by
having an affair with Harthouse, Louisa actually returns home to her
father.
Pegasus
Mr. Sleary’s circus entertainers stay at an inn called the Pegasus
Arms. Inside this inn is a “theatrical” pegasus, a model of a flying
horse with “golden stars stuck on all over him.” The pegasus
represents a world of fantasy and beauty from which the young
Gradgrind children are excluded. While Mr. Gradgrind informs the
pupils at his school that wallpaper with horses on it is unrealistic
simply because horses do not in fact live on walls, the circus folk
live in a world in which horses dance the polka and flying horses can
be imagined, even if they do not, in fact, exist. The very name of the
inn reveals the contrast between the imaginative and joyful world of
the circus and Mr. Gradgrind’s belief in the importance of fact.
Smoke Serpents
At a literal level, the streams of smoke that fill the skies above
Coketown are the effects of industrialization. However, these smoke
serpents also represent the moral blindness of factory owners like
Bounderby. Because he is so concerned with making as much profit as he
possibly can, Bounderby interprets the serpents of smoke as a positive
sign that the factories are producing goods and profit. Thus, he not
only fails to see the smoke as a form of unhealthy pollution, but he
also fails to recognize his own abuse of the Hands in his factories.
The smoke becomes a moral smoke screen that prevents him from noticing
his workers’ miserable poverty. Through its associations with evil,
the word “serpents” evokes the moral obscurity that the smoke creates.
Fire
When Louisa is first introduced, in Chapter 3 of Book the First, the
narrator explains that inside her is a “fire with nothing to burn, a
starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow.” This description
suggests that although Louisa seems coldly rational, she has not
succumbed entirely to her father’s prohibition against wondering and
imagining. Her inner fire symbolizes the warmth created by her secret
fancies in her otherwise lonely, mechanized existence. Consequently,
it is significant that Louisa often gazes into the fireplace when she
is alone, as if she sees things in the flames that others—like her
rigid father and brother—cannot see. However, there is another kind of
inner fire in Hard Times—the fires that keep the factories running,
providing heat and power for the machines. Fire is thus both a
destructive and a life-giving force. Even Louisa’s inner fire, her
imaginative tendencies, eventually becomes destructive: her repressed
emotions eventually begin to burn “within her like an unwholesome
fire.” Through this symbol, Dickens evokes the importance of
imagination as a force that can counteract the mechanization of human
nature.

The mayor of caster bridge
Context
THOMAS HARDY WAS BORN on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton in
Dorset, a rural region of southwestern England that was to become the
focus of his fiction. The child of a builder, Hardy was apprenticed at
the age of sixteen to John Hicks, an architect who lived in the city
of Dorchester. The location would later serve as the model for Hardy’s
fictional Casterbridge. Although Hardy gave serious thought to
attending university and entering the church, a struggle he would
dramatize in his 1895 novel Jude the Obscure, his declining religious
faith and lack of money encouraged him to pursue a career in writing
instead. Hardy spent nearly a dozen years toiling in obscurity and
producing unsuccessful novels and poetry. Far from the Madding Crowd,
published in 1874, was his first critical and financial success.
Finally able to support himself as a writer, Hardy married Emma
Lavinia Gifford later that year.
Although he built a reputation as a successful novelist, Hardy
considered himself—first and foremost—a poet. To him, novels were
primarily a means of earning a living. Like many novelists of his day,
he wrote according to the conventions of serialization (the process of
publishing a work in periodic installments). To insure that readers
would buy a serialized novel, writers often left pressing questions
unanswered at the end of each installment. This practice explains the
convoluted, often incredible plots of many nineteenth-century
Victorian novels. But Hardy cannot be labeled solely a Victorian
novelist. Nor can he be categorized as purely a modernist, in the
tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf or D. H. Lawrence who were
determined to explode the conventions of nineteenth-century literature
and build a new kind of novel in its place. In many respects, Hardy
was trapped between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, between
Victorian and modern sensibilities, and between tradition and
innovation.
The Mayor of Casterbridge reveals Hardy’s peculiar location in this
shifting world, possessing elements of both the Victorian and
modernist forms. It charts the course of one man’s character, but it
also chronicles the dramatic change of an isolated, rural agricultural
community into a modern city. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, as well as
in his most popular fictions, such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles and
Jude the Obscure, Hardy explores the effects of cultural and economic
development: the decline of Christianity as well as folk traditions,
the rise of industrialization and urbanization, and the unraveling of
universally held moral codes.
Hardy himself abandoned Christianity. He read the writings of Charles
Darwin, accepted the theory of evolution, and studied the German
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer’s notion of the
“Immanent Will” describes a blind force that drives the universe
irrespective of human lives or desires. Though his novels often end in
crushing tragedies that reflect Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Hardy
described himself as a meliorist, one who believes that the world
tends to become better and that people aid in this betterment. Humans
can live with some happiness, he claimed, so long as they understand
their place in the universe and accept it. Hardy died in 1928 at his
estate in Dorchester. True to the rather dramatically romantic
fantasies of his fiction, Hardy had his heart buried in his wife’s
tomb.

Plot Overview
MICHAEL HENCHARD IS TRAVELING with his wife, Susan, looking for
employment as a hay-trusser. When they stop to eat, Henchard gets
drunk, and in an auction that begins as a joke but turns serious, he
sells his wife and their baby daughter, -Elizabeth-Jane, to Newson, a
sailor, for five guineas. In the morning, Henchard regrets what he has
done and searches the town for his wife and daughter. Unable to find
them, he goes into a church and swears an oath that he will not drink
alcohol for twenty-one years, the same number of years he has been
alive.
After the sailor’s death, eighteen years later, Susan and Elizabeth-
Jane seek Henchard; Elizabeth-Jane believes he is merely a long-lost
relative. They arrive in Casterbridge and learn that Henchard is the
mayor. The parents meet and decide that in order to prevent -Elizabeth-
Jane from learning of their disgrace, Henchard will court and remarry
Susan as though they had met only recently.
Meanwhile, Henchard has hired Donald Farfrae, a young Scotchman, as
the new manager of his corn business. Elizabeth-Jane is intrigued by
Farfrae, and the two begin to spend time together. Henchard becomes
alienated from Farfrae, however, as the younger man consistently
outdoes Henchard in every respect. He asks Farfrae to leave his
business and to stop courting Elizabeth-Jane.
Susan falls ill and dies soon after her remarriage to Henchard. After
discovering that Elizabeth-Jane is not his own daughter, but Newson’s,
Henchard becomes increasingly cold toward her. -Elizabeth-Jane then
decides to leave Henchard’s house and live with a lady who has just
arrived in town. This lady turns out to be Lucetta Templeman, a woman
with whom Henchard was involved during Susan’s absence; having learned
of Susan’s death, Lucetta has come to Casterbridge to marry Henchard.
While Lucetta is waiting for Henchard to call on her, she meets
Farfrae, who has come to call on Elizabeth-Jane. The two hit it off
and are eventually married. Lucetta asks Henchard to return to her all
the letters she has sent him. On his way to deliver the letters, the
messenger, Jopp, stops at an inn. The peasants there convince him to
open and read the letters aloud. Discovering that Lucetta and Henchard
have been romantically involved, the peasants decide to hold a
“skimmity-ride,” a humiliating parade portraying Lucetta and Henchard
together. The event takes place one afternoon when Farfrae is away.
Lucetta faints upon seeing the spectacle and becomes very ill. Shortly
afterward, she dies.
While Henchard has grown to hate Farfrae, he has grown closer to
Elizabeth-Jane. The morning after Lucetta’s death, Newson, who is
actually still alive, arrives at Henchard’s door and asks for -
Elizabeth-Jane. Henchard tells him that she is dead, and Newson leaves
in sorrow. Elizabeth-Jane stays with Henchard and also begins to spend
more time with Farfrae. One day, Henchard learns that Newson has
returned to town, and he decides to leave rather than risk another
confrontation. Elizabeth-Jane is reunited with Newson and learns of
Henchard’s deceit; Newson and Farfrae start planning the wedding
between Elizabeth-Jane and the Scotchman.
Henchard comes back to Casterbridge on the night of the wedding to see
Elizabeth-Jane, but she snubs him. He leaves again, telling her that
he will not return. She soon regrets her coldness, and she and
Farfrae, her new husband, go looking for Henchard so that she can make
her peace. Unfortunately, they find him too late, discovering that he
has died alone in the countryside. He has left a will: his dying wish
is to be forgotten.

Character List
Michael Henchard - As the novel’s protagonist, Henchard is the “Man
of Character” to whom the subtitle of The Mayor of Casterbridge
alludes. When the novel opens, Henchard is a disconsolate twenty-one-
year-old hay-trusser who, in a drunken rage, sells his wife and
daughter at a county fair. Eighteen years later, Henchard has risen to
become the mayor and the most accomplished corn merchant in the town
of Casterbridge. Although he tries to atone for his youthful crimes,
he focuses too much on his past misdeeds and enters a downward
trajectory that embroils him in a fierce competition with a popular
Scotchman named Donald Farfrae.
Michael Henchard (In-Depth Analysis)
Elizabeth-Jane Newson - The daughter of Susan and Newson. Elizabeth-
Jane bears the same name as the child born to Susan and Henchard, who
actually dies shortly after Henchard sells Susan and his daughter.
Over the course of the novel, the independent and self-possessed
Elizabeth-Jane transforms herself from an unrefined country girl into
a cultured young lady. Though she experiences much hardship over the
course of the novel, she maintains an even temperament throughout.
Elizabeth-Jane Newson (In-Depth Analysis)
Donald Farfrae - The Scotchman who arrives in Casterbridge at the
same time as Susan Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane. Farfrae’s business
efficiency, good humor, and polish make him extremely popular among
the town’s citizens. These same qualities, however, eventually make
him Henchard’s rival. Despite this tension in their friendship,
Farfrae remains fair-minded, patient, and even kind in his dealings
with the ruined Henchard.
Donald Farfrae (In-Depth Analysis)
Lucetta Templeman - A woman whom Henchard meets, courts, and proposes
to marry. Lucetta bucks convention, choosing to love whom she pleases
when she pleases. Like Henchard, she is guided by her emotions, and
her reactions are thus not always rational.
Lucetta Templeman (In-Depth Analysis)
Susan Henchard - A meek, unassuming woman married to Michael Henchard
when the novel opens. Overly concerned with propriety, Susan attempts
to keep secrets about Henchard’s and Elizabeth-Jane’s identities in
order to give the appearance of perfect family harmony.
Newson - The sailor who buys Susan and Elizabeth-Jane from Henchard.
Newson is absent for most of the novel; his eventual reappearance
contributes to the feeling that Henchard is besieged by fate.
Joshua Jopp - The man Henchard intends to hire as his assistant
before meeting Farfrae.
Abel Whittle - One of the workers in Henchard’s hay-yard. Whittle is
also the source of the first disagreement between Henchard and
Farfrae, as Farfrae thinks that Henchard is too rough with Whittle
when he is constantly late for work.
Benjamin Grower - One of Henchard’s creditors.
Christopher Coney - A peasant in Casterbridge. Coney represents the
bleak reality of peasant life.
Nance Mockridge - A peasant who is instrumental in planning the
skimmity-ride.
Mother Cuxsom - A peasant in Casterbridge.
Solomon Longways - A peasant in Casterbridge.
Analysis of Major Characters
Michael Henchard
At the end of The Mayor of Casterbridge, the ruined Michael Henchard
wills that no one remember his name after his death. This request is
profoundly startling and tragic, especially when one considers how
important Henchard’s name has been to him during his lifetime. After
committing the abominable deed of selling his wife and child, Henchard
wakes from a drunken stupor and wonders, first and foremost, if he
told any of the fair-goers his name. Eighteen years pass between that
scene on the heath of Weydon-Priors and Henchard’s reunion with Susan
in Casterbridge, but we immediately realize the value that Henchard
places on a good name and reputation. Not only has he climbed from hay-
trusser to mayor of a small agricultural town, but he labors to
protect the esteem this higher position affords him. When Susan and
Elizabeth-Jane come upon the mayor hosting a banquet for the town’s
most prominent citizens, they witness a man struggling to convince the
masses that, despite a mismanaged harvest, he is an honest person with
a worthy name.
As he stares out at an unhappy audience made up of grain merchants who
have lost money and common citizens who, without wheat, are going
hungry, Henchard laments that he cannot undo the past. He relates
grown wheat metaphorically to the mistakes of the past—neither can be
taken back. Although Henchard learns this lesson at the end of Chapter
IV, he fails to internalize it. If there is, indeed, a key to his
undoing, it is his inability to let go of his past mistakes. Guilt
acts like a fuel that keeps Henchard moving toward his own demise.
Unable to forget the events that took place in the furmity-woman’s
tent, he sets out to punish himself again and again. While he might
have found happiness by marrying Lucetta, for instance, Henchard
determines to make amends for the past by remarrying a woman he never
loved in the first place. Possessed of a “restless and self-accusing
soul,” Henchard seems to seek out situations that promise further
debasement. Although Donald Farfrae eventually appropriates Henchard’s
job, business, and even his loved ones, it is Henchard who insists on
creating the competition that he eventually loses. Although Henchard
loses even the ability to explain himself—“he did not sufficiently
value himself to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal or
elaborate argument”—he never relinquishes his talent of endurance.
Whatever the pain, Henchard bears it. It is this resilience that
elevates him to the level of a hero—a man, ironically, whose name
deserves to be remembered.
Donald Farfrae
Farfrae, the young Scotchman, serves as a foil (a character whose
actions or emotions contrast with and thereby accentuate those of
another character) for Henchard. Whereas will and intuition determine
the course of Henchard’s life, Farfrae is a man of intellect. He
brings to Casterbridge a method for salvaging damaged grain, a system
for reorganizing and revolutionizing the mayor’s business, and a blend
of curiosity and ambition that enables him to take interest in—and
advantage of—the agricultural advancements of the day (such as the
seed-sowing machine).
Although Henchard soon comes to view Farfrae as his adversary, the
Scotchman’s victories are won more in the name of progress than
personal satisfaction. His primary motive in taking over
Casterbridge’s grain trade is to make it more prosperous and prepare
the village for the advancing agricultural economy of the later
nineteenth century. He does not intend to dishonor Henchard. Indeed,
even when Henchard is at his most adversarial—during his fight with
Farfrae in the barn, for instance—the Scotchman reminds himself of the
fallen mayor’s circumstances, taking pains to understand and excuse
Henchard’s behavior. In his calm, measured thinking, Farfrae is a
model man of science, and Hardy depicts him with the stereotypical
strengths and weaknesses of such people. He possesses an intellectual
competence so unrivaled that it passes for charisma, but throughout
the novel he remains emotionally distant. Although he wins the favor
of the townspeople with his highly successful day of celebration,
Farfrae fails to feel any emotion too deeply, whether it is happiness
inspired by his carnival or sorrow at the death of his wife. In this
respect as well he stands in bold contrast to Henchard, whose depth of
feeling is so profound that it ultimately dooms him.
Elizabeth-Jane Newson
Elizabeth-Jane undergoes a drastic transformation over the course of
the novel, even though the narrative does not focus on her as much as
it does on other characters. As she follows her mother across the
English countryside in search of a relative she does not know,
Elizabeth-Jane proves a kind, simple, and uneducated girl. Once in
Casterbridge, however, she undertakes intellectual and social
improvement: she begins to dress like a lady, reads voraciously, and
does her best to expunge rustic country dialect from her speech. This
self-education comes at a painful time, for not long after she arrives
in Casterbridge, her mother dies, leaving her in the custody of a man
who has learned that she is not his biological daughter and therefore
wants little to do with her.
In terms of misery, one could easily argue that Elizabeth-Jane has a
share equal to that of Henchard or Lucetta. Unlike these characters,
however, Elizabeth-Jane suffers in the same way she lives—with a quiet
kind of self-possession and resolve. She lacks Lucetta’s sense of
drama and lacks her stepfather’s desire to bend the will of others to
her own. Thus, when Henchard cruelly dismisses her or Lucetta
supplants her place in Farfrae’s heart, Elizabeth-Jane accepts these
circumstances and moves on with life. This approach to living stands
as a bold counterpoint to Henchard’s, for Henchard cannot bring
himself to let go of the past and relinquish his failures and
unfulfilled desires. If Henchard’s determination to cling to the past
is partly responsible for his ruin, then Elizabeth-Jane’s talent for
“making limited opportunities endurable” accounts for her triumphal
realization—unspectacular as it might be—that “happiness was but the
occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”
Lucetta Templeman
Like Michael Henchard, Lucetta Templeman lives recklessly according to
her passions and suffers for it. Before arriving in Casterbridge,
Lucetta becomes involved in a scandalously indiscreet affair with
Henchard that makes her the pariah of Jersey. After settling in High-
Place Hall, Lucetta quickly becomes enamored with Henchard’s
archrival, Farfrae. Their relationship is peaceful until the town
learns of Lucetta’s past relationship with Henchard, whereupon they
make her the subject of a shameful “skimmity-ride.” Although warned of
these likely consequences, Lucetta proceeds to love whomever she wants
however she pleases. Still, her character lacks the boldness and
certainty of purpose that would elevate her to the level of “the
isolated, damned, and self-destructive individualist” that critic
Albert Guerard describes as “the great nineteenth-century myth.”
Lucetta emerges not as heroic but as childish and imprudent. Her love
for Farfrae, for example, hinges on her refusal to accept Henchard’s
visits for several days, a refusal that makes her seem more petty than
resolute. Similarly, her rapidly shifting affections—Farfrae eclipses
Henchard as the object of her desire with amazing, almost ridiculous
speed—brand her as an emotionally volatile Victorian female, one whose
sentiments are strong enough to cause the most melodramatic of deaths.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
The Importance of Character
As a “Story of a Man of Character,” The Mayor of Casterbridge focuses
on how its protagonist’s qualities enable him to endure. One tends to
think of character, especially in terms of a “Man of Character,” as
the product of such values as honor and moral righteousness. Certainly
Michael Henchard does not fit neatly into such categories. Throughout
the novel, his volatile temper forces him into ruthless competition
with Farfrae that strips him of his pride and property, while his
insecurities lead him to deceive the one person he learns to truly
care about, Elizabeth-Jane. Henchard dies an unremarkable death,
slinking off to a humble cottage in the woods, and he stipulates in
his will that no one mourn or remember him. There will be no statues
in the Casterbridge square, as one might imagine, to mark his life and
work. Yet Hardy insists that his hero is a worthy man. Henchard’s
worth, then—that which makes him a “Man of Character”—lies in his
determination to suffer and in his ability to endure great pain. He
shoulders the burden of his own mistakes as he sells his family,
mismanages his business, and bears the storm of an unlucky fate,
especially when the furmity-woman confesses and Newson reappears. In a
world that seems guided by the “scheme[s] of some sinister
intelligence bent on punishing” human beings, there can be no more
honorable and more righteous characteristic than Henchard’s brand of
“defiant endurance.”
The Value of a Good Name
The value of a good name is abundantly clear within the first few
chapters of the novel: as Henchard wakes to find that the sale of his
wife was not a dream or a drunken hallucination, his first concern is
to remember whether he divulged his name to anyone during the course
of the previous evening. All the while, Susan warns -Elizabeth-Jane of
the need for discretion at the Three Mariners Inn—their respectability
(and, more important, that of the mayor) could be jeopardized if
anyone discovered that Henchard’s family performed chores as payment
for lodging.
The importance of a solid reputation and character is rather obvious
given Henchard’s situation, for Henchard has little else besides his
name. He arrives in Casterbridge with nothing more than the implements
of the hay-trusser’s trade, and though we never learn the
circumstances of his ascent to civic leader, such a climb presumably
depends upon the worth of one’s name. Throughout the course of the
novel, Henchard attempts to earn, or to believe that he has earned,
his position. He is, however, plagued by a conviction of his own
worthlessness, and he places himself in situations that can only
result in failure. For instance, he indulges in petty jealousy of
Farfrae, which leads to a drawn-out competition in which Henchard
loses his position as mayor, his business, and the women he loves.
More crucial, Henchard’s actions result in the loss of his name and
his reputation as a worthy and honorable citizen. Once he has lost
these essentials, he follows the same course toward death as Lucetta,
whose demise is seemingly precipitated by the irretrievable loss of
respectability brought about by the “skimmity-ride.”
The Indelibility of the Past
The Mayor of Casterbridge is a novel haunted by the past. Henchard’s
fateful decision to sell his wife and child at Weydon-Priors continues
to shape his life eighteen years later, while the town itself rests
upon its former incarnation: every farmer who tills a field turns up
the remains of long-dead Roman soldiers. The Ring, the ancient Roman
amphitheater that dominates Casterbridge and provides a forum for the
secret meetings of its citizens, stands as a potent symbol of the
indeli-bility of a past that cannot be escaped. The terrible events
that once occurred here as entertainment for the citizens of
Casterbridge have, in a certain sense, determined the town’s present
state. The brutality of public executions has given way to the
miseries of thwarted lovers.
Henchard’s past proves no less indomitable. Indeed, he spends the
entirety of the novel attempting to right the wrongs of long ago. He
succeeds only in making more grievous mistakes, but he never fails to
acknowledge that the past cannot be buried or denied. Only Lucetta is
guilty of such folly. She dismisses her history with Henchard and the
promises that she made to him in order to pursue Farfrae, a decision
for which she pays with her reputation and, -eventually, her life.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Coincidence
Even the most cursory reading of The Mayor of Casterbridge reveals a
structural pattern that relies heavily on coincidence. Indeed, the
story would hardly progress were it not for the chance occurrences
that push Henchard closer and closer to failure. For example, the
reappearance of just one long-lost character would test our
willingness to believe, but here we witness the return of Susan, the
furmity-woman, and Newson, each of whom brings a dark secret that
contributes to Henchard’s doom. Although we, as modern readers, are
unlikely to excuse such overdetermined plotting, we should attempt to
understand it. Hardy’s reliance on coincidence relates directly to his
philosophy of the world. As a determinist, Hardy believed that human
life was shaped not by free will but by such powerful, uncontrollable
forces as heredity and God. Henchard rails against such forces
throughout the novel, lamenting that the world seems designed to bring
about his demise. In such an environment, coincidence seems less like
a product of poor plot structure than an inevitable consequence of
malicious universal forces.
The Tension between Tradition and Innovation
Casterbridge is, at first, a town untouched by modernism. Henchard’s
government runs the town according to quaintly traditional customs:
business is conducted by word of mouth and weather-prophets are
consulted regarding crop yields. When Farfrae arrives, he brings with
him new and efficient systems for managing the town’s grain markets
and increasing agricultural production. In this way, Henchard and
Farfrae come to represent tradition and innovation, respectively. As
such, their struggle can be seen not merely as a competition between a
grain merchant and his former protégé but rather as the tension
between the desire for and the reluctance to change as one age
replaces another.
Hardy reports this succession as though it were inevitable, and the
novel, for all its sympathies toward Henchard, is never hostile toward
progress. Indeed, we witness and even enjoy the efficacy of Farfrae’s
accomplishments. Undoubtedly, his day of celebration, his new method
for organizing the granary’s business, and his determination to
introduce modern technologies to Casterbridge are good things.
Nevertheless, Hardy reports the passing from one era to the next with
a quiet kind of nostalgia. Throughout the novel are traces of a world
that once was and will never be again. In the opening pages, as
Henchard seeks shelter for his tired family, a peasant laments the
loss of the quaint cottages that once characterized the English
countryside.
The Tension between Public Life and Private Life
Henchard’s fall can be understood in terms of a movement from the
public arena into the private one. When Susan and Elizabeth-Jane
discover Henchard at the Three Mariners Inn, he is the mayor of
Casterbridge and its most successful grain merchant, two positions
that place him in the center of public life and civic duty. As his
good fortune shifts when his reputation and finances fail, he is
forced to relinquish these posts. He becomes increasingly less
involved with public life—his ridiculous greeting of the visiting
Royal Personage demonstrates how completely he has abandoned this realm
—and lives wholly with his private thoughts and obsessions. He moves
from “the commercial [to] the romantic,” concentrating his energies on
his personal and domestic relationships with Farfrae, Lucetta, and
Elizabeth-Jane.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
The Caged Goldfinch
In an act of contrition, Henchard visits Elizabeth-Jane on her wedding
day, carrying the gift of a caged goldfinch. He leaves the bird in a
corner while he speaks to his stepdaughter and forgets it when she
coolly dismisses him. Days later, a maid discovers the starved bird,
which prompts Elizabeth-Jane to search for Henchard, whom she finds
dead in Abel Whittle’s cottage. When Whittle reports that Henchard
“didn’t gain strength, for you see, ma’am, he couldn’t eat,” he
unwittingly ties Henchard’s fate to the bird’s: both lived and died in
a prison. The finch’s prison was literal, while Henchard’s was the
inescapable prison of his personality and his past.
The Bull
The bull that chases down Lucetta and Elizabeth-Jane stands as a
symbol of the brute forces that threaten human life. Malignant,
deadly, and bent on destruction, it seems to incarnate the unnamed
forces that Henchard often bemoans. The bull’s rampage provides
Henchard with an opportunity to display his strength and courage, thus
making him more sympathetic in our eyes.
The Collision of the Wagons
When a wagon owned by Henchard collides with a wagon owned by Farfrae
on the street outside of High-Place Hall, the interaction bears more
significance than a simple traffic accident. The violent collision
dramatically symbolizes the tension in the relationship between the
two men. It also symbolizes the clash between tradition, which
Henchard embodies, and the new modern era, which Farfrae personifies.

Ulysses
Context
JAMES JOYCE WAS BORN on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland, into a
Catholic middle-class family that would soon become poverty-stricken.
Joyce went to Jesuit schools, followed by University College, Dublin,
where he began publishing essays. After graduating in 1902, Joyce went
to Paris with the intention of attending medical school. Soon
afterward, however, he abandoned medical studies and devoted all of
his time to writing poetry, stories, and theories of aesthetics. Joyce
returned to Dublin the following year when his mother died. He stayed
in Dublin for another year, during which time he met his future wife,
Nora Barnacle. At this time, Joyce also began work on an
autobiographical novel called Stephen Hero. Joyce eventually gave up
on Stephen Hero, but reworked much of the material into A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man, which features the same autobiographical
protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, and tells the story of Joyce’s youth up
to his 1902 departure for Paris.
Nora and Joyce left Dublin again in 1904, this time for good. They
spent most of the next eleven years living in Rome and Trieste, Italy,
where Joyce taught English and he and Nora had two children, Giorgio
and Lucia. In 1907 Joyce’s first book of poems, Chamber Music, was
published in London. He published his book of short stories,
Dubliners, in 1914, the same year he published A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man in serial installments in the London journal The
Egoist.
Joyce began writing Ulysses in 1914, and when World War I broke out he
moved his family to Zurich, Switzerland, where he continued work on
the novel. In Zurich, Joyce’s fortunes finally improved as his talent
attracted several wealthy patrons, including Harriet Shaw Weaver.
Portrait was published in book form in 1916, and Joyce’s play, Exiles,
in 1918. Also in 1918, the first episodes of Ulysses were published in
serial form in The Little Review. In 1919, the Joyces moved to Paris,
where Ulysses was published in book form in 1922. In 1923, with his
eyesight quickly diminishing, Joyce began working on what became
Finnegans Wake, published in 1939. Joyce died in 1941.
Joyce first conceived of Ulysses as a short story to be included in
Dubliners, but decided instead to publish it as a long novel, situated
as a sort of sequel to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Ulysses picks up Stephen Dedalus’s life more than a year after where
Portrait leaves off. The novel introduces two new main characters,
Leopold and Molly Bloom, and takes place on a single day, June 16,
1904, in Dublin.
Ulysses strives to achieve a kind of realism unlike that of any novel
before it by rendering the thoughts and actions of its main characters
— both trivial and significant—in a scattered and fragmented form
similar to the way thoughts, perceptions, and memories actually appear
in our minds. In Dubliners, Joyce had tried to give his stories a
heightened sense of realism by incorporating real people and places
into them, and he pursues the same strategy on a massive scale in
Ulysses. At the same time that Ulysses presents itself as a realistic
novel, it also works on a mythic level, by way of a series of
parallels with Homer’s Odyssey. Stephen, Bloom, and Molly correspond
respectively to Telemachus, Ulysses, and Penelope, and each of the
eighteen episodes of the novel corresponds to an adventure from the
Odyssey.
Ulysses has become particularly famous for Joyce’s stylistic
innovations. In Portrait, Joyce first attempted the technique of
interior monologue, or stream-of-consciousness. He also experimented
with shifting style—the narrative voice of Portrait changes
stylistically as Stephen matures. In Ulysses, Joyce uses interior
monologue extensively, and instead of employing one narrative voice,
Joyce radically shifts narrative style with each new episode of the
novel.

Joyce’s early work reveals the stylistic influence of Norwegian
playwright Henrik Ibsen. Joyce began reading Ibsen as a young man; his
first publication was an article about a play of Ibsen’s, which earned
him a letter of appreciation from Ibsen himself. Ibsen’s plays
provided the young Joyce with a model of the realistic depiction of
individuals stifled by conventional moral values. Joyce imitated
Ibsen’s naturalistic brand of realism in Dubliners, A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man, and especially in his play Exiles. Ulysses
maintains Joyce’s concern with realism but also introduces stylistic
innovations similar to those of his Mo-dernist contemporaries.
Ulysses’s multivoiced narration, textual self-consciousness, mythic
framework, and thematic focus on life in a modern metropolis situate
it close to other main texts of the Modernist movement, such as T. S.
Eliot’s mythic poem The Waste Land (also published in 1922) or
Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness novel, Mrs. Dalloway (1925).
Though never working in collaboration, Joyce maintained
correspondences with other Modernist writers, including Samuel
Beckett, and Ezra Pound, who helped find him a patron and an income.
Joyce’s final work, Finnegans Wake, is often seen as bridging the gap
between Modernism and postmodernism. A novel only in the loosest
sense, Finnegans Wake looks forward to postmodern texts in its playful
celebration (rather than lamentation) of the fragmentation of
experience and the decentered nature of identity, as well as its
attention to the nontransparent qualities of language.
Like Eliot and many other Modernist writers, Joyce wrote in self-
imposed exile in cosmopolitan Europe. In spite of this fact, all of
his work is strongly tied to Irish political and cultural history, and
Ulysses must also be seen in an Irish context. Joyce’s novel was
written during the years of the Irish bid for independence from
Britain. After a bloody civil war, the Irish Free State was officially
formed—during the same year that Ulysses was published. Even in 1904,
Ireland had experienced the failure of several home rule bills that
would have granted the island a measure of political independence
within Great Britain. The failure of these bills is linked to the
downfall of the Irish member of Parliament, Charles Stewart Parnell,
who was once referred to as “Ireland’s Uncrowned King,” and was
publicly persecuted by the Irish church and people in 1889 for
conducting a long-term affair with a married woman, Kitty O’Shea.
Joyce saw this persecution as an hypocritical betrayal by the Irish
that ruined Ireland’s chances for a peaceful independence.
Accordingly, Ulysses depicts the Irish citizens of 1904, especially
Stephen Dedalus, as involved in tangled conceptions of their own
Irishness, and complex relationships with various authorities and
institutions specific to their time and place: the British empire,
Irish nationalism, the Roman Catholic church, and the Irish Literary
Revival

Plot Overview
STEPHEN DEDALUS SPENDS the early morning hours of June 16, 1904,
remaining aloof from his mocking friend, Buck Mulligan, and Buck’s
English acquaintance, Haines. As Stephen leaves for work, Buck orders
him to leave the house key and meet them at the pub at 12:30. Stephen
resents Buck.
Around 10:00 A.M., Stephen teaches a history lesson to his class at
Garrett Deasy’s boys’ school. After class, Stephen meets with Deasy to
receive his wages. The narrow-minded and prejudiced Deasy lectures
Stephen on life. Stephen agrees to take Deasy’s editorial letter about
cattle disease to acquaintances at the newspaper.
Stephen spends the remainder of his morning walking alone on
Sandymount Strand, thinking critically about his younger self and
about perception. He composes a poem in his head and writes it down on
a scrap torn from Deasy’s letter.
At 8:00 A.M. the same morning, Leopold Bloom fixes breakfast and
brings his wife her mail and breakfast in bed. One of her letters is
from Molly’s concert tour manager, Blazes Boylan (Bloom suspects he is
also Molly’s lover)—Boylan will visit at 4:00 this afternoon. Bloom
returns downstairs, reads a letter from their daughter, Milly, then
goes to the outhouse.
At 10:00 A.M., Bloom picks up an amorous letter from the post office—
he is corresponding with a woman named Martha Clifford under the
pseudonym Henry Flower. He reads the tepid letter, ducks briefly into
a church, then orders Molly’s lotion from the pharmacist. He runs into
Bantam Lyons, who mistakenly gets the impression that Bloom is giving
him a tip on the horse Throwaway in the afternoon’s Gold Cup race.
Around 11:00 A.M., Bloom rides with Simon Dedalus (Stephen’s father),
Martin Cunningham, and Jack Power to the funeral of Paddy Dignam. The
men treat Bloom as somewhat of an outsider. At the funeral, Bloom
thinks about the deaths of his son and his father.
At noon, we find Bloom at the offices of the Freeman newspaper,
negotiating an advertisement for Keyes, a liquor merchant. Several
idle men, including editor Myles Crawford, are hanging around in the
office, discussing political speeches. Bloom leaves to secure the ad.
Stephen arrives at the newspaper with Deasy’s letter. Stephen and the
other men leave for the pub just as Bloom is returning. Bloom’s ad
negotiation is rejected by Crawford on his way out.
At 1:00 P.M., Bloom runs into Josie Breen, an old flame, and they
discuss Mina Purefoy, who is in labor at the maternity hospital. Bloom
stops in Burton’s restaurant, but he decides to move on to Davy
Byrne’s for a light lunch. Bloom reminisces about an intimate
afternoon with Molly on Howth. Bloom leaves and is walking toward the
National Library when he spots Boylan on the street and ducks into the
National Museum.
At 2:00 P.M., Stephen is informally presenting his “Hamlet theory” in
the National Library to the poet A.E. and the librarians John
Eglinton, Best, and Lyster. A.E. is dismissive of Stephen’s theory and
leaves. Buck enters and jokingly scolds Stephen for failing to meet
him and Haines at the pub. On the way out, Buck and Stephen pass
Bloom, who has come to obtain a copy of Keyes’ ad.
At 4:00 P.M., Simon Dedalus, Ben Dollard, Lenehan, and Blazes Boylan
converge at the Ormond Hotel bar. Bloom notices Boylan’s car outside
and decides to watch him. Boylan soon leaves for his appointment with
Molly, and Bloom sits morosely in the Ormond restaurant—he is briefly
mollified by Dedalus’s and Dollard’s singing. Bloom writes back to
Martha, then leaves to post the letter.
At 5:00 P.M., Bloom arrives at Barney Kiernan’s pub to meet Martin
Cunningham about the Dignam family finances, but Cunningham has not
yet arrived. The citizen, a belligerent Irish nationalist, becomes
increasingly drunk and begins attacking Bloom’s Jewishness. Bloom
stands up to the citizen, speaking in favor of peace and love over
xenophobic violence. Bloom and the citizen have an altercation on the
street before Cunningham’s carriage carries Bloom away.
Bloom relaxes on Sandymount Strand around sunset, after his visit to
Mrs. Dignam’s house nearby. A young woman, Gerty MacDowell, notices
Bloom watching her from across the beach. Gerty subtly reveals more
and more of her legs while Bloom surreptitiously masturbates. Gerty
leaves, and Bloom dozes.
At 10:00 P.M., Bloom wanders to the maternity hospital to check on
Mina Purefoy. Also at the hospital are Stephen and several of his medi-
c-al student friends, drinking and talking boisterously about subjects
related to birth. Bloom agrees to join them, though he privately
disapproves of their revelry in light of Mrs. Purefoy’s struggles
upstairs. Buck arrives, and the men proceed to Burke’s pub. At closing
time, Stephen convinces his friend Lynch to go to the brothel section
of town and Bloom follows, feeling protective.
Bloom finally locates Stephen and Lynch at Bella Cohen’s brothel.
Stephen is drunk and imagines that he sees the ghost of his mother—
full of rage, he shatters a lamp with his walking stick. Bloom runs
after Stephen and finds him in an argument with a British soldier who
knocks him out.
Bloom revives Stephen and takes him for coffee at a cabman’s shelter
to sober up. Bloom invites Stephen back to his house.
Well after midnight, Stephen and Bloom arrive back at Bloom’s house.
They drink cocoa and talk about their respective backgrounds. Bloom
asks Stephen to stay the night. Stephen politely refuses. Bloom sees
him out and comes back in to find evidence of Boylan’s visit. Still,
Bloom is at peace with the world and he climbs into bed, tells Molly
of his day and requests breakfast in bed.
After Bloom falls asleep, Molly remains awake, surprised by Bloom’s
request for breakfast in bed. Her mind wanders to her childhood in
Gibraltar, her afternoon of sex with Boylan, her singing career,
Stephen Dedalus. Her thoughts of Bloom vary wildly over the course of
the monologue, but it ends with a reminiscence of their intimate
moment at Howth and a positive affirmation.
Character List
Leopold Bloom - A thirty-eight-year-old advertising canvasser in
Dublin. Bloom was raised in Dublin by his Hungarian Jewish father,
Rudolph, and his Irish Catholic mother, Ellen. He enjoys reading and
thinking about science and inventions and explaining his knowledge to
others. Bloom is compassionate and curious and loves music. He is
preoccupied by his estrangement from his wife, Molly.
Leopold Bloom (In-Depth Analysis)
Marion (Molly) Bloom - Leopold Bloom’s wife. Molly Bloom is thirty-
three years old, plump with dark coloring, good-looking, and
flirtatious. She is not well-educated, but she is nevertheless clever
and opinionated. She is a professional singer, raised by her Irish
father, Major Brian Tweedy, in Gibraltar. Molly is impatient with
Bloom, especially about his refusal to be intimate with her since the
death of their son, Rudy, eleven years ago.
Molly Bloom (In-Depth Analysis)
Stephen Dedalus - An aspiring poet in his early twenties. Stephen is
intelligent and extremely well-read, and he likes music. He seems to
exist more for himself, in a cerebral way, than as a member of a
community or even the group of medical students that he associates
with. Stephen was extremely religious as a child, but now he struggles
with issues of faith and doubt in the wake of his mother’s death,
which occurred less than a year ago.
Stephen Dedalus (In-Depth Analysis)
Malachi (Buck) Mulligan - A medical student and a friend of Stephen.
Buck Mulligan is plump and well-read, and manages to ridicule nearly
everything. He is well-liked by nearly everyone for his bawdy and
witty jokes except Stephen, Simon, and Bloom.
Haines - A folklore student at Oxford who is particularly interested
in studying Irish people and culture. Haines is often unwittingly
condescending. He has been staying at the Martello tower where Stephen
and Buck live.
Hugh (“Blazes”) Boylan - The manager for Molly’s upcoming concert in
Belfast. Blazes Boylan is well-known and well-liked around town,
though he seems somewhat sleazy, especially toward women. Boylan has
become interested in Molly, and they commence an affair during the
afternoon of the novel.
Millicent (Milly) Bloom - Molly and Leopold Bloom’s fifteen-year-old
daughter, who does not actually appear in Ulysses. The Blooms recently
sent Milly to live in Mullingar and learn photography. Milly is blond
and pretty and has become interested in boys—she is dating Alec Bannon
in Mullingar.
Simon Dedalus - Stephen Dedalus’s father. Simon Dedalus grew up in
Cork, moved to Dublin, and was a fairly successful man until recently.
Other men look up to him, even though his home life has been in
disarray since his wife died. Simon has a good singing voice and a
talent for funny stories, and he might have capitalized on these
assets if not for his drinking habit. Simon is extremely critical of
Stephen.
A.E. (George Russell) - A.E. is the pseudonym of George Russell, a
famous poet of the Irish Literary Revival who is at the center of
Irish literary circles—circles that do not include Stephen Dedalus. He
is deeply interested in esoteric mysticism. Other men consult A.E. for
wisdom as if he were an oracle.
Richard Best - A librarian at the National Library. Best is
enthusiastic and agreeable, though most of his own contributions to
the Hamlet conversation in Episode Nine are points of received wisdom.
Edy Boardman - One of Gerty MacDowell’s friends. Gerty’s uppity
demeanor annoys Edy, who attempts to deflate Gerty with jibes.
Josie (née Powell) and Denis Breen - Josie Powell and Bloom were
interested in each other when they were younger. Josie was good-
looking and flirtatious. After Bloom married Molly, Josie married
Denis. Denis Breen is slightly insane and seems paranoid. Looking
after her “dotty” husband has taken its toll on Josie, who now seems
haggard.
Cissy, Jacky, and Tommy Caffrey - Cissy Caffrey is one of Gerty
MacDowell’s best friends. She is something of a tomboy and quite
frank. She looks after her younger toddler brothers, Jacky and Tommy.
The citizen - An older Irish patriot who champions the Nationalist
cause. Though the citizen seems to work for the cause in no official
capacity, others look to him for news and opinions. He was formerly an
athlete in Irish sports. He is belligerent and xenophobic.
Martha Clifford - A woman with whom Bloom corresponds under the
pseudonym Henry Flower. Martha’s letters are strewn with spelling
mistakes, and she is sexually daring in only a pedestrian way.
Bella Cohen - A conniving brothel-mistress. Bella Cohen is large and
slightly mannish, with dark coloring. She is somewhat concerned about
respectability, and has a son at Oxford, whose tuition is paid by one
of her customers.
Martin Cunningham - A leader among Bloom’s circle of friends. Martin
Cunningham can be sympathetic toward others, and he sticks up for
Bloom at various points during the day, yet he still treats Bloom as
an outsider. He has a face that resembles Shakespeare’s.
Garrett Deasy - Headmaster of the boys’ school where Stephen teaches.
Deasy is a Protestant from the north of Ireland, and he is respectful
of the English government. Deasy is condescending to Stephen and not a
good listener. His overwrought letter to the editor about foot-and-
mouth disease among cattle is the object of mockery among Dublin men
for the rest of the day.
Dilly, Katey, Boody, and Maggy Dedalus - Stephen’s younger sisters.
They try to keep the Dedalus household running after their mother’s
death. Dilly seems to have aspirations, such as learning French.
Patrick Dignam, Mrs. Dignam, and Patrick Dignam, Jr. - Patrick Dignam
is an acquaintance of Bloom who passed away very recently, apparently
from drinking. His funeral is today, and Bloom and others get together
to raise some money for the widow Dignam and her children, who were
left with almost nothing after Paddy used his life insurance to pay
off a debt.
Ben Dollard - A man known around Dublin for his superior bass voice.
Ben Dollard’s business and career went under a while ago. He seems
good-natured but is perhaps rattled by a past drinking habit.
John Eglinton - An essayist who spends time at the National Library.
John Eglinton is affronted by Stephen’s youthful self-confidence and
doubtful of Stephen’s Hamlet theory.
Richie, Sara (Sally), and Walter Goulding - Richie Goulding is
Stephen Dedalus’s uncle; he was Stephen’s mother, May’s, brother.
Richie is a law clerk, who has been less able to work recently because
of a bad back—a fact that makes him an object of ridicule for Simon
Dedalus. Richie and Sara’s son, Walter, is “skeweyed” and has a
stutter.
Zoe Higgins - A prostitute in Bella Cohen’s brothel. Zoe is outgoing
and good at teasing.
Joe Hynes - A reporter for the Dublin newspaper who seems to be
without money often—he borrowed three pounds from Bloom and has not
paid him back. Hynes does not know Bloom well, and he appears to be
good friends with the citizen in Episode Twelve.
Corny Kelleher - An undertaker’s assistant who is friendly with the
police.
Mina Kennedy and Lydia Douce - The barmaids at the Ormond hotel. Mina
and Lydia are flirtatious and friendly to the men who come into the
bar, though they tend to be scornful of the opposite sex when they
talk together. Miss Douce, who is bronze-haired, seems to be the more
outgoing of the two, and she has a crush on Blazes Boylan. Miss
Kennedy, who is golden-haired, is more reserved.
Ned Lambert - A friend of Simon Dedalus and other men in Dublin. Ned
Lambert is often found joking and laughing. He works in a seed and
grain warehouse downtown, in what used to be St. Mary’s Abbey.
Lenehan - A racing editor at the Dublin newspaper, though his tip,
Sceptre, loses the Gold Cup horserace. Lenehan is a jokester and
flirtatious with women. He is mocking of Bloom but respectful of Simon
and Stephen Dedalus.
Lynch - A medical student and old friend of Stephen (he also appears
in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). Lynch is used to hearing
Stephen’s pretentious and overwhelming aesthetic theories, and he is
familiar with Stephen’s stubbornness. He is seeing Kitty Ricketts.
Thomas W. Lyster - A librarian at the National Library in Dublin, and
a Quaker. Lyster is the most solicitous of Stephen’s listeners in
Episode Nine.
Gerty MacDowell - A woman in her early twenties from a lower-middle-
class family. Gerty suffers from a permanent limp, possibly from a
bicycle accident. She fastidiously attends to her clothing and
personal beauty regimen, and she hopes to fall in love and marry. She
rarely allows herself to think about her disability.
John Henry Menton - A solicitor in Dublin who employed Paddy Dignam.
When Bloom and Molly were first courting, Menton was a rival for
Molly’s affections. He is disdainful of Bloom.
Episode Twelve’s Nameless Narrator - The unnamed narrator of Episode
Twelve is currently a debt collector, though this is the most recent
of many different jobs. He enjoys feeling like he is “in the know” and
has gotten most of his gossip about the Blooms from his friend
“Pisser” Burke, who knew them when they lived at the City Arms Hotel.
City Councillor Nannetti - A head printer for the Dublin newspaper,
and a member of Parliament. Nannetti is of mixed Italian and Irish
heritage.
J. J. O’Molloy - A lawyer who is now out of work and money. O’Molloy
is thwarted in his attempts to borrow money from friends today. He
sticks up for Bloom in Barney Kiernan’s pub in Episode Twelve.
Jack Power - A friend of Simon Dedalus and Martin Cunningham and
other men around town. Power possibly works in law enforcement. He is
not very nice to Bloom.
Kitty Ricketts - One of the prostitutes working in Bella Cohen’s
brothel. Kitty seems to have a relationship with Lynch and has spent
part of the day with him. She is thin, and her clothing reflects her
upper-class aspirations.
Florry Talbot - One of the prostitutes in Bella Cohen’s brothel.
Florry is plump and seems slow but eager to please.
Analysis of Major Characters
Leopold Bloom
Leopold Bloom functions as a sort of Everyman—a bourgeois Odysseus for
the twentieth century. At the same time, the novel’s depiction of his
personality is one of the most detailed in all literature. Bloom is a
thirty-eight-year-old advertising canvasser. His father was a
Hungarian Jew, and Joyce exploits the irony of this fact—that Dublin’s
latter-day Odysseus is really a Jew with Hungarian origins—to such an
extent that readers often forget Bloom’s Irish mother and multiple
baptisms. Bloom’s status as an outsider, combined with his own ability
to envision an inclusive state, make him a figure who both suffers
from and exposes the insularity of Ireland and Irishness in 1904. Yet
the social exclusion of Bloom is not simply one-sided. Bloom is clear-
sighted and mostly unsentimental when it comes to his male peers. He
does not like to drink often or to gossip, and though he is always
friendly, he is not sorry to be excluded from their circles.
When Bloom first appears in Episode Four of Ulysses, his character is
noteworthy for its differences from Stephen’s character, on which the
first three episodes focus. Stephen’s cerebrality makes Bloom’s
comfort with the physical world seem more remarkable. This ease
accords with his practical mind and scientific curiosity. Whereas
Stephen, in Episode Three, shuts himself off from the mat-erial world
to ponder the workings of his own perception, Bloom appears in the
beginning of Episode Four bending down to his cat, wondering how her
senses work. Bloom’s comfort with the physical also manifests itself
in his sexuality, a dimension mostly absent from Stephen’s character.
We get ample evidence of Bloom’s sexuality—from his penchant for
voyeurism and female underclothing to his masturbation and erotic
correspondence—while Stephen seems inexperienced and celibate.
Other disparities between the two men further define Bloom’s
character: where Stephen is depressive and somewhat dramatic, Bloom is
mature and even-headed. Bloom possesses the ability to cheer himself
up and to pragmatically refuse to think about depressing topics. Yet
Bloom and Stephen are similar, too. They are both unrealized artists,
if with completely different agendas. As one Dubliner puts it,
“There’s a touch of the artist about old Bloom.” We might say that
Bloom’s conception of art is bourgeois, in the sense that he considers
art as a way to effect people’s actions and feelings in an immediate
way. From his desire to create a newer, better advertisement, to his
love poem to Molly, to his reading of Shakespeare for its moral value,
Bloom’s version of art does not stray far from real-life situations.
Bloom’s sense of culture and his aspiration to be “cultured” also seem
to bring him close to Stephen. The two men share a love for music, and
Stephen’s companionship is attractive to Bloom, who would love to be
an expert, rather than a dabbler, in various subjects.
Two emotional crises plague Bloom’s otherwise cheerful demeanor
throughout Ulysses—the breakdown of his male family line and the
infidelity of his wife, Molly. The untimely deaths of both Bloom’s
father (by suicide) and only son, Rudy (days after his birth), lead
Bloom to feel cosmically lonely and powerless. Bloom is allowed a
brief respite from these emotions during his union with Stephen in the
latter part of the novel. We slowly realize over the course of Ulysses
that the first crisis of family line is related to the second crisis
of marital infidelity: the Blooms’ intimacy and attempts at
procreation have broken down since the death of their only son eleven
years ago. Bloom’s reaction to Molly’s decision to look elsewhere (to
Blazes Boylan) for sex is complex. Bloom enjoys the fact that other
men appreciate his wife, and he is generally a passive, accepting
person. Bloom is clear-sighted enough to realize, though, that Blazes
Boylan is a paltry replacement for himself, and he ultimately cheers
himself by recontextualizing the problem. Boylan is only one of many,
and it is on Molly that Bloom should concentrate his own energies.
In fact, it is this ability to shift perspective by sympathizing with
another viewpoint that renders Bloom heroic. His compassion is evident
throughout—he is charitable to animals and people in need, his
sympathies extend even to a woman in labor. Bloom’s masculinity is
frequently called into question by other characters; hence, the second
irony of Ulysses is that Bloom as Everyman is also somewhat feminine.
And it is precisely his fluid, androgynous capacity to empathize with
people and things of all types—and to be both a symbolic father and a
mother to Stephen—that makes him the hero of the novel.
Molly Bloom
Over the course of the novel, we get a very clear picture of Bloom and
Stephen because we witness their interactions with many different
people and see what they are thinking throughout all of these
interactions. For most of the novel we only see Molly Bloom through
other people’s eyes, so it may be tempting to dismiss her as a self-
centered, unfaithful woman. The way we decide to view her will require
us to reevaluate the understanding we have thus far formed of Leopold
Bloom. If we focus on the “vulgarity” and physicality of her
monologue, our built-up sympathies with Bloom as the well-meaning
husband of a loose woman are ratified. But a more nuanced
understanding of her involves seeing her as an outgoing woman who
takes a certain pride in her husband, but who has been feeling a lack
of demonstrative love. This idea yields a reevaluation of Bloom as
being unfaithful in his own ways and complicit in the temporary
breakdown of their marriage.
Like Bloom, Molly is a Dublin outsider. She was raised in the military
atmosphere of Gibraltar by her father, Major Brian Tweedy. Molly never
knew her mother, who was possibly Jewish, or just Jewish-lo-oking.
Bloom associates Molly with the “hot-blooded” Mediterranean regions,
and, to a lesser degree, the exoticism of the East. Yet Molly
considers her own childhood to have been normal, outside the dramatic
entrances and exits of young, good-looking soldiers going off to war.
Molly seems to organize her life around men and to have very few
female friends. She enjoys being looked at and gains self-esteem from
the admiration of men. Molly is extremely self-aware and perceptive—
she knows without looking when she is being looked at. A man’s
admiration of her does not cloud her own negative judgments about him.
She is frank about topics that other people are likely to
sentimentalize—intimacy, mourning, and motherhood, for example. She is
also frank about the extent to which living involves adaptations of
different roles. Her sense of this truth—which is perhaps related to
her own career as a stage singer—aligns her with Stephen, who is also
conscious of his outward existence in terms of a series of roles.
Molly and Stephen both share a capacity for storytelling, scene-
setting, and mimicry. Molly’s storytelling and frankness about role-
playing evinces her sense of humor, and it also mediates our sense of
her as a hypocritical character. Finally, it is this pragmatic and
fluid adoption of roles that enables Molly to reconnect with Bloom
through vivid recollections, and, indeed, reenactments, of the past,
as in her final memory of the Howth scene at the end of Ulysses.
Stephen Dedalus
The character of Stephen Dedalus is a harshly drawn version of Joyce
himself at age twenty-two. Stephen first appeared as the main
character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which followed
his development from early childhood to his proud and ambitious days
before leaving Dublin for Paris and the realization of his artistic
capabilities. When we meet Stephen again at the beginning of Ulysses,
it is over two years after the end of Portrait. Stephen has been back
in Dublin for over a year, having returned to sit at his mother’s
deathbed. Stephen’s artistic talent is still unrealized—he is
currently a reluctant teacher of history at a boy’s school. He is
disappointed and moody and is still dressed in mourning over the death
of his mother almost a year ago. Stephen’s interactions with various
characters—Buck, Haines, Mr. Deasy—in the opening episodes of the book
crystallize our sense of the damaging ties and obligations that have
resulted from Stephen’s return to Ireland. At the beginning of
Ulysses, Stephen is a self-conscious young man whose identity is still
in formation. Stephen’s aloofness and his attempts to understand
himself through fictional characters such as Hamlet dramatize his
struggle to solidify this identity.
Stephen is depicted as above most of the action of the novel. He
exists mainly within his own world of ideas—his actions in the world
tend to pointedly distance himself from others and from the world
itself. His freeness with money is less a demonstration of his
generosity than of his lack of material concerns. His unwashed state
similarly reflects his removal from the material world. His cryptic
stories and riddles cut o-thers off rather than include them. He
stubbornly holds grudges, and our admiration of his noble struggle for
independence is tempered by our knowledge of the impoverished siblings
he has left behind. If Stephen himself is an unsympathetic character,
however, the issues central to his identity struggle are easier for us
to sympathize with. From his contemplation of the eye’s perception of
the outside world to his teaching of a history lesson to his
meditations on amor matris or “mother love,” Stephen’s mental
meanderings center on the problem of whether, and how, to be an active
or passive being within the world.
Stephen’s struggles tend to center around his parents. His mother, who
seems to blame Stephen for refusing to pray at her deathbed,
represents not only a mother’s love but also the church and Ireland.
Stephen is haunted by his mother’s memory and ghost in the same ways
that he is haunted by memories of his early piety. Though Stephen’s
father is still alive and well, we see Stephen attempting to ignore or
deny him throughout all of Ulysses. Stephen’s struggle with his father
seems to be about Stephen’s need to have a space in which to create—a
space untainted by Simon Dedalus’s overly critical judgments.
Stephen’s struggle to define his identity without the constraint or
aid imposed by his father bleeds into larger conflicts—Stephen’s
struggle with the authority of God, the authority of the British
empire, even with the authority of the mocker or joker.
After the first three episodes, Stephen’s appearances in Ulysses are
limited. However, these limited appearances—in Episodes Nine,
Fourteen, and Fifteen—demonstrate that Stephen’s attempted repudiation
of authority and obligations has precipitated what seems to him to be
the abandonment of all those close to him. At the end of Episode
Fifteen, Stephen lies nearly unconscious on the ground, feeling as
though he has been “betrayed” by everyone. Never before has Stephen
seemed so much in need of a parent, and it is Bloom—not wholly father
nor mother—who cares for him.
Though Stephen plays a part in the final episodes of Ulysses, we see
less and less of his thoughts as the novel progresses (and, perhaps
not coincidentally, Stephen becomes drunker and drunker). Instead, the
circumstances of the novel and the apparent choices that Stephen makes
take over our sense of his character. By the novel’s end, we see that
Stephen recognizes a break with Buck Mulligan, will quit his job at
Deasy’s school, and has accepted, if only temporarily, Bloom’s
hospitality. In Bloom’s kitchen, Stephen puts something in his mouth
besides alcohol for the first time since Episode One, and has a
conversation with Bloom, as opposed to performing as he did earlier in
the day. We are thus encouraged to understand that, in the calm of the
late-night hours, Stephen has recognized the power of a reciprocal
relationship to provide sustenance.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
The Quest for Paternity
At its most basic level, Ulysses is a book about Stephen’s search for
a symbolic father and Bloom’s search for a son. In this respect, the
plot of Ulysses parallels Telemachus’s search for Odysseus, and vice
versa, in The Odyssey. Bloom’s search for a son stems at least in part
from his need to reinforce his identity and heritage through progeny.
Stephen already has a biological father, Simon Dedalus, but considers
him a father only in “flesh.” Stephen feels that his own ability to
mature and become a father himself (of art or children) is restricted
by Simon’s criticism and lack of understanding. Thus Stephen’s search
involves finding a symbolic father who will, in turn, allow Stephen
himself to be a father. Both men, in truth, are searching for
paternity as a way to reinforce their own identities.
Stephen is more conscious of his quest for paternity than Bloom, and
he mentally recurs to several important motifs with which to
understand paternity. Stephen’s thinking about the Holy Trinity
involves, on the one hand, Church doctrines that uphold the unity of
the Father and the Son and, on the other hand, the writings of
heretics that challenge this doctrine by arguing that God created the
rest of the Trinity, concluding that each subsequent creation is
inherently different. Stephen’s second motif involves his Hamlet
theory, which seeks to prove that Shakespeare represented himself
through the ghost-father in Hamlet, but also—through his translation
of his life into art—became the father of his own father, of his life,
and “of all his race.” The Holy Trinity and Hamlet motifs reinforce
our sense of Stephen’s and Bloom’s parallel quests for paternity.
These quests seem to end in Bloom’s kitchen, with Bloom recognizing
“the future” in Stephen and Stephen recognizing “the past” in Bloom.
Though united as father and son in this moment, the men will soon part
ways, and their paternity quests will undoubtedly continue, for
Ulysses demonstrates that the quest for paternity is a search for a
lasting manifestation of self.
The Remorse of Conscience
The phrase agenbite of inwit, a religious term meaning “remorse of
conscience,” comes to Stephen’s mind again and again in Ulysses.
Stephen associates the phrase with his guilt over his mother’s death—
he suspects that he may have killed her by refusing to kneel and pray
at her sickbed when she asked. The theme of remorse runs through
Ulysses to address the feelings associated with modern breaks with
family and tradition. Bloom, too, has guilty feelings about his father
because he no longer observes certain traditions his father observed,
such as keeping kosher. Episode Fifteen, “Circe,” dramatizes this
remorse as Bloom’s “Sins of the Past” rise up and confront him one by
one. Ulysses juxtaposes characters who experience remorse with
characters who do not, such as Buck Mulligan, who shamelessly refers
to Stephen’s mother as “beastly dead,” and Simon Dedalus, who mourns
his late wife but does not regret his treatment of her. Though remorse
of conscience can have a repressive, paralyzing effect, as in
Stephen’s case, it is also vaguely positive. A self-conscious
awareness of the past, even the sins of the past, helps constitute an
individual as an ethical being in the present.
Compassion as Heroic
In nearly all senses, the notion of Leopold Bloom as an epic hero is
laughable—his job, talents, family relations, public relations, and
private actions all suggest his utter ordinariness. It is only Bloom’s
extraordinary capacity for sympathy and compassion that allows him an
unironic heroism in the course of the novel. Bloom’s fluid ability to
empathize with such a wide variety of beings—cats, birds, dogs, dead
men, vicious men, blind men, old ladies, a woman in labor, the poor,
and so on—is the modern-day equivalent to Odysseus’s capacity to adapt
to a wide variety of challenges. Bloom’s compassion often dictates the
course of his day and the novel, as when he stops at the river Liffey
to feed the gulls or at the hospital to check on Mrs. Purefoy. There
is a network of symbols in Ulysses that present Bloom as Ireland’s
savior, and his message is, at a basic level, to “love.” He is
juxtaposed with Stephen, who would also be Ireland’s savior but is
lacking in compassion. Bloom returns home, faces evidence of his
cuckold status, and slays his competition—not with arrows, but with a
refocused perspective that is available only through his fluid
capacity for empathy.
Parallax, or the Need for Multiple Perspectives
Parallax is an astronomical term that Bloom encounters in his reading
and that arises repeatedly through the course of the novel. It refers
to the difference of position of one object when seen from two
different vantage points. These differing viewpoints can be collated
to better approximate the position of the object. As a novel, Ulysses
uses a similar tactic. Three main characters—Stephen, Bloom, and Molly—
and a subset of narrative techniques that affect our perception of
events and characters combine to demonstrate the fallibility of one
single perspective. Our understanding of particular characters and
events must be continually revised as we consider further
perspectives. The most obvious example is Molly’s past love life.
Though we can construct a judgment of Molly as a loose woman from the
testimonies of various characters in the novel—Bloom, Lenehan, Dixon,
and so on—this judgment must be revised with the integration of
Molly’s own final testimony.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Lightness and Darkness
The traditional associations of light with good and dark with bad are
upended in Ulysses, in which the two protagonists are dressed in
mourning black, and the more menacing characters are associated with
light and brightness. This reversal arises in part as a reaction to
Mr. Deasy’s anti-Semitic judgment that Jews have “sinned against the
light.” Deasy himself is associated with the brightness of coins,
representing wealth without spirituality. “Blazes” Boylan, Bloom’s
nemesis, is associated with brightness through his name and his flashy
behavior, again suggesting surface without substance. Bloom’s and
Stephen’s dark colors suggest a variety of associations: Jewishness,
anarchy, outsider/wanderer status. Furthermore, Throwaway, the “dark
horse,” wins the Gold Cup Horserace.
The Home Usurped
While Odysseus is away from Ithaca in The Odyssey, his household is
usurped by would-be suitors of his wife, Penelope. This motif
translates directly to Ulysses and provides a connection between
Stephen and Bloom. Stephen pays the rent for the Martello tower, where
he, Buck, and Haines are staying. Buck’s demand of the house key is
thus a usurpation of Stephen’s household rights, and Stephen
recognizes this and refuses to return to the tower. Stephen mentally
dramatizes this usurpation as a replay of Claudius’s usurpation of
Gertrude and the throne in Hamlet. Meanwhile, Bloom’s home has been
usurped by Blazes Boylan, who comes and goes at will and has sex with
Molly in Bloom’s absence. Stephen’s and Bloom’s lack of house keys
throughout Ulysses symbolizes these usurpations.
The East
The motif of the East appears mainly in Bloom’s thoughts. For Bloom,
the East is a place of exoticism, representing the promise of a
paradisiacal existence. Bloom’s hazy conception of this faraway land
arises from a network of connections: the planter’s companies (such as
Agendeth Netaim), which suggest newly fertile and potentially
profitable homes; Zionist movements for a homeland; Molly and her
childhood in Gibraltar; narcotics; and erotics. For Bloom and the
reader, the East becomes the imaginative space where hopes can be
realized. The only place where Molly, Stephen, and Bloom all meet is
in their parallel dreams of each other the night before, dreams that
seem to be set in an Eastern locale.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
Plumtree’s Potted Meat
In Episode Five, Bloom reads an ad in his newspaper: “What is home
without / Plumtree’s Potted Meat? / Incomplete. / With it an abode of
bliss.” Bloom’s conscious reaction is his belief that the ad is poorly
placed—directly below the obituaries, suggesting an infelicitous
relation between dead bodies and “potted meat.” On a subconscious
level, however, the figure of Plumtree’s Potted Meat comes to stand
for Bloom’s anxieties about Boylan’s usurpation of his wife and home.
The image of meat inside a pot crudely suggests the sexual relation
between Boylan and Molly. The wording of the ad further suggests, less
concretely, Bloom’s masculine anxieties—he worries that he is not the
head of an “abode of bliss” but rather a servant in a home
“incomplete.” The connection between Plumtree’s meat and Bloom’s
anxieties about Molly’s unhappiness and infidelity is driven home when
Bloom finds crumbs of the potted meat that Boylan and Molly shared
earlier in his own bed.
The Gold Cup Horserace
The afternoon’s Gold Cup Horserace and the bets placed on it provide
much of the public drama in Ulysses, though it happens offstage. In
Episode Five, Bantam Lyons mistakenly thinks that Bloom has tipped him
off to the horse “Throwaway,” the dark horse with a long-shot chance.
“Throwaway” does end up winning the race, notably ousting “Sceptre,”
the horse with the phallic name, on which Lenehan and Boylan have bet.
This underdog victory represents Bloom’s eventual unshowy triumph over
Boylan, to win the “Gold Cup” of Molly’s heart.
Stephen’s Latin Quarter Hat
Stephen deliberately conceives of his Latin Quarter hat as a symbol.
The Latin Quarter is a student district in Paris, and Stephen hopes to
suggest his exiled, anti-establishment status while back in Ireland.
He also refers to the hat as his “Hamlet hat,” tipping us off to the
intentional brooding and artistic connotations of the head gear. Yet
Stephen cannot always control his own hat as a symbol, especially in
the eyes of others. Through the eyes of others, it comes to signify
Stephen’s mock priest-liness and provinciality.
Bloom’s Potato Talisman
In Episode Fifteen, Bloom’s potato functions like Odysseus’s use of
“moly” in Circe’s den—it serves to protect him from enchantment,
enchantments to which Bloom succumbs when he briefly gives it over to
Zoe Higgins. The potato, old and shriveled now, is an heirloom from
Bloom’s mother, Ellen. As an organic product that is both fruit and
root but is now shriveled, it gestures toward Bloom’s anxieties about
fertility and his family line. Most important, however, is the
potato’s connection to Ireland—Bloom’s potato talisman stands for his
frequently overlooked maternal Irish heritage.

As I Lay Dying
Context
WILLIAM FAULKNER WAS BORN in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25,
1897, the oldest of four brothers in a southern family of aristocratic
origin. Faulkner spent much of his life in and around his beloved
hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, where he worked various odd jobs and
wrote in his spare time in the years leading up to his literary fame.
Stints in New York and Paris introduced Faulkner to the culture and
major figures of the Modernist literary movement, an early twentieth-
century response to a world marked by rapid and often bewildering
technological development. Modernism in literature was characterized
by experimentation with language and literary conventions, and
Faulkner became one of the movement’s major figures. In 1924, Faulkner
published his first book, a collection of poetry titled The Marble
Faun. Faulkner published his fourth novel, The Sound and the Fury, in
1929, and though The Sound and the Fury is often considered his
masterpiece, it was his sixth novel, Sanctuary, in 1929, that finally
won him an audience and a literary career. The Sound and the Fury,
however, marked the beginning of Faulkner’s use of experimental
narrative techniques to explore the psychological complexity of his
characters and their interactions more thoroughly than a traditional
style would have allowed.
As I Lay Dying, originally published in 1930, is one of the most vivid
testaments to the power of this new style, with Faulkner’s usually
complex and lengthy paragraphs trimmed down with a conscientious
economy to form a clear, unified plot. Much of this clarity can be
attributed to the intensity of Faulkner’s vision for the work and the
careful planning and outlining he did before sitting down to write.
Whereas Faulkner conceived many of his other works in a scattered
fashion, he fully imagined the innovative concepts of As I Lay Dying
ahead of time, furiously scribbling down his revelations on the back
of an upturned wheelbarrow. This organization reflects the great hopes
that Faulkner pinned on the novel—he had recently married his high
school sweetheart, Estelle Oldham, and hoped his saga of the Bundren
family would finally ensure a steady income for his family and a
greater literary reputation for himself. The result is a novel of some
daring, one that forgoes the unified perspective of a single narrator
and fragments its text into fifty-nine segments voiced from fifteen
different perspectives. In writing As I Lay Dying in this way,
Faulkner requires his readers to take an active part in constructing
the story, allows for multiple and sometimes conflicting
interpretations, and achieves remarkable levels of psychological
insight.
In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner first introduces Yoknapatawpha County, a
fictional rendition of his native Lafayette County, Mississippi, which
became the setting for most of his best-known works. The novels set in
Yoknapatawpha County can even be read as one intricate story, in which
the same places, events, families, and people turn up over and over
again. For example, Vernon and Cora Tull, who appear in As I Lay
Dying, also appear in The Hamlet, a later novel. Before Faulkner, the
American South was widely portrayed in American literature as a
backward, impossibly foreign land. The complexity and sophistication
of the Yoknapatawpha novels changed many of these perceptions, and it
is largely due to Faulkner’s influence that the South is now
recognized as one of the country’s most fertile literary regions.
Faulkner himself, however, did not fare well financially, and he was
eventually forced to take work as a screenwriter in Hollywood to
supplement his dwindling income. His fortunes were revived, however,
with the 1946 publication of The Portable Faulkner, which featured a
large and varied selection of his writings. He won the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1949, and a pair of Pulitzer Prizes followed in 1955 and
1962. Faulkner continued to write about Yoknapatawpha until his death
in Byhalia, Mississippi, on July 6, 1962, at the age of sixty-four.
Plot Overview
ADDIE BUNDREN, THE WIFE of Anse Bundren and the matriarch of a poor
southern family, is very ill, and is expected to die soon. Her oldest
son, Cash, puts all of his carpentry skills into preparing her coffin,
which he builds right in front of Addie’s bedroom window. Although
Addie’s health is failing rapidly, two of her other sons, Darl and
Jewel, leave town to make a delivery for the Bundrens’ neighbor,
Vernon Tull, whose wife and two daughters have been tending to Addie.
Shortly after Darl and Jewel leave, Addie dies. The youngest Bundren
child, Vardaman, associates his mother’s death with that of a fish he
caught and cleaned earlier that day. With some help, Cash completes
the coffin just before dawn. Vardaman is troubled by the fact that his
mother is nailed shut inside a box, and while the others sleep, he
bores holes in the lid, two of which go through his mother’s face.
Addie and Anse’s daughter, Dewey Dell, whose recent sexual liaisons
with a local farmhand named Lafe have left her pregnant, is so
overwhelmed by anxiety over her condition that she barely mourns her
mother’s death. A funeral service is held on the following day, where
the women sing songs inside the Bundren house while the men stand
outside on the porch talking to each other.
Darl, who narrates much of this first section, returns with Jewel a
few days later, and the presence of buzzards over their house lets
them know their mother is dead. On seeing this sign, Darl sardonically
reassures Jewel, who is widely perceived as ungrateful and uncaring,
that he can be sure his beloved horse is not dead. Addie has made Anse
promise that she will be buried in the town of Jefferson, and though
this request is a far more complicated proposition than burying her at
home, Anse’s sense of obligation, combined with his desire to buy a
set of false teeth, compels him to fulfill Addie’s dying wish. Cash,
who has broken his leg on a job site, helps the family lift the
unbalanced coffin, but it is Jewel who ends up manhandling it, almost
single-handedly, into the wagon. Jewel refuses, however, to actually
come in the wagon, and follows the rest of the family riding on his
horse, which he bought when he was young by secretly working nights on
a neighbor’s land.
On the first night of their journey, the Bundrens stay at the home of
a generous local family, who regards the Bundrens’ mission with
skepticism. Due to severe flooding, the main bridges leading over the
local river have been flooded or washed away, and the Bundrens are
forced to turn around and attempt a river-crossing over a makeshift
ford. When a stray log upsets the wagon, the coffin is knocked out,
Cash’s broken leg is reinjured, and the team of mules drowns. Vernon
Tull sees the wreck, and helps Jewel rescue the coffin and the wagon
from the river. Together, the family members and Tull search the
riverbed for Cash’s tools.
Cora, Tull’s wife, remembers Addie’s unchristian inclination to
respect her son Jewel more than God. Addie herself, speaking either
from her coffin or in a leap back in time to her deathbed, recalls
events from her life: her loveless marriage to Anse; her affair with
the local minister, Whitfield, which led to Jewel’s conception; and
the birth of her various children. Whitfield recalls traveling to the
Bundrens’ house to confess the affair to Anse, and his eventual
decision not to say anything after all.
A horse doctor sets Cash’s broken leg, while Cash faints from the pain
without ever complaining. Anse is able to purchase a new team of mules
by mortgaging his farm equipment, using money that he was saving for
his false teeth and money that Cash was saving for a new gramophone,
and trading in Jewel’s horse. The family continues on its way. In the
town of Mottson, residents react with horror to the stench coming from
the Bundren wagon. While the family is in town, Dewey Dell tries to
buy a drug that will abort her unwanted pregnancy, but the pharmacist
refuses to sell it to her, and advises marriage instead. With cement
the family has purchased in town, Darl creates a makeshift cast for
Cash’s broken leg, which fits poorly and only increases Cash’s pain.
The Bundrens then spend the night at a local farm owned by a man named
Gillespie. Darl, who has been skeptical of their mission for some
time, burns down the Gillespie barn with the intention of incinerating
the coffin and Addie’s rotting corpse. Jewel rescues the animals in
the barn, then risks his life to drag out Addie’s coffin. Darl lies on
his mother’s coffin and cries.
The next day, the Bundrens arrive in Jefferson and bury Addie. Rather
than face a lawsuit for Darl’s criminal barn burning, the Bundrens
claim that Darl is insane, and give him to a pair of men who commit
him to a Jackson mental institution. Dewey Dell tries again to buy an
abortion drug at the local pharmacy, where a boy working behind the
counter claims to be a doctor and tricks her into exchanging sexual
services for what she soon realizes is not an actual abortion drug.
The following morning, the children are greeted by their father, who
sports a new set of false teeth and, with a mixture of shame and
pride, introduces them to his new bride, a local woman he meets while
borrowing shovels with which to bury Addie.
Character List
Addie Bundren - The wife of Anse Bundren and mother to Cash, Darl,
Jewel, Dewey Dell, and Vardaman. Addie is a mostly absent protagonist,
and her death triggers the novel’s action. She is a former
schoolteacher whose bitter, loveless life causes her to despise her
husband and to invest all of her love in her favorite child, Jewel,
rather than in the rest of her family or God.
Addie Bundren (In-Depth Analysis)
Anse Bundren - The head of the Bundren family. Anse is a poor farmer
afflicted with a hunchback, whose instincts are overwhelmingly
selfish. His poor childrearing skills seem to be largely responsible
for his children’s various predicaments. Alternately hated and
disrespected by his children, Anse nonetheless succeeds in achieving
his two greatest goals in one fell swoop: burying his dead wife in her
hometown of Jefferson, and acquiring a new set of false teeth.
Darl Bundren - The second Bundren child. Darl is the most sensitive
and articulate of the surviving Bundrens and delivers the greatest
number of interior monologues in the novel. As the family encounters
disaster upon disaster during the trip, Darl’s frustration with the
whole process leads him to try to end things decisively by
incinerating his dead mother’s coffin.
Darl Bundren (In-Depth Analysis)
Jewel - The bastard child of Addie and Whitfield, the minister.
Though Darl seems to understand him, Jewel remains the novel’s
greatest mystery, and is the least represented in its many sections.
Jewel has a proud, fiercely independent nature that most of his family
and neighbors confuse for selfishness. His passionate, brooding
nature, however, reveals a real love and dedication to his mother, and
he becomes a fierce protector of her coffin.
Cash Bundren - The eldest Bundren child and a skilled carpenter. Cash
is the paragon of patience and selflessness, almost to the point of
absurdity. He refuses ever to complain about his broken, festering
leg, allowing the injury to degenerate to the point that he may never
walk again. Cash emerges as one of the novel’s few consistently stable
characters.
Dewey Dell Bundren - The only Bundren daughter. Dewey Dell is
seventeen, and a recent sexual experience has left her pregnant.
Increasingly desperate, she finds her mind occupied exclusively with
her pregnancy, and views all men with varying degrees of suspicion.
Vardaman Bundren - The youngest of the Bundren children. Vardaman has
a lively imagination, and he views his mother’s death through the same
lens with which he views a fish he has recently caught and cleaned.
Although his ramblings at the beginning of the novel border on the
maniacal, Vardaman proves to be a thoughtful and innocent child.
Vernon Tull - The Bundrens’ wealthier neighbor. Tull is both a critic
of and an unappreciated help to the Bundrens. He hires Darl, Jewel,
and Cash for odd jobs, and helps the family cross the river in spite
of its overt hostility toward him. Tull and his wife Cora, however,
are critical of the Bundrens’ decision to bury Addie’s body in
Jefferson.
Cora Tull - Vernon Tull’s wife. Cora stays with Addie during Addie’s
final hours. A deeply religious woman and pious to a fault, Cora
frequently and vocally disapproves of Addie’s impiety and behavior.
Lafe - The father of Dewey Dell’s child. While he never appears in
person in the novel, Lafe is certainly a driving force behind many of
Dewey Dell’s thoughts and much of her behavior. In a supreme effort to
disassociate himself from her problems, Lafe gives Dewey Dell ten
dollars with which to pay for an abortion.
Whitfield - The local minister. Held up by Cora Tull as the pinnacle
of piety, Whitfield is in fact a hypocrite. His affair with Addie
results in Jewel’s conception, and, though Whitfield resolves to
confess the affair to Anse, he ends up deciding that the mere
intention to confess will do just as well.
Peabody - The severely overweight rural doctor who attends to Addie
and later to Cash. Peabody is extremely critical of the way Anse
treats his children.
Samson - The local farmer who puts up the Bundrens on the first
evening of their disastrous funeral journey. Samson sees the Bundrens’
problems as a judgment on the family’s uncouth manners and on Addie
and Anse’s disregard for God and their own children.
Armstid - A local farmer who puts up the Bundrens on the second
evening of their funeral journey. Anse repeatedly and rigidly refuses
Armstid’s offer to lend Anse a team of mules.
Gillespie - A farmer who puts up the Bundrens later in their journey.
Moseley - The Mottson druggist who indignantly refuses Dewey Dell’s
request for an abortion. Moseley’s stern lecture to Dewey Dell is both
the embodiment of sanctimoniousness and, some might say, of fatherly
caring.
MacGowan - A rather despicable young employee at a Jefferson
drugstore. MacGowan extorts a sexual favor from Dewey Dell in return
for a fake abortion treatment.
The Gillespie boy - Gillespie’s son, who helps Jewel save the animals
from the burning barn.
Analysis of Major Characters
Addie Bundren
Though she is dead for most of the novel, Addie is one of its most
important characters, as her unorthodox wish to be buried near her
blood relatives rather than with her own family is at the core of the
story. Addie, whose voice is expressed through Cora Tull’s memories
and through her own brief section in the narrative, appears to be a
strong-willed and intelligent woman haunted by a sense of
disillusionment. Unable to bring herself to love the coarse, helpless
Anse or the children she bears him, Addie sees marital love and
motherhood as empty concepts, words that exist solely to fill voids in
people’s lives. After she bears a second child to Anse, Addie first
expresses her wish to be buried far away, stating her belief that “the
reason for living [is] to get ready to stay dead a long time.” The
little value she does find in life, from her brief affair with
Whitfield and her love for her son Jewel, ends on a morbid note. Jewel
treats Addie harshly while she is alive, and only once she is dead
does he “save [her] from the water and from the fire,” as she always
believed he would. Addie invests her life and energy in a love that
finds repayment and comes to fruition only after she is dead.
As a corpse, Addie is equally important to the novel, hindering and
dividing her family as much as when she is alive. Many of the
incidents after Addie’s death reflect this feeling that some part of
Addie is still living. Vardaman drills holes in the coffin so that the
dead Addie might have air to breathe, and when Darl and Vardaman
listen to the noises of the decomposing body, Darl claims that these
sounds are Addie speaking. Even the stench of Addie’s corpse
captivates a large audience of strangers. The notion that there is
continuity between the articulate human voice of the living Addie and
the putrid biological mass that is the dead Addie is among the most
emotionally powerful ideas presented in the novel.
Darl Bundren
Darl, who speaks in nineteen of the novel’s fifty-nine sections, is in
many ways its most cerebral character. Darl’s knack for probing
analysis and poetic descriptions mean that his voice becomes the
closest thing the story offers to a guiding, subjective narrator. Yet
it is this same intellectual nature that prevents him from achieving
either the flashy heroism of his brother Jewel or the self-sacrificing
loyalty of his brother Cash. In fact, it prevents Darl from believing
wholeheartedly in the family’s mission. Darl registers his objection
to the entire burial outing by apparently abandoning his mother’s
coffin during the botched river-crossing, and by setting fire to
Gillespie’s barn with the eight-day-old corpse inside.
Another consequence of Darl’s philosophical nature is his alienation
from the community around him. According to Cora Tull, people find
Darl strange and unsettling. He is also able to understand private
things about the lives of the people around him, as he does when he
guesses at Dewey Dell’s fling with Lafe or perceives that Anse is not
Jewel’s real father. At times, Darl is almost clairvoyant, as
evidenced by the scene in which he is able to describe vividly the
scene at his mother’s death, even though he and Jewel are far away
from the scene when she dies. Other characters alienate Darl for fear
that he will get too close to them and their secrets. It is perhaps
this fear, more than Darl’s act of arson, that leads his family to
have him committed to an insane asylum at the end of the novel—after
all, Dewey Dell, who realizes that Darl knows her sordid secret, is
the first to restrain him when the officers from the asylum arrive.
Jewel Bundren
Because Jewel speaks very few words of his own throughout the novel,
he is defined by his actions, as filtered through the eyes of other
characters. Jewel’s uncommunicative nature creates a great distance
between him and us, and a great deal of room exists for debating the
meaning of Jewel’s actions. Darl’s frequent descriptions of Jewel as
“wooden” reinforce the image of Jewel as impenetrable to others, and
also establish a relationship between Jewel and the wooden coffin that
comes to symbolize his mother. Whether or not Jewel returns his
mother’s devotion is also debatable—his behavior toward her while she
is alive seems callous. Even as Addie lies on her deathbed, Jewel
refuses to say good-bye to her, and harshly asserts his independence
from her earlier on with his purchase of a horse. Jewel’s actions
after Addie’s death show, however, that Jewel does care deeply about
her, as he makes great sacrifices to assure the safe passage of her
body to her chosen resting place, agreeing even to the sale of his
beloved horse. Similarly, Jewel’s cold, rough-spoken behavior toward
the rest of his family contrasts sharply with the heroic devotion he
demonstrates in his deeds, such as when he searches valiantly for
Cash’s tools after the river-crossing and nearly comes to blows with a
stranger whom he believes has insulted the family. In general, Jewel
is an independent, solitary man of action, and these traits put him in
an antagonistic relationship with the introspective Darl.
Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
The Impermanence of Existence and Identity
The death of Addie Bundren inspires several characters to wrestle with
the rather sizable questions of existence and identity. Vardaman is
bewildered and horrified by the transformation of a fish he caught and
cleaned into “pieces of not-fish,” and associates that image with the
transformation of Addie from a person into an indefinable nonperson.
Jewel never really speaks for himself, but his grief is summed up for
him by Darl, who says that Jewel’s mother is a horse. For his own
part, Darl believes that since the dead Addie is now best described as
“was” rather than “is,” it must be the case that she no longer exists.
If his mother does not exist, Darl reasons, then Darl has no mother
and, by implication, does not exist. These speculations are not mere
games of language and logic. Rather, they have tangible, even
terrible, consequences for the novel’s characters. Vardaman and Darl,
the characters for whom these questions are the most urgent, both find
their hold on reality loosened as they pose such inquiries. Vardaman
babbles senselessly early in the novel, while Darl is eventually
declared insane. The fragility and uncertainty of human existence is
further illustrated at the end of the novel, when Anse introduces his
new wife as “Mrs. Bundren,” a name that, until recently, has belonged
to Addie. If the identity of Mrs. Bundren can be usurped so quickly,
the inevitable conclusion is that any individual’s identity is equally
unstable.
The Tension Between Words and Thoughts
Addie’s assertion that words are “just words,” perpetually falling
short of the ideas and emotions they seek to convey, reflects the
distrust with which the novel as a whole treats verbal communication.
While the inner monologues that make up the novel demonstrate that the
characters have rich inner lives, very little of the content of these
inner lives is ever communicated between individuals. Indeed,
conversations tend to be terse, halting, and irrelevant to what the
characters are thinking at the time. When, for example, Tull and
several other local men are talking with Cash about his broken leg
during Addie’s funeral, we are presented with two entirely separate
conversations. One, printed in normal type, is vague and simple and is
presumably the conversation that is actually occurring. The second, in
italics, is far richer in content and is presumably the one that the
characters would have if they actually spoke their minds. All of the
characters are so fiercely protective of their inner thoughts that the
rich content of their minds is translated to only the barest, most
begrudging scraps of dialogue, which in turn leads to any number of
misunderstandings and miscommunications.
The Relationship Between Childbearing and Death
As I Lay Dying is, in its own way, a relentlessly cynical novel, and
it robs even childbirth of its usual rehabilitative powers. Instead of
functioning as an antidote to death, childbirth seems an introduction
to it—for both Addie and Dewey Dell, giving birth is a phenomenon that
kills the people closest to it, even if they are still physically
alive. For Addie, the birth of her first child seems like a cruel
trick, an infringement on her precious solitude, and it is Cash’s
birth that first causes Addie to refer to Anse as dead. Birth becomes
for Addie a final obligation, and she sees both Dewey Dell and
Vardaman as reparations for the affair that led to Jewel’s conception,
the last debts she must pay before preparing herself for death. Dewey
Dell’s feelings about pregnancy are no more positive: her condition
becomes a constant concern, causes her to view all men as potential
sexual predators, and transforms her entire world, as she says in an
early section, into a “tub full of guts.” Birth seems to spell out a
prescribed death for women and, by proxy, the metaphorical deaths of
their entire households.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that
can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Pointless Acts of Heroism
As I Lay Dying is filled with moments of great heroism and with
struggles that are almost epic, but the novel’s take on such battles
is ironic at best, and at times it even makes them seem downright
absurd or mundane. The Bundrens’ effort to get their wagon across the
flooded river is a struggle that could have been pulled from a more
conventional adventure novel, but is undermined by the fact that it
occurs for a questionable purpose. One can argue that the mission of
burying Addie in Jefferson is as much about Anse’s false teeth as
about Addie’s dying wishes. Cash’s martyrdom seems noble, but his
uncomplaining tolerance of the pain from his injuries eventually
becomes more ridiculous than heroic. Jewel’s rescuing of the livestock
is daring, but it also nullifies Darl’s burning of the barn, which,
while criminal, could be seen as the most daring and noble act of all.
Every act of heroism, if not ridiculous on its own, counteracts an
equally epic act, a vicious cycle that lends an absurdity that is both
comic and tragic to the novel.
Interior Monologues
As Faulkner was embarking on his literary career in the early
twentieth century, a number of Modernist writers were experimenting
with narrative techniques that depended more on explorations of
individual consciousness than on a string of events to create a story.
James Joyce’s Ulysses and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time are
among the most famous and successful of these experiments, but
Faulkner also made a substantial contribution to this movement.
As I Lay Dying is written as a series of stream-of-consciousness
monologues, in which the characters’ thoughts are presented in all
their uncensored chaos, without the organizing presence of an
objective narrator. This technique turns character psychology into a
dominant concern and is able to present that psychology with much more
complexity and authority than a more traditional narrative style. At
the same time, it forces us to work hard to understand the text.
Instead of being presented with an objective framework of events,
somewhere in the jumble of images, memories, and unexplained
allusions, we are forced to take the pieces each character gives and
make something of them ourselves.
Issues of Social Class
In the American South, where Faulkner lived and wrote, social class
was more hierarchical and loomed larger as a concern than elsewhere in
the United States, and it is clearly engrained in the fabric of As I
Lay Dying. Faulkner proved to be unusual in his ability to depict poor
rural folk with grace, dignity, and poetic grandeur, without
whitewashing or ignoring their circumstances. The Bundrens find
willing, even gracious hosts at neighboring rural farms, but their
welcome in the more affluent towns is cold at best: a marshal tells
them their corpse smells too rancid for them to stay, a town man pulls
a knife on Jewel, and an unscrupulous shop attendant takes advantage
of Dewey Dell. On the other hand, despite their poor grammar and
limited vocabularies, Faulkner’s characters express their thoughts
with a sort of pared-down poeticism. Exactly what Faulkner’s
intentions were for his family of rural southerners is unclear—As I
Lay Dying has been read as both a poignant tribute to and a scathing
send-up of rural southern values—but the Bundrens’ background
unmistakably shapes their journey and the interactions they have along
the way.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
Animals
Shortly after Addie’s death, the Bundren children seize on animals as
symbols of their deceased mother. Vardaman declares that his mother is
the fish he caught. Darl asserts that Jewel’s mother is his horse.
Dewey Dell calls the family cow a woman as she mulls over her
pregnancy only minutes after she has lost Addie, her only female
relative. For very different reasons, the grief-stricken characters
seize on animals as emblems of their own situations. Vardaman sees
Addie in his fish because, like the fish, she has been transformed to
a different state than when she was alive. The cow, swollen with milk,
signifies to Dewey Dell the unpleasantness of being stuck with an
unwanted burden. Jewel and his horse add a new wrinkle to the use of
animals as symbols. To us, based on Darl’s word, the horse is a symbol
of Jewel’s love for his mother. For Jewel, however, the horse, based
on his riding of it, apparently symbolizes a hard-won freedom from the
Bundren family. That we can draw such different conclusions from the
novel’s characters makes the horse in many ways representative of the
unpredictable and subjective nature of symbols in As I Lay Dying.
Addie’s Coffin
Addie’s coffin comes to stand literally for the enormous burden of
dysfunction that Addie’s death, and circumstances in general, place on
the Bundren family. Cash, always calm and levelheaded, manufactures
the coffin with great craft and care, but the absurdities pile up
almost immediately—Addie is placed in the coffin upside down, and
Vardaman drills holes in her face. Like the Bundrens’ lives, the
coffin is thrown off balance by Addie’s corpse. The coffin becomes the
gathering point for all of the family’s dysfunction, and putting it to
rest is also crucial to the family’s ability to return to some sort of
normalcy.
Tools
Tools, in the form of Cash’s carpentry tools and Anse’s farm
equipment, become symbols of respectable living and stability thrown
into jeopardy by the recklessness of the Bundrens’ journey. Cash’s
tools seem as though they should have significance for Cash alone, but
when these tools are scattered by the rushing river and the oncoming
log, the whole family, as well as Tull, scrambles to recover them.
Anse’s farm equipment is barely mentioned, but ends up playing a
crucial role in the Bundrens’ journey when Anse mortgages the most
expensive parts of it to buy a new team of mules. This trade is
significant, as the money from Anse’s pilfering of Cash’s gramophone
fund and the sale of Jewel’s horse represents the sacrifice of these
characters’ greatest dreams. But the fact that Anse throws in his farm
equipment should not be overlooked, as this equipment guarantees the
family’s livelihood. In an effort to salvage the burial trip, Anse
jeopardizes the very tools the family requires to till its land and
survive.