1841: Emerson, Self-Reliance

Emerson in 1857.

Harvard

Emerson was 14 when he enrolled in Harvard College. He graduated, four years later, in 1821 (550).

Schoolmaster

For several years after his graduation, he was a "hopeless Schoolmaster" at several Boston-area schools (550).

Ministry

In 1825, he began studying to become a minister at Harvard Divinity school, and began preaching a year later. Like Unitarians at the time, he did not believe that "human beings were innately depraved" (551).

Emerson aligned with those in his church who "interpreted biblical miracles as stories comparable to myths of other cultures." In time, Emerson developed "a greater faith in individual moral sentiment and intution than in revealed religion" (551).

Widower

After the death of his 19-year-old wife in 1832, Emerson resigned his pastorate. He claimed that "he had become so skeptical of the validity of the Lord's Supper that he could no longer administer the sacrament" (551).

Because of the money his wife left him, he did not need to produce a constant income, and he "began a new career as a lecturer, speaking around New England in the lyceums" (551).

Transcendentalists

Emerson and his allies became known as "Transcendentalists" for their faith in "the mind as actively intuitive and creative" (551). In time, he gave more than fifteen hundred lectures (552).

Social reform?

Emerson "accepted the idea of racial differences and hierarchies."

In 1844, "he delivered a passionate antislavery address," and in time he condemned the Fugitive Slave Law as an "outrage" and slavery as "abhorrent."

He was an advocate for women's rights.

Emerson was "skeptical of social reforms that required group participation," and he never achieved national prominence as a social reformer (552).

Legacy

According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature: Beginning to 1865, Shorter Ninth Edition, Emerson is "arguably the most influential American writer of the nineteenth century--the writer with whom numerous other significant writers of the time sought to come to terms."

1841: Harrison and Tyler

William Henry Harrison, Whig from Ohio, beat sitting President Martin Van Buren by 6% of the popular vote.

On the day he took office, Harrison gave a long speech in which he said it was wrong for anyone to try to make slavery illegal in states where it was legal. Harison said that if the people who opposed slavery continued to do that, the result would be "disunion, violence, and civil war, and the ultimate destruction our free institutions."

John Tyler (at left), Whig/Independent fom Virigina, became President in April after Harrison died of penumonia.

Invites Texas to Join the United States as a Slave State

Tyler, who held seventy African-Americans captive as salves on his Virginia farm, wanted to increase the number of states that allowed slavery, so he encouraged the Congress to invite Texas to join the United States. The Mexican Congress said the document that said Texas was an independent country was invalid because their President, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, was a prisoner of war when he signed it, and the Mexican Congress never approved it. In their eyes, Texas was still a part of Mexico. The leaders of Mexico said if the U.S. tried to take over Texas, they would consider it an act of war. In spite of this, in the spring of 1845, in one of his last acts as President, Tyler signed a document welcoming Texas to join the United States as a state where slavery was legal.

15-17B. "Self-Reliance" (1841) by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Undated image of an engraving of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ideology: A Personal God

1. Emerson recounts a conversation with a religious friend who tells him not to listen to his impulses, as they may be of the Devil. Emerson replies “… if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” He views a person’s relationship with the Christian god as something that is deeply personal, so religious rituals and the opinions of others are irrelevant. He even says that he prefers the “silent church” to “a Christianity entrenched in establishments.”

Ideology: The Individual and Society

2. Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” could also be titled “Pride.” I think that Emerson disregarded the idea that wisdom is not only found from within and from personal experiences but also from others and what people teach one another. To believe that one can succeed in life without the wisdom of others is a bit foolish.

Ideology: Children and Society
3. [Emerson] argues that people, especially Americans, do not act on instinct enough and instead “surrender liberty.” Emerson believes that “imitation is suicide” which is caused by adults copying one another because they think it is what they are supposed to do. He writes that we should instead be like children or animals as “their eye is as yet unconquered” by what adults (society) believe to be proper. If one where to allow their “childlike” wonder and instinct to shine through, then one would be one step closer to being “great.”

Ideology: The unity of all things
4. This excerpt from “Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson sings the tune of that of a Taoist—endorsing the universal nature of all things in statements such as, “These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.” Emerson is placing the rose (a symbol of nature, a symbol of beauty, a symbol of nature’s beauty) on a pedestal in order to encourage mankind to embrace their essential qualities, those immutable truths of our character.

Ideology: Eastern Philosophy
5. Emerson’s [advocacy] for self-reliance retains elements of Eastern philosophy, such as Taoism, as I will define as the act of inaction and the release of attachments to expectation. To qualify this claim, I present the following quotation from his excerpt: “He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.” This notion suggests that to desire something, to form an attachment to an expectation, is falling short of the beauty and goal of life. From the Tao te Ching, there exists a similar quote, reading, “The Master’s power is like this. He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire. He never expects results; thus he is never disappointed. He is never disappointed; thus his spirit never grows old” [(55)]. Like the Tao te Ching, Emerson is arguing that true satisfaction is found from within oneself, and that the senseless pursuit of expectation will leave one feeling unfulfilled.

Ideology: The Benefits of Travel

6. I felt a certain interest in Emerson’s idea of travel, that I feel is very relevant to our world. “Travelling is a fool’s paradise,” said Emerson, “We owe our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing.” What I think he means by this is that people travel to discover new places and new experiences, the allure of it all. But at the end of the day, we are stuck with ourselves wherever we go, and cannot escape that. Emerson gives a scenario in which he paints a picture of this idea. Emerson says that “at home, I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness.” However, when he wakes up, realizes that “there is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.” This metaphorical situation introduced by Emerson is in reality a situation that happens every single day. People feel sadness, depression, and discontentment. So, they try to run away from those problems, by either travelling or simply leaving their houses. Instead of doing what should really be done, confronting the problems head on, and recognizing what is causing ill feelings.

Ideology: The Benefits of Study

7. Emerson mentioned something that I do not entirely agree with [...:]“Every great man is a unique… Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare” (Emerson). This is a great point, originality and innovation are key in this area, but Emerson’s argument here feels as though influence and inspiration did not play a role in helping create a “great man”. I agree that a Shakespeare will not be made by studying Shakespeare, but I do not believe that anyone can become a “great man” just by being entirely unique. There’s a sense of genius to their originality that can not be fully replicated, but their influence can help guide others to that level.

Ideology: The Individual and Society

8. Emerson does not believe the [progress] of society means that individuals themselves improve. He believes that people only approve when they look inward and not outward, and that limiting your view of success to the success of society as a whole will leave you unfulfilled. He argues that being a man means being a “nonconformist” and that life is for the individual “not for a spectacle”.

9. Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” could also be titled “Pride.” I think that Emerson disregarded the idea that wisdom is not only found from within and from personal experiences but also from others and what people teach one another. To believe that one can succeed in life without the wisdom of others is a bit foolish.

10. He has quite a [skeptical] view of society and appears to be against working for someone, considering other people’s ideas and charitable efforts. He claims, “we have an ambition out of all proportion to our practical force, and so do beg day and night continually.” Although I can see the point he is trying to make in that one should always exercise their own awareness and truth so as not to be coerced into one centralized mentality, I think he could be neglecting to see a crucial element to evolution. Regardless of if you agree or disagree with the mechanics of society, refusing to see other opinions or beliefs can in some sense jeopardize the potential for change.

Quotations and Questions for Consideration

11.   "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius" (596).

• Compare with imperialism
• Question: Is Emerson’s attitude friendly to imperialism?

12.   "An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called 'the height of Rome'; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons" (602).

• Compare the "Great Man" theory of history with the views of  Marx and Tolstoy
• Question: Does the “Great Man” theory of history encourage particular political attitudes? Is it anti-democratic, for example?
• Question: Which is a greater threat in society today: “herd mentality” or individual arrogance?

13.   "[The child, the babe, the brute] cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent genuine verdict" (597).

• Compare with Kant's "categorical imperative"
• Question: Which is a greater threat in society today: people who think too much about the consequences of their actions (including how these actions will be seen and judged by others) or people who do what they think is right and don’t think about the consequences at all?

8.

14. "Discontent is the want of self-reliance; it is infirmity of will. Regret calamaties, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with the soutl. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide"  (608).

• Compare with Jane Tompkins on the power of tears in Uncle Tom's Cabin

15. "The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. . . . He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the ; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his memory . . ." (611).

• Compare with Thoreau

1843: Poe, The Black Cat

"Edgar Allan Poe" by Hadi Kraimi

An Orphan

Edgar Poe was two years old when his mother died in 1811. With his father out of the picture, Poe was taken in and raised by the family of John Allan, a Richmond, Virginia tobacco merchant.

Childhood Years with Foster Parents in England

In 1815, Poe was 6 years old, when he and the Allans moved to England. Poe went to good schools there.

A Familial Rift

In 1820, Poe and the Allans moved back to Richmond.

In 1824, John Allan's business failed, and he and Poe had a falling out.

Freshman Flame Out

In 1826, at the age of 15, Poe enrolled as a student at the University of Virginia. His father provided him with minimal financial support. Poe began drinking. He incurred debts, which increased when he tried gambling to pay them off.  He had to leave the University before the end of his first year.

In the Army

In 1827, John Allan kicked Poe out of his house, and Poe joined the army and published a collection of his poems.

In 1830, Poe was admitted to West Point. When John Allan remarried, Poe lost hope of inheriting his foster father's wealth (which included slaves), stopped going to classes, and was expelled.

Poverty and Publications

Beginning in 1831, Poe wrote and published poems and stories while living in poverty with relatives in Baltimore, including his aunt and his eight-year-old cousin Virginia.

Silent on Slavery

In 1835, he moved back to Richmond and became an editorial assistant at the Southern Literary Messenger, which "adopted a middle-of-the-road position linking slvery to states' rights rather than God's will" (Levine 732). According to the Norton Anthology of American Literature, Beginnings to 1865, "Like many white writers of the time, Poe sometimes resorted to racial stereotypes, and he sometimes conveyed his fears of the possibilities of black violence" (Levine 732).  Even though Poe "spent years in the South and even held hopes of inheriting the property of a slaveholder, the fact is that his relative silence on the political debate on slavery makes him notably different from most southern intellectuals of the time . . . who went on record with their proslavery views" (Levine 733).

My Cousin, My Child-Bride

In 1836, he was 27 when he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia.

Alcoholism and Literary Rise

Fired from his editorial job in 1837, in part because of his drinking, Poe and his wife and aunt/mother-in-law moved to New York City. That year, he published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

In 1838, Poe moved to Philadelphia, where he got a steady job as a co-editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. While there, he published "The Fall of the House of Usher." In 1840, he was fired for his drinking.

Inventing Detective Fiction

Poe was subsequently employed by a new magazine called Graham's, where he published "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which "many critics regard as the earliest example of detective fiction" (Levine 733).

Literary Heights

"The Tell-Tale Heart" was published in January 1843 in The Pioneer.

"The Black Cat" was published in August 1843 in the Saturday Evening Post.

In 1844, he moved his family back to New York City, where he worked at another journal. In 1845, his poem "The Raven," "was published.

Tragedy and Death

In 1847, his wife, Virginia, died from tuberculosis.

In 1849, Poe was found unconscious in Baltimore and taken to a hospital, where he died.

Legacy

Poe was a pragmatic professional writer "who recognized the advent of a mass market and wanted to succeed in it." He did this by writing stories about "aristocratic madmen, self-tormented murderers, neurasthenic necrophiliacs" (Levine 734).  Poe, "more than most, understood his audience . . . and sought ways to gain its attention for stories that, aside from their shock value, regularly addressed compelling philosophical, cultural, psychological, and scientific issues; the place of irrationality, violence and repression in human consciousness and social institutions; the alienation and dislocations attending democratic mass culture and the modernizing forces of the time; the tug and pull of the material and the corporeal; the absolutely terrifying dimensions of one's own mind; and new ideas about technology and the physical universe" (Levine 734).

18B. "The Black Cat" (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe

"Edgar Allan Poe" by Pablo Lopez

Aesthetics: How Would the Cat Survive?
1) The cat also survives within the wall for four days, which a normal cat probably would not be able to do?

Ideology: Domestic Abuse

2) With his violent outbursts the narrator tries to defend himself by trying to reason that “Who has not… found himself committing a vile or a silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not,” and that his violence was “because I knew it had loved me” (Poe). Domestic abusers often use these phrases to try and make others see sense in their actions or prevent consequences from arising.

Ideology: Do We Become What We Read?
3) His stories and poems have always been too dark to me, and I think this can be damaging to the human soul if we’re not careful. While it is not wrong to wrestle with hard truths in life, I do not recommend glorifying darkness or wickedness, and I think Poe is a villain of the arts because of this. I believe that art was and is meant to glorify God, and although mankind is fallen, we should not dwell too heavily on that fact, but look to the One Who made us and gave His Son to save sinners.

Ideology: Rage-aholic
4) The fact that the character later kills Pluto in a fit of rage demonstrates how men have difficulty controlling their anger even when it comes to a “friendship” that has lasted for several years. This idea is further supported by the main character killing his wife after the “blow was arrested by [her] hand” and she endures her husband’s wrath that was originally meant for the new cat. Before her death, the wife attempts to keep the main character from ruining another good relationship even though he has already damaged his with her, implying the difference in “cruel” men and “uncomplaining” women.

Ideology: Alcohol and the Author
5) Despite being a once good and caring man, due to his excessive consumption of alcohol he “grew, day by day, […] more regardless of the feelings of others,” and he began to “offer [his wife] personal violence,” and of his many pets he “not only neglected, but ill-used them” (767). Despite how Poe makes a character so easy to dislike, its concerning that Poe himself had his own experiences with alcohol, and that his explanation on the “spirit of Perverseness” could come from a place of personal experience. He explains that the horrible actions he carried out upon poor Pluto were due to “the unfathomable longing for the soul to vex itself- […]- to do wrong for wrong’s sake only” (767). Though he does not put much effort into displaying how to avoid or cope with this state of mental extremity, he describes the demented place’s atmosphere in such a way to invite the consideration of the “spirit of perverseness” and where and how it manifests in our lives.

Ideology: Self-Hatred
6) The narrator is slowly losing his humanity throughout the story, and when he sees the kindness of his cat and his wife, he becomes enraged and bitter at what he himself has become. This is why he lashes out and kills them.

Ideology: The Witch Made Me Do It
7) Poe does not depict a man who merely exclaims his own innocence, rather, he creates a character who shifts accountability and blame onto a black cat—not necessarily directly, but surely indirectly. The narrator first creates his red herring in his saying, “[My wife] made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. […] I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered,” and although it may be that black cats, and in particular, this black cat, is a supernatural force of nature to be reckoned with, the cat is used, effectively, in this story to justify a drunkard’s explosive anger and arrogance.

Aesthetics: For the Horror of It

8) There [are] several schools of thought regarding why humans enjoy the horror genre; excitation transfer theory proposes that enjoyment of horror (films, in this context) comes from the suspense of a threat, which Poe creates in the narrated telling of this story of the black cat and the escalating nature of the narrator’s transgressions against said cat. The theory further proposes that when the threat is resolved, a “euphoria” is born and the suspense is overcome. The empathetic reader’s resolution is offered directly in this story, as Poe writes, “No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb!—by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman—a howl—a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damnation.” At last! Our conflicted, habitually violent protagonist is damned by his own folly; the black cat he so brutishly struck down avenges his murdered wife, and we, as readers, get to enjoy the afterglow of deserved poetic justice. Alternatively, some theories about enjoyment of the horror genre are built upon precepts from the Five Factor Model, suggesting that those who are high in sensation-seeking may be more apt to turn to horror as form of entertainment. Thus, I propose that Poe effectively captures the off-putting nature of a horror tale, and he demonstrates that humans are drawn to what affirms their own safety and what disturbs them absolutely—ironically, in this context, the two coalesce into one.

Ideology: The Black Cat as Slave?

Lesley Ginsburg "Slavery and the Gothic Horror of Poe's 'The Black Cat'" (1998)

• "Not only does 'The Black Cat' reproduce the struggle between a helpless dependent and an abusive tyrant which figures so prominently in both gothic fictions and abolitionist discourses, but the crumbling edifice of denial exposed by the narrator's confession deconstructs the sentimental strategies of repression so common to antebellum rhetoric" (376).
• ". . . critics have shown that the story reflects contemporary sensationalist fictions, parodies the temperance confessional, and critiques the growing acceptance of the insanity defense in antebellum courtrooms (Reynolds, Matheson, Cleman). But the tale also invokes other discourses central to the 1830s and 1840s, including its rehearsal of the scene of pet abuse so often featured in antebellum child-rearing manuals and its repetition of the obsessive pitting of black against white, dependency against freedom and animal against human, which fueled contemporary debates over chattel slavery and social reform" (376).
• "At the core of the proslavery ideology was the equation of slaves with animals" (380)
• ". . . proslavery rhetoric was quick to sentimentalize the relationship of master and slave by repeated allusions to the cloying imagery of the bonds between humans and domesticated animals, esspecially pets" (381)

1845: Polk

James K. Polk, Democrat from Tennessee, beat Kentucky Whig Henry Clay by 1.4% of the vote in 1844.

Orders Attack on Mexico

Polk holds 25 Blacks captive as slaves on his Tennessee farm, and he is eager to increase the number of the states where slavery was protected by the law. Polk asks Mexico to sell the United States much of its land between Texas and the Pacific coast, but the Mexicans said "no." At the end of 1845, Texas voted to join the United States. At the time, the Texans and the Mexicans also did not agree about the border between them. The Texans said it was the Rio Grande. The Mexicans said it was the Nueces River, which was 165 miles farther north. In early 1846, Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor and 3,400 soldiers to the north shore of the Rio Grande, an area that was inhabited and goverend at the time by Mexicans. When the Mexican army attacked Taylor's forces there, Polk asked the Congress to delcare war on Mexico. They did. After more than 13,000 Americans and 25,000 Mexican were killed, the leaders of the Mexican government asked for peace. Polk told them that to get it, they would have to agree thta the Rio Grande was the border between Texas and Mexico. He also demands that Mexico sell the U.S. the land currently ocupied by California, Arizona, and New Mexico, plus Utah, Nevada, and western Colorado. Not wanting to continue the war, Mexico agrees.

Polk remains in office until 1849.

1845: Douglass

Frederick Bailey was about twenty years old on September 3, 1838, when he went to a Baltimore train station "disguised as a sailor and carrying the borrowed papers of a free Black seaman," boarded a train to New York City, and escaped slavery.

New Bedford Douglass

Days later, Anna, an enslaved woman he was engaged to, joined him, and they were married in New York City on September 15. "They soon left for New Bedford, Massachusetts, where the likelihood of his being captured on a fugitive slave was reduced by assuming the name 'Douglass'" (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Ninth Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 998).

Team Garrison

Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison "was in the audience when Douglass delivered his first antislavery speech, and shortely thereafter he hried Douglass as a speaker in his Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. During 1841-1843, Douglass delivered his antislavery message on behalf Garrison's organization in a number of northern states, and on one occasion in 1843, in Pendleton, Indiana, he was attacked by an anti-abolitionist mob and suffered a borken hand"(The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Ninth Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 998).

Best-seller

Douglass published his Narrative in May 1845 and it became "a bona fide best-seller" (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Ninth Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 998).

Power and Violence

Garrison advocated "moral persuasion over violence," but in time, Garrison and Douglass became estranged, and in 1851, Douglass "defended the strategic use of violence as a response to the violence of slavery" (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Ninth Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 999).

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” (from Douglass's "West India Emancipation" speech, delivered on August 3, 1857, at Canandaigua, New York).

Douglass vs. Covey II

While in his "1845 Narrative, [Douglass] presented himself as relatively isolated from his fellow slaves, describing his fight with Covey as a heroic instance of individual rebellion; in the 1855 My Bondage and My Freedom, he depicted the fight as involving several other African Americans who came to his assistance" (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Ninth Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 999).

Militancy

By the late 1850s, Douglass "became more militant in his writing. Though he refused to participate in John Brown's 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, which he regarded as a suicidal action, he was obliged to flee to Canada and thence to England because of his known association with Brown" (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Ninth Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 999).

Recruiter

During the Civil War, Douglass "became a successful recruiter of Black soldiers, whose ranks included his own sons . . . Douglass subsequently protested directly to President Lincoln over Blacks' unequal pay and treatment in the Union army" (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Ninth Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 1000).

Women's Rights

Although "[a]t times his writing seems to celebrate black manhood, ... Douglass had a longstanding interest in women's rights. Though he broke temporarily with women's rights supporters in 1868-69, when he championed the Fifteenth Amendment (which failed to offer suffrage to women), he had attended the first Women's Right's Convnetion in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and he continued to attend women's rights conventions and to editorialize and lecture in favor of women's rights. His final speech, delivered just hours before he died of a heart attack on February 20, 1895, was at a women's rights rally" (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Ninth Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 999).