Interaction between American Literature and Culture in the 19th Century

Interaction between American Literature and Culture in the 19th Century
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Interaction between American Literature and Culture in the 19th Century
In any era, literature is considered to be the depiction of culture. An artist internalizes feelings, ideas, and appeals from his surroundings and shapes them into an attention-grabbing piece of work using his literary sense (Clarke & Wittenberg, 2017). For this paper, a short story and a poem are chosen from the 19th century to investigate as to how these pieces suggestive of the values are prevailed during the times when they were composed.
The poem chosen for the analysis is “Mother Mind. It is written by Julia Ward Howe (a renowned American poet of the 19th century) (Johnson, 2016). The short story is titled as “The Revolt of Mother” authored by Mary Wilkins Freeman, which is also renowned to be autobiographic due to the resemblance of surroundings featured in the story with Freeman’s lifestyle (Freeman, 1890). Both these pieces are popular contributions to the American literature during said period of time.
To begin, it is important to pay attention to the titles. Both the pieces have “Mother” in common in their titles. The reason for creating this appeal by the authors is in line with the dominant American values where ‘motherhood’ emerged as a high rated theme. The value of motherhood came to notice and, to be a mother, began to be seen as a source of dignity (Ariza, 2017). Even though it was undeniable that mothers were forced to live in deplorable conditions, their importance came to the light in which the artist played a vital role. There is a decades-long eye-opening movement behind, eventually, the creation of the “Mother Day” later (Handwerk, 2017). This implies that the writers have deliberately used this keyword in their titles to derive attention and have the desired impact on their target audience.
Both the poem and the story serve purely as the depiction of the exploitation of women at the hands of men, which was a common observation during the 19th century. In the major part of the literature, women are shown to be suffering while their male counterparts being in the dominating and commanding positions (Postel, 2019). For example, in the story, the mother, Sarah, was promised to be gifted a house by her husband. However, where her husband had promised the built the house, he started digging in collaboration with other men after 40 years of his marriage with Sarah, upon which she was deeply concerned. Her daughter Nanny was about to get married. She asked her son about the reason behind that digging, who meekly told them that his father was going to build a new barren as he intended to add more animals to his herd. This reply sent Sarah and Nanny to utter despondency as they knew, at the back of their minds, that to stop Penn (Sarah’s husband) was akin to invite their own doom. In the story, Sarah and Nanny are shown to be under an obligation to complete their chores on daily basis come what may, while Sammy (Sarah’s son) enjoyed considerable latitude in his routine (Freeman, 1890). Hence, the story clearly shows the plight of women duri...