Appearance
Excerpt
Excerpt from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day, by Rebecca Harding Davis
TO MY MOTHER.
CHAPTER I.
Let me tell you a story of To-Day,--very homely and narrow in its scope
and aim. Not of the To-Day whose significance in the history of
humanity only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead.
We can bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while
the nations of the earth stand afar off. I have no word of this To-Day
to speak. I write from the border of the battlefield, and I find in it
no theme for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes. The shadow of death
has fallen on us; it chills the very heaven. No child laughs in my
face as I pass down the street. Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten
to pray; only in the bitterness of endurance, they say "in the morning,
'Would God it were even!' and in the evening, 'Would God it were
morning!'" Neither I nor you have the prophet's vision to see the age
as its meaning stands written before God. Those who shall live when we
are dead may tell their children, perhaps, how, out of anguish and
darkness such as the world seldom has borne, the enduring morning
evolved of the true world and the true man. It is not clear to us.
Hands wet with a brother's blood for the Right, a slavery of
intolerance, the hackneyed cant of men, or the blood-thirstiness of
women, utter no prophecy to us of the great To-Morrow of content and
right that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives,
it is there. The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened
down as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour, renews the
quiet promise of its coming in simple, humble things. Let us go down
and look for it. There is no need that we should feebly vaunt and
madden ourselves over our self-seen rights, whatever they may be,
forgetting what broken shadows they are of eternal truths in that calm
where He sits and with His quiet hand controls us.
Explanation
Rebecca Harding Davis’s Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day (1862) is a novella set during the American Civil War, blending realism with social critique. The excerpt you’ve provided—Chapter I’s opening—serves as a prologue that frames the story’s themes of suffering, uncertainty, and the search for meaning amid historical upheaval. Below is a detailed analysis of the passage, focusing on its language, literary devices, and philosophical underpinnings while situating it in its broader context.
Context and Overview
Historical Background:
- Published in 1862, Margret Howth reflects the turmoil of the Civil War, a conflict that fractured families, economies, and moral certainties. Davis, a journalist and realist writer, was deeply engaged with the war’s human cost, and her work often critiqued industrialization, class disparity, and the hypocrisy of societal institutions.
- The novella’s subtitle, A Story of To-Day, signals its immediacy—it is not a historical allegory but a raw, contemporary account of a nation in crisis.
Genre and Style:
- Davis is a pioneer of American literary realism, and this passage exemplifies her rejection of romantic idealism. The prose is stark, introspective, and unflinching in its portrayal of collective despair.
- The address "To My Mother" suggests a personal, almost confessional tone, blending public grief with private reflection.
Themes in the Excerpt
The Weight of the Present ("To-Day"):
- The narrator disavows any grand historical narrative ("Not of the To-Day whose significance... only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead"). Instead, she focuses on the immediate, unprocessed pain of the moment—a pain too raw for prophecy or poetic embellishment ("no theme for shallow argument or flimsy rhymes").
- The repetition of "To-Day" (capitalized for emphasis) contrasts with the distant "To-Morrow", underscoring the myopia of survival. The present is a "border of the battlefield"—a liminal space where clarity is impossible.
Collective Trauma and Despair:
- The passage depicts a society in moral and spiritual paralysis:
- "No child laughs in my face" → Loss of innocence, joy extinguished.
- "Men have forgotten to hope, forgotten to pray" → Faith and optimism have collapsed into "bitterness of endurance."
- The biblical allusion to "Would God it were even!" (Job 7:4) evokes existential exhaustion, a cycling of despair from morning to night.
- The "shadow of death" is not metaphorical but visceral, "chill[ing] the very heaven"—a cosmic dimming of light and hope.
- The passage depicts a society in moral and spiritual paralysis:
The Failure of Prophecy and Human Agency:
- The narrator admits humanity’s blindness to the future: "Neither I nor you have the prophet's vision." The war’s meaning is inscrutable; its justice ("Hands wet with a brother's blood for the Right") is muddied by "slavery of intolerance" and "blood-thirstiness of women" (a critique of both Northern and Southern rhetoric).
- The "hackneyed cant of men" refers to the empty political and religious justifications for violence, exposing the hollowness of ideological certainties.
Faith and the "Quiet Promise":
- Amid the chaos, the narrator turns to Christian humility as a counterpoint to human arrogance. The "meek Nazarene" (Jesus) is dismissed as "ill-timed" by a world obsessed with "self-seen rights", but his teachings—"simple, humble things"—offer the only path to the "true world and the true man."
- The contrast between human "vaunt[ing]" (boasting) and divine "quiet hand" suggests that redemption lies in surrender, not in the noisy assertions of warring factions.
Literary Devices and Stylistic Choices
Tone and Diction:
- Sombre and urgent: Short, declarative sentences ("It is not clear to us. Hands wet... utter no prophecy") mimic the narrator’s breathless grappling with chaos.
- Biblical and classical allusions:
- "Would God it were even!" (Job 7:4) → Lamentation of suffering.
- "Prophet's vision" → Invokes Old Testament seers who interpreted divine will, now absent.
- "Meek Nazarene" → Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:5), emphasizing humility over vengeance.
Imagery:
- Darkness vs. Light:
- "Shadow of death", "anguish and darkness" → The war as a void.
- "Enduring morning" → A distant, almost mythic hope.
- Blood and Violence:
- "Hands wet with a brother's blood" → Fratricidal war; the Civil War’s literal and symbolic violence.
- "Blood-thirstiness of women" → Challenges the ideal of women as peaceful, hinting at complicity in war’s brutality.
- Darkness vs. Light:
Paradox and Contrast:
- "The To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there." → The future’s existence is contingent on faith, not human understanding.
- "Broken shadows" of rights vs. "eternal truths" → Human claims are fragile; divine truth is immutable but obscured.
Rhetorical Questions and Direct Address:
- "Let us go down and look for it." → The narrator invites the reader (and herself) to seek meaning in the mundane, not in grand narratives.
- "Whatever [rights] may be" → Undermines the absoluteness of political or moral claims.
Significance of the Passage
Realism and the Civil War:
- Davis rejects the romanticized war narrative (e.g., glory, heroism) prevalent in contemporary literature. Instead, she presents war as a spiritual and social rupture, where even language fails ("no word of this To-Day to speak").
- The passage foreshadows the novella’s focus on marginalized voices (e.g., Margret Howth, a working-class woman) as sites of quiet resistance and truth.
Theological and Philosophical Struggle:
- The text grapples with theodicy (how a just God allows suffering). The narrator doesn’t resolve the tension but suggests that faith persists in "simple, humble things"—a radical claim in a time of ideological extremism.
- The critique of "self-seen rights" anticipates modern discussions of moral relativism and the dangers of unchecked certainty.
Feminist Undertones:
- The mention of "blood-thirstiness of women" is striking. Davis implicates women in the war’s violence, challenging the cult of domesticity that portrayed women as passive victims. This aligns with her broader critique of gender roles in Life in the Iron Mills (1861).
Literary Influence:
- Davis’s blend of social realism and existential questioning prefigures later works like Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (1895) and Ernest Hemingway’s war fiction.
- Her focus on everyday suffering as a lens for historical change influenced American literary naturalism.
Key Takeaways from the Text Itself
- The narrator rejects grand narratives in favor of the immediate, unvarnished pain of the present.
- The Civil War is a crisis of meaning, not just politics—it has erased hope, prayer, and even the laughter of children.
- Human claims to righteousness are fragile ("broken shadows"), but the promise of redemption persists in humility and small acts.
- The passage is both a lament and a call to action: to look for truth "down" (in the ordinary) rather than in the "vaunt[ing]" of ideological battles.
Conclusion
This excerpt is a manifest of literary realism’s ethical urgency. Davis doesn’t offer solutions but demands that readers confront the weight of history as it is lived—not as it will be mythologized. The "story of To-Day" is one of disorientation and endurance, where the only certainty is the "quiet promise" of a future that must be sought in meekness, not in the clamor of war. In its raw honesty, the passage transcends its 19th-century context, speaking to any era where human suffering outpaces human understanding.
Questions
Question 1
The narrator’s invocation of the "meek Nazarene" primarily serves to:
A. condemn the hypocrisy of institutional Christianity in wartime, where piety masks complicity in violence.
B. contrast the futile grandiosity of human conflict with the enduring, unassuming promise of divine redemption.
C. suggest that Jesus’s teachings are irrelevant to the immediate suffering of the Civil War era.
D. imply that spiritual salvation is attainable only through active political resistance to oppression.
E. argue that the war’s moral ambiguity can be resolved by adhering to a literal interpretation of Scripture.
Question 2
The phrase "broken shadows" (in "broken shadows they are of eternal truths") most precisely conveys:
A. the fragility of human memory in the face of historical erasure.
B. the way ideological certainties dissolve under the pressure of lived experience.
C. the incomplete and distorted nature of human claims to righteousness when measured against divine truth.
D. the psychological fragmentation of individuals traumatized by war.
E. the inevitability that all human achievements will be forgotten by future generations.
Question 3
The narrator’s repeated use of the capitalized "To-Day" and "To-Morrow" functions primarily to:
A. emphasize the cyclical nature of history, where present suffering is fated to recur.
B. juxtapose the tangible, oppressive immediacy of the present with the abstract, uncertain promise of the future.
C. suggest that the war’s significance will only be understood by posterity, not by those living through it.
D. critique the human tendency to romanticize the past while neglecting the urgencies of the present.
E. imply that the present is a mere prelude to an inevitable, utopian future.
Question 4
Which of the following best describes the relationship between the narrator’s tone and her rhetorical strategy in the passage?
A. A tone of weary resignation undercuts the passage’s explicit calls for humility, revealing a deeper skepticism about the possibility of redemption.
B. The urgent, fragmented syntax mirrors the narrator’s attempt to impose order on chaos, reflecting a desperate need for control.
C. The shift from collective despair ("Men have forgotten to hope") to personal exhortation ("Let us go down and look for it") signals a move from observation to activism.
D. The repeated biblical allusions serve to distance the narrator from the suffering she describes, lending an air of detached prophecy.
E. The passage’s lyrical cadences contrast with its grim subject matter, creating an irony that underscores the futility of artistic expression in wartime.
Question 5
The narrator’s assertion that "the voice of the meek Nazarene... renews the quiet promise of its coming in simple, humble things" is most fundamentally a:
A. rejection of organized religion in favor of a personal, intuitive spirituality.
B. call to abandon political engagement in favor of ascetic withdrawal from society.
C. critique of the war’s participants for failing to live up to Christian ideals of pacifism.
D. suggestion that moral clarity can only be achieved through direct divine intervention.
E. claim that meaning and redemption are found not in grand historical narratives but in the unassuming, everyday acts of endurance and faith.
Solutions and Explanations
1) Correct answer: B
Why B is most correct: The "meek Nazarene" (Jesus) is invoked as a counterpoint to the "vaunt[ing]" and "madden[ing]" of human conflict. The passage contrasts the "hackneyed cant of men" and "blood-thirstiness" of wartime with the "quiet promise" of divine redemption, which persists in "simple, humble things." The narrator does not dismiss Jesus’s teachings (eliminating C) but positions them as an antidote to human grandiosity. The focus is on the humble endurance of faith amid chaos, not on institutional hypocrisy (A), political resistance (D), or scriptural literalism (E).
Why the distractors are less supported:
- A: The passage critiques human rhetoric ("hackneyed cant"), but the "meek Nazarene" is not framed as a rebuke of institutional Christianity specifically—rather, as a contrast to human arrogance in general.
- C: The narrator explicitly states that the voice of Jesus has been "deafened down as ill-timed," but she immediately affirms its "quiet promise," rejecting the idea of irrelevance.
- D: The passage advocates humility, not resistance; the "quiet hand" of God controls, but human action is framed as secondary to divine will.
- E: The narrator does not suggest that Scripture provides clear moral resolutions to the war’s ambiguity; the focus is on the tone of divine promise (quiet, humble), not its content.
2) Correct answer: C
Why C is most correct: The "broken shadows" metaphor describes human "rights" as distorted reflections of "eternal truths." The passage emphasizes the gap between human claims (which are partial and flawed) and divine truth (which is whole but obscured). This aligns with the narrator’s broader argument that human perspectives—whether political, moral, or ideological—are inadequate to grasp the "To-Morrow" that God alone understands.
Why the distractors are less supported:
- A: The passage does not address historical erasure or memory; the "shadows" are metaphors for human limitations, not forgotten history.
- B: While human ideologies may dissolve under suffering, the "broken shadows" specifically refer to the incomplete nature of human righteousness, not its collapse.
- D: Psychological fragmentation is not the focus; the metaphor is epistemological (about knowledge) and theological (about truth), not psychological.
- E: The passage does not suggest human achievements will be forgotten; it questions their significance in the face of divine truth.
3) Correct answer: B
Why B is most correct: The capitalized "To-Day" and "To-Morrow" create a structural contrast: "To-Day" is tangible, oppressive, and immediate ("the shadow of death has fallen on us"), while "To-Morrow" is abstract, uncertain, and contingent ("if God lives, it is there"). The narrator’s focus on the "border of the battlefield" (the present) underscores the myopia of human suffering, while the "To-Morrow" remains a distant, almost mythic promise.
Why the distractors are less supported:
- A: The passage does not suggest cyclicality; the "To-Morrow" is framed as a break from the present’s suffering, not a repetition.
- C: While the narrator acknowledges that future generations may understand the war’s significance, this is not the primary function of the capitalization. The contrast is between the experienced present and the unseen future.
- D: The passage does not critique romanticizing the past; it laments the inaccessibility of the future.
- E: The "To-Morrow" is not presented as inevitable but as contingent ("if God lives"), and the present is not a "prelude" but a site of unprocessed pain.
4) Correct answer: A
Why A is most correct: The narrator’s tone is one of weary resignation ("We can bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough"), which undermines the passage’s explicit calls for humility and faith. The "quiet promise" of redemption is acknowledged, but the dominant affect is skepticism—evident in phrases like "It is not clear to us" and "we have deafened down" the voice of hope. The rhetorical strategy (urging humility) is thus complicated by the tone, which suggests doubt about whether such humility can truly alleviate suffering.
Why the distractors are less supported:
- B: The syntax is fragmented, but this reflects the chaos of the present, not an attempt to impose order. The narrator does not seek control but surrender ("no need that we should feebly vaunt").
- C: The shift from collective despair to "Let us go down" is not a move to activism but to passive seeking—a turn inward, not outward.
- D: The biblical allusions (e.g., Job, Jesus) are not detached but intimate, tied to the narrator’s personal and collective grief.
- E: The passage does not employ lyrical irony; the "lyrical" elements (e.g., "enduring morning") are sincere, not ironic, and the grim subject matter is met with solemnity, not detachment.
5) Correct answer: E
Why E is most correct: The narrator’s claim about the "meek Nazarene" culminates in the assertion that redemption is found in "simple, humble things"—not in grand historical narratives ("no theme for shallow argument") or human assertions of right ("self-seen rights"). The passage rejects the idea that meaning emerges from ideological battles or divine intervention (D) and instead locates it in the everyday endurance of faith. This aligns with the realist tradition of finding truth in the mundane.
Why the distractors are less supported:
- A: The passage does not reject organized religion; it critiques human distortions of faith, not the institution itself.
- B: The narrator does not advocate ascetic withdrawal but a reorientation toward humility within the world.
- C: While the war’s participants are critiqued, the focus is on the nature of redemption (quiet, humble), not on their failure to achieve pacifism.
- D: The passage emphasizes human seeking ("let us go down"), not passive waiting for divine intervention. The "quiet hand" of God is already present, but humans must look for it in "simple things."