Summary Of Rebecca Harding Davis's 'Marcia'

624 Words2 Pages

Chris Shea
ENG 348
Professor Christine Doyle
03/29/16
Analytical Response Paper #7
In her 1876 short story Marcia, Rebecca Harding Davis shows the determination and persistence of a 20-year-old amateur female writer by the name of Marcia Barr from the perspective of an unnamed, middle-aged narrator who may be a writer herself. However, Davis also demonstrates the not-so-good perks of being an artist, hence the old term ‘starving artist’, and the other not-so-good perks of being a single woman in the 19th century (such as forced marriage).
We first meet this amateur female writer in the winter “…a few years ago…” (Davis 87). She comes up from Mississippi, “…the only white child on a poor plantation on the banks of the Yazoo.” (88). She tells …show more content…

As Marcia so eloquently puts it: “‘People will do anything for me – but publish my manuscripts.’” (88). She goes on to describe how she has had “‘…printed forms of rejection from every magazine and literary newspaper in the country.’” (89), and only had a two-inch snippet of her work posted in a Sunday paper throughout her three-year career. But when asked by the narrator if she is ready to give up, Marcia so eloquently says “‘No; not if it were ten years instead of three.’” (89), showing her true persistence as a writer.
But as the author of this essay has known well in his own life, sometimes persistence does not pay off. Marcia has an optimistic viewpoint on her literary career and vows “‘I shall not starve.’” (90). However, the narrator later goes on to say Marcia essentially all but starves during this endeavor. Her clothing becomes ratty, and she herself becomes forlorn and cold. And although she did get some assignments by newspaper companies, they were for petty tasks such as “…to collect a column of jokes for a Sunday paper, by which she made three dollars a week.” (90). She soon loses all hope and likely becomes

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