Who Is Bret Harte's The Luck Of The Roaring Camp

Bret Harte wrote The Luck of the Roaring Camp in 1868. This work truly demonstrates the balance between the weakness and goodness of humanity. The story takes place in a poor mining town in California, called Roaring Camp. There was only one woman in the town named Cherokee Sal. She was pregnant and died after giving birth, later having her body thrown over a hillside. The miners were then left to figure out what to do with her child. Harte describes the men of the camp as reckless, fugitives, and criminals. He presents these immoral men in a romanticized way, allowing the readers to see that they have some inner good qualities. This story stands out because it was unlikely to see how these rough miners would be able to possess good moral qualities. The men

decide to keep the baby and name it Luck. This band of reckless men changes their ways and things start to get better. They show compassion for the baby and everyone change. The men become more sanitary, cuss less, and are quieter for the baby’s sake.

Harte shows how the men of the camp became dedicated to taking care of Luck, and how his guardian, Stump, was serious about his well-being. Harte brings light to this in the story when he states that, “The reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again, Stumpy imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and privilege of holding The Luck. It was a cruel mortification to Kentuck--who, in the carelessness of a large nature and the habits of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through decay--to be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons. Yet, such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary laws neglected” (Harte). The men at the Roaring Camp are seemingly a band of reckless outlaws, yet they manage to teach the readers a lesson of morality. This story shows that having weakness can bring out the good in

people. The miners at the camp teach readers that good does exist in humanity and weak people can come together and have compassion and do the right thing regardless of whom they are and that everyone has a moral compass inside of them.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is mentally ill and her husband is trying to do what he thinks is best for her. However, he does not listen to her and belittles everything she says. One clear example of this is in the beginning of the story when the narrator says, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house” (Gilman). The narrator interrupts her own thoughts by remembering John’s instructions. Gilman displays how the narrator has embodied her husband’s superiority to the point that she hears his voice telling her what to think. Despite this, she cannot push aside her feelings, in the end, she directs her focus on the house instead of her mental situation, and this marks the start of her drift into insanity. This struggle with herself and this frantic attempt to not meditate on her unhappiness, forces her to project her feelings on her surroundings, especially the wallpaper, which evolves to become a symbolic image of he mental state. Gilman consistently uses irony throughout the story with her play on words. The narrator becomes solemn whenever she thinks about her “condition,” that is, about both her depression and her mental condition along with her oppressive controlling marriage. The author uses this psychological monstrosity of a story to scrutinize the role of women within the foundation of marriage, as practiced by the socially respected classes of her time. For Gilman, the traditional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its strict differentiation between the domestic roles of the women and the active roles of the men, made sure that women remained second-class citizens. As this story unfolds it reveals that this gender division effected women’s minds and kept them in a childish state of ignorance, which prevented them from fully developing their minds. John assumes he has superior wisdom and knows what is best but he ends up misjudging, patronizing, and controlling his wife, all for the sake of trying to help her. The narrator is forced to lower herself down to acting like a foolish child and is unable to stand up for herself without seeming irrational or disloyal to her husband. She has absolutely no input in even the tiniest details of her life, and she recedes back into her delusional obsessive fantasies, the only true thing she can control in her life where she can manage and exercise the power of her mind.

William Dean Howells work, Editha, perfectly exemplifies the opportunist that existed in the Gilded Age. She refuses to visualize the cruel realities of war, however, she sees the romantic aspect of war that she read in her patriotic novels. She forces her views of war on her fiancé, convincing him that it might be best for him to join the military. She realizes that Gearson could die in battle, however, appears to not care, because then the attention would be centered on her and she could act like the heroes of her stories. Howells displays her twisted imagination as she daydreams of Gearson losing his arm in battle once he writes; “She thrilled with the sense of the arm around her; what if that should be lost?” (Howells). Editha is very controlling and manipulative when it comes to Gearson. She manipulates him using vindictive tactics and concepts that she might have seen in her books. Gearson ends up dying, and Editha acts fake in a manner that she had learned from her books. She fakes becoming sick and wears black all the time. Editha and her father visit Gearson's mother, however, the mother sees directly through Editha's deceptive appearance. She confronts Editha and consequently she sees Editha for the vindictive, selfish, opportunist that she truly is. Howells was the precise opposite of what Editha would be. He was a practical thinker and placed others before himself, unlike Editha. He despised romanticism and believed that fiction ought to be real and concentrate on regular people that lived regular lives. He accomplished this with Editha while additionally displaying the consequences that romantic literature may wear on a person's mind. Editha is the essence of the Gilded Age meaning shiny on the outside, but black and corrupt from within. Today people are not influenced by the romantic writings of war. In the news and media, people can see for themselves the tragedy and horrors of war and what a truly detestable thing it is.He made the reader wonder if Editha would have had a unique perspective towards war if reading romantic war stories had not influenced her.