New South Writers and the Matter of Audience

While Thomas Nelson Page seems to support the southern status quo regarding race and class structure, showing a conciliatory perspective as he does in “Marse Chan,” George Washington Cable in “Belles Demoiselles Plantation,” Kate Chopin in “Desiree’s Baby,” and Ellen Glasgow in “Jordan’s End” are more complex and more difficult to classify. Each challenges traditional southern attitudes and conventional southern thinking in regard to race, class, or gender (or a combination of these); each exhibits a serious social consciousness; but each also treads cautiously, sometimes resorting to indeterminateness in the text through ambiguity, ambivalence, a lack of closure, obscuring or softening issues. Focusing on one of the aforementioned stories of Cable, Chopin, or Glasgow (use only one story) and using an example from that text, explain how the writer tends to defuse or to downplay the possibility for controversial reader reaction, perhaps doing so to appease the demands of magazine editors or the expectations of reading audiences. Limit your response to 200 words and be sure to sign your name. All responses should be posted no later than 9 am on Thursday, February 18.

Huckleberry Finn: Jim’s decision to help Tom Sawyer

In Chapter 40, when Tom Sawyer has been shot while carrying out the plan to free Jim from slavery, Jim delays his freedom by insisting that the wounded Tom be treated by a doctor first, a noble gesture that suggests Jim places Tom’s well being above his own. Jim, in fact, does stay by Tom’s side while Huck fetches the doctor. Huck’s response to Jim’s benevolent statement that he is going to stay with Tom is: “I knowed he was white inside” (263, Signet Classics edition). But what does Huck seem to mean here by using whiteness as a benchmark for judging Jim’s character and is his assessment of Jim in these terms without racial bias? In your response, also briefly speculate what Mark Twain may have had in mind in having Huck respond in this way. Post your response (200 words) no later than Thursday, February 11, at 9 am.