The form of Letters suits Child way more than the novel, and this is a way better read than Hobomok. The same good intentions and misshapen pretensions apply, of course.
Oh my. Yet there are some things of value in Child's writing, and even in the form of these letters. She's serious about her moralism and her abolitionism, and while she doesn't seem to understand Indian or African-American society even as an outsider, she does understand white American society well enough to smell the common frauds of feudal slavery and slaving capitalism, and her rampant Christianity does not include pretending these are part of some other world.
Formally, the letters here unquestionably form a single discourse, though I suspect the sequence could be shuffled,if not randomly. She appears to have envisioned beforehand that her stay in NYC gave her an opportunity for a theme. She saw that she could narrate her exploration of NYC and at once describe the various subcultures and subclasses that interacted in the metropolis. Each letter follows a fresh social thread, and each concrete incident is treated as exemplar of Child's humanistic and (mostly) antijudgmental Christianism. The style suffers considerably because she thoroughly conflates idea with sensory input, recycling old pastoral images as though Marlowe and Spenser and Co. were really talking about shepherds. She seems to feel the questions of the world are largely resolved in their long lines, and that enlightened humans are left to explore the details and bring along their beknighted brethren, so she appears to see her mission as polemic.
"'Every flower writes music in the air;' and every tree that grows enshrines a tone within its heart. Do you doubt it? Try the willow and the oak, the elm and the poplar . . . "
On the other hand, she had some value as a polemicist for the era, remaining clear at times when subtler minds had grown lost in calculation. She's got the guts to undercut Milton, for instance:
"Milton (stern moralist as he was, in many respects) maintains, in his 'Christian Doctrine,' that falsehoods are sometimes not always allowable, but necessary. 'It is scarcely possible, says he, to execute any of the artifices of war without openly uttering the greatest untruths, with the undisputable intention of deceiving.' And because war requires lies, we are told by a Christian moralist that lies musts, therefore, be lawful!" (171).
As a revelation of consciousness, I wouldn't set Hobomok or even these letters against any healthy slice of Paradise Lost or even any 3 Milton poems. Would one rather be right than Milton? In either case, there's got to be some value here.
Some historical notes:
"Music, like every thing else, is now passing from the few to the many. The rat of printing has laid before the multitude the written widom of ages, once locked up in the elaborate manuscripts of the cloister. Engraving and deaguerrotype spread the productions of the pencil before the whole people. Music is taught in our common schools, and the cheap accordion brings its delights to the humblest class of citizens. All these things are full of prophecy. Slowly, slowly, to the measured sound of the spirit's music, there goes round the world the golden band of brotherhood; slowly, slowly, the earth comes to itse place, and makes a chord with heaven" (192).
"Many more than half of the inmates of the penitentiary were women; and of course a large proportion of them were taken up as 'street-walkers.' The men who made them such, who, perchance caused the love of a human heart to be its ruin, and changed tenderness into sensuality and crime -- these men live in the 'ceiled houses' of Broadway, and sit in council in the City Hall, and pass 'regulations' to clear the streets they have filled with sin" (202).
Just a passing thought, but in an odd way, Child's form reminds me of Tropic of Cancer, of all things.
"We were to have an execution yesterday; but the wretched prisoner avoided it by suicide. The gallows had been erected for several hours, and with a cool refinement of cruelty, was hoisted before the window of the condemned; the hangman was all ready to cut the cord; marshalls paced back and forth, smoking and whistling; spectators were waiting impatiently to see where he would 'die game.' Printed circulars had been handed abroad to summon the number of witnesses reqired by law:-- 'You are respectfully invited to witness the execution of John C. Colt.' I trust some of them are preserved for museums. . . . Women deemed themselves not treated with becoming gallantry because tickets of admittance were denied them; . . . "
Some of the most painful moments relate to phrenology and race. Child's a nice-guy racist, but racist nonetheless.
"We who have robbed the Indians of their lands, and worse still, of themselves, are very fond of proving their inferiority. We are told that the facial angle in the
Caucasioan race is 85 degrees.
Asiatic 78 "
American Indian 73 "
Ethiopian 70 "
Orang-Utang 67 "
This simply proves that the Causasioan race, through a succession of ages, has been exposed to influences emininently calculated to develop the moral and intellectual faculties" (261).
-- but clearly not enough to prevent our enslaving the blacks and murdering the reds--among others. But the angle of the forehead demonstrates morals!
Here's the faith, right at the end:
"Man is moving to his highest destiny through manifold revolutions of spirit; and te outward must change with the inward" (288). Viva Hegel.
