March by Geraldine Brooks

Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize, March is the Australian writer’s second novel. It’s set in the American Civil War, and is ostensibly based on a character, March, from Louisa May Alcott’s 19th century novel Little Women. In Little Women, March is the girls’ father, who volunteers to go south and serve as an army chaplain. He is a marginal figure in Alcott's book, being away in the fighting for some time. The actual model Brooks used for March is the historical figure of Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s father. He was one of the leaders of the Transcendentalists, who cultivated the belief that God is revealed in nature and in human beings, if they follow the right principles. The Transcendentalists championed pacifism, vegetarianism, women’s rights, and the kind of education in which a natural thirst for knowledge is cultivated and facts are not crammed into young minds.

Brooks is an accomplished writer, and she fluently depicts March’s sensitivity to his physical surroundings and to his companions. In Virginia, he is removed from his first post as an army chaplain, since his faith is too humanist to give solid comfort to the wounded and dying soldiers. Not believing in a literal hell, or in Christ as God, his view of humanity bumbling and stumbling itself into a mess does not sit well with the men or with his superiors. Critics of the book have found fault with March’s excessive self-flagellation, with his despair at witnessing pillaging and violence on the side of the Northern soldiers as well as on the Southern side. In contrast, the character of March in Little Women, although undeveloped, is one of stability and purpose – a father who steadies his wife and girls through their trials and sorrows.

March is transferred to a plantation whose absent owner supports the North and has leased the land to a Northerner come down to make a profit. March is to help by teaching the former slave children. The plantation has been ransacked both by the Union Army and local bands of raiders, who live on what they can pillage. Brooks’ depiction of the final devastation that takes place on the plantation reads like something out of Rwanda, and the source she cites does not match the unspeakable cruelty and horror which Brooks presents as commonplace. (When this kind of violence did occur, her source relates how the local residents rose up and administered their own justice after the sheriff and his men apprehended the assailants.) In Brooks’ landscape, there is no sheriff, and evil is done with impunity.

Brooks’ literary license ends up as an assault on the principles which Bronson Alcott propagated in his writings and teachings. An assault, because there is no surcease - there is no “balm in Gilead” found in the novel’s experience. Here history is not “unveiled” simply through engrossing characters and vivid landscapes. March, a broken man, or one who was never truly whole, creeps back to his family’s side, without hope and without redemption. This may be Brooks’ world, but it is not everyone’s.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: or Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe was a Christian and an Abolitionist, meaning that she was opposed to slavery. She first started Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a serial in June 1851, in the abolitionist newspaper, The National Era. The series was immensely popular, and the book was printed in March of 1852. The book was a runaway best seller, both at home and abroad. While anti-slavery was not a popular sentiment at the time, Stowe’s book helped stir up feelings both for and against the institution of slavery.

Reading the book today, it is hard to remember that slavery had such acceptance at one time, and that Ms. Stowe’s portrayal of African-Americans as not only creatures who lived and breathed, but as thinking , feeling and caring people was unheard of for most Americans. It was a radical book. The story is about Uncle Tom, an older slave in Kentucky, and Eliza, a young woman, a slave in the same Kentucky family. Tom is sold to pay his master’s debt, and Eliza’s child is sold also, except that she runs away when she hears what her master has done. Their separate stories make up the book.

Today we use the phrase “bleeding heart” in a way to make fun of people, but in that time a writer like Ms. Stowe had no qualms about using that expression seriously. Her work has been criticized for being overly sentimental, creating characters who are angel-like, as little Eva, a Southern planter’s daughter, and devil-like, as Tom’s last owner Simon Legree. Suffice it to say, that Ms. Stowe has defended herself that she wrote it as an argument, and so the book should not be expected to have literary merit. But the characters are compelling, even if their strengths and weaknesses are exaggerated. And in accordance with Ms. Stowe’s Christianity, their failings are always excused, encouraged and even aided by the world, while sympathy, love and compassion find obstacles at every turn.

The character Uncle Tom, as a Christian, believes his body may be bought and sold, but not his soul. His character has been maligned by white and black alike, for what has been called his ‘servile’ acceptance of his condition. Yet in the book, he is a strong figure, one who many turn to for advice and consolation – the master as well as the slave.

Abraham Lincoln met Ms. Stowe in 1862, after the Civil War had started. His words: “So this is the little lady who started this Great War”, may not be entirely accurate. Different economic structures, state vs. federal rights - these and other concerns were also at issue. Still, Uncle Tom’s Cabin played an important role in that war; the greatest separation that this country has so far experienced.