"The Communist's Wife"

• Originally published in Lippincott's Magazine, XXII (October 1878), 481-493 under the title "Communism and Capitalists: A Sketch from Life." Reprinted in Knitters in the Sun. McMichael suggests that she changed the title to distinguish the story from "her essays in economic history" (p. 105).
• Also reprinted in Oscar Cargill's 1933 The Social Revolt: American Literature from 1888 to 1914. 
  
• McMichael notes that the story "was an attempt at serious social and economic commentary, and it was unusually topical, especially for the literary ladies of the 1870's" (p. 61).
• McMichael praises the story as avoiding "the grossest banalities of contemporary feminine writing" (p. 61). I'd suggest that the very term "feminine writing" is problematic. He goes on to discuss howThanet was "working in two literary traditions, romanticism and the emerging realism" (p. 61).
• According to McMichael, the "story of the 1877 strike also contained the first instance of her attention to the language of the people she portrayed" (p. 63).
• "In notebooks she listed long examples of bizarre and archaic words and phrases to be later mortised into her sentences, a habit revived with particular success in the stories based on her experiences in Arkansas ten years later" (McMichael, p 65).

Basic Plot: 

This story covers an interesting relationship between and a strange Countess an old childhood friend who has recently been widowed.  The countess has taken a job to help support the window and the focus of the story is on the Bailey family.  The husband and the Bailey family is a communist head because of his principles has been out of work.  His wife comes to the two women and asks for assistance. Bailey refuses to give up his affiliations with the union and the Countess refuses to hire him on without the promise that he will not unionize and strike.  Within this story the countess makes two offers to employ Bailey, and she’s turned down both times. 

The Bailey family moves to Chicago where the countess later has to journey in order to settle the conditions of her husband’s will when he dies.  She arrives on the day of The Railroad Strike of 1877 in Chicago and sees Mrs. Bailey shortly before she is trampled and shot during the riots.  Coincidentally, she winds up in the same room with Mr. Bailey as they bring in the body of his dead wife.  Bailey accuses the countess of murdering his wife, and she denies the accusation, reminding him that she offered him a job twice. The story ends with neither agreeing.

This story is yet another example within this collection of Thanet bringing together opposing social and economic status people into a stalemate.  The story is remarkable mainly for this, but also for the depiction of the relationship between the countess and her living companion.