Category: Unionization

"Otto The Knight"

4/16/2021

I was excited to begin Otto the Knight and Other Trans Mississippi Stories in part because of the regional focus. A few of these stories carry over characters from stories published in Knitters in the Sun. Michael B. and Carol W. Dougan's 1980 collection By the Cypress Swamp: The Arkansas Stories of Octave Thanet brings many of those stories together, although the title story "Otto the Knight" is not in that collection. Given the very light emphasis on the setting here, the omission of the story isn't completely surprising. McMichael also only mentions the story itself on page 125, indicating that it was chosen as the title for the collection solely based on the fact it was the first story.

The omission is interesting, given that Lum Shinault definitely lives on the Black River in "Whitsun Harp, Regulator" and because there is the connection to getting lost in the swamp. Marty Ann searching for Boo gets lost, just as Ma' Bowlin got lost in the earlier story.

Basic Summary:

Originally published in Scribner's Magazine, III, (August 1888), 156-73. Reprinted in Otto the Knight.
Main characters: Otto Knipple, Aunt Betsey, Marty Ann, Baby Boo, Dake.
Characters who appear in other stories: Lum Shinault, who is now a sort of lawyer, (esquire) ("Whitsun Harp, Regulator") and Mr. Francis ("The Conjured Kitchen").
Of note: The setting and description of the plantation store, the road, and houses. The setting embodies two periods: "It was the old South and the new" (Thanet, p. 2).
Otto Knipple is a bit simple, but highly principled. He's joined the secret society of the Knights of Labor, which Aunt Betsey compares to the KKK, on the basis of "secret society" alone. Dake, a carpenter who is widowed, is seen as a scab and the mill he operates is blown up. Otto saves Baby Boo from the explosion, and is hailed as a hero. The twist is that Otto set up the explosion, and he eventually confesses his crime and is forgiven.
Subplot: Dake and Marty Ann fall in love. Dake loves her child, Boo, and gives her a doll: "Seerayphine Dake, be it explained, was not a little live girl like Lizzie Victory, but a beautiful wax doll that could open and shut its eyes, and cry in the most natural and affecting manner if you squeezed her stomach. Dake had bought her in St. Louis and put her on the Christmas tree for Boo" (p. 26). The doll is what Boo goes to the mill to fetch when the explosives are set. Dake decides Marty Ann conspired with Bassett to kill him in the explosion: "He would not be fooled by another false woman. A sentence that an old German, a former member of a religious community in Iowa, used to quote, kept running in his head: 'Woman is a magic fire.' Well, he was burned" (p. 28). Eventually, the two reveal their mutual love and Dake stays put, rather than moving away.

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"The Communist's Wife"

3/17/2021

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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.

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"Otto The Knight"

"The Communist's Wife"

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