Cara Erdheim, Why
Speak of American Stories as Dreams?
In this academic article Cara Erdheim summarises a broad
sweep of material and critical approaches that examine the American Dream. She
clusters the scholarship in three ‘waves’ that correspond to eras between the
1950s to the present. She asserts that in whatever way it is deployed in
literary texts, the American Dream has remained a powerful presence. Horatio
Alger’s Ragged Dick (1868) is often
referred to alongside Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography
(1791-1790) as ‘classics’ of the American Dream. However, that view presumes an
interpretation of the American Dream in terms of achievement, success,
‘perseverance and promise.’ In her analysis of the range of scholarly conversations,
Erdheim locates differing views within the American Dream discourse, including
the claim that Ragged Dick is less about individualism and more about social
mobility. (Pitofsky cited by Erdheim p61).
Meanwhile in Erdheim’s view, for many readers, Alger’s
heroes embody Americans’ dreams of success, for in tale after tale, Alger
traced the rise of his boy heroes from penury to middle class respectability. Certainly,
the novel is unequivocal in describing the material circumstances of Dick’s
existence. He sleeps often outside, in a box if he can find one or something
similar. He has just one set of ragged clothing and can only eat if he has
earnt enough from his shoe-blacking business in the previous days. There is no
mention of family or other support networks and he is aware from his friend’s
experience to avoid getting swept up from his street existence onto the ‘Orphan
Trains.’
An estimated 30,000 children were homeless in New York City in the 1850s.
(The children ranged in age from about six to 18 and shared a common grim existence. Homeless or neglected, they lived in New York City's streets and slums with little or no hope of a successful future. Their numbers were large - an estimated 30,000 children were homeless in New York City in the 1850s. Charles Loring Brace, the founder of The Children's Aid Society, believed that there was a way to change the futures of these children. By removing youngsters from the poverty and debauchery of the city streets and placing them in morally upright farm families, he thought they would have a chance of escaping a lifetime of suffering.
He proposed that these children be sent by train to live and work on farms out west. They would be placed in homes for free but they would serve as an extra pair of hands to help with chores around the farm. They wouldn't be indentured. In fact, older children placed by The Children's Aid Society were to be paid for their labors.
The Orphan Train Movement lasted from 1853 to the early 1900s and more than 120,000 children were placed. This ambitious, unusual and controversial social experiment is now recognized as the beginning of the foster care concept in the United States. )
For further information, see http://www.childrensaidsociety.org/about/history/orphan-trains
The arc of the narrative does appear to confirm an upward
trajectory, with colourful anecdotes of Dick’s poverty stricken existence and
how with his personality he manages to overcome the challenges.
Gorman Beauchamp, Ragged
Dick and the Fate of Respectability. Michigan Quarterly Review.
In this article Gorman Beauchamp argues the significance of
social mobility in the American psychology and that its varied and general
manifestations were pervasive throughout society. For him Horatio Alger
embodies this credo which is manifested in the story line of virtually all his
100 plus novels: the core plot tracing the trajectory of a poor but honest lad
pulling himself up from poverty with a mixture of determination and hard work.
For nearly half a century the books remained very popular and generated a plethora
of interest amongst famous men and charitable concerns, keen to publicise these
important civic virtues. Although his literary reputation diminished in the
twentieth century, Alger was still remembered for his status as the chief
purveyor of the rags -to -riches myth.
Beauchamp begins his analysis of Dick’s social mobility by
referring to the view of John Cawelti who describes it not as rags to riches
saga but as more resembling a journey towards achieving a comfortable middle
class niche. This is a subtly drawn sequence throughout the story starting with
his ‘adoption’ by Frank, bolstered by decent clothes and the subsequent respect
he is shown by shopkeepers and other former ‘enemies.’ His next step in
learning to read is instrumental in beginning to make the journey away from
‘trade’ and working with his hands, to the more respectable work of a clerk – that
admired group a few steps higher on the social ladder. Following his meal with
the respectable family and his growing awareness of how uneducated he is, Dick
undertakes a mission of self-improvement on all fronts. This results,
confirming Cawelti’s viewpoint, in Dick achieving the post of clerk in a
counting house with a modest regular salary. Dick is delighted with this ‘change
of fortune’ and promotion of his prospects. He thinks immediately of a
financial strategy to capitalise on his good fortune and along with Fosdick
makes plans to find better accommodation to support his ambition to “grow up ‘spectable”
John Swansburg. The Self-Made Man. Slate.com
Inspired by reflections on his own father’s business
approaches and reviewing the state of the American Myth of upward mobility
within his own life time, John Swansburg traces the evolution of the self-made
myth through the lives of six men and one woman. Alger had started out as a Unitarian
minister but left hastily after one year to start a new life in New York. It
was in the city that he found and befriended the street urchins, giving them
shelter and encouraging them to share their anecdotes of life lived on the streets.
These became the copy for his novels. Swansburg accepts that Ragged Dick
exhibits many of the traditional virtues of the upwardly mobile self-made man;
hard work, honesty and resilience and he agrees with the views of Beauchamp
that it is the intervention of support from an outsider that is key to Dick’s
escape from the gutters. Because he has learnt to read and write, a fact also
due to the support of others, Dick can capitalise on the reward offered to him
following his brave and successful rescue of a beloved, drowning child. Dick is
offered a job in the counting house of Mr Rockwell. This is not yet or
necessarily a rise from ‘rags to riches,’ but much more, one of rags to the
beginnings of respectability.
Beauchamp had noted that Alger’s stories are ‘stories of beginnings.’ This
demonstrates successful business acumen for a writer. It allows for the
development of sequels and hopefully a series of novels. For Swansburg, the enterprising
qualities of the aspiring street boy ‘merely qualify the hero for success; they
don’t produce it.’
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