Week 5 - The Hidden Hand

Let me just start off by saying, wow! I really enjoyed reading the beginning of this novel! I was actually rather upset that we weren't reading more of it, and I couldn't have said the same about either The Wide, Wide World or The Lamplighter. I may go by the library in the next few days and see if they have it!


Well, seeing as how that just gave me the inspiration to write this blog posting, I'm just going to follow along with this train of thought. This novel is quite a departure from the previous two books we've read. The previous novels contained Ellen, a prim and proper young girl who is the epitome of a young lady, and Gerty, a not so nice or pretty young girl but one who strives hard to be 'good' all the same. Now, we have Capitola. She decided to dress in boys clothes so she can work to feed herself rather than starve. She talks back to Old Hurricane in a teasing manner, both dressed as a boy and after she is revealed. She is fearless when faced with the trapdoor in her room, and as is evidenced by her decision to even start dressing like a boy, she takes her future into her own hands. Capitola is nothing like either the perfect little Ellen or ignorant and helpless Gerty. Why does Southworth make this sudden departure from conventional domestic fiction? Both The Wide, Wide World and The Lamplighter were bestsellers in their times. Why try to reinvent the wheel? Or, is Southworth inventing something completely different, with a completely different message? This seems to be exactly like the "furious kind of a novel" (Warner 31) that we have been told is bad for women.

I believe that one of the biggest reasons that this novel is so much more rapidly paced and features so much stronger characters than the other novels is the manner in which it was first published. Professor Irvin mentioned in class that The Hidden Hand was first published as a serial in a newspaper. I can imagine that if I were an author, I would want to hook my audience right at the very beginning so I could continue being published. This explains the clean breaks between chapters as well, which reads rather well from the perspective of a modern reader. The characters I can imagine were created with specific purpose as well: Old Hurricane is that feisty old man everyone has encountered and loved to hate; Traverse is young and handsome, described as having a "nobel form [and] graceful air" (Southworth 190); Marah Rocke provides us with a delicious bit of drama and scandal; and Capitola is that tough little free-spirit that all girls wish they could let loose sometime. That is another part of why I believe that The Hidden Hand was so successful: though Capitola was not what you would call a conventional young woman of the times, she is edgy, spunky, and makes you wish that you could be having her adventures. Women who did not get out of the home much could pick up a paper and read about this girl who makes them feel that they are out experiencing the world as well.