vivehodie’s Blog

In both poems of “Margaret Fuller Slack” and “George Trimble”, I noticed the general idea that society tries to impose their ideals upon individuals and manipulate their “outer self” without any regard to their innerself. In the case of Margaret, she was a talented writer who “would have been as great as George Eliot”. However, the (as she puts it) problem was what to with her outer image in the eyes of society: “should igt be celibacy, matrimony or unchastity”. Decieved by John Slack to marry him with the “promise of leisure for my novel”, she had no time to write with eight kids. By the time she cut herself with the needle (possibly as a suicide) while washing her baby’s clothes, it unfortunately was “all over with me”, both in the sense of being dead and pursuing her dreams. The irony of dyig from lock-jaw is symbolic: she was scilenced by indirect societal pressures to get married in a world that didn’t allow woman to pursue their dreams. WIth George Trimble, it is quite similar. Though involved in his community (”when Peerles Leader lost first battle, I began to talk prohibition and became active in the church?”)he, like Margaret was decived into doing it by his wife. She claimed that he must show his “morality” if he did not want to be destroyed, most likely by society. However, ultimately sucumbing to “outside forces” can backfire: he mentions that the radicals were suspicious of him, and the conservatices were unsure of him. Hence he died, brimming with resentment towards his life.  Both, dying bitter and unfullfilled in their lives desires, were ultimately alienated from theirselves.