Understanding the Growth of New York - Term Paper Example

New York Observed Understanding the growth of New York as a which has witnessed a lot of important events and seen through the social backwardness is possible through the works of some literary scholars who have actually traveled across the city to understand it. The paper takes up three articles of three authors, Dickens, Foster and Mrs. Trollope, all of who have visited New York at different times and brought out different aspects of the city in their works. All three authors have attempted to criticize the city’ lifestyles, culture and society in their own way and at different points of time, but in the end they give us a clear picture of the life in the city as well as some of the transformation it went through. Dickens in his article, “A Dickensian View of New York” begins by giving a dismal view of the city, painting a busy, filthy but beautiful and full of life. Dickens focuses upon the struggles, the darkness and the tough survival of the city. He talks of the beautiful metropolis of America on one hand and the other aspect comprising of “confused heaps of buildings,….city’s hum and buzz” on the otheri. He compares it to Boston saying that in contrast to the same, New York was not a clean one and did not have clean well maintained houses. This is a little unlike Mrs. Trollope’s view in “Mrs. Trollope Visits New York City” where she clearly mentions that the rich lived in exotic houses well maintained and decorated, comparable with those of Paris and also London. Dickens calls the ferryboats “restless Insects” and the ships in contrast to these were majestic. Mrs. Trollope approaches the city’s description with a calmness, which captures the beauty of the New York City in early nineteenth century. She calls the sea liquid gold and says, “we darted past the green isles which rise from its bosom, like guardian sentinels of the fair city, the setting sun stretched his horizontal beams farther and farther at each moment, as if to point out to us some new glory in the landscape”ii. Thus while she brings out the peace of the scenic beauty, Dickens mainly talks of the hustle- bustle of city life. If we recall some of his novels one might however find his style of creating a contrast between the riches and poverty. Even in this article he adopts the style especially when compares New York to Boston and the ferry boats to the ships. This shows that Dickens was looking into the livelihood of the economically backward or the middle and lower classes of the society, rather the working class. However he finds some of the by-streets as dirty as that of London. Both the authors, Trollope and Dickens, focus on the way the people and their lifestyle but while Dickens presents the people as he sees them all scattered around the city’s streets, Trollope tries to analyze their domestic habits and ways of living. She picks at the habit of changing houses annually especially if one lived in a rented place and the specific day when this was customary. She also throws a critical eye at the lack of dining habits especially the presence of gender discrimination present at the dinners comprising of only gentlemen. She describes the houses where unlike London they had dining and drawing rooms on the same floor. She is analytical while Dickens is observant and gives us the facts as they are instead of analyzing too much in depth. She compares New York with London unlike Dickens who also compares the city with Boston. Trollope explores the city with some memories of the period of slavery and hence when she sees the negroes or Afro Americans visiting the churches or on the streets, she imagines the impact of misery which they still carried in their appearancesiii. He mentions in this respect the filthy slum area of Five Points. Foster also takes up this area for his study in detail. Like Trollope, Dickens also moves to some incorporate some imagination and comparison when he describes the harsh life of the streets and compares the people’s ways of living with that of pigs. The description of ill treatment of the prisoners at The Tombs is left to the readers for comparison with the way a pig walks down the streets like a philosopher despite knowing his fate of turning into flesh any moment. Dickens is daring and experimental where he voices his view through the grunt of the pig “Such is life: all flesh is pork!”iv He compares the inhuman treatment of the prisoners to that of England. For instance, old man to be tried for execution was not allowed to breath even once in the fresh air outside. Even the peoples waiting to be tried and the children were not spared. The description of the pig’s way of living is symbolic and perhaps comparable with those of the poor and wretched ones who loiter the streets without work and food. Unlike Dickens, Mrs. Trollope describes the streets she essentially focuses upon the fashionable areas and the highways like Hudson Square and “the splendid Broadway”. He describes some of the paintings of Queen Victoria and these were signs of the period of colonization, which the nation has gone through. Some of the same essence is evident as Trollope travels through the decoration of the rooms and the built of the houses, which were quite similar to the ones at London. Therefore she praises the tastes of those aspects, which were partly or wholly borrowed form Europeans but is critical of the ones developed by the city’s people. Dickens sweeps gracefully and skillfully from the bright colors of Broadway to the gloom of the dark night left to the scavengers. Once again he brings in the contrast of the quiet streets at night to the busy life of the day. While most of Mrs. Trollope’s work centers on the cultural side of New York of which she is at times critical, Dickens focuses upon the prison and the streets about which he paints a dismal picture. Trollope also criticizes the ambience and the performances. She talks of places mostly beautiful and away from the filth described by Dickens but she points out the public places where only men were allowed while the wives and daughters were not treated fairly. Like Dickens, Foster in his work, “The Points at Midnight” focuses upon the dirt and the gloom hanging over some parts of the city and chooses Five Points specifically for his analysis. He describes the crime and crisis of the people and calls the place “sad, an awful sight--a sight to make the blood slowly congeal and the heart to grow fearful and cease its beatings…inextinguishable either by repressive laws or by considerations of personal safety.”v Like Dickens he paints the crude picture of the hellish life of the slum region. He describes the way a woman and her daughters, all prostitutes, receive their client sin the same room. He describes the scenes at the Old Brewery where the liquor initiates the man to go for the prostitutes to quench his desires “The liquor is of course of the most abominable description, poison and fire”vi. The clients are termed as victims who are forced to drink and hence robbed and kicked out in an unconscious state to be discovered by the police. Despite the emancipation of the blacks, they were always taken to have survived hard lives better than whites – “the negroes form a large and rather controlling portion of the population of the Points, as they bear brutalization better than the whites, (probably from having been so long used to it!) and retain more consistency and force of character, amid all their filth and degradation.”vii Similar to Trollope Foster also highlights the past of these negroes despite their present state of freedom. The discrimination was underlying in the racial proportion amongst the workers meant for bearing the brutal tasks. While Trollope illustrates the elegantly dressed peacefully living negroes, Foster describes them in a different environment. At the end of the article Foster presents a brief analysis where he ask the parents to be careful with their wives and children especially when they are ambitious about good dresses. He implores the men to show them this gloom of the lives of women who dare to leap into the darkness and lead a dangerous life of a prostitute. This shows the women were not much exposed to the outside world. This is similar to what we find in Trollope’s work that women were not expected at some of the public places, even so harmless as dinner parties. From the above discussion therefore one might conclude that New York was a city of contrast, where the men had recently come out of their colonial period and the treatment received at the hands of the imperialists was reflected in the way their prisoners were treated. The civilization had not yet progressed too far and this is evident in the confinement of women within the domestic environment and their unawareness of the outdoor life. Therefore both racial and gender discrimination existed although slavery was not formally practiced. On one hand the lives of the rich were beautiful while the common people dwelt in misery. The difference in the views presented by the authors could also result from the time period in which they were writing their pieces of work. Dickens wrote his work around a decade after Trollope while Foster published his work eight years after that of Dickens. The life was gradually becoming harsher and living was even tougher. The industrial Revolution had begun and Dickens’ illustration of the people at work and busy in their lives is a strong reflection of the same. Foster brings out the deprived and backward sections of the society and especially the women who were not destined to be protected within the patriarchal set up of their home and compelled to choose the difficult way of living. Works Cited Dickens, Charles. “A Dickensian View of New York”, American Notes, 1842 Foster, George “The Points at Midnight”, in, New York by Gaslight, New York, 1850, VII Trollope, Frances. “Mrs. Trollope Visits New York City”, in, Domestic Manners of the Americans, 1832. Read More