Research Project Proposal

Didn't notice that this was supposed to be posted on the blog until this morning, so...

Catharine Williams’ Fall River: An Authentic Narrative has received limited literary analysis to date. It may be that, as Patricia Caldwell implies in her essay, “In ‘Happy America’: Discovering Catharine Williams’s Fall River for the Women Writers Project,” the novel contains relatively little literary value for it is a narrative retelling of the investigation and trial of Methodist Minister Ephraim K. Avery for the murder of Sarah Maria Cornell. However, both Caldwell’s essay and Jeanne DeWaard’s, “‘Indelicate Exposure’: Sentiment and Law in Fall River: An Authentic Narrative,” find something intriguing about the manner in which Williams represents Sarah Maria Cornell. While DeWaard deconstructs the sentimental in Williams’s novel by examining how Cornell’s victimization vindicates and castigates her, Caldwell focuses on how Cornell’s transience and lack of familial connections challenges views of her as the stock female sentimental character. Interestingly, both essays only touch on the intersection of class and power with gender, particularly in their consideration of how Avery’s trials end in his acquittal. In my essay, I will consider how Avery’s gender, social standing, and religious background likely influenced the two verdicts despite his relative silence. Not only will the essay consider his voice relative to that of Cornell, but it will consider how he serves as a literary foil to traditional male antagonists in early American novels as a result.

Reverend Avery is an inversion of Cornell’s treatment in Fall River. While In addition to a rich biography, Cornell is personalized with her own dialogue; by contrast Avery appears relatively mute. However, most of his voice is found in the efforts of his brother and his attorneys. Williams’ representation of Avery is less that of an individual and more akin to a multi-vocal, oppressive patriarchal utterance that stifles both life and justice for his alleged victim. Even the verdict handed down by his peers, land owning white men, echoes Avery’s own declaration of innocence. Cornell’s murder goes unaddressed and her death is silenced as a suicide under the pressure of Avery’s deceptively mute speech. Williams’ novel attempts to confront Avery’s multi-vocality and, by doing so, expose the threats that Cornell and women like her posed to the patriarchy Avery represents.

Ironically, Williams’s decision to keep Avery mute while giving voice to Cornell, is double-edged. While we learn a great deal about Cornell, what we learn is limited to her individual position rather than to her place within a larger social framework. Conversely, Avery represents that very same framework without offering any insight as to his own humanity (or lack thereof). The socio-economic realities of the day, touched in passing by Williams, are told in fragments of both characters’ stories. One must consider the ramifications of this choice in order to comprehend how Fall River speaks to the events of the country at the time.

A reflection on Williams’s representation of Avery will highlight the manner in which Avery serves as a warning not just against injustice, but against the realities of institutionalized misogyny and classism. Avery’s lack of speech is granted because he does not need a voice to act; society will act on his behalf to protect itself. Williams’s choice to keep Avery “mute,” while not necessarily intentional, reflects her own understanding of male hegemony in America. It also reminds those of us in an increasingly media-driven age to be aware of the complexity hidden under the guise of predetermined roles of crime perpetrators and their victims for something is certainly being said despite the obvious words and the silence.

Works Cited

Caldwell, Patricia. “In ‘Happy America’: Discovering Catherine Williams’s Fall River for the Women Writers Project.” South Central Review 11.2 (1994): 79 – 98.

DeWaard, Jeanne Elders. “ ‘Indelicate Exposure’: Sentiment and Law in Fall River: An Authentic Narrative.” American Literature 74 (2002): 373 – 401.