Whitman, Harper, Alcott

American literature in the nineteenth century is necessarily concerned with democracy: by the time of the U.S. Civil War the American democratic experiment was not even a century old, and as a result writers remained extremely sensitive until the end of the century toward questions of whether America was capable of living up to the high ideals that it had set for itself in its founding documents. An examination of some representative nineteenth century American works -- Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," Harper's "A Double Standard" and "The Deliverance," and Louisa May Alcott's story "Work" -- will demonstrate that the failings of American democracy were a subject all these writers had in common.

Whitman is commonly thought of as the poet who champions American democracy, but "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is a poem that contains grave doubts. We note this most obviously as Whitman's long flowing stanzas suddenly dry...
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