"Jordan’s End":
Social Commentary
Gretchen
Lynn Greene
Ellen Glasgow’s short story "Jordan’s End" is a dark, brooding tale of the demise of a once prominent Virginia planter’s family in the years following the end of the Civil War. In this sad tale the author appears to make every effort to set a tone of hopelessness and despair, painting a depressing picture of an unsustainable life style fallen into ruin. In "Jordan’s End" Glasgow seems to be making a pointed social comment on the consequences of an elite Southern social system based primarily on heredity, specifically primogenitureship. In Joan DelFattore’s essay on Ellen Glasgow, which appears in Critical Survey of Short Fiction, she discusses the author’s attempt to write realistically about the South, touching on taboo subjects such as heredity, social selection, and criticism of the South’s class system. DelFattore suggests that some of the author’s reasons for writing so critically and realistically about the South "were the product of her frustration with the weakness and ineffectuality of the Southern aristocracy" (1000). In "Jordan’s End" Glasgow points out and criticizes these weaknesses.
From the very beginning of the story Glasgow builds a dark and decaying physical and natural world for the inhabitants of Jordan’s End. She uses ominous symbolism to evoke a mood of finality, signaling that this fictional world is in the midst of its last days. Glasgow sets her story in November when the year is nearly over; the trees have "half bared boughs," there is a smell of "rotting leaves," and nothing moved (Glasgow 357, 358, 360). She describes a landscape with bleak abandoned fields taken over by scrub pines and broom sedge (Glasgow 360). She sends her narrator down a cold and cheerless road late in the day, where he witnesses "the last flare of the sunset" and "on either side the forest was still as death" (Glasgow 357, 360). In "Jordan’s End" lawns are ragged, fields are abandoned, trails are rutted and deep in mud, it is constantly cold and gloomy, it is forever late in the day, and the refuse of nature is rotting and odorous (Glasgow 357-368). By setting this story in late autumn, Glasgow has effectively used the physical aspects of nature to signal the reader that this is the story about the end of a way of life for the Jordans.
Glasgow not only uses the time of year, autumn, as an ominous symbol, she also uses some key cultural signs to foreshadow what lies ahead. In the very first sentence of the story the author evokes unease; her hapless narrator, a young doctor making his first call in this remote and desolate part of the country, faces a fork in the road and sees a "dead tree where buzzards were roosting" (Glasgow 357). Just to top it off, the sun is starting to set without the doctor having finished his journey Glasgow makes sure that her narrator is unable to escape from these dark symbols. As when the ancient Negro delivers the message; when the old, dwarfed, and hunchback Mr. Paterkin solicits a ride; and when a buzzard’s feather drifts down from above to land on his lap—the symbolism of the Jordan’s decaying world seems to be reaching out to pull him in (Glasgow 358, 359). The doctor, upon reaching his destination, is faced with more stark symbolism: a once grand house fallen into bleak decay, the three older Jordan women who are all thin and dressed severely in black, young Mrs. Jordan who is described as a beautiful skeleton, and the clothing worn by this once prominent family now plain and tattered (Glasgow 360, 361). Glasgow seems determined that the outside world of the Jordans, both natural and physical, reflect the inward crumbling of their family and Southern culture.
Glasgow successfully uses both the physical and mental state of her characters to represent the disastrous effects of the old Southern aristocracy. The two doctors in this story (the narrator and Dr. Carstairs of Baltimore) appear to be the only two persons that do not carry some fatal flaw, and it is probably by design that Glasgow portrays them as not being part of the Jordan’s social world. They merely drift in and out of the Jordan’s life when needed. Every other member of this story has some mental or physical flaw. The Negro messenger sent by the Jordans to summon the doctor (narrator) is described as ancient and decrepit (Glasgow 358, 365). Glasgow may have been using the old Negro to show how long the Southern aristocracy had been in place (Levy 101). Mr. Paterkin, who gains a ride from the narrator, is described as wrinkled and weather-beaten, and is suspected of looking older then his years for he is sharp of mind and physically agile (Glasgow 358). It is as if Mr. Paterkin’ association with the decaying Jordans (he farms some of their land) has physically aged and weathered him. The Jordans themselves carry either a mental or physical flaw. The Jordan men all go insane, and the Jordan women all seem to deteriorate physically, becoming thin and aged, and finally succumbing to an insanity of their own (Glasgow 361-63, 366).
Within the story of "Jordan’s End" Glasgow also shows blatant examples of the consequences suffered by the Jordans who are caught up within the old Southern class system. Insanity was not the only concern of the Jordan family. Evidence of the unprofitablility of the farm is everywhere, and it seems as if Glasgow is using the farm as a metaphor for the decline of the Jordans’ social class.
First, the Jordans do not have enough field hands to work the farm. They lease some of the land to sharecroppers like Mr. Paterkin (Glasgow 359). It is also insinuated that labor was so dear that the surviving Mr. Jordan worked in the fields himself and his wife accompanied him there. Mrs. Jordan also does common household chores usually given to servants, like going to the smokehouse and gathering wood chips (Glasgow 361). This would have been unheard of in the glory days of the old South. There is much evidence that the Jordans were not able to make the farm very profitable. Their once grand house has not only fallen into disrepair, but it is also full of vermin (Glasgow 359,360, 362). The old ladies and young Mrs. Jordan (she is described as skeletal) are very thin which would suggest not only on their stressful situation, but also on the quality and quantity of any food stuffs supplied by the farm. The only livestock, a few sheep, are huddled on "the ragged lawn," and every time a field is mentioned, it is barren or overgrow (Glasgow 360, 365). Also, the Jordans do not seem to be able to afford the type of textiles common to their class, like fine clothing and linen. Young Mrs. Jordan is dressed in calico and a tattered shawl, and the linen used on her dead husband is old and yellow, "handed down from some more affluent generation" (Glasgow 361, 366). It is plainly evident that the Jordans were unable to sustain their once profitable lifestyle in the years following the Civil War.
As with many of her novels and short stories, Ellen Glasgow appears to be expressing her views on the Southern social class structure of the pre- and post-Civil War South. DelFattore argues that Glasgow uses the same themes, techniques, and characterizations in "Jordan’s End" as she does in her other major novels; issues of heredity and environment are reoccurring in the author’s body of work (DelFattore 1004). DelFattore further argues that "the fall of the Jordans suggest[s] the recurrent Glasgow theme of the decadence of the South in both blood and environment . . ." (1004). It appears that within her body of work Glasgow was writing about a lifestyle she both knew and understood, and latter came to scorn. It seems she took every opportunity through her writing to challenge the status quo of Southern elitist culture (Levy 95-130).
Works
Cited
DelFattore, Joan. Critical
Survey of Short Fiction, Vol. 3. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Pasadena: Salem
Press, Inc., 1993. 999-1005.
Levy, Helen
Fiddyment. Fiction of the Home Place. Jackson: U P of Mississippi, 1992.
97-130.
Glasgow, Ellen.
"Jordan’s End." A Norton Anthology: The Literature of the American
South. Ed. William L. Andrews. New York: Norton, 1998. 355-368.
_Works
Consulted
Branson, Stephanie
R. "Experience Illuminated: Veristic Representation in Glasgow’s Short
Stories." Ellen Glasgow: New Perspectives. Ed. Dorothy M. Scura.
Knoxville: U Tennessee Press, 1995.
Harrison, Elizabeth
Jane. Female Pastoral: Women Writers Re-Visioning the American South.
Knoxville: U Tennessee Press, 1991.
Manning, Carol S.
"The Real Beginning of the Southern Renaissance." The Female
Tradition in Southern Literature. Ed. Carol S. Manning. Urbana: U Illinois
Press, 1993. 37-56.
Raper, Julius
Rowan. From the Sunken Garden: The Fiction of Ellen Glasgow, 1916- 1945.
Louisiana State U P, 1980. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism,
Vol. 7. Ed. Sharon K. Hall. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1982. 345-347.
The History of
Southern Literature. Baton Rouge: LA
State U P, 1985.
Torsney, Cheryl B.
"Ellen Glasgow: 1873-1945." Modern American Women Writers. Ed.
Elaine Showalter. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991. 171-180.
What Are They
Saying About Ellen Glasgow?
Bobbi L.
Ellington
Ellen
Glasgow was born in Richmond, Virginia on April 22, 1873 and was the next to
the youngest in a family of four sons and six daughters. In spite of this,
Glasgow experienced a somewhat lonely childhood. Because of fragile health and
what was described as a nervous temperament, she did not attend formal schools.
The onset of deafness as a child further isolated her and contributed to her
unhappiness. Most of her education came from her father’s extensive library,
but reading alone caused her to become even more of a recluse. Glasgow admired
the works of Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Henry Fielding, and
Jane Austin. She also read extensively in philosophy and political economy.
Glasgow’s
writings included novels, short stories, poetry, criticism, and an
autobiography. During her career she had 23 books published and is best known
for her novels, Barren Ground, The
Romantic Comedians, The Sheltered Life, and In This Our Life, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1941.
William L. Andrews writes in The
Literature of the American South, that “the Pulitzer Prize awarded that
novel was in truth more a tribute to Glasgow’s entire career than to a single
book” (357). Frank N. Magill in Critical Survey of Short Fiction states
that “Her books were commercially successful, often achieving the status of
best-sellers. Until the publication of Barren
Ground in 1925, however, Glasgow’s work received little serious
consideration from critics or scholars” (1488). Magill considers "Jordan’s
End" “by far the best of Glasgow’s ghost stories” (1493). He concludes,
“the title Jordan’s End has a double meaning. It is the name of the crumbling
Southern mansion which is the main setting of the story, and it is also a
reference to the decaying state of the Jordan family” (1493).
Ellen
Glasgow was thought of as a writer of the South. Although she was a member of a
southern aristocratic family, in her novels she rebelled against the
idealization of the genteel traditions of the South prior to the Civil War. In
his book Ellen Glasgow, Marcelle
Tiebauz states that Glasgow’s “chosen subject was Virginia’s social history,
and as the first writer of the modern South she gave literature definition to
the region in its post-Reconstruction period” (1). Thiebauz further states that “Glasgow resisted being termed a
southern writer. Her subject, she maintained, was human nature in the South,
not Southern nature” (2).
Magill, in Critical Survey of Short Fiction, states
that Glasgow “revolted against the affectedness, Romanticism, and excessive
picturesqueness of much nineteenth and early twentieth century Southern
literature, and set out to produce a more realistic kind of fiction” (1489).
Magill also summized that “although Glasgow did introduce an element of realism
into Southern literature, she failed to accomplish her objectives fully. She
remained a rather genteel Southern lady whose attempt to depict the truth of
the human situation was hampered by the limited range of her own experiences”
(1489).
Glasgow
suffered many tragedies. She experienced bouts of major depression during her
life and sought the help of therapists. MacDonald claims that the work of her
therapists could be seen in her writings. He states “Psychiatrists were
teaching her there was no one universal perception” (99). J. R. Paper in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism,
states that Glasgow “seems often to have looked to irony as the attitude by
which an individual can best remove the sting from reality” (190). Among
Glasgow’s other personal tragedies during her career were the death of her
mother in 1893 and the suicide of her brother-in-law and mentor, Walter
McCormack in 1894. Glasgow’s brother also committed suicide in 1909. Glasgow
mentions in her autobiography that she had considered her childhood home filled
with “ghosts,” the “ghosts” of sad childhood memories of her mother’s mental
illness and all the deaths of family members.
Although
Ellen Glasgow is known as a writer of the South, Magill states “Glasgow’s
fiction receives a moderate amount of critical attention today, but her work is
considered uneven, and she is not regarded as one of the top American fiction
writers” (1488). Magill further states
that “she tried to consolidate her reputation as a serious writer of American
fiction by cultivating critics and journalists, but she was only partially
successful. Her comparatively genteel brand of Southern realism became an
object of scorn to younger critics who were eager to establish the ascendancy
of writers such as William Faulkner” (1488).
Glasgow
suffered a severe heart attack in December, 1939 at the age of 66. She was ill
for the remaining six years of her life and died in her sleep on November 21,
1945. Her tombstone reads “To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”
Andrews, William L. et al., eds. The Literature of the American South. New York: Norton, 1998.
MacDonald, Edgar. Short Story Criticism. Ed. Anna Sheets Nesbitt. Michigan: Gale Research Group, 2000. Vol. 34. 55-105.
Magill, Frank N. ed. Critical Survey of Short Fiction. New Jersey: Salem Press, 1981. Vol. 4. 1488-1494.
Magill, Frank N., ed. Great Women Writers. New York: Salem Press, 1994. 182-185.
Raper, J.R. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Eds. Hall, Sharon K. and Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research Group, 1979. Vol. 2. 175-191.
Thiebaux, Marcelle. Ellen Glasgow. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1982.
What Are They Saying About
Ellen Glasgow?
Katharine Best
Ellen Glasgow offers fine storytelling that reflects a particular
era in southern literature. Numerous literary critics have written of the
feminist aspect of her writing. Others have studied Glasgow’s themes as they
pertain to the events in her life and have compared her work to the writings of
H.G. Wells and Edgar Allen Poe.
One interesting component of Glasgow’s writing was her depiction
of the “reality” of the southern condition. In 1928, Dorothea Lawrance Mann in
her book, Ellen Glasgow, stated:
To her indeed we owe our real understanding of the gracious life
of the old plantation. Always before her it came to us sugar-coated—like the
compliments which fell so easily from the lips of Southern gentlemen. Possibly
she is a trifle hard on these gentlemen. Some of her friends find her so!
Nevertheless, we have needed her words (7).
In the early part of this century the thrust of Glasgow’s
feminist stories was rather unusual. Mann applauds Glasgow’s work, “For the
past twenty years she has been the foremost, and, for much of that time, the
only Southern woman who dared to champion the intellectual freedom of her sex”
(3). Further, Mann states, “She saw and understood very many things that
traditional Southern women were not supposed to see and understand” (4).
In a 1982 salute to Glasgow’s female characters, Linda W. Wagner
maintains that Glasgow’s short stories emphasize characterization—particularly
strong female characters—rather than plot development. Wagner also believes
that many of Glasgow’s short story plots were subsequently integrated into her
novels (50).
Glasgow’s writing changed over time, as happens to many writers,
so that critical essays of her work might often apply to her writing from a
particular period of her life. The Norton Anthology, The Literature of the
American South, comments on her depiction of the role of women and notes that a
shift in her tone and focus occurred with Virginia in which she attacks the
“idealism and the traditional role of women” (357).
In an introduction to The Collected Stories of Ellen Glasgow,
Richard K. Meeker comments on her development as a writer. He compares
Glasgow’s “Whispering Leaves” to “Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher.” Meeker
points out that not only is there similarity in the subject—decaying house and
decaying family—there is a quality to Glasgow’s writing that is comparable to
Poe’s. Meeker wrote, “The tonal unity achieved by the identification of house
and occupants has been one of the most admired features of the Poe story” (63).
In “Jordan’s End” the theme is again repeated, however, Meeker makes an even
more specific analogy, “the title bears the same dual symbolism as the Poe
story” (63).
In an essay dated 1995, Catherine Rainwater concurs with the Poe
analogy arguing that Glasgow’s stories also show the influence of the works of
H. G. Wells. Rainwater notes that in Glasgow’s autobiography, The Woman Within,
Glasgow mentions reading both Poe and Wells, but states that she especially
felt a “curious kinship with
Poe” (92). Rainwater continues, “Glasgow’s stories nearly all
exhibit Poe-esque narrative management, and thereby imply a Poe-inspired
worldview . . . Glasgow’s stories reveal her sympathy with the Southern
antebellum ethos of Poe’s work” (92).
Like Meeker, Rainwater suggests Poe’s influence in the setting of
“Whispering Leaves.” Rainwater describes “a remotely located and haunted
ancestral mansion which the narrator approaches with some apprehension in the
opening of the story, and [Glasgow’s] use of the haunted house to represent [a]
claustrophobic, enclosed psychological space” (96). Rainwater also believes the
house in “Jordan’s End” is Poe-inspired and draws a comparison of the Jordan
family to the Usher family as “hereditarily mentally ill” (96).
In 1980 Julius Rowan Raper wrote that Glasgow’s stories “were
written during a time of aesthetic and emotional crisis and reflect her work
for a new language to express the working of the deepest reaches of human
consciousness” (75). In addition to the story lines of decay and madness, Raper
observes the theme of euthanasia in southern literature and references other
stories from that era, Absalom, and The Web and the Rock as well as “Jordan’s
End.” He believes this theme is also a reflection of the narrator.
Since the dream logic of “Jordan’s End” suggests that, as in
“Whispering Leaves,” all the characters are attributes of the narrator, it may
well be that these stories of euthanasia or beneficent death . . . are actually
tales of attempted rescue: the narrator dreams his or her way to the core of
his psyche, identifies what is still vital there, rescues it, and allows the
dead past to be finally dead (75).
In a 1982 essay Marcelle Thiebaux comments on Glasgow’s short
story themes that were developed more fully in her novels. As an example,
Thiebaux compares the lethal overdose in “Jordan’s End” to the events in “A
Point of Morals.” Thiebaux claims the themes of crime and strong women are
pertinent to Glasgow’s interest.
The southern lady’s ability quietly to commit crimes with
impunity appears again in “The Ancient Law,” “The Sheltered Life,” and “In This
Our Life.” Even more dear to the author’s heart is the woman of superior
strength who, one way or the other, manages to survive while watching her lover
or husband die wretchedly (78).
It might seem logical that when a theme is repeated in writing,
e.g. strong women, a reader might begin to associate this attribute to a
personal characteristic of the author. In a 1996 essay Edgar MacDonald
addresses this aspect of Glasgow’s writing. He claims that Glasgow had “fixed
her romantic imagination of other males—notably on her brother-in-law, Walter
McCormack” (99). Later, McCormack committed suicide. It might be reasonable to
believe the event could foster the development of Glasgow’s personal strength
and resolve.
At one time Glasgow was engaged to a man named Henry Anderson.
Their relationship lasted twenty-one years, yet they never married. However,
according to MacDonald, Anderson had a positive effect on her writing.
MacDonald wrote, “Her meeting with a healthy male egotist coincided with her
emergence from an artistic malaise . . . he would become a part of a
regeneration of her work. . . . If he was good for her, she was good for him.
He liked strong women” (99).
The components of an author’s writing are always subject to study
and discussion. While Glasgow’s writing reflected life in the south a century
ago, her daring characterization of women, and the quality and style of her
written word is the subject of study and critique to the present day.
Works Cited
Hobson, Fred. “Ellen Glasgow.” The Literature of
the American South. Ed. William Andrews. New York: 1998. 355-57.
MacDonald, Edgar. “From Jordan’s End to Frenchman’s
Bend: Ellen Glasgow’s Short Stories.” Rpt. in Short Story Criticism.
Detroit: Gale, 2000.
Mann, Dorothea Lawrance. Ellen Glasgow. New
York: Doubleday, 1928.
Meeker, Richard K. “The Collected Stories of Ellen
Glasgow.” Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Detroit: Gale, 2000.
Rainwater, Catherine. “Ellen Glasgow’s Outline of
History in the Shadowy Third and Other Stories.” Rpt. in Short Story
Criticism. Detroit: Gale, 2000.
Raper, Julius Rowan. From the Sunken Garden: the
Fiction of Ellen Glasgow. Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
Thiebaux, Marcelle. “Poems and Short Stories of Ellen
Glasgow.” Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Detroit: Gale, 2000.
Wagner, Linda W. “The Years of the Locust in Ellen
Glasgow: Beyond Convention.” Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Detroit:
Gale, 2000.
Works Consulted
Sherman, Stuart P. Ellen Glasgow, Critical Essays.
Garden City: Doubleday, 1928.
Thiebaux, Marcelle. Ellen Glasgow. New York:
Frederick Ungar, 1982.