I hid me in a corner, Spoon River
Despite his name, Fletcher McGee is no straight arrow. Whatever kind of man Fletcher might have been before his wife, Ollie McGee, took his “life by hours’, when we encounter him in his epitaph, he is a broken man – the arrow has snapped.
Where Hod Putt is the very epitome of his name, Fletcher McGee is a weak man who has allowed life to defeat him. Unfortunately, we know nothing of what other factors may have beaten down this rather pathetic figure, for Edgar Lee Masters gives no back-story, either here or in the previous poem ‘spoken’ by Fletcher’s wife. This dearth of detail serves two purposes – one localized, the other universal – one microscopic, the other macroscopic.
Fletcher and Ollie McGee are consumed by their hatred; their whole world has become little more than the causing and suffering of mutual pain. As they lie in their graves, wherein one would imagine they should be beyond the petty cares of life, yet they remain fixated on each other - on who did what, on who will have the last say.
Without any background information, it is difficult to speculate as to how these two people became so wrapped up in their hatred for one another. One cannot help but wonder, however, if such negative passion could exist if there hadn’t first been something more romantically positive between them.
We do know that Ollie was a proud woman, that it was this pride which became too much of a burden for Fletcher to bear. It became his mission to break his wife’s pride, possibly because it somehow prevented him being accepted as a fully equal partner in their relationship – the proud will always elevate themselves at the expense of others, regardless of their actual status. The illogicality of Ollie’s pride is that, while herself never bestowing equal status upon her husband, she would, in all likelihood, expect him to live up to her high expectations. It would, of course, be impossible for Fletcher to achieve the acclaim Ollie would desire for him for the strength he would need she took “by minutes”. How was Fletcher to seek the level of success Ollie likely craved in a life that was being taken by hours, drained “like a fevered moon/That saps the spinning world”?
The moon has long been a symbol of the feminine – whether the stages of menstruation, or the triple nature of the Goddess or, less flattering, as reflecting the light of the masculine sun. While usually a positive image, here it is ‘fevered’ – whatever light it may have to offer can only be unhealthy, making sickly all it touches. If Ollie is the ‘fevered moon’, Fletcher is the ‘spinning world’ her unhealthy touch saps of strength.
We must be careful in these days of gender fluidity and stereotype avoidance syndrome – concerns largely unknown in 1915 when ‘Spoon River Anthology’ was published – not to cause offense to those for whom discrimination is a real part of life. As we will see in the epitaph of Mrs. Benjamin Pantier, there were very definite roles to be played out by women, especially in America, in the early Twentieth Century. This separation of the sexes situated women in the home, out of sight, unspoiled by the harsh light of the burning sun. In this role, women were but an extension of their husbands, his shadow, reflecting his glow.
Though seen as the weaker sex, women nevertheless held influence over their domains and even their husbands, within the home. While she might not so readily enter the world of the public sphere, the wife held a certain moral dominance that could not but have some impact upon the man whose role it was to turn the wheels of industry and economy. Ollie most definitely wields a great deal of influence over her husband.
His response is to become a kind of metaphysical Victor Frankenstein, not so much stitching body parts together as – an equally impossible task – attempting to mould his wife in his own image. As with Victor so with Fletcher – whenever the male takes upon himself the role of creator of life, disaster ensues. Both Victor and Fletcher, in trying to shape life in a very real, physical way, usurp the natural order and both are destroyed by the creature they ‘created’.
No doubt steeped in the Protestant evangelical values it was supposedly Ollie’s role to foster in the home, Fletcher has some awareness of the futility of his course of action. We can assume Fletcher’s knowledge of Scripture from the metaphor of the sculptor or potter moulding the clay. It is a frequently used image in the Bible to denote God’s creative activity. Fletcher cannot help but know that, in likening his actions to those of the ultimate Creator, he transgresses his role as creature, as man. He goes so far as to tell us as much.
As God breathed life into man, in Genesis 2:7, so Fletcher sends his soul into his wife, hoping that she will succumb to his mastery. It is a doubly futile effort on Fletcher’s part. First, if God himself couldn’t prevent the Fall of Adam and Eve what hope could Fletcher possibly have? And second, even as he performs this God-like task, Fletcher sees himself “Fighting like seven devils”, at once acknowledging the difficulty of his undertaking and foretelling his own doom (cf. Mark 16:9).
Fletcher McGee is a fallen man – fallen from the straight and true flight of the arrow, now lying broken and fallen from the heights once attained by the sons of Aodh, high kings of Ireland.
The tragedy of Fletcher and Ollie McGee, so very human in its dimensions, is localized to these two people and the ruin they made of their lives. As I will continue to maintain, ‘Spoon River Anthology’ really does succeed in drawing the macrocosm in the microcosm, for in this tragedy, in the poetry of Edgar Lee Masters, we see and hear of humanity at its most raw, at its most lived, at its most elemental level. This is the power of poetry, that it provides a window onto the soul of men and women as we are, as we might be and as we could be.
Where Hod Putt is the very epitome of his name, Fletcher McGee is a weak man who has allowed life to defeat him. Unfortunately, we know nothing of what other factors may have beaten down this rather pathetic figure, for Edgar Lee Masters gives no back-story, either here or in the previous poem ‘spoken’ by Fletcher’s wife. This dearth of detail serves two purposes – one localized, the other universal – one microscopic, the other macroscopic.
Fletcher and Ollie McGee are consumed by their hatred; their whole world has become little more than the causing and suffering of mutual pain. As they lie in their graves, wherein one would imagine they should be beyond the petty cares of life, yet they remain fixated on each other - on who did what, on who will have the last say.
Without any background information, it is difficult to speculate as to how these two people became so wrapped up in their hatred for one another. One cannot help but wonder, however, if such negative passion could exist if there hadn’t first been something more romantically positive between them.
We do know that Ollie was a proud woman, that it was this pride which became too much of a burden for Fletcher to bear. It became his mission to break his wife’s pride, possibly because it somehow prevented him being accepted as a fully equal partner in their relationship – the proud will always elevate themselves at the expense of others, regardless of their actual status. The illogicality of Ollie’s pride is that, while herself never bestowing equal status upon her husband, she would, in all likelihood, expect him to live up to her high expectations. It would, of course, be impossible for Fletcher to achieve the acclaim Ollie would desire for him for the strength he would need she took “by minutes”. How was Fletcher to seek the level of success Ollie likely craved in a life that was being taken by hours, drained “like a fevered moon/That saps the spinning world”?
The moon has long been a symbol of the feminine – whether the stages of menstruation, or the triple nature of the Goddess or, less flattering, as reflecting the light of the masculine sun. While usually a positive image, here it is ‘fevered’ – whatever light it may have to offer can only be unhealthy, making sickly all it touches. If Ollie is the ‘fevered moon’, Fletcher is the ‘spinning world’ her unhealthy touch saps of strength.
We must be careful in these days of gender fluidity and stereotype avoidance syndrome – concerns largely unknown in 1915 when ‘Spoon River Anthology’ was published – not to cause offense to those for whom discrimination is a real part of life. As we will see in the epitaph of Mrs. Benjamin Pantier, there were very definite roles to be played out by women, especially in America, in the early Twentieth Century. This separation of the sexes situated women in the home, out of sight, unspoiled by the harsh light of the burning sun. In this role, women were but an extension of their husbands, his shadow, reflecting his glow.
Though seen as the weaker sex, women nevertheless held influence over their domains and even their husbands, within the home. While she might not so readily enter the world of the public sphere, the wife held a certain moral dominance that could not but have some impact upon the man whose role it was to turn the wheels of industry and economy. Ollie most definitely wields a great deal of influence over her husband.
His response is to become a kind of metaphysical Victor Frankenstein, not so much stitching body parts together as – an equally impossible task – attempting to mould his wife in his own image. As with Victor so with Fletcher – whenever the male takes upon himself the role of creator of life, disaster ensues. Both Victor and Fletcher, in trying to shape life in a very real, physical way, usurp the natural order and both are destroyed by the creature they ‘created’.
No doubt steeped in the Protestant evangelical values it was supposedly Ollie’s role to foster in the home, Fletcher has some awareness of the futility of his course of action. We can assume Fletcher’s knowledge of Scripture from the metaphor of the sculptor or potter moulding the clay. It is a frequently used image in the Bible to denote God’s creative activity. Fletcher cannot help but know that, in likening his actions to those of the ultimate Creator, he transgresses his role as creature, as man. He goes so far as to tell us as much.
As God breathed life into man, in Genesis 2:7, so Fletcher sends his soul into his wife, hoping that she will succumb to his mastery. It is a doubly futile effort on Fletcher’s part. First, if God himself couldn’t prevent the Fall of Adam and Eve what hope could Fletcher possibly have? And second, even as he performs this God-like task, Fletcher sees himself “Fighting like seven devils”, at once acknowledging the difficulty of his undertaking and foretelling his own doom (cf. Mark 16:9).
Fletcher McGee is a fallen man – fallen from the straight and true flight of the arrow, now lying broken and fallen from the heights once attained by the sons of Aodh, high kings of Ireland.
The tragedy of Fletcher and Ollie McGee, so very human in its dimensions, is localized to these two people and the ruin they made of their lives. As I will continue to maintain, ‘Spoon River Anthology’ really does succeed in drawing the macrocosm in the microcosm, for in this tragedy, in the poetry of Edgar Lee Masters, we see and hear of humanity at its most raw, at its most lived, at its most elemental level. This is the power of poetry, that it provides a window onto the soul of men and women as we are, as we might be and as we could be.
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