8. Amanda Mason

Amanda Barker’s epitaph is the third in a quartet of linked poems. Along with Cassius Hueffer, Serepta Mason and Constance Hately, Amanda Barker accuses the people of Spoon River of being blind to reality - wilfully or otherwise.

Amanda addresses her epitaph to the ‘Traveler’, or any stranger who happens along as she likely feels, even in death, unable to speak to those who failed her so tragically in life. And, if they really were so willing to allow her husband’s hatred take the course it did, all for the sake of appearances, would there be any point in Amanda trying to reason with them now? The good people of Spoon River will go to any lengths to live the appearance of an up-standing, virtuous Middle American community, even if lives must be stunted (Serepta Masaon), lies must be told of the dead (Cassius Hueffer), meanness of spirit ignored as necessary (Constance Hately), and lives forfeited for the greater good (Amanda Barker). No wonder that Amanda Barker is reduced to speaking her epitaph to any passing stranger!

The eighth epitaph of Spoon River Anthology is particularly brutal in its depiction of life in, what we may suppose, a typical Middle American town. Certainly, Edgar Lee Masters would have us believe that the Anthology speaks for more than merely one small town. That Spoon River itself is supposed to be a composite of the two towns in which Masters grew up supports the wider application of these poems, to include the very idea of Middle America and its vaunted values. These values, it seems, Masters would undermine for they are destructive, even murderous, in their application if not in their intent.

In just eight lines, Masters lays bare the brutal tragedy of those values which idealises woman only as wife and mother. Amanda Barker “entered the portals of dust” upon marriage and, once within, they barred her path to any kind of meaningful life other than the one prescribed for her. Those portals demarcated her world - a world wherein she was subject to the whim of a husband whose heart was devoid of love. Not a husband, mind you, who was willing to forego his own pleasure, even though it cost his wife her very life. His pleasure was all her life was worth, according to the so-called ‘values’ of her community. Accordingly, she did her duty by him, providing him with off-spring, giving her life for his gratification and - if the child were a boy - the continuance of his name and fortune.

And so, like Cassius Hueffer and Serepta Mason before her, Amanda Barker’s life fell victim to a set of values whose maintenance requires sacrifice. It is a price the good people of Spoon River are willing to pay - and, likely, is paying still.

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