Dear Serial Readers,
I found myself only reading one more installment--I shall endeavor to pick up the pace, but too many other demands on my reading time right now!
In this installment, where Martin C. and Mark T. make the transatlantic voyage, I was especially intrigued by the description of the steerage. Martin, with his English "gentleman" class identity, resents having to mingle with the riff-raff in steerage, but Mark rallies to the democratic flavor of this miscellaneous group of travelers and tends to them all with food, song, reading, writing letters for others--"there never was a more popular character than Mark Tapley" who is "the life and soul of the steerage."
I'm also struck by how miserable the journey is on bodies--everyone seems to suffer from sea-sickness in this "unwholesome ark" of The Screw, and its "terrible transport." I've read about the "middle passage" from Africa, and wonder how the steerage conditions Dickens describes compares with the horrors of the middle passage. Being chained and without fresh air or windows or the ability to walk on the deck would be worse. Steerage is the way immigrants usually traveled. But in any case, is the prospect of opportunity (which Martin seems to anticipate) in the US worth the price of the passage? We'll see.
Next up, New York, New York! Chaps. 16-17.
Serially sailing still,
Susan
1 comment:
I too am struck by the detailed misery of the crossing. And I too have read other accounts of life in steerage on immigrant ships (mid-19th century, Atlantic). What no other accounts I read contained was the kindness and mutual assistance among passengers.
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