“I Am to Others What I Am to Myself”: Religion, Charity, and Fraud in Rebecca Harding Davis’s A Law Unto Herself

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Notes

¹ Harris briefly discusses the novel in Rebecca Harding Davis and American Literary Realism (1991). In her examination of the text, she mentions the roles of Spiritualism and of the confidence-man in the novel, but her main focus is the novel’s engagement with women’s legal status (196–202). In Rebecca Harding Davis (1993), Rose outlines the novel’s depiction of female interiority and psychology – particularly in the characterization of Jane – but avoids discussing other themes (107–11).

² These three versions include an original, holographic text as submitted to The Atlantic Monthly in 1860; a censored version that was published in the Atlantic in 1861, which excised the church scene; and an expanded version for an 1865 collection of previously-published Atlantic Monthly fiction that restored the censored portion. All three versions can be viewed at Rebecca Harding Davis: Complete Works under the article title “‘Life in the Iron-Mills’ With original ms notations.” The paragraph that had been censored in the 1861 publication is highlighted in the body of the text. Note 10 provides the text of the revised 1865 version.

³ Both “Polly’s Religion” and “A Brand Left to Burn” appeared on the first page of their respective issues of The Congregationalist, reflecting Davis’s prestige as a front-page contributor and the value the paper put in her as a writer.

⁴ See Cadwallader for an analysis of the differences in charity, benevolence, and philanthropy as responses to need in the nineteenth century.