Gender Tension in "Working Class Geniuses"

            Upon reading the section “Working Class Geniuses,” for my presentation, I found it interesting that there was underlying tension between men and women within working class writers.   

            Just to review, during the era in which public print exploded, commoners and people from laborious classes began to publish literary works.  This time period allowed for the working class to be heard and better respected among high ranked societies. However, within this time period of commoner publishing, tension between genders was exposed through the writing of different authors.

            This tension, according to our Norton Anthology, was clearly revealed through the works of Stephen Duck and Mary Collier.  Even though both authors addressed the daily hardships and labors of field-workers, each author represented the perspective of their own gender—Stephen Duck portrayed the male experience in labor, and Mary Collier displayed the hardships of a female field-worker and countrywoman. What is most interesting, however, is the negative banter that goes on between the genders.  Stephen Duck wrote comments about women that Collier took offensively an evidently served as motivation to write her work (“Working Class Geniuses”).  The tension and competition between the writings is even seen through the titles of the works, Duck’s Thresher’s Labor followed by Collier’s The Woman’s Labor.

             In Collier’s work, she directly combats the claims of Stephen Duck against women. Specifically, Collier argues in contradiction of Duck's claim that women are lazy laborers ("Working Class Geniuses"). She first exclaims that women do their work whole heartedly, "But in the work we freely bear a part, and what we can, perform with all our hearts," to argue against Duck's claim that women are lazy (Collier 91-92). Collier also explains the struggle to balance both motherhood and fieldwork, and shows that women take on both loads at once by carrying their babies with them while they tend the fields (94-102). Lastly, collier says that men have it easier because while they get to lay down to sleep for the night, women " little sleep can have, because our forward children cry and rave,” showing their constant duty toward the family and enduring labor despite the lack of rest (Collier 113-114).  Here, Collier is doing all she can to defend hard-working women, and she is trying to convince Duck, as well as her readers, that women do actually playa significant role in labor, and perhaps have an even harder burden to carry with the addition of kids. 
            Collier’s opposition to Duck’s claims clearly reveals an underlying tension between men and women within the working class.  It is very interesting to analyze these tensions through these specific works, however I am sure that many works of this era and of this genre show similar evidence.

Works Cited:

 

Collier, Mary. The Woman’s Labor. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, George H. Logan, Katharine E. Maus,     and Barbara K. Lewalski. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ninth ed. Vol. C. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.

"Working Class Geniuses." Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, George H. Logan, Katharine E. Maus, and Barbara K. Lewalski. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ninth ed. Vol. C. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.