A Washerwoman Wreaks Havoc

Abstract

Why would E. L. Doctorow choose a Negro washerwoman as the means for explicating the national temper and the values of a society? A common notion about most of the characters in Ragtime is that “Doctorow’s figures are essentially passive units impinged upon by social and economic forces,”2 and that he uses historical personages to examine “the impact of large historical forces on the lives of common people.”3 Undoubtedly, but Ragtime does much more than this. A significant aspect of this text is that large historical forces and ordinary people are symbiotic and have a reciprocal, if not necessarily equal, contingency. Doctorow states in “The Beliefs of Writers” that “[h]igh seriousness in literature is attached to the belief in the moral immensity of the single soul.”4 Ragtime examines and even celebrates the potentialities of ordinary people and, in particular, the solitary person on large historical forces—among these people the washerwoman and domestic servant, Sarah. It is true that these individuals are buffeted about by external forces they cannot control, but even within such a context some are resourceful and resolute and act in ways that accommodate their own lives, sensibilities and agenda. These seemingly powerless individuals, such as Sarah, become forces that are ignored at the peril of an entire society. They are, at the least, the means by which suppressed social and political issues are brought to light, are sometimes able to effect change or even progress and quite often create havoc and anarchy in the face of denial or resistance.