Genevieve Taggard's Sentimental Marxism in Calling Western Union

Abstract

This article investigates Genevieve Taggard's Calling Western Union (1936), the only volume of Taggard's poetry devoted to class issues. It argues that this work is more complex than its obvious Marxism suggests because Taggard recasts an earlier sentimental ethic of interpersonal bonds and helping others in Marxist terms. Initially, I discuss Taggard's links with earlier sentimental writers and works, especially Rebecca Harding Davis' Life in the Iron Mills, in order to establish this ethic. I utilize this philosophical framework to inform close readings of Taggard's autobiographical Preface and representative vocalic poems in which women play key political roles. Taggard develops these poems, in which speakers emulate another voice, more fully than those used in worker's correspondence poems and in Tillie Olsen's "I Want You Women Up North to Know" by representing the entire socio-economic spectrum. Thus, Taggard juxtaposes affluent characters with middle class speakers who empathize with the working class. She also uses a knowledgeable, middle class voice to help readers define the working class and at appropriate moments supersedes this voice with those of the workers. Both middle and working class speakers demonstrate the efficacy of a sentimental ethic by performing functions appropriate to their class.