Author Archives: herzogl

Charlotte Gilman Hates Nevada: How “A Nevada Desert” Reflected Her Inner Turmoil: By Liana Herzog

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A Nevada Desert, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

An aching, blinding, barren, endless plain,
Corpse-colored with white mould of alkali,
Hairy with sage-brush, slimy after rain,
Burnt with the sky’s hot scorn, and still again
Sullenly burning back against the sky.

Dull green, dull brown, dull purple, and dull gray,
The hard earth white with ages of despair,
Slow-crawling, turbid streams where dead reeds sway,
Low wall of sombre mountains far away,
And sickly steam of geysers on the air.

TW: suicidal ideation, depression.
As you approach a poem like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s A Nevada Desert, you may expect to find an ode to America’s vast and diverse landscape. Instead, one is brought to a dull and drab, sticky landscape situated beneath a scorching sun. Immediately it is apparent that Gilman would rather be anywhere else besides Nevada.

Burnt with the sky’s hot scorn, and still again
Sullenly burning back against the sky.

I was taken back to a day about ten years ago when I’d found myself in a similar

situation. When I was ten years old my family took a road trip through the United States. During our drive through the deserts of Nevada, we had missed a gas station and were running on empty with no sign of civilization for miles. As we chugged along on empty, our car began to sputter and threatened to leave us stranded in the blistering heat. Early on in our trip, I was mesmerized by the variety of colors in the rocks, the deep purples and blues starkly contrasting the bright yellows and oranges. But with our AC shut off and our car giving out, I remember staring out at the vast desert, and that awe was replaced with fear.

When reading A Nevada Desert, I questioned if Charlotte Gilman’s hatred

was perhaps misplaced anxiety or anger that had been taken out on the scenery before her, scenery she may have considered beautiful, like I had, under different circumstances. I imagined a worn-out Gilman, weary from days on the road, scribbling in the back of a coach as it slowly made its way through the barren land. Maybe like me, she was imagining her life stranded in the desert, with only a few goats and the occasional puff of steam to keep her company as she slowly succumbed to the heat. The sun in the Nevada Desert can reach blisteringly hot temperatures of over 115

degrees

Fahrenheit, and as she herself became stickier with sweat,

she likely began to feel disdain towards the even stickier, steaming alkali springs that decorated the landscape.

Slow-crawling, turbid streams where dead reeds sway,
Low wall of sombre mountains far away,
And sickly steam of geysers on the air.

But perhaps Gilman’s pain was not caused by the desert but rather exacerbated by it. A Nevada Desert is a part of the The World section of Gilman’s poetry

book, In This Our World. Her revolting description of a drab and scorched desert starkly contrasts her language in other poems in the same section, in which she depicts beautiful and lush forests and meadows with great fondness. Poems such as Nature’s Response are far more similar to other works of poetry at the time, which often romanticized the natural landscape of the newly acquired West. As a result, A Nevada Desert greatly stands out for her passionate hatred for vast and isolated world before her.

Gilman was all too familiar with isolation. Her most famous work, The Yellow Wallpaper, told the story of a woman’s battle with mental illness after being forced to live in a closet-like room for three months. This story was a reflection of Charlotte’s own life, as she had suffered from severe depression and suicidal ideation following Rest Cure treatment. Rest Cure was a controversial treatment in the late 19th century for women suffering from anxiety and depression, and was prescribed to Gilman in an effort to relieve post-partum depression. Gilman was instructed to avoid intellectual or creative activity and to spend much of her time resting. Her experience in isolation contributed to severe mental instability. As she slowly lost her grip, Her depressive episodes cost her her marriage, and later in life, she would calculate that over 27 years of her time had been lost to these episodes.

The Nevada desert, full of muted colors and drab planes that may once have been vibrant and colorful, may serve to represent Gilman’s experiences trapped within her own thoughts as her isolation slowly dullened them. Gilman spent 90 days in relative isolation, and with little to no mental or emotional stimulation. She may have felt threatened by large stretches of nothingness, her despair more so directed at the thoughts she was now trapped with, rather than the desert itself.

Dull green, dull brown, dull purple, and dull gray,

The hard earth white with ages of despair,

Whether Charlotte Gilman was struggling with her own mind, or simply hated Nevada, this poem’s detailed and grimy descriptions effectively place the reader into her perspective. We feel the sun scorching her back, we smell the raw sewage scent of the Alkali flats. In reading, we are transported to this desert with Gilman and thus share in her pain.
Gilman uses particularly disgusting imagery to describe the scene before her, describing the sagebrush as “hairy” and the alkali flats, a staple of the Nevada Desert, as “corpse-colored”.

Corpse-colored with white mould of alkali,

Hairy with sage-brush, slimy after rain,

She uses words such as “aching”, “blinding”, “barren”, “sickly”, and “despair” to paint a picture of an undesirable and ugly scene. A combination of unpleasant sights, smells, and textures that fully immerse every sense in the unpleasantry. While never explicitly stated, her disgust is clear, and in reading her work, we are made to share in her anguish.

An aching, blinding, barren, endless plain, (…)

The hard earth white with ages of despair,

Each year, over a million people travel to Death Valley to see the very same corpse-colored flats and endless plains Gilman carried so much hatred for. Many poets sing the praises of its multicolored planes and diverse scenery. What inspired Gilman’s view of this landscape will never be known for sure, but one’s view of the world is often a reflection of one’s inner peace. When I was a child, that landscape had turned ugly as I (rather unrealistically) became terrified of the possibility of being lost in the desert. Perhaps, like me, Charlotte Perkins Gilman hated the desert because she too was scared to be lost once more.

 

Works Cited:

“Charlotte Perkins Gilman.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., March 6, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlotte-Perkins-Gilman
Foster, Alyson. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman Did More Than Write One Classic Short Story: Beyond ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.” HUMANITIES, vol. 43, no. 4, Fall 2022.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. In This Our World. Boston, Small, Maynard & Company Publishers, 1914.
Kessler, R. C., et al. “Prevalence, Severity, and Comorbidity of 12-Month DSM-IV Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication.” American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 164, no. 5, 2007, pp. 737-744.
Martin. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Yellow Wallpaper”. American Journal of Psychiatry, Https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.2007.164.5.736, vol. 164, no. 5, American Psychiatric Publishing, May 2007, pp. 736–736, doi:10.1176/ajp.2007.164.5.736. May, 2007.
“Visitation in Death Valley National Park Increases in 2023.” National Park Service. February 27, 2024. https://www.nps.gov/deva/learn/news/2023-visitation.htm.
Handal, Nathalie. “Accepting Heaven at Great Basin.” Poem A Day, King Features Syndicate, 2016. https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/entertainment/arts/2016/11/25/accepting-heaven-at-great/21819614007/

Awake Thee, O Maiden

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A 1905 Postcard of Lake Champlain, Plattsburgh, N.Y., at sunrise

 Liana Herzog

In a world becoming increasingly fast-paced, I often worry that I’ve stopped being able to appreciate stillness. I am uncomfortable sitting in silence, my thoughts unoccupied by worries or plans. Morning Melody by Lucretia Maria Davidson reintroduced me to the comfort in stillness, the peace that comes from observing what is often overlooked and considered mundane. 

Written when she was only fifteen, Morning Melody is told from the perspective of the morning itself as it crosses over the land, awakening the world. The morning beckons a maiden to awake from her slumber, along with the rest of the world around her. 

I come in the breath of the waken’d breeze,
I kiss the flowers, and I bend the trees;
And I shake the dew, which hath fallen by night,
From its throne, on the lily’s pure bosom of white
(…)
Then awake thee, O maiden, I bid thee awake!

Lucretia Maria Davidson was born and died in Plattsburgh, New York, a month before her seventeenth birthday. Already I am older than she ever had the chance to be, and yet at her young age, she had the ability to transform a page in a way that many adults decades her senior could not. 

She is by far not the first to write about the morning, the sun, or the dew, but her choice to write from the perspective of the morning displays unique creativity that stands out to me. 

I grew up on the opposite side of the country as Davidson, and yet, the scenery she describes in Morning Melody sounds like home. Like me, she grew up surrounded by towering forests, mountains, and crystal blue lakes. This poem is the morning, it is watching the earth wake up, staring in wonder at how beautiful the world can be. 

I beam o’er the mountains, and come from on high:
When my gay purple banners are waving afar;
When my herald, gray dawn, hath extinguish’d each star:

These lines take me back to a backpacking trip I took a few years ago. I awoke one morning atop a peak in the cascades in complete darkness. I found a small rock to sit upon, and I slowly watched from my vantage point as the sun crept up the side of the mountain, a solid line distinguishing night from day. I began to hear birds chirping, and goats appeared on a distant peak. The flowers rose and bent towards the sun, as though the morning had said “When I smile on the woodlands, I bid thee awake!” 

I was fifteen years old on this trip, just as Lucretia was, and yet I was unable to put into words what I had seen as I watched the world awaken. Her ability to turn a feeling I had deemed indescribable into words I could share with others is special to me. 

As I get older I often find myself struggling to see the world in the same light I did when I was younger. Morning Melody takes me back to a simpler time, a time when I appreciated every rock and tree, every flower, and every gust of wind. 

In the latter half of the poem, Davidson describes the night as a world of silence, solitude, and sorrow.

Bearing on, in their bosoms, the children of light,
Who have fled from this dark world of sorrow and night;
When the lake lies in calmness and darkness, save where
The bright ripple curls, ‘neath the smile of a star;
When all is in silence and solitude here,
Then sleep, maiden, sleep! without sorrow or fear!

The morning encourages the maiden to sleep during this time, “When the lake lies in calmness and darkness, save where / The bright ripple curls, ‘neath the smile of a star;” but urges her to awaken when the rest of the world does. 

But when I steal silently over the lake,
Awake thee then, maiden, awake! oh, awake!

While this can be taken literally, I see this as a call to awaken from a more metaphorical slumber. I often forget to sit in stillness as I did when I was a kid, when I observe every little detail of the world around me. The world seems to move so quickly around me, and I often forget to pause and take it all in. It reminds me to awaken and appreciate the sunrise, the dew on the lawn, the clear blue skies. I often sleep through these morning sunrises after late nights studying, and I am reminded to pause and awaken both myself and my senses to appreciate the morning. It is as though I am the maiden being called to awaken, as though 200 years later she is speaking to me, reminding me not to sleep through the beauty around me. 

Lucretia Davidson was only on this earth for seventeen years, and she spent those years, despite repeated illness, choosing to see and appreciate the beauty around her. This poem reminds me that life is fleeting, and inspires me to do the same.