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61 reviews for:
Trials of the Earth: The Autobiography of Mary Hamilton
Mary Mann Hamilton, Helen Dick Davis
3.72 AVERAGE
61 reviews for:
Trials of the Earth: The Autobiography of Mary Hamilton
Mary Mann Hamilton, Helen Dick Davis
3.72 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
A good read, though not for everyone. It was written as an autobiography by Mary Mann Hamilton, a true working woman of the hardscrabble post-Civil War South. You don't hear a lot of voices like hers, because they didn't write books, and weren't considered important enough to listen to or write about at the time. So, from that point of view I thought it was really educational--especially considering a lot of my ancestors didn't live all that differently from Mary.
The narrative can sound like fiction at times, but I think that was because Mary was telling a story in the the way she heard stories be told, with good and evil on earth and a moral at the end. It does sound like a 19th century magazine serial at times. Or even a Bible story with floods, plagues, you name it! On the other hand, her views of frontier justice, race relations, childrearing, etc. ring very true to the era. They are what they are, and she is unapologetic for them.
It occurs to me that Mary and her husband both told themselves a lot of stories, as a survival technique. Frank Hamilton was an Englishman, likely suffering from PTSD and alcoholism, blundering around in the Mississippi Delta wilderness trying to support a family. Mary was an uneducated teenage bride also suffering from the PTSD of losing several children. Grinding poverty (and spells of likely malnutrition) were their normal. They were a hot mess.
Frank tells himself the story that he can become a farmer, even though he knows nothing about it. Mary sees a problem with this, but her solution is to take up the slack herself and quietly engage others to teach him by example, so as not to bruise his ego (OK, that's not unique to this book...)
In the end, when they lose the farm that they dreamed of and worked so hard to get due their own ignorance of the system (because he's a foreigner and she's uneducated) they tell themselves another story, that they don't need to own anything because they have their children. And throughout the book, you can hear Mary telling herself the story that her kids are smarter, stronger, and more intelligent than they could possibly be (her daughter is a full-time nanny at age 6, for example), because she simply had them to be that way or it wouldn't work. And Frank keeps telling himself that the kids have noble blood or some such thing, so they'll be OK in the end. Even their daughter is convinced that her sister that died has "come back" as a younger sibling. They all tell themselves stories because reality is just too hard to take.
So, I think that's how the book has to viewed: as unconsciously fictionalized truth. But Mary's stoic perspective on her life is as much a part of the story as the facts are.
On that subject, though Frank was undoubtedly English, I wonder how much of what he told Mary regarding his background was truth or a story he told himself. Was he actually an aristocrat (he sure doesn't talk like one in the narrative) or just an ordinary guy with a bit more education than was common on the American frontier? And I wonder if someone in this age of genealogy detection has figured it out? :)
The narrative can sound like fiction at times, but I think that was because Mary was telling a story in the the way she heard stories be told, with good and evil on earth and a moral at the end. It does sound like a 19th century magazine serial at times. Or even a Bible story with floods, plagues, you name it! On the other hand, her views of frontier justice, race relations, childrearing, etc. ring very true to the era. They are what they are, and she is unapologetic for them.
It occurs to me that Mary and her husband both told themselves a lot of stories, as a survival technique. Frank Hamilton was an Englishman, likely suffering from PTSD and alcoholism, blundering around in the Mississippi Delta wilderness trying to support a family. Mary was an uneducated teenage bride also suffering from the PTSD of losing several children. Grinding poverty (and spells of likely malnutrition) were their normal. They were a hot mess.
Frank tells himself the story that he can become a farmer, even though he knows nothing about it. Mary sees a problem with this, but her solution is to take up the slack herself and quietly engage others to teach him by example, so as not to bruise his ego (OK, that's not unique to this book...)
In the end, when they lose the farm that they dreamed of and worked so hard to get due their own ignorance of the system (because he's a foreigner and she's uneducated) they tell themselves another story, that they don't need to own anything because they have their children. And throughout the book, you can hear Mary telling herself the story that her kids are smarter, stronger, and more intelligent than they could possibly be (her daughter is a full-time nanny at age 6, for example), because she simply had them to be that way or it wouldn't work. And Frank keeps telling himself that the kids have noble blood or some such thing, so they'll be OK in the end. Even their daughter is convinced that her sister that died has "come back" as a younger sibling. They all tell themselves stories because reality is just too hard to take.
So, I think that's how the book has to viewed: as unconsciously fictionalized truth. But Mary's stoic perspective on her life is as much a part of the story as the facts are.
On that subject, though Frank was undoubtedly English, I wonder how much of what he told Mary regarding his background was truth or a story he told himself. Was he actually an aristocrat (he sure doesn't talk like one in the narrative) or just an ordinary guy with a bit more education than was common on the American frontier? And I wonder if someone in this age of genealogy detection has figured it out? :)
medium-paced
This memoir definitely destroys any romantic visions I might have had of being a pioneer. I was interested in this book as my grandmother lived in a lumber camp in Southwest Louisiana which must have been very similar to the experiences of this pioneer woman, Mary Mann Hamilton. Her life on the Mississippi delta region was incredibly hard. The details of cooking, taking care of children, and making a living were even more arduous than I realized. She truly worked her fingers to the bone from dawn to dusk. Cooking for 80 while perpetually pregnant! Baking loaves and loaves of bread on a wood fired oven. The uncertainty of moving from place to place and never having her own home were her biggest trials. Despite all of the hardships and loneliness, she was able to make a warm and loving home for her children and establish a caring relationship with her enigmatic and at times, problematic husband. You will feel like your life is incredibly easy after reading this book.
I appreciated the honest view of pioneer life and the blunt story telling from a first hand account. Modern day readers will find the racism rough.
It did drive my crazy they never said who her husband really wash
It did drive my crazy they never said who her husband really wash
3.5 - An interesting autobiography by one of the first women to homestead in the Mississippi Delta. What a hard life she led - lots of work, minimal reward, and plenty of tough times.
Oh calamity! Life was so hard for early settlers. I had never considered the South when thinking pioneers, only the West, so this was a fresh perspective on the hardships of the people who had to make everything they owned and had to grow everything they ate with very few others nearby for help.
Fascinating story of a woman's day-to-day life in the late 1800's early 1900s.
I couldn't put this book down, although I wanted to many times, just to escape the heartbreak Mary experienced.
Wow! To think that this book was nearly not published, what a loss that would have been. From her many near death experiences, loss of so many children, financial ups and downs and a work ethic stronger than many men, the legacy Mary left was astounding. "I could see no way to live. It is strange that the more our loved ones depend on us, the harder it is to give them up."