English students explore the literary legacy of Concord

Dylan Pichnarcik / THE GATEPOST

By Sophia Oppedisano Editor-in-Chief On a moody New England September day, newly fallen leaves crunched underfoot as clouds hung low over the picturesque Massachusetts town of Concord. The cozy charm of warmly lit colonial homes and coffee-scented air wafting from shops adorned in fairy lights signaled the arrival of fall, along with the ominous weather. It was precisely the type of day that almost demanded a cup of tea, a cozy armchair, and a good book. Even so, one group of Framingham State students chose to put down their books for a field trip through literary Concord that included stops at The Old Manse, Orchard House, and Walden Pond Sept. 24. The English Department has been sponsoring the annual Concord field trip since 2014, when English Professors Carolyn Maibor and then-department chair Desmond McCarthy decided to create an opportunity for English students to enjoy a bonding experience early in the academic year, according to McCarthy. “This was the perfect location because there's so much history near Framingham State, and students are so busy they don't have an opportunity to get out to Concord and look at all of these historic sites. … We thought we could match up some of our courses, like American Romanticism and Literary Study taught by Dr. Maibor, and get them out here during the beautiful fall weather,” McCarthy said. Chair of the English Department Lisa Eck has attended the field trip for the last five years since becoming department chair. She said since then, she’s become “addicted. “I actually love that this isn't a class assignment. I think it's just the culture of getting off campus as a group, and we're all having a shared experience. … I believe in the bonding potential of hitting the road together, and we do care about the same things, and there are shared values,” she said. McCarthy, accompanied by co-chaperone Eck, led students through the temperamental drizzle to their first stop, The Old Manse. The Old Manse was built in 1770 for patriot minister William Emerson, the father of famed poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne also spent a three-year stint in the house, and he was friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and fellow transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau, according to the group's Old Manse tour guide, Simone. While the group ambled through the rooms of the house, Simone offered the Revolutionary War-era history of the house, including William Emerson’s involvement in the battle at Old North Bridge, located just behind the house, in 1775. Upstairs, the group congregated in the study, which once belonged to both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Hawthorne. The room came to life as Simone pointed out the furniture and small details left behind by the two families. On one of the window panes, Hawthorne’s wife, Sophia, etched a description with her diamond ring of their daughter, Una, standing on the windowsill one winter day. On one side of the room sat a replica of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s desk. It was attached to a chair and could be moved freely about the room, contrasting sharply with Hawthorne’s desk - a plain slab of wood embedded in the wall facing away from any windows. Simone mused that Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was exploring themes of nature and wrote his famous essay “Nature” in the study, would have wanted to be able to move about the room and look out the window. Hawthorne, conversely, would have wanted to be tucked away in the corner to stay focused on his work. First-edition books with their original annotations, paintings, a piano, and even an original taxidermied owl are also on display throughout the house. The objects, as well as their former owners, were spoken of with reverence and love by the tour guide, who reminisced about the house’s inhabitants as though they were old friends. Simone completed the tour by inviting the group to think about how Emerson and Hawthorne were such great writers because they had more time to dedicate to their craft than they would have today. Andrew Ramirez, a junior English major who is pursuing his passion for writing, said The Old Manse tour and Simone’s parting sentiment stuck out to him on the trip. “It’s just so interesting how these people lived. … One of the [tour guides] was talking about how [the authors] had so much more free time, and that gave them the ability to write so much. I'm trying to be a writer myself, but I don't have a lot of free time. … So, trying to live my life in a way that I can have a lot more free time to pursue that,” Ramirez said. Wenchell Pierre, a senior English major, said The Old Manse was particularly interesting because of his “extensive” studies of both Hawthorne and Emerson. He said he was excited to connect the sites to his reading and classroom discussions. “I was really interested to learn about that personal connection between them, because I hadn't known it before. I thought it was a pretty liberating space to walk through,” he said. The second stop on the field trip was Orchard House, the home of author Louisa May Alcott and the setting of her famous novel “Little Women.” Eck said she is a “devotee of the Orchard House” and it is her favorite part of the trip. “There's something just so great about a place that's centered on women, on sisters, and their creativity, and this progressive father who thought they needed to earn a living and have an education themselves, right? So it's just the thought that these feminist ideas could have found a voice a long time ago. It's important inspiration,” she said. Eck said the annual field trip makes her “jealous” of professors, including Maibor and McCarthy, who teach American literature. “I teach mostly non-Western texts and post-colonial literature, and to have colleagues who have this rich literary connection and historical memory in their region - it's powerful,” she said. Stepping inside Orchard House, one could practically see the March sisters from “Little Women” performing plays in the dining room and gathering around Marmee in the parlor. The group walked through May Alcott’s art studio and saw the original pen and pencil drawings she had etched into the walls throughout the house. Elizabeth Alcott’s kind eyes gazed at the group from the portrait hung above her piano in the dining room, and Louisa Alcott’s mood pillow sat upright on the couch in the parlor, indicating Louisa would have been in a good mood that day. Students mused with the group's tour guide, Lisa, about whether Louisa would have enjoyed the inside-out octopus mood pillows of today. The details of the house, down to the calla lilies May Alcott painted next to her sister’s writing desk so she would have something nice to look at while she wrote, gave the house a romantic, warm, and cheerful energy that made the students feel right at home. Brady Guy, a freshman English major, said he attended the field trip because of a fascination with the story of “Little Women” and Orchard House, despite having not read the book or watched the most recent film. After seeing the house, Guy said he was “inspired. “I loved going to the ‘Little Women’ house, because I have heard of the movie, and I've heard of the book, so seeing where this family actually did live was really fascinating,” he added. Along with his excitement to see Orchard House, Guy said he attended the field trip to “get out and enjoy nature.” To complete their day, the group made a stop at Walden Pond and a replica of the cabin where Henry David Thoreau spent two years in the woods to live his life intentionally. The cabin would make any college student feel right at home. Roughly the size of a dorm room, it was outfitted with a simple bed, desk, and three chairs, as well as a stove. Jacqueline, the park ranger who led the group to Thoreau’s cabin, discussed Thoreau’s arrest in 1846 for refusing to pay his poll tax as a protest against slavery, the event that served as the inspiration for his well-known essay, “Civil Disobedience.” In addition, Jacqueline shared with the group that Thoreau gave one of his more “fiery” anti-slavery speeches in Framingham on July 4, 1854, at an anti-slavery rally held in Harmony Grove. With this parting kernel of history from right on their doorstep, the group returned to campus to share their stories from Concord. McCarthy said, “There are events that we hold every year that enrich the lives of our students and ourselves as professors, and this is one of them. I've gone 11 times, and I’ve learned something new every single time I go.” McCarthy has taught novels by Hawthorne and essays by Thoreau in his classes, but he credits Maibor as the department’s “primary instructor” of American Romanticism. Last spring, Maibor led an “incredibly inventive” Seminar in Literature on authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ralph Ellison, who was named after Emerson, McCarthy said. “That class was just so phenomenal and such a brilliantly imagined and constructed course. … That's just an example of the way Carolyn continues to work with the material of American Romanticism, which is one of her primary areas of expertise, and also bring it into other contexts… to make that link to one of the foremost and most formidable African American novelists in the American literary tradition,” he added. This is the first year Maibor was unable to attend the field trip. She was missed by the students as well as McCarthy and Eck, who both credit Maibor with the trip’s continued success. Texts by Alcott, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau may seem daunting to students after all this time, but a visit to literary Concord proves just how relevant they still are in the world today. Eck said, “What feels really current now with the environmental movement is that there's a lot of attention paid to Emerson's essay 'Nature' and Thoreau's 'Walden Pond.’ … I think, in a way, that Transcendentalism never went out of style. … Emerson has essays on self-reliance and the dignity of labor, finding your vocation, finding your calling, which are such good things for college students. … Everybody has a calling.” McCarthy said, “We have a very divided country today, and issues concerning civil liberties and rights for every person who lives in our country are being fought over with great urgency. … Thoreau is a kind of founding figure in terms of nonviolent and ethical resistance to wrongdoing by government, and just on that level alone, Thoreau is a figure everyone should be reading today. “We have all this history right here in our backyard, and visiting these sites, and seeing Orchard House and The Old Manse and Walden Pond - it brings it alive,” he added.