46 pages • 1 hour read
Joan W. BlosA Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Cultural Context: Rural 19th-Century New England Life
A Gathering of Days reflects the culture and mindset of early-19th-century, white New England farm families. Their sense of community, patriotism, and religious fervor were strong. Boston, where Catherine’s father trades his furs and maple sugar, was a center of commerce, and young people like Catherine’s friend Sophy were beginning to leave their farm homes to work in water-powered mills. However, northeastern New England, including New Hampshire, was still largely populated with “subsistence” farmers who, between rocky soil and a harsh climate, could grow only as much as their family needed to survive.
These families were mostly descendants of English settlers, and they had little exposure to other cultures. They had a strong work ethic: Holidays such as birthdays and Christmas passed almost unnoticed. Only Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, holidays rooted in faith and patriotism, are observed with any fanfare in A Gathering of Days. Their moral code, rooted in belief in the Bible and the Congregational church, was equally firm. They practiced the biblical injunction to “love one’s neighbor” by readily helping others, especially in times of hardship. In addition, certain tasks, like collecting sap for maple sugar and “breaking out” the road to town (clearing a path through the snow with the help of teams of oxen and men armed with shovels), could only be accomplished through cooperation.
Historical Context: The Abolitionist Movement
The early 1830s was a period of relative peace and growth in America, but it also saw social and political change, including the beginnings of the abolitionist movement. Starting in the 1820s, the movement called for the federal government to outlaw slavery. The movement was especially strong among people in the North, where the economy did not depend on the labor of enslaved people as it did in the plantation-based South. Journalist William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper The Liberator, which exposed the horrors of slavery and called for all enslaved people to be freed, was both influential and controversial.
Not every abolitionist agreed with Garrison, even in 1830s New Hampshire, where only three enslaved people were listed in the census roll for 1830 and where slavery would be officially abolished in 1857. Some people thought that enslaved people themselves should revolt against their enslavers. An enslaved man named Nat Turner led such a rebellion in August 1831, and it resulted in the deaths of about 55 white people. It is mentioned in A Gathering of Days as Catherine reflects upon the deaths of both those murdered and the people attempting to emancipate themselves. Others, including Catherine’s father in the novel, thought that people formerly enslaved should form a new nation in Africa, to be called Liberia. Ultimately, the so-called “slave states” in the South left the union, leading to the Civil War. The passage of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865, at the end of the war, abolished slavery.
Social Context: Gender Roles and Education
New England communities valued education for boys from the time of their establishment, and every rural community could boast one or more one-room schoolhouses where boys and young men were educated during the months they weren’t needed for farm work, October through April. These schools, typically chilly and poorly lit, were originally devoted to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. Committees made up of local citizens chose the teachers, who were poorly paid and usually boarded at the home of one of their students. In New Hampshire, an act passed in 1805 gave towns the right to divide into school districts, each of which could raise money through taxes to build or repair a schoolhouse. In 1808, a new law added the study of such subjects as grammar and geography.
In the early part of the 19th century, few American girls received an education. As the need for more schools and more qualified teachers grew, towns began providing access to education to young women. Teachers were, however, allowed to bypass arithmetic and geography when instructing girls. In A Gathering of Days, Catherine remarks on the fact that because she is a girl, she only receives the simplest education on arithmetic. She does, however, have the benefit of summer school, which is mostly attended by girls and by boys who are too young to be useful on the farm. In the novel, women teachers are only allowed to teach during the summer months.
