Point of View

After reading the biography on Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, her short story "The Tenth of January," is put into much more context which allows the reader to understand the historical elements of the time and how they affect the writers point of view. Because the story is told from a third person point of view we are able to understand the hardships that Asenath and Del endure while being factory workers. Not only the hardships and the long hours that they work but also romantically. The girls dream of making a better life for themselves with a dutiful husband and an honest days work. However, because Asenath or Sene is a cripple she believes that she will never belong and that nobody will ever love her or see her as beautiful as Del. However, none of this is important once the tragedy at the mill happens. However, I think it is important that the point of view is not either Asenath or Del because we are better able to see their work conditions and daily struggles. Marriage was a very important issue for girls in the 1850s. Since women still had few to no rights, legally and socially, they needed to be married to use their husbands voice and to make sure that they were taken care of. We would not have been able to see Asenath accept her disability and see her budding romance with Dick had she wrote the story. Lastly, we would not have been able to understand and see her act of heroism to save Del's life. Asenath had everything to live for, a recent engagement, an acceptance to being labeled crippled, and a resolved issue with her father. However, I believe that she had come to accept who she was and knew that Del had not. Although she knew she did not want to die, she sacrificed herself because she I think that she knew that she was a strong enough person to endure a tragic and painful death. Lastly, I believe that Phelps wrote in a third person point of view because she is able to bring up the idea of social inequality and the conditions that women were forced to work in. The contractors knew that the work environment was not safe, but at the time there was nobody around to stand up for women or laws that would protect them, so they were forced to work long, laborious hours of go without a job.