Death in the Woods

Sherwood Anderson began writing at a time when the effects of the Industrial Revolution were in full swing. Cities across the country grew denser as more people moved to take advantage of job opportunities. Meanwhile, there were those that were slowly being left behind, primarily in smaller towns all over America. The Dust Bowl had decimated the financial stronghold of once-lucrative farming families. The people in these communities struggled to find their place in this new world. Stuck between the slow-paced life of traditions and the fast-paced world of economic growth, coupled with the dearth of jobs in these areas between the Great Depression and the New Deal, people of rural 1930s America struggled to find their footing.

Mrs. Grimes, the old woman in “Death in the Woods,” is a grotesque of pre-Industrial, small-town tradition, and while the rest of the world is becoming more progressive, she is mired in past traditional roles of domestication and subservience. While she is “sickly” with stooped shoulders, she treks long distances every day to serve the needs of those in her care, implying that the weight of all the men relying on her is too much for the woman to bear. Even