29 pages • 58 minutes read
Edith Maude EatonIn the Land of the Free
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1912A 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
Authorial Context: Eaton’s Perspective
Edith Maude Eaton was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, in 1865. Her father was a British merchant who met her mother, a Chinese woman, while traveling in Shanghai. Their family eventually moved from England to North America, settling in Montreal, Canada. Eaton was well educated, but her family was poor, which led her to find work and support herself. She worked in the newspaper industry as a typesetter before eventually becoming a correspondent and journalist. She published much of her early work anonymously and in 1896 began publishing under her Chinese pen name, Sui Sin Far, which is the Cantonese word for the narcissus flower.
Eaton is largely considered to be one of, if not the first, Asian writers in North America. As a mixed-race woman living in Canada and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she would have both witnessed and experienced racist and sexist discrimination. Additionally, her identity and her role as a journalist would have granted her knowledge of the legal system’s racist structures in the United States and North America more broadly. Her journalistic articles exposed the systemic inequities faced by immigrants and non-citizens, particularly those of Asian descent. She used her fictional works to explore the same issues and themes, intending to illuminate the Chinese and immigrant experience in the context of racist legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Written into law in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited the immigration of all Chinese laborers into the United States, allowing only merchants, students, teachers, and diplomats to enter the country. Likewise, it made Chinese immigrants living in the United States ineligible for citizenship (“Exclusion.” Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History. Library of Congress, 2023). This restrictive law led to the fracturing of many immigrant families and the alienation of Chinese Americans, even those that had been living in America for many years. Eaton would have been keenly aware of the effects of this law, both from a professional and personal perspective, and it provided a backdrop for most of her writing at the time.
Genre Context: Sentimental Literature
Sentimental literature, a genre written largely by women, was most popular in 18th-century England and regained popularity in 19th-century America. Novels and short stories in this genre feature characters who face great trials and difficulties and a narrative tone that highlights emotion to garner a sympathetic response in readers (Blair, Kristie, and Eliza O’Brien. “Sentimentality.” Victorian Literature. Oxford Bibliographies, 2011). Early examples of sentimental novels include The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. In the United States, sentimental fiction became a popular genre with women writers including Harriet Beecher Stowe and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
Although sentimental literature was starting to fall out of vogue by the time Edith Maude Eaton wrote “In the Land of the Free,” Eaton utilizes and reimagines the sentimental style to prompt an emotional response in her readers. Her characters experience unexpected tragedy and are subjected to the injustice of an inherently unfair system. Their adverse circumstances are largely outside of their control. Eaton emphasizes their misfortune by depicting heightened emotions, particularly in Lae Choo, who is often overcome with grief to the point of physical debilitation. Eaton’s audience is thus prompted to sympathize with Lae Choo and Hom Hing and to feel outraged by the unfairness of the US legal system. In this way, Eaton harnesses the features and outcomes of sentimental literature while expanding it to incorporate issues of gender and race. Sentimental fiction largely appealed to Christian morals, so at the time she was writing, Eaton’s rhetorical choices would have been noteworthy and even groundbreaking.
