Horatio Alger: Gender and Success Term Paper

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When Alger's Ragged Dick put himself forward for hire as a guide for a rich boy who is visiting the city, the boy's businessman uncle hesitated to entrust his nephew to him. But after reflection the older man decided that although Dick "isn't exactly the sort of guide I would have picked out...he looks honest. He has an open face, and I think he can be depended upon "(55). Thus, although Alger believed that private generosity and charity alone were necessary to remedy the evils of capitalism, he knew no one could truly succeed alone. Dick's contact with the rich boy Frank because of Dick's shining honesty resulted in his becoming a young gentleman, not just because Dick was a hard worker. And, in the story of Tom, the street tomboy, rather than rise to prosperity through her labor, Tom became the genteel 'Jane Lindsay' at the end of the tale, once again in her wealthy mother's custody, as a result of a series of plot twists, not her success selling newspapers like a boy. Like a fairy princess, Tom/Jane found she was not a street urchin at all, despite her success in the capitalist endeavors she shines in like a young, potentially prosperous boy.

Thus both Alger's Jane/Tom and Dick had qualities that set them apart from their fellow poor orphans, which resulted in their being elevated in status, but in ways that were conservative, rather than radical -- Dick rose through patronage, Jane rise by enhancing her position in society because of finding her true birth mother.

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Their unusual qualities were also, always apparent. "But in spite of his dirt and rags there was something about Dick that was attractive. It was easy to see if he had been clean and well dressed he would have been decidedly good looking." (40) The narrator said that Tattered Tom's face was dirty but that if it were clean, "Tom would certainly have been considered pretty" (80), Again, like a fairy tale, both Dick and Tom were plucked out as special because of their gifts of beauty rather than their intellect or willingness to work hard alone. They were gentlefolk in disguise, rather than hard working stiffs, even though they were willing to work hard while in the gutter.

But was this willingness the result of the children's true gentility or because their hard work also contributed to their subsequent success? Thus, Gender and Success in the Gilded Age showed how even Horatio Alger's stories of is "rags to riches" success through self-directed efforts were not really so gritty. Even Alger's orphans were princesses in disguise, or handsome boys like Dick who was a diamond in a series of rough and uncouth faces. Alger's literary works reinforced traditional gender roles and myths about aristocracy as well as capitalism, and contributed to an image of the United States where power and patronage's role in success were masked as mere examples of hard work being rewarded.

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