History as Fiction - Erin

When I came across articles about gender when researching for my panel presentation, I realized how little I had focused on the aspect of gender within Mumbo Jumbo, and upon my query, several of my peers felt similarly. I think part of this is due to the fact that there are so many other complicated issues and themes to focus on and discuss, that I was effectively distracted from the issue of gender, or lack thereof, within the novel. One thing that is a noticeable common theme among all the female characters in the book is how they are oversexualized. Earline is possessed by a spirit, Ezrulie, who fulfills the trope of the evil temptress, seducing the poor, innocent train conductor who has a family at home and was defenseless to her feminine wiles. By portraying Earline’s sexual expression as negative and a bad thing that needed correction through removing the spirit, he is condoning that behavior in the same way that western culture, the very thing he’s trying to

I focused a lot on Henry K. Thaw in my last blog post, talking about how Doctorow uses the contrast between him and Houdini to create a social commentary on the state of class in the United States. However, the more I think about Thaw and his situation, the more frustrated I get. To me, it shows continuation of the class privilege in America. We briefly touched on this in some of our class discussions, but his immense power and privilege that he gets from his money and class status separates him from the rest of society, even when in jail. In Ragtime, Doctorow uses Thaw as a contrast between the working class immigrant communities in New York at the turn of the century, during the first big surge of capitalism in America and the class inequity that comes with it. Yet, what I keep coming back to is the fact that in real life in the early 1900s, Thaw shot and killed Stanford White in public and in front of witnesses, and still got away with it. I know that Doctorow ha