Weekly Post: 11/23/09

Because I am doing my final project on Tufts, I decided to find a bigamous man for this posting. One of the articles I found was published in 1867 and titled “A Husband of Varied Tastes. A Lover False and Truant. A Railroad Engineer with Three Wives.” Right away, I was struck by the comparison between this bigamist and Tufts. Both, because of their supposed “professions,” are able to traverse the country freely, thus enabling them to visit many cities and have many wives. Tufts was able to travel all throughout the country, and though he mainly stayed in a little area, he nevertheless was able to be unknown in other parts of the country, even if it was only a few miles away from his home and first wife. These two characters, Tufts and the engineer, also possess the necessary charm for becoming a bigamist: “He possessed that free and open manner which, united with youth, good looks and a surplus of spending money, never fails to win the hearts of a certain class of young ladies.” Note how the author of this article claims that “a certain class” of young women are susceptible to the amiable young engineer. This makes me wonder what types of judgments were passed on Tufts’ wives. Did they belong to any “class” that made them vulnerable to deception? Or, rather, were all women who were duped by these con-men instantly become part of this sisterhood of swindled gals? I thinking the latter is the case. The article also describes one of the young ladies as becoming stricken with admiration to her “god of her idolatry.” References to gods resonate throughout Tufts’ work as well, and though he falls short of describing himself as a god, he uses rhetoric that suggests he received heretical admiration from his various women. The engineer, after marrying his first wife in Kirkwood, marries a second one who lives within one mile of Kirkwood soon after. The proximity of the two women does not surprise me—it seems that for the men, mobility was easy, but for the women, moving around the country, or even a mile away to hear of a wedding, was not as accessible (though, of course, Ann Carson moves around quite a bit).
Above all, this article reiterates what we have discovered so far this semester—that identity for the early American republics was not a fixed concept, but rather a costume to be donned whenever needed. The bigamist in the article participates in this creation of identity, and for him laws and rules do not apply. Instead, he makes his own standards. The engineer, Tufts, Burroughs, Carson, or any of the other counterfeiters we have read thus far all take their identities into their own hands and mold them accordingly.
Along with this concept of identity (which for some reason I come back to in almost every blog posting I make!), is the idea of humor present in all of the accounts we have read. The story of the engineer is described in highly farcical language—as is the other counterfeit narratives. The humor is sometimes difficult to detect, but underlying all of these accounts is the sense that these tricksters and their adventures are amusing for the American public. They are enjoyable to read about because they use wit and funny situations to get the better of people. In this sense, perhaps more so than we realize, humor adds to these narratives and enhances the concept of identity because it challenges our own assumptions about these characters’ personalities and actions.
The bigamist gets away. His mobility, his talent for creating a new, personable identity, and his charming wit and humor allow him to flee the city.