March

“For the next two weeks, I felt my life more complete than during any period I had known until that time. I had my studies by day, enriching conversation in the evening, and at night, a work that I found uplifting.”

Though Mr. March had planned to continue selling his wares across the South, he feels comfortable and fulfilled and remains at Mr. Clement’s plantation. Here, his burgeoning abolitionism becomes increasingly apparent. Though he does respect Mr. Clement’s intellect, he goes behind his back to teach Prudence how to read and write. This illustrates his belief—which becomes more concrete in his later years—that morality is to be held above legality.

“To be sure, those events were several years behind me by the time we met. The guilt I felt for having let myself be seduced by Clement’s wealth and deceived by his false nobility had eased, in time, from an acute pain to a dull ache.”

This passage provides insight into Mr. March’s conscience, and how he carries guilt throughout his adult life. It is through inaction that he often feels remorseful. This guilt foreshadows how his strong conscience later compels him to take actions that put his life in danger.

“I wish his eyes had grown less desperate, his shallow breathing deeper as I spoke. But I cannot say so. ‘Will of God,’ ‘bosom of our Saviour,’ perhaps these were the words he wanted. Perhaps it was in the hope of such preachments that he had called out for a chaplain. Instead, what I told him was the plain truth: that today’s business was neither God’s work nor his will, but a human shambles, merely.”

Mr. March does not believe in an interventionist God. Rather, he holds humans accountable for their actions. Even in a moment of such grave desperation, he considers it more important to speak his truth, rather than to say what might be more comforting to the soldier. In his view, beliefs are not simply to be held, but to be acted upon.

“If war can ever be said to be just, then this war is so; it is action for a moral cause, with the most rigorous of intellectual underpinnings. And every day, as I turn to what should be the happy obligation of opening my mind to my wife, I grope in vain for words with which to convey to her even a part of what I have witnessed, what I have felt. As for what I have done, and the consequences of my actions, these I do not even attempt to convey.”

Turning inward, Mr. March again finds himself in moral murkiness. He is convinced that his war participation is morally just. Within the broader context of the war effort, he regularly faces situations that test his moral reasoning. This moral struggle, along with his propensities to overthink and self-punish, make it difficult to write to Marmee. He wants to reassure her, but this requires whitewashing. When considering his unwillingness to discuss some of his actions, it also seems that he is taking refuge in some degree of self-denial.

“But today’s epistle is shrouded in words meant to mislead. After much reflection, I have decided to cast the matter of my transfer in an entirely positive light. Leave aside that which cannot be confessed. I also find I can write no word to her of my lesser failures. Of my inability to win the minds of the officers or the hearts of the common soldiers she must not know. For how can I justify the sacrifice she has made in letting me come here to minister to these men, if she learns that none of them want me, that my service is, in fact, despised?”

Mr. March seems to have emerged from any self-denial about withholding information from Marmee. Now that his moment of unfaithfulness has been unearthed, he actively keeps her in the dark about his worsening situation. Because he is unwilling to share his problems with her, he deprives himself of an emotional release, which contributes to his increasing guilt and self-criticism.

“‘Flint’s Pond!’ he said again. ‘Mr. Flint, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word of it, nor thanked God that he had made it. Why, that man would have drained and sold it for the mud at its bottom. He’d carry the landscape, he would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him.’”

Henry makes clear his disgust with people who place profit above nature. This draws a contrast with Mr. March, who is a successful young capitalist. Through his budding friendship with Henry, Mr. March is realizing the value of prioritizing moral convictions over material desires.

“When Canning called for the water carrier, I took the chance to plant myself before him. I thought to start on a positive note, so praised the scene of diligent toil. Canning took a swig of water, swilled it around his mouth, and spat without troubling to make me any reply. Affronted by his rudeness, I bluntly spoke my dismay at his ill usage of the man Zeke.”

Mr. March arrived at the property with the assumption that the former slaves would be respected as wage-earners. However, Canning treats them as if they are still slaves. Mr. March takes exception to this approach and confronts Canning, establishing a tense working relationship between them. Though Canning is in charge of the property, Mr. March will not bow to his authority. 

“I thought, but did not say, that not a decade earlier I would have had just such a fortune. But I did not wish to canvas to Canning the whole tangled history of my swift journey from plenty to poverty. Still, the young man’s words had inspired me. There were men of fortune—in Concord, in Boston, and in New York—to whom we might apply for help.”

This passage foreshadows the story of how Mr. March lost his fortune. It also illustrates how his moral convictions create tangible change. As a military chaplain, he held the same beliefs, but the power structure made it difficult for him to turn these beliefs into beneficial outcomes. At Oak Landing, he has more agency, allowing him to more easily use his resources to improve the former slaves’ quality of life.

“Lifting up his voice, Brown proclaimed that he had no doubt it would be right, in opposing slavery, not only to accept a violent death, but also to kill. I felt my face settle into a scowl at this. If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.”

Throughout the novel, Mr. March had seemed quite radical (for his times) in his pursuit of abolition. Juxtaposed with Brown, he now appears more pragmatic and moderate. Because of Mr. March’s conviction that no life—human or animal—should be taken, he struggles to reconcile his own beliefs with Brown’s militancy. 

“I do not think I was jealous of Brown, exactly, for finding approval in my wife’s fine eyes. And yet I was uneasy, as we left the hall and were invited by our girls’ teacher, Mr. Sanborn, to an impromptu reception for the speaker. The Emersons and the Thoreaus were attending, Sanborn assured us. Marmee assented without waiting for a word from me, and at that I felt my gloom settle a little deeper upon me, rolling in like a damp fog.”

Mr. March is concerned that his wife is more drawn to Mr. Brown than to him. Though Mr. March is an abolitionist, it is his wife’s apparent affection for Brown that compels him to more adamantly align himself with Brown’s militant abolitionism. He wants Marmee to regard him with similar respect, and so chooses to financially support Brown.

“If I could not earn my wife’s esteem, perhaps at least I had the means with which to purchase it.”

After watching his wife become increasingly enamored of Brown’s oratory, Mr. March decides he must make a bold move to regain her undivided affection. Though he was already an abolitionist, in comparison to Brown, he was a moderate. His jealousy, primarily, and his moral convictions, secondarily, compel him to provide financial backing to Brown’s radical projects.

“She was on her feet as if the chair had a spring which had propelled her upward, and was advancing on Aunt March most menacingly. I, too, was affronted, but I could not have my wife behave so. Not to an elderly relative who, whatever her conduct, had a claim on our respect.”

Though Mr. March has a progressive perspective about abolition and the advancement of black people in America, he sometimes expresses conventional notions about how a woman should behave, as exemplified in this scene. Here, he follows etiquette instead of morals.

“I tried to make them understand that they were, from now on, to consider themselves as part of the American story, and therefore must take pride in their nation’s past.”

During one of his first lessons, Mr. March implores his students to acquire a patriotic spirit in their studies of American history. Though he has good intentions, Mr. March is naïve in assuming that freed slaves should suddenly hold in high regard a nation governed by white men. This holds especially true at Oak Landing, where Canning treats the workers as if they are still slaves.

“Who is the brave man—he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination. The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads. And yet I do not think it heroic to march into fields of fire, whipped on one’s way only by fear of being called craven. Sometimes, true courage requires inaction; that one sit at home while war rages, if by doing so one satisfies the quiet voice of honorable conscience.”

In Mr. March’s view, putting oneself in physical danger should not automatically be equated with bravery. Rather, it is more courageous to follow moral reasoning to its moral ends, whether that requires physical peril or pacifism. He often questions the morality behind his own participation in the war; he believes it is just to pursue the eradication of slavery, but he doesn’t consider himself to be brave for joining the military campaign.

“We go because there is within this blessed country an unholy land. A land where it is become a crime to teach God’s children God’s word. We go, because within this country is a blighted land, were a man may put asunder those whom God has joined together. We go because there is in this country a land which one may, which one must, in all reverence, call a damnable land, and we must go forth and root out the evil that lies within.”

In his speech to the parting soldiers, Mr. March tells them why their fight is worthy. With his Biblically-charged words, it becomes clear that, in Mr. March’s view, this is not only a moral war, but also a religious one. There is a duty to God to ensure that all people are free to pursue their relationship with God.

“More than months, more than miles, now stand between me and that passionate orator perched on his tree-stump pulpit. One day, I hope to go back. To my wife, my girls, but also to the man of moral certainty that I was that day; that innocent man, who knew with such clear confidence exactly what it was that he was meant to do.”

At Oak Landing, Mr. March not only struggles to follow his moral path, he can’t determine what that path even looks like anymore. In Concord, he had moral ideas that were supported by his intellectual circle. Now that he must convert those moral ideas into moral actions, he struggles with the tangible results of those actions.

“I told him to go. I didn’t cry at our parting. I said that I was giving my best to the country I love, and kept my tears till he was gone, and shed them in private. I told the girls we had no right to complain, when we each of us had merely done our duty and will surely be happier for it in the end. They were hollow words then and all the more so now. For what happiness will there be if he dies in this wretched place? What happiness, even if he recovers?”

This passage marks a shift in Marmee’s perspective. Throughout the novel, she has been portrayed through Mr. March’s eyes. Now, as the narrative moves forward, she speaks for herself, which is appropriate to her character as an outspoken advocate of women’s liberation. 

“I raised my arms to him, imploring him not to say the words that I knew were forming in his mind. He looked me full in the face, he saw my tears, and he ignored them and did as he pleased. And then I in my turn had to pretend to be pleased by my hero of a husband.”

Through the perspective shift, it becomes clear that Mr. March misunderstood Marmee when she reacted to his declaration that he’d join the war effort. She, in fact, did not want him to go. This illustrates how—even before Mr. March’s departure and subsequent whitewashed letters—their ability to communicate was substantially flawed.

“I had never blamed my husband for squandering all on Brown’s ventures: I had no right to do so. The money he advanced was his entirely, the product of his own labors and sage investments, and the cause, surely, was dear to us both. Yet it bit at me cruelly that he had not even consulted me in this, a matter that touched me so nearly and had such large consequences for us all.”

Again, through Marmee’s point of view, we see an entirely different interpretation of a major occurrence in their marriage. At this point, it is fair to question Mr. March’s reliability as a narrator, and perhaps also Marmee’s. While one would not expect them to have identical interpretations of shared occurrences, their perceptions are jarringly out of sync.

“Sleep is a great mender of spirits, and as I looked around the bleak little room, I was able to manufacture some cheer by thinking of all the ways its deficiencies might be turned to advantage. It had become a habit of mind to start each day so; I had schooled myself to do it ever since the turning of our fortune into dust.”

Though Marmee is not optimistic, she still maintains a measure of hope. In this fragile hopefulness, she is not in self-denial. Rather, she is fully aware of her husband’s grave condition and her family’s troubling financial situation. However, Mr. March remains alive, and thus, she actively clings to reasons for hopefulness.

“The ink dried on my nib as I searched for a style of truth that would not completely dishearten its recipients. And then I realized that this was exactly the dilemma he had faced, day following dreadful day, in camp or on battlefield: the lies had been penned, the truths unwritten, because he was ashamed, yes, on occasion; but also, and more often, because he had wanted to spare me from the grief that an accurate account would have inflicted.”

In trying to comfort her children, Marmee realizes that she is censoring her words in the same way that her husband had. This revelation compels her to see his actions through his perspective. In turn, she empathizes with his struggle to provide good news while living through hellish experiences.

“The jug handle slipped in my hand as she said this, and water splashed onto the oilcloth. I had not realized how much store I set in being of service of her. To be deprived of her company, so soon after our unlikely reunion—this seemed a cruel prospect.”

Though Mr. March had long ago physically departed from his family, it was debatable if he’d emotionally abandoned them. Now, there is no question. He has the opportunity to return home and comfort his family during Beth’s ailment, but he chooses to remain at the hospital, in Grace’s company. While he doesn’t outright admit it, it’s clear that he has stronger feelings for Grace than for his wife.

“At times, I knew I was being touched, but I could not feel the contact on my flesh. I knew I was being spoken to, but I could not quite make out the sense of the words.”

Finally, Mr. March has returned home, but he remains emotionally away. His disconnection with his surroundings suggests that he no longer knows who he is in relation to his family. His identity is now interwoven with his wartime experiences, and his familial surroundings now feel as foreign as the South once did.