User:Tptrahan/The Silent Partner (1871 novel)

Summary
The book begins by introducing its main character, Miss Perley Kelso, twenty three year old daughter of a Bostonian manufacturer at the Hayle and Kelso Mills.. At the time she was engaged to be married to her fathers junior partner, Maverick Hayle. The novel opens with Miss Kelso preparing to attend a night at the opera, this is very routine for her as she explains she has season passes annually. This night in particular was very rainy and gray, so much so that Miss Kelso was questioning whether or not she should go. She decided she should and her and her friends got into their carriage. On this carriage ride to the opera, Miss Kelso met a young mill girl in plaid. She was walking through the rainy streets with nothing to cover her. Miss Kelso was curious about the girl and began a conversation. That night it did not go well between the two, the class divide was apparent and Sip Garth, the young girl, was not keen on her at all. After the exchange, Sip left the carriage at the return of the men and the opera goers continued on their way and the exchange got lost in Miss Kelso memory. A few days later Miss Kelso finds out that her father has died in the mills, he was crushed under the machinery in the Five Falls Mill, making her the sole heir to the company. Miss Kelso then visits the mills after finding out about the death of her father to see what goes on there. While there, she runs into Sip again, though Miss Kelso does not recognize her at first. The women talk and Miss Kelso gets the mill girl to open up to her more. She finds out that she works for Miss Kelso's father and she learns about her family, her drunk abusive father and her young sister Catty who was deaf. After her run in with Sip at the mills, Miss Kelso meets with Maverick and his father Mr. Hayle to propose that she partners with them to run the mills. The men did not buy into it at first as she was just a women and the only way they would give her a role in the company was if she agreed to be a silent partner in the firm, where she would not have much say in what went on in the mills but she would technically be a part of the team. Perley Kelso agreed to be a silent partner after a long conversation with the men where they did not budge. Miss Kelso then went to visit Sip Garth at her home and met her sister Catty, it was there that Sip told her that she didn't usually like upper class people because they always placed judgement on the mill girls. Meeting Catty and having a conversation with these girls in their small and dirty home gave Miss Kelso a new perspective on the class divide and how she should help her mills. When leaving she has another encounter with a poor child, Bub Mell, who was just eight years old, chewing tobacco and working overtime. Miss Kelso visited his family and offered to give them some money seeing how poorly they were living. When leaving, Sip Garth found her again to walk her home to make sure she got back safely because walking around milll people late at night can hold some scary sights. On the walk back Miss Kelso met many people who Sip knew, Nynee Mell and Dirk Burdock, the entire time they walked back she was in shock and she had an outburst when they arrived back at her home. Perley claimed that upper class people are born in a dream where they cannot see how awful it is to be poor, and how she wishes people could be woken up to see the reality of the situation. She then took this newfound knowledge and went to her fiance to share what should be done to fix the mills. She claims they need libraries and part time schools, Maverick claims they do not have the money and dismisses the silent partner. She then meets with the new partner Mr. Garrick and finds out that he himself came from poverty so he had to claw his way up to wealth. A little while later, Perley tells Maverick that she does not love him anymore and ends their relationship. She recognizes that she could have lived a comfortable life and he would have loved her forever but she needed to do what was best for her and break it off, creating a difficult tie amongst the partners. After ending the relationship with Maverick, Perley takes more time with Sip, having her and Catty over her house to help them the best she can. Miss Kelso continues to fight for the poor people of the mills, though it is very difficult as a young women to get the two men she was working alongside to take any of her ideas, particularly since they were going to cause more money to be spent on people that the men do not particularly care for. She also continues to reject the ideas of marriage in her life. Mr. Garrick tells Perley that he loves her and wants to be with her, but she refuses. She says she has no time to think about marriage she has too much else going on in her life. Soon after this exchange, the Five Falls Mill broke and flooded the surrounding area. In this incident, Catty was killed by logs from the bridge that came crashing down. Sip would not work for weeks, she loved her sister but was too exhausted to feel. When she was finally able to work again she spoke to Dirk Burdock, who proceeded to ask her to marry him. She refused, saying that she promised that she would never bring children into the world to be factory children. At the end of the novel, Mrs. Hayle gives a sermon to the mill crowd, and Sip ends it to herself by asking for God to help the poor mill people at Five Falls.

The Author

 * Elizabeth Stuart Phelps wrote the novel The Silent Partner which was published in the year 1871. She was born in Boston Massachusetts.


 * Elizabeth Stuart Phelps wrote prolifically about women's rights and and their own right to work during the Industrial Revolution. Many of these pieces had strong, independent female main characters who had an intention of making their life their own. This includes "The Silent Partner."
 * The female characters in "The Silent Partner" bring to light a new generation of women who wanted to fight for themselves as a class and were not afraid of criticizing the institutions that discriminated against them in the first place.
 * By writing "The Silent Partner", Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was able to help support her husband and herself financially.
 * "The Silent Partner" was one of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' many tales that showed her sympathy for women who worked in industry and in the mills.

Critical Analysis

 * The main character, Miss Kelso, represents an entire class of women behind her during the Industrial Revolution who live their lives as "silent partners."
 * Elizabeth Stuart Phelps utilizes the the main female characters in "The Silent Partner" to show how women during the industrial time period expressed themselves if they did not have the means with their own voice. Vice versa, it shows how those who have access to their own voice use it to help themselves and/or others.
 * By writing "The Silent Partner," Elizabeth Stuart Phelps understood how speech was a function of power during this time period. Class and sex were also used in this manner.
 * Elizabeth Stuart Phelps acknowledges that there is an inseparability between class and sex. She does this by utilizing the word "partner." This is a word used commonly in business matters, which nods to class. Additionally, she uses this word in reference to marriage as it relates to sex.
 * Though in vastly different ways, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps is able to show three different marriage proposals go wrong in the different class settings in the industrial time period. She claimed that this was one of the novel's strengths.
 * At the time of the publishing of "The Silent Partner", Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was criticized and marveled for her radical idea of a "female hero."