What Happened to Evelyn?
Evelyn Nesbit, who leaves in the middle of the story, leads a very interesting life beyond Ragtime. In the book, she tells Mother's younger brother she is going to run away with a ragtime artist, and that they are putting on an act together. In the real world, this person is Jack Clifford. They performed across the world until their eventual divorce in 1918. Jack Clifford citied his reasons for leaving her as not being able to handle her notoriety. If Doctorow were to have kept writing beyond the end of Ragtime, I wonder if he would use this event to have Emma Goldman reunite with Evelyn Nesbit as in their first and only meeting, Emma criticized Evelyn as a mere object in the eyes of the capitalist patriarchal mainstream. And having her husband leave her because he was unable to deal with that fact would certainly fall in line with Emma's criticisms. Unfortunately, Evelyn would have financial trouble for the rest of her life. She opened a tea shop called the Evelyn Nesbit Specialty Food Shop and eventually moved to music and strip clubs where she would perform across the country. She would eventually try to commit suicide and would be reunited with Thaw in 1927 when he went to visit her. If Doctorow were to keep writing I wonder if he would have kept Thaw as insane as he was at the end of Ragtime. When Thaw died in 1947, she began to pursue an education in sculpting, and she would eventually teach sculpting classes in 1952. It is interesting how Evelyn evolved from the model to the artist herself as she grew up and went through so many life experiences. One of the last things Evelyn did was act as an advisor to the movie "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing." A movie that explores Evelyn's life and the Trial of the Century, blending both fact and fiction in a similar was Doctorow did. It is interesting to wonder as to if Doctorow got any inspiration from this film in writing Ragtime as a Postmodern look at the life of a very interesting woman.
If Doctorow had continued to write beyond the time period Ragtime, I wonder how he would have connected her to the other characters. Perhaps one of the movies she would have acted in would have been written by Tateh leading to a strange reunion. Or the film about her "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing." could have been written by a grown up The Little Boy or Girl. I wonder how she would have stayed in contact with Emma Goldman during her exile from the USA. I wonder if she would ever see mothers younger brother again or at least learn about him through Emma. I wonder how her second chance relationship with Thaw would have played out. In researching for this blogpost I learned that Henry K. Thaw and Henry Ford died less then 6 weeks apart from each other. What might be just a coincidence could have been much more in Doctorow's world. And Lastly, I wonder about her child, Russell William Thaw, who was never mentioned in Ragtime and was reported in the real world to have been conceiver out of wedlock. While the era of Ragtime has ended, it is interesting to speculate what would have happened beyond the small scope of Doctorow's Ragtime.
You bring up an interesting point. Doctorow ends Ragtime at a definitive moment in time, but if he were to write a sequel - maybe titled "Jazz" or whatever the musical era was at the time of these events - I'm sure he would've discussed the points you bring up. I liked your last paragraph's imaginative feel (quite a postmodern thing to do). I also agree Doctorow's takes on these later events would be interesting. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteI like that you seem to have researched the life of Evelyn Nesbit after the book. I see other people stating that Doctorow seems to have rushed his ending. That makes me wonder if Doctorow could have fit those details about Nesbit's life into ragtime if he had just written more for the ending.
ReplyDeleteYour post is really interesting! I also felt like Evelyn had kind of been abandoned and was unsatisfied with how she was just dropped halfway through the book, but I didn't actually look into what happened to her for the rest of her life, so it was cool to read about what you had found. I love all the ways you theorized Doctorow might have connected Evelyn back to the other characters if he had continued past the Ragtime era. I think if he had actually focused on Evelyn through the second half of the book, after Coalhouse's story starts, he might have connected Evelyn to the events through Jack Clifford, what with him being a Ragtime player as well as Coalhouse. Maybe they had used to play together in the city, and the reason they decide to perform around the world is to get away from the attention garnered from working with the infamous Coalhouse. Or hey, maybe Evelyn and Clifford decide to discretely help out Coalhouse, with Evelyn taking her down-low anarchism to the next level.
ReplyDeleteWow, this is super interesting. Ragtime was 70's too, right, so he had time to consider things like this. He definitely had a ton of ammunition and a lot of great characters to return to if he needed too. This makes the ending feel even more jarring. The storyline seems to be abandoned pretty quickly after Coalhouse dies, but there was a whole story to follow elsewhere if he had just skipped a few years.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I don't often think about what the historical characters in a historical fiction book do after the story but with Doctorow this is actually an interesting question. It's possible he could have simply given us anecdotes of her life after divorcing Harry K. Thaw, but knowing Doctorow I think you are right to wonder about how she would have reunited with Emma Goldman. Honestly the fact that he left her alone completely after her divorce is quite shocking. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI was also hoping for some sort of closure with Evelyn, but it never came in the novel. I wonder if Doctorow was planning on having some sort of sequel or perhaps a longer storyline with Evelyn Nesbitt. The details he incorporates into his story about Evelyn Nesbitt could definitely be used to draw parallels to her real life. This might be a stretch, but you mentioned that Evelyn went on to teach sculpting classes later on in life. The three children in the novel (Little Boy, Sarah's son, and Tateh's daughter) could grow up and enroll in one of those classes. After all, there family is well off by the end of the novel, and as children of artists, they may be inclined to pursue sculpting in the future. The ideas in your blog post would fit right into a Ragtime sequel as well, especially given Doctorow's talent with piecing completely unrelated events together. Overall, great job! This was a really fun and unique post.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point. It's odd that we didn't really get to see an ending to her story like we did with some of the other characters. Most were killed off, and characters like mother were briefly described. But just like the ending of the book we don't really get to see that last punch with Evelyn, which is interesting because she helped shape a lot of the novel. Especially surrounding Mother's Younger Brother.
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely curious how Doctorow decides to rush through the ending. It really makes one wonder why he chose the ending to be in such a way that it leaves a weird feeling of discontinuance in his readers. I think the fact that there's a feeling of "but he could've done so much more!" is a sign that Doctorow did well with building his sort of parallel universe in a unique and engrossing way. It's cool how you kind of imagine all the things that could have been included in Doctorow's story, and it does make one wonder what would have happened in the world of Ragtime had Doctorow given his characters a chance to live (or maybe "survive" is the better word) into the new era.
ReplyDeleteI like how you went out and researched the further context behind Evelyn's characters. In many ways, Doctorow does not grant us that luxury with his descriptions in Ragtime as he picks and chooses which elements and storylines of a given historical character like Evelyn Nesbit will intersect with the fictional narrative and fictional characters we've discussed such as Mother's Younger Brother. In respect to the ending, the chapter does seem forced to close quite abruptly and in an almost "rushed" fashion. With all the historical aspects Doctorow draws into Ragtime, I believe he still wants to remind the audience that this is as much as fictional novel as anything, and that ultimately he holds the power.
ReplyDeleteThere were definitely a lot of possibilities for where Evelyn Nesbit's character could have gone past where Ragtime cut us off. I already thought Evelyn's character arc ending was abrupt before reading this post, but now that I know more about the rest of her life following the time frame of Ragtime, I feel like so much more could have been done with her. But I guess that's kind of the whole point in a way? Doctorow has a trend of getting super in depth with a character, and then not mentioning them again for long stretches of the plot. The disappearance of Evelyn in the story and her rushed ending fit with the tone of the book in a way, but it is a bit of a shame for me, since she was probably my favorite character, or the one I was most interested in.
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