"Death in the woods" (Cultural Context)

“Death in the woods” written by Sherwood Anderson is a sad story of one woman’s loneliness and strive at life to hardly survive. Her life would only consist of a duty to care for “others”, which were her animal friends on her small farm and the joke of a family inherited. The story of the poor woman portrays the lives of people who once lived during the capitalistic society, when the powerful reign of “Marxism” flourished. Being that Sherwood Anderson was a writer during the “modernism” period, encourages Anderson to depict the hardworking way of life that most American’s faced during the industrial revolution.

Such as the story of Mrs. Grimes who only knew a life of loneliness and enslavement. All through her life she was nothing more then a slave and piece of meat to others. Her life only consisted of serving unkind, cold hearted people beginning with the German framer, her boss who tried to take advantage of her sexually and even the ones closest to her, Jake (her husband), and there only son. No one in the town had ever known anything of the woman besides that both of her men were low life thieves and criminals who had little respect for anyone or anything. Since neither the father or son were ever home for long periods at a time, the woman had to look after the farm and face the responsibilities that came with it even if it meant she could barely survive. “Life was work, and work was life” for the old woman who knew nothing more. The old woman once young and beautiful never got to enjoy her life because of the burden of others. Work meant feeding the Men, horses, dogs and the few chickens that had to lay eggs so she could gain income. Not only was her life miserable but also unexpectedly cut short because of the long, hard, cold days of work and traveling through snow for miles, which her body could no longer endure.

The woman in the story is the definition of the way of life that millions faced during Karl Marx’s period of “modernism”. Marx’s main fear and anxiety was for the people who worked everyday of their lives during the Industrial Revolution, which would ultimately exploit them for their contributions to society and received little to no sympathy for it. Capitalism is unkind to society and can bring pain to the people who follow it. This is what the story entails of the sad short life of the woman who knew nothing but of hard work. Capitalism ultimately means to work and never rest. When the woman stopped to sit and rest from working for one second, she died. Women and people who are less fortunate in life are not only providers of life but are crucial to a societies development.