The Yares of the Black Mountain

In Davis’s The Yares of the Black Mountain, there is a definite battle between the thoughts of slavery and a battle between the Union and the Confederates. Mrs. Cook is from the north and thinks the south is terrible and immoral while the widow, Denby, thinks the south is a place of healing and comfort. Davis published this short story soon after the Civil War and she presents this conflict for a reason.

Mrs. Cook resembles the northerner who has prejudice views of the south. She comes down to find facts for her books and she lets her previous emotions effect how interprets the culture. Davis uses Mrs. Cook’s character to show the faults of the south. She says that they are poor and insults their profession, “I heard that these people were miserably poor! Don’t look so shocked. If you earned your bread by your brains as I do, you’d want as much bread for a penny as possible” (244). She thinks that the southerners only want to take advantage of people, “They think you have money. These Southerners are impoverished by the war, and they have an idea that every Northern traveler is overloaded with wealth, and is fair game” (249). The character of Mrs. Cook develops into someone that the reader isn’t favorable with. Mrs. Cook becomes rude and critical of everything in the south. Davis could be presenting this character in such a manner to persuade the reader in a certain political direction. The reader starts to dislike the anti-south Mrs. Cook and start to agree with the distressed widow.

Denby is a widow in search for health and comfort for her newborn. When she comes down to the south, she immediately falls in love with it. She loves the people’s friendliness, the climate, and the whole overall comfort of the south. Davis uses the emotion of a widow to sway the reader’s views. The south to her is home, “The baby was ill at Linville, and the train was stopped for an hour, and the ladies of the village came to help me. And now these people. It is just as though I were coming among old friends” (249). Unlike Mrs. Cook, Denby does not complain about anything in the south, including slavery. She seems to just accept slavery and not question it. Maybe Davis is trying to convince the reader that slavery should be accepted.

As Davis creates characters and political sides, the reader falls into the beliefs of the characters. If Davis could create a character well enough liked, she could use that character to change the beliefs of the audience. This type of rhetorical tool is used by most major American writers; they just do it so well the reader doesn’t notice that they are being influenced.