A Hazard of New Fortunes · Chapter
Chapter X explained
Mrs.
What happens
Mrs. March prepares to return to Boston, leaving Basil March to continue the apartment search. Fulkerson visits and offers to help. The Marches share a reflective journey to the train station, observing the city's night life and discussing their changing perspectives on urban poverty and personal happiness. A letter from Mrs. Grosvenor Green arrives, and she later meets the Marches at their hotel to discuss her flat.
Themes in this chapter
Urban vs. Rural Life
The Marches contrast their past travels with the gritty reality of New York, highlighting the city's poverty and the difficulty of finding a suitable home.
Social Class and Mobility
The search for an apartment and the encounter with Mrs. Grosvenor Green's flat underscore class distinctions and the challenges of urban living.
Characters to notice
- Basil March
Left behind in New York to find an apartment; reflects on urban poverty and aging with his wife.
- Mrs. March
Returns to Boston, leaving Basil with instructions for the apartment search; expresses frustration with the city's ugliness and poverty.
- Fulkerson
Visits the Marches, offers to help Basil find an apartment, and promises to keep an eye on him.
- Mrs. Grosvenor Green
Meets the Marches at their hotel to discuss renting her flat; described as large, placid, and calm.
Key passages
“But freedom brings responsibility, you know, Fulkerson, and it's the same as if I'd no choice. I'm staying behind because I'm left, not because I expect to do anything.”
March jokes that his freedom to choose an apartment is meaningless because he feels compelled to act, even though he doesn't expect to succeed.
March expresses his ambivalence about the apartment search to Fulkerson.
“What forces, what fates, slept in these bulks which would soon be hurling themselves north and south and west through the night!”
The Marches marvel at the sleeping trains, imagining the powerful journeys they will soon undertake.
A moment of awe at the Central Depot, reflecting on the scale and energy of modern transportation.
“If it's the unhappy who see unhappiness, think what misery must be revealed to people who pass their lives in the really squalid tenement-house streets—I don't mean picturesque avenues like that we passed through.”
March suggests that only those who are unhappy notice unhappiness, and imagines the constant misery faced by residents of poor neighborhoods.
March reflects on the visibility of poverty and its connection to personal perspective.