These earlier sentences in the poem also show how the opinions of preachers were just as respected as the opinions of judges in the judicial court. This illustrates the common American value of a complete, happy family, in which every decision is decided upon “For the sake of the children”. Similarly, the strongest concern that is voiced, such as by Reverend Wiley and Judge Somers, is towards the wellbeing of the children.

Her existence, so to speak, is therefore very much tied to her husband and their marriage. Charles Bliss” as the persona has no identity or name of her own. This is particularly evident even through the title of the poem “Mrs. While divorce rates had begun to rise by the 1910s, this act of separation was still mostly unheard of and considered blasphemous in the rural areas of the United States. Charles Bliss” (41) discusses the struggles of divorce on both the couple and their children. The introductory poems, 'The Hill'( Masters, 2022, p.In Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, the poem entitled “Mrs. Thanks to this process, they become both protagonists and narrators of their existence, and are able to reflect on the forces that moved it, as death gave them the necessary detachment to do so. By using epitaphs, Master actually maintains the objectivity of naturalism, to the extent that the characters portray themselves as they truly are in essence, beyond the veil of life and death. In fact, death gave to all of them a unique opportunity to express themselves freed from any social or moral barrier forcing them to depict euphemistic representations of their life 'the characters of the Anthology state all the facts necessary to a delineation of their lives without any concerted effort, considering the whole work, to warp the facts to fit a preconceived, single judgement of life' (Wolf, 1940, p. However, it is precisely the fact that the characters speaking in the Anthology are dead that grants their monologues the necessary amplitude to portray the reality of their life, and in doing so, to recreate that of Spoon River. It is, indeed, quite surprising for a naturalist poet to use a supernatural element to depict his reality.

At first sight, it may seems paradoxal that, while aiming for an accurate representation of reality, the poet uses the voices of dead people, in the form 'self epitaphs'.

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