Miss Henrietta Noble in the short story "The March of Progress" is a former African American school teacher with a heart condition. This story conveys her duty to teach but also a duty to herself to be well.
Before she was a teacher she thought:
"It was not easy to find employment such as she desired. She wrote to her Western cousins, and they advised her to come to them, as they thought they could do something for her if she were there. She had almost decided to accept their offer, when the demand arose for teachers in the South. Whether impelled by some strain of adventurous blood from a Pilgrim ancestry....she decided to go South, and wrote to her cousins declining their friendly offer." (Chesnutt, 72)She began to feel a sense of duty to the young children that she taught.
"She had distributed among them the cast-off clothing that came from their friends in the North; she had taught them to wash their faces and to comb their hair; and patiently, year after year, she had labored to instruct them in the rudiments of learning and the first principles of religion and morality. And she had not wrought in vain." (Chesnutt, 73)She worked with children for fifteen years.
"She had lived a lonely life. The white people of the town, though they learned in time to respect her and to value her work, had never recognized her existence by more than the mere external courtesy shown by any community to one who lives in the midst of it." (Chesnutt, 73)When her health began to deteriorate, her duty to work became even more important because her treatments in New York were very expensive. She went up against the school committee to fight for her position against a well educated black man who she had previously taught when he was a young boy.
The committee wanted to give the position to the African American. It made sense to them that their people be taught by one of their own until Old Abe spoke up and reminded the people in the committee meeting that many wouldn't be there today without the help of Miss Henrietta, certainly not the well-educated man that she was up against.
The job was restored to Miss Henrietta. Her duty restored to herself so that she may take care of her own needs. Unfortunately, she died the very night she was given the teaching position.
September 25th, 2014