SOURCE: “Redefining the Feminine: Women and Work in Rebecca Harding Davis's ‘In the Market’,” in Legacy, Vol. 8, No. 2, Fall, 1991, pp. 118-21.

In the following essay, Harris maintains that “In the Market” is one of Davis's most feminist texts.

In the 1860s, most of Rebecca Harding Davis's fiction focused upon the rise of industrial capitalism, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. A notable thematic shift in Davis's writings was evidenced, however, with the 1868 publication of one of her finest short stories,“In the Market”. The significance of that shift is twofold. First, instead of the Atlantic Monthly, where most of her best fiction appeared in the 1860s, she chose Peterson's Magazine as the place of publication for a story that is of the highest quality. The lack of critical attention that this story has received is due in part to its publication in this “ladies' magazine.” The assumption that such...