Abstract
This chapter explains Rebecca Harding Davis's moral duty. She identifies care for the disenfranchised as the preeminent moral duty of Christians. In renouncing cold-blooded logic, Davis alludes to the mid-century rise of scientific philanthropy. A movement subjects the poor to empirical investigation and spawned an array of philanthropic agencies to dispense aid according to the results of scientific research. The mawkish sentimentality she decries is most recognizable in nineteenth-century sentimental fiction, where morally simplistic characters and plots promote; strong affective responses from reader soften to the neglect of rational analysis and behavioral transformation. Davis's metaphor suggests depth, engagement, charity, and embodiment; but to understand more fully the practice to which Life calls its audience. One must first look to the multiple scenes of failed reading in this text, which help through antithesis to define incarnational reading. The notion that Davis pursues her moral purpose through a flawed medium corresponds to her incarnational theology that couches divine intervention in human affairs.