1836 - 1839
The text from the top two rows is from A Peopleās History of the United StatesĀ pages 228 - 229.
Memo:Ā In the risk of sounding like a pretentious jag, Iāll say, while I worked on the illustrations I was listening to The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon. It occurred to me that under certain context that this comic page is just one more contribution toward turning Harriet Hanson into a legend, in reference to La Bonās discussion of how demagogs use history and mythologize the past to control their audience. Of course thereās no perfect equilibrium between individuality and collective action, thatās just the perpetual struggle of living in an imperfect world and society.
I hope that through this constant process of development, a viewer of this blog can understand that the amount of portraits generated has more to do with diluting legend making rather than exploiting it. If you read the rest of the chapter from A Peopleās HistoryĀ you will find a very difficult path the Mill Girls took, not to say it wasnāt a worthy cause and Harriet Hanson wasnāt courageous. Out of all the facts in A Peopleās HistoryĀ the Harriet Hanson story stuck out the most to me and I knew a couple of years ago that I would eventually get to making some illustrations for it. Thanks again to Maria for sending me the book.
