Bess Houdini

       

        Houdini is a very interesting character in Ragtime. Doctorow is using him as an element to convey themes. The biography Doctorow creates for Houdini is not completely accurate. He is seen as a magician traveling the country and world, daring himself to be better than he can be, while also pursuing a connection with his deceased mother. Doctorow excludes the existence of Harry’s wife Beatrice. They were married in 1894, well before the story of Ragtime takes place. I think this is because Doctorow did not want a third conflicting female image. With Goldman, Mother, and Nesbit, he is showing the change in stereotypes and personalities of women in the era. How would a wife of Houdini fit in? He was an entrepreneur of his time, and wife would have only complicated the situation.

            If Beatrice were in the piece it would be hard to imagine how she would complicate the novel. It would have interrupted with the sense of freedom that Houdini exhibits. He was the master of escape, and a marriage would have complicated this.

“His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was roped to a chair. He escaped. He was chained to a ladder. He escaped. He was handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, he was tied up in a straightjacket, he was tied up in a straight jacket and put in a locked cabinet. He escaped…. His escapes were mystifying because he never appeared damaged or appeared to unlock what he escaped from” (Doctorow, 7). 

         The anaphora Doctorow uses leaves no ambiguity that Houdini was escaping to a freed life. He even manages to escape his real name Erich Weiss, by simply changing it to Harry Houdini. I think, in a sense, if Houdini had been married in the novel, it would have been a bond that he could not have escaped from.

By: Elyse Curtis

"Harry Houdini." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 16 May 2011.

"Harry Houdini." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 16 May. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/272947/Harry-Houdini>.

Sahlman, Rachel. "Harry Houdini." SPECTRUM Home & School Magazine. [http://www.incwell.com/Spectrum.html] 16 May. 2011. © K. B. Shaw