Winters is a freelance writer and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In this essay she considers themes of blood and race in Davis's book.

Rebecca Harding Davis's novel Margret Howth is a novel of social reform, as Davis brings up questions about the fate of the poor, relationships among people of different races, and the effects of industrialization. An interesting aspect of the book, however, is that although Davis urges social reform through Christianity, she seems to believe in theories of race and "blood" that imply that some people are destined to live among the "dregs" of humanity no matter what assistance they are given.

In the nineteenth century, two pseudosciences were in vogue—ethnology and phrenology. Both of these purported to link physical traits with nonphysical ones, and to link biological sex and race with particular physical traits. These "sciences" often led...