Read the Afterword

The huge man-fig tree that sits on the town square in 
the fictional Coastal Bend town of Thornham (probably 
West Columbia) is the gathering place for the town’s 
male gossips. Under this tree reputations are made and 
broken, rumors are spread, and a twisted folk history of 
the town is created.

    
Under the Man-Fig, by Mollie Moore Davis, a popular
late-nineteenth century poet, novelist, and historian, is 
part romance, realism, color, and satire. The idea that men 
are the purveyors of gossip rings a change on the usual 
cliché that women are the worst rumor-mongers. Davis’ main 
characters, drawn mostly from Victorian romance, are true to 
the genre, and her African Americans borrow heavily from the
moonlight-and-magnolias format of many novels about the Old 
South.


But there are many things in the novel that make it important 
to early Texas writing. The Juneteenth scene with its interesting
"center figger" captures a part of folklore not often seen. And 
the flavor of life just north of the Texas Gulf Coast is rarely
captured in fiction.

    
In 1895, the year Under the Man-Fig was published, there 
was not a large body of Texas writing besides the Wild West 
tales published in dime novels. Davis’ novel was more realistic 
than the shoot-em-ups that featured bold cowboys and degenerate 
or bloodthirsty Indians. 

    
Davis’ mixture of realism and romance appealed to the audience of 
the times but has long since been overwhelmed by the Texas of the 
wild frontier.

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MOLLIE EVELYN MOORE DAVIS was born in Talladega, Alabama, 
in 1844 but came to Texas in her childhood. In 1879, she moved 
from Texas to New Orleans when her husband became editor of the 
Daily Picayune. She continued to write about Texas until her 
death in 1909.

Number Twenty-eight: The Texas Tradition Series