After the Escape
A theme of escape is prominent throughout Ragtime . Characters might physically escape fantastic prisons (Houdini), use subterfuge to escape their identities (Nesbit), or even escape their families for various reasons, on various impulses (Father and Mother’s Younger Brother). Even if characters aren’t conscious of getting away from something, they end up entering alternate worlds, to borrow a postmodernist idea. In these worlds, their identities become malleable, and the rules of real life often fail to apply. But what happens when these characters reenter the “normal world” of their existence? How do these forays into alternate universes change the characters and the worlds they occupy? When the characters try to go back, can they? Or have their experiences irreversibly changed something? In terms of long-term escapes from a public persona, Evelyn Nesbit comes to mind first. Her world is in a great deal of flux when she escapes her identity, becoming just another poor (step-)mot...