May Day 1919

May Day 1919 arrives in the novel as a charged promise of collective action, but the surviving scenes emphasize anticipation and personal choice rather than showing the day’s full course. In Paris, the expectation of a general strike draws Eveline Hutchins away from her routine at the American Red Cross and brings Paul Johnson to her door in civilian clothes. The date gathers political unrest and private discontent into a decision: whether to leave familiar roles and take part.

Paris on the Eve of May Day

At the end of April, Don Stevens appears in Paris broke and out of uniform after resigning from a reconstruction unit. Eveline, already bitter and unhappy, agrees to put him up secretly, despite fearing the concierge’s suspicions and what J.W. Moorehouse or Eleanor Stoddard might think. Don treats May 1 as the first real test of strength and urges her toward a revolutionary outlook. He has her read L’Humanité and takes her to the rue du Croissant, where he points out the restaurant in which Jaurès was assassinated. May Day therefore enters Eveline’s life not as an abstract date but through Don’s arguments, reading matter, and walks through a city marked by political memory.

Don’s stay is temporary. He has sold articles and found work in Vienna for the Daily Herald of London, and he expects to leave soon after May 1 unless events in Paris change. When Eveline returns from a gloomy day at Chartres, sick with a cold, Don looks after her and then departs for a hotel. His absence leaves her feeling lonely and uncertain. The approaching strike has become entangled with the instability of her personal attachments: Don offers solidarity, but also leaves, while the other relationships shaping her Paris life remain strained or unavailable.

The Decision to Strike

On the morning of May 1, Paul Johnson arrives before Eveline is out of bed. He is wearing borrowed civilian clothes and says Don’s talk has stirred him about what may happen during the general strike. He has come to stay nearby if she does not mind. His changed clothing makes visible a wish to step out of military life, although he acknowledges that civilian life will mean going back to work. He is also restless with the Sorbonne lectures and the repeated hostility toward Germans he hears there.

Eveline answers that she may strike too, saying she is sick of the Red Cross office. Paul welcomes the idea of walking around together to see the excitement, while worrying that she is reckless and wanting to know where she is if trouble begins. The exchange makes their plans reciprocal but not identical: Eveline’s choice grows out of disillusionment with her work, while Paul’s comes amid his weariness with military service and the lectures. The scene establishes their intention to join the day’s activity; it does not recount what they encounter afterward or establish the strike’s outcome.

Labor Conflict Beyond the Date

The May Day expectation resonates with other episodes of labor organization and coercion in the novel, though those episodes are not identified as events on May 1. In a New Jersey textile town, Webb Cruthers takes a companion to see a strike and finds the mills guarded by police and special deputies. A meeting is blocked on the grounds that the hall is full, despite the small number inside. Ben Compton addresses the waiting crowd from a lamppost and is dragged away; when Webb protests the exclusion, he too climbs up to speak. On a later picket line, police break up the workers and kick a fallen young woman. The companion steps in, strikes at a policeman, and is taken to a police wagon. These scenes show how quickly workers’ assembly and speech can meet physical force, giving the anticipated Paris mobilization a wider context of contested public space.

Elsewhere, Ben Compton joins a construction-camp strike after Nick Gigli tells him the bosses have cheated the men on their time. Ben refuses an order from the foreman, is fired, and declares his allegiance to the workers. His choice, like Eveline’s and Paul’s on May Day, marks a turn from private dissatisfaction toward collective action, but its immediate cost is explicit: dismissal and the threat of employer retaliation. The episodes clarify the stakes surrounding May Day without making them part of the Paris events themselves.

Significance and Limits of the Depiction

May Day is a hinge in Eveline’s Paris narrative because it converts political agitation into a possible act. Don supplies its revolutionary interpretation; Paul arrives ready to share the day’s excitement; Eveline, worn down by the Red Cross office and personal disappointment, says she will strike. Yet the narrative stops short of documenting a completed march, confrontation, arrest, or political victory on that date. Its emphasis falls instead on the threshold between intention and action, and on how war-weary individuals encounter labor politics through the decisions they make about where to stand.