Background
Authorial Context: O. Henry
William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, on September 11, 1862. He moved to Texas in 1882, where he would live for the next 15 years, holding jobs as a pharmacist, clerk, cartoonist, cartographer, and banker. While in Texas, he married Athol Estes and had two children, one of whom died as an infant. In 1894, Porter began publishing a newspaper named The Rolling Stone; however, after a year, he gave up the endeavor when he could not make a profit. Shortly after, Porter was accused of embezzlement while working at the bank, leading him to flee the country and travel to Honduras. However, when he learned that his wife’s health was failing, he traveled back to Austin, Texas, to take care of her until she died in 1897. After his wife’s death, Porter was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in prison in Columbus, Ohio.
While he was in prison, Porter began writing short stories under the pseudonym of O. Henry. After serving three and a half years, Porter was released for good behavior and moved to New York in 1902, where he continued writing as O. Henry. For the next four years, Henry wrote short fiction pieces for the weekly magazine New York Sunday World, where many of his most famous short stories were published. Henry also published several books that contained his short story collections and featured memories of his time in Honduras, Texas, and New York City. His short story collection titled The Four Million, published in 1906, contained “The Gift of the Magi” and “The Furnished Room,” which focused on the daily lives of New Yorkers as they searched for romance and adventure. His personal experiences while he lived in New York City were incorporated into many of his texts, including “The Furnished Room.”
In 1907, Henry married his high school sweetheart and briefly moved to Asheville, North Carolina, before returning to New York. Through declining health, he continued to write fiction until he died in 1910. Even after his death, several of Henry’s works of fiction were discovered and published. Due to his significant contributions to the short story genre, the O. Henry Prize was established in 1919 and awarded each year to the best short story writers. Henry’s legacy as an American short story author keeps him as a popular author in high school English classes, and he remains most well-known for “his trademark tales of gentle, warm-hearted characters and ironic plot twists at the end of the story” (Martin, Jonathan. “O. Henry (1862-1910).” North Carolina History Project).
Geographical Context: New York City’s Lower West Side
“The Furnished Room” is set in the Lower West Side of New York City at the start of the 20th century. The area to the west of Broadway between Battery Place and Liberty Street, the Lower West Side was one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Manhattan due in part to its proximity to Ellis Island, a station most immigrants entering America traveled through between 1890 and 1920. Among the nationalities represented in the Lower West Side during this time were those of German, Irish, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern descent. This ethnic diversity is seen in “The Furnished Room” in the character of Mrs. McCool, whose dialogue includes regional dialect, suggesting she is of Irish descent.
Many inhabitants of the Lower West Side at the turn of the century lived in tenements. These buildings had once been single-family dwellings of the wealthy but, with the influx of immigrants, had turned into apartments to accommodate the swell in population. “These crumbling red mansions” (Paragraph 3), as described in “The Furnished Room,” were often dilapidated buildings with cramped and poorly ventilated living quarters. Because of the vast amounts of people coming and going into these tenements, the living conditions were typically inadequate, with dilapidated accommodations and limited ventilation. The lack of access to proper air circulation can be seen in the description of Mrs. Purdy’s boarding house, whose carpet is described as having “degenerated in that rank, sunless air” and in which plants most likely have “died in that foul and tainted air” (Paragraph 7).
During this time, the population in New York City continued to increase at immense rates, with the majority of individuals coming to the city in search of a better life. Because of the population increase, it was easy for the eager new inhabitants to get lost in “the great water-girt city” (referring to the island of Manhattan), described in “The Furnished Room” as “a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly” (Paragraph 14). O. Henry was one of these newcomers to New York City in the early 1900s and would have seen firsthand the poor living conditions many inhabitants endured. Thus, the details in “The Furnished Room” were realistic for many New Yorkers during the early 20th century.
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