Despair, Blurriness, and Change: Rebecca Harding Davis's Implicit Relational Knowing.

This article analyzes the literary work of Rebecca Harding Davis through the lenses of attachment theory and dynamic systems theory, focusing on themes of confusion, despair, and failure as integral to processes of change. It examines Davis's novel *Margret Howth* and stories like "John Lamar," highlighting her attention to episodic, embodied interactions that reflect implicit relational knowing—patterns of attachment behavior influencing race, class, and gender relations beyond formal narrative structures. The article situates Davis outside conventional nineteenth-century literary categories, emphasizing her aesthetic of disjointed, unstable narrative attention as a mode of engaging with social and ideological complexities, including racial tensions and the limits of liberal progress. Ultimately, Davis’s work is presented as embodying a "living negativity" that resists redemptive or revolutionary closure, instead fostering a form of compassion grounded in mercy amid unresolved suffering and ambiguity.