Fire and fiction : : Augusta Jane Evans in context / / Anna Sophia Roelina Riepma.

• Superior document: Costerus New Series ; 125
• VerfasserIn: Riepma, Anna Sophia Roelina,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam ;, Atlanta, Georgia : : Rodopi,, [2000]; ©2000
• Year of Publication: 2000
• Language: English
• Series: Costerus New Series ; 125.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.

Augusta Jane Evans, a nineteenth-century writer from the American South, produced bestsellers in the genre of the domestic novel, popular between the 1820s and 1880s. Evans was particularly good in creating strong and independent heroines. She is best known for her blockbuster St. Elmo (1866), featuring the love story of Edna Earl and the passionate St. Elmo Murray. In Fire and Fiction: Augusta Jane Evans in Context Anne Sophie Riepma reconstructs the literary, cultural, religious, social, and historical contexts of Evans's work. She explores the author's relation to her times and focuses on the way her novels reflect and address the cultural experiences of Southern women. Riepma pays particular attention to topics such as the ideology of domesticity, domestic fiction, the concept of "woman's sphere," women's role in society, middle-class culture, education and employment for women, religion, reform, political developments, and the Confederate War.

Table of Contents

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations used in the parenthetical references -- Introduction: Reconstructing Augusta Evans's Cultural Environment -- 1 Religious Culture: Inez and Beulah -- Inez -- Beulah and Female Independence -- Beulah's Intellectual and Spiritual Crisis -- 2 Confederate Womanhood: Macaria -- Republican Motherhood and Female Education in the North -- Plantation Culture -- Domesticity and Social Reform -- The Confederate War -- 3 The Ideology of Domesticity Triumphant: St Elmo -- Female Education in the South -- The Role of the Ministers -- Southern Manhood -- Women's Political Equality -- The Woman Writer -- Southern Womanhood -- 4 The Final Stage -- Vashti -- Infelice -- At the Mercy of Tiberius -- A Speckled Bird -- Devota -- 5 From the Home to the Stage -- Sister Carrie -- The House of Mirth -- The Song of the Lark -- Conclusion -- Works Cited.