Social Class in the Writings of Mary Hallock Foote (review)

Christine Hill Smith's preface gives a clear outline of the rest of her book: "Using terminology and concepts of class defined by historians, sociologists, political scientists, and literary critics, I analyze Foote's fiction and nonfiction, addressing how she came to think and write as she did. I compare Foote with other writers of her age, delve into her upbringing and literary tastes, and scrutinize how being a woman affected her attitudes toward class" (xii–xiii). Smith sheds light on Foote's novels, stories, letters, and children's literature and also explains how class affected frontier society in the American West.

To prepare her readers for her detailed analysis of Foote's writings, Smith's introductory chapter starts with some of the key facts of Foote's life and then briefly discusses topics such as western American stratification, the realism and naturalism of the period, female and male roles, and the controversy over Wallace Stegner's use of Foote's life and writings in his novel Angle of Repose (1971). Although Smith sometimes mistakenly slips into reading Angle of Repose as nonfiction biography instead of as a novel, her comments on the controversy are otherwise fair and sensible. Then, in chapter 1, she extends the discussion of social class to explain Foote's elitist views and "the tensions between her old and new contexts" (26). Smith makes a good guess that Foote's personal insecurity probably reinforced her sense of social exclusivity to such an extent that it "ruled out interaction as peers with people of a different color" and with most people of an ethnic background different from her own (48).

Chapters 2 and 3 focus, respectively, on literary allusions and gender roles in Foote's Leadville novels. These earlier novels have received somewhat more attention than Foote's later works. Nevertheless, Smith's discussion adds significantly to our understanding of social tensions in early Leadville. Foote's children's literature is the subject of the fourth chapter; and Smith's perceptive analysis shows that the treatment of social class in Foote's children's stories is very similar to how it appears in her adult fiction.

The last two chapters make a major contribution to our understanding of Foote's work and her times. First, Smith says, "The term New Woman came to be used in the 1890s and early twentieth century to describe women who avoided or reinvented marriage and family life and strove to create autonomous lives for themselves working outside the home" (117). Then, by showing that an important character in The Ground-Swell (1919) is a New Woman, Smith gives a new and illuminating reading of Foote's last novel.

Smith's closing chapter is about the early correspondence between Foote and her close friend Helena de Kay Gilder. Except for the letters Stegner used and often altered in Angle of Repose, very little of that correspondence has been published. Smith uses her knowledge of all the letters to advance our understanding of Foote's attitudes and writings. She achieves what she set out to do, and she thereby makes possible a more informed reading of Foote's writings and of Angle of Repose.