Paradoxes of Prosperity: Wealth Seeking in Pre-Civil War America

7. Women Writers: Defending the Christian Republic

•• seven Women Writers: Defending the Christian Republic Despite daunting odds and discouraging social pressures, the names of women often appeared among the mid-nineteenth century’s best-selling authors. What those women wrote profited them and gave them a voice in the ongoing discussions about the troubled state of their society. Educated or self-educated women writing for pleasure at home sometimes were impelled into the marketplace by a husband’s death or by financial problems.As Ronald and Mary S. Zboray put it, “Beneath many a woman’s pseudonyms lay tales of broken vows or deceased spouses.”1 Even if, as for Harriet Beecher Stowe, a woman writer’s financial circumstances were not difficult, the novel gave her a voice and income too. Susan Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Maria Cummins were among the most successful of these writers. Their novels both revealed and influenced their reader’s opinions.In a note that appeared in the magazine Literary World in 1850, the editor asserted,“The novel is now almost recognized with the newspaper and the pamphlet as a legitimate mode of influencing public opinion, an indispensable organ in the discussion of any party question or set of opinions.”2 The prosperity-morality paradox was central to the plots of the books upon which each of those women built both her fortune and her literary reputation. 86 / paradoxes of prosperity Susan Warner, author of the best-seller The Wide,Wide World, published in 1852, grew up in a newly rich family that subsequently fell on hard economic times.3 Her father had climbed and then fallen from the ladder of financial success and social prominence. In some respects, her novel’s plot was based on his failure and its impact on her and her siblings. Henry Warner followed a common path when he moved from the country to the city, hoping to find success there. He practiced law in New York City but made his money investing in various business ventures. But the Panic of 1837 hit him hard. Although he tried various schemes to regain his wealth, nothing worked. With his fortune gone, Warner sold his New York City mansion and bought a small farm on Constitution Island in the Hudson River, some seventy miles north of the city. His wife died during these difficult times, and he was left with five children. While he searched for a scheme to recoup his losses, the children worked the farm; desperate for money, the two older girls each decided to write a novel. Susan Warner found the right formula. Wide, Wide World’s central character, Ellen Montgomery, is victimized by her father’s weakness. He is an army officer from a prosperous family who lost his fortune through bad investments and living beyond his means. Faced with bankruptcy and the disgrace that brings, he takes an assignment in Europe and insists that his wife, who is very ill, accompany him for her health.The parents leave their only child behind in the United States. Ellen, who was brought up in New York City, is sent to live on the farm of an aunt she has never met.The aunt despises the ways of the urban middle class and is determined to wean her niece away from them. Before her father’s fall, the child had grown up with time to read books and discuss what she read with her mother. But life on her aunt’s farm is harsh and dull, and Ellen has no time, nor any encouragement, to engage in matters either of the intellect or the soul. Her aunt warns her, “It doesn’t do for women to be bookworms.” Given what her aunt expects of her, Ellen feels reduced to the lot of a servant. Mother and daughter each pay a high price for the missteps of a father who has allowed vanity and greed to dictate his actions.He has shattered his family and left his young daughter to fare for herself in the wide, wide world. After years of struggle, made easier thanks to loving evangelical Christians who spiritually care for her and in effect became her surrogate family, Ellen goes to Scotland to live with her maternal grandparents. While good people, they are neither devout Christians nor do they respect republican values. They introduce Ellen to what Warner labels the false manners and Defending the Christian Republic / 87 vices of the English...