Two Men (review)

The 2008 republishing of Elizabeth Stoddard's Two Men is a valuable addition to current Stoddard scholarship, as is editor Jennifer Putzi's extensive introduction. First published in 1865 amid the chaos of the Civil War, Two Men was Stoddard's follow-up to her better-known work The Morgesons. Fans of The Morgesons will recognize Stoddard's stylistic tendencies in Two Men, such as her reliance upon dialogue rather than author commentary to convey the mood of a scene and her reluctance to cast women characters in traditional gender roles. However, the work should also be recognized as a meaningful expansion to the study of women's Civil War writing and to conversations regarding nineteenth-century race relations in America.

Two Men is the tale of the aristocratic Parke family, a prominent but decaying New England clan. Sarah Parke marries Jason Auster, an idealist who wants to put his socialist theories into practice but ends up doing little more than running the Parke family business at Sarah's bidding. According to Putzi, Sarah is "one of the most unsentimental mother figures in all of nineteenth-century American fiction" (xxvii). Sarah is cold and distant to both Jason and her charge, Philippa, the young daughter of Sarah's cousin and co-heir, Osmand Luce. However, Sarah fawns over her free-spirited and headstrong son, Parke. As the story plays out, readers encounter radical relationships, including an interracial sexual relationship between Parke and Charlotte Lang and a quasi-incestuous relationship between Philippa and her foster father, Jason. As Putzi notes in her introduction, "For its daring and unconventional plot alone Two Men deserves recognition" (xv).

Though both praised and panned by critics, Two Men, like its predecessor, failed to procure much public interest, even after a republishing in the late 1880s. Putzi believes Stoddard's work is a victim of critics' failure adequately to appreciate the individuality of her narrative voice. Though many acknowledged that her voice was indeed unlike any other writers of the day, such comments often had unintended repercussions that led Stoddard's work to enigmatic obscurity rather than appreciative exposure. Additionally, Putzi takes critics to task for their belief that Stoddard does not cleanly fit into either romanticism or realism and for their false charge that Stoddard's work is not concerned with the Civil War or politics of the day.

Putzi argues instead for a reading of Stoddard and her writing that casts her as an "object lesson" for students of nineteenth-century literature by showcasing her works as transitional and reflective of the political and social climate. She offers readers a brief but thorough panoramic view of Stoddard, her life, her works, her struggles managing the literary marketplace, and her critics—both then and now. As a result, Putzi offers a strong case for the continued examination of Stoddard's work and for the reexamination of her novels as squarely situated within the changing social, political, and literary landscape of the United States during and following the Civil War.