American Realist Fictions of Marriage

A native of Chicago, Illinois, Kelli V. Randall earned a Ph.D. in English from Emory University in 2007. She served as Assistant Professor of English at Salisbury University from 2007 to 2010. From 2010 to 2011, Dr. Randall served as Acting Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of English and Modern Languages at University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Currently, Dr. Randall serves as Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dean of Liberal Arts and Humanities, and SACSCOC Liaison at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina. She is a tenured Professor of English within the Department of English and Foreign Language at Livingstone College. Dr. Randall’s scholarly research interests include “race” and realism, voodoo in writings by women of color, and the role of HBCUs in the twenty-first century. Dr. Randall has previously taught English at Dekalb Technical College, Georgia Perimeter College, Spelman College, Wor-Wic Community College, and Rowan-Cabarrus Community College.

• Preface – Acknowledgments – Introduction: Realism and the Value of Marriage on an American Scene – Conversion, Marriage, and Realism in Emma Kelley’s Megda and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening – Marriage on the "Color Line" in Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy and William Dean Howells’s An Imperative Duty – Realism, Romance, and Questions of Marital Eligibility in Pauline Hopkins’s Contending Forces and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth – Conclusion: Realist Delineations of Married Life – Index.