Elizabeth Stoddard – författare

Elizabeth Stoddard combines the narrative style of the popular nineteenth-century male-centered bildungsroman with the conventions of women's romantic fiction in this revolutionary exploration of the conflict between a woman's instinct, passion, and will, and the social taboos, family allegiances, and traditional New England restraint that inhibit her. Set in a small seaport town (1862), The Morgesons is the dramatic story of Cassandra Morgeson's fight against social and religious norms in a quest for sexual, spiritual, and economic autonomy. An indomitable heroine, Cassandra not only achieves an equal and complete love with her husband and ownership of her family's property, but also masters the skills and accomplishments expected of women.Counterpointed with the stultified lives of her aunt, mother, and sister, Cassandra's success is a striking and radical affirmation of women's power to shape their own destinies. Embodying the convergence of the melodrama and sexual undercurrents of gothic romance and Victorian social realism, The Morgesons marks an important transition in the development of the novel and evoked comparisons during Stoddard's lifetime with such masters as Balzac, Tolstoy, Eliot, the Brontes, and Hawthorne.

We first meet Jason Auster when he climbs out of a stagecoach in a New England maritime town and, as it were, salutes destiny. A twenty-year-old house carpenter who has come adventuring, Jason hopes to "put in practice certain theories concerning the rights of men and property which had already made him a pest at home." And, indeed, theory and practice, destiny and self-determination are all following quite different paths as this antebellum story of love and power, incest and family honor, and sexual bonds and intractable conflicts between races and classes plays out against the backdrop of a nation—and a world—divided. First published in 1865, this novel tracks the fortunes of Jason and his unlikely bride, the aristocratic Sarah Parke, along with the children and wards, the lost loves and secret passions that define and forever alter an entire family and everyone who touches it. Uniquely located within the romantic, realist, and regional traditions, this oddly unsentimental tale illuminates the racial, sexual, and political conventions and conflicts of its time even as it offers an unusual and compelling perspective on the historical moment it reflects.

"Stoddard was, next to Melville and Hawthorne, the most strikingly original voice in the mid-nineteenth-century American novel, a voice . . . that ought to gain a more sympathetic and perceptive hearing in our time than in her own."-from the IntroductionThe centerpiece of this volume is The Morgesons (1862), one of the few outstanding feminist bildungsromanae of that century. Additional selections include arresting short stories and provocative journalistic essays/reviews, plus a number of letters and manuscript journals that have never before been published. The texts are fully edited and documented.

"Stoddard was, next to Melville and Hawthorne, the most strikingly original voice in the mid-nineteenth-century American novel, a voice . . . that ought to gain a more sympathetic and perceptive hearing in our time than in her own."-from the IntroductionThe centerpiece of this volume is The Morgesons (1862), one of the few outstanding feminist bildungsromanae of that century. Additional selections include arresting short stories and provocative journalistic essays/reviews, plus a number of letters and manuscript journals that have never before been published. The texts are fully edited and documented.

...I suppose it was environment that caused me to write these novels; but the mystery of it is, that when I left my native village I did not dream that imagination would lead me there again, for the simple annals of our village and domestic ways did not interest me; neither was I in the least studious. My years were passed in an attempt to have a good time, according to the desires and fancies of youth. Of literature and the literary life, I and my tribe knew nothing; we had not discovered "sermons in stones." Where then was the panorama of my stories and novels stored, that was unrolled in my new sphere? Of course, being moderately intelligent I read everything that came in my way, but merely for amusement. It had been laid up against me as a persistent fault, which was not profitable; I should peruse moral, and pious works, or take up sewing,--that interminable thing, "white seam," which filled the leisure moments of the right-minded. To the personnel of writers I gave little heed; it was the hero they created that charmed me, like Miss Porter's gallant Pole, Sobieski, or the ardent Ernest Maltravers, of Bulwer...

The Morgesons: A Novel traces the intense inner journey of a young woman determined to define herself within the rigid social order of New England. Moving from an isolated hometown to broader urban settings, she confronts strict religious doctrine, narrow moral codes, and the suffocating weight of convention. Her path is marked by emotional upheaval, forbidden longing, and experiences that challenge inherited beliefs about duty and virtue. Encounters with love and loss force her to reckon with personal desire and moral consequence, deepening her awareness of independence and vulnerability. As relationships grow increasingly complex, she questions the boundaries placed upon women's intellect, sexuality, and ambition. Marriage and family obligations present both constraint and possibility, compelling her to negotiate between societal expectation and inner conviction. The narrative explores identity, autonomy, and the struggle for self realization within a culture resistant to female self expression. Through psychological depth and moral tension, the novel presents growth not as quiet acceptance but as a restless pursuit of emotional truth and individual freedom.