Romances of the Republic: Women, the Family, and Violence in the Literature of the Early American NationRomances of the Republic contributes to the lively field of scholarship on the interconnection of ideology and history in early American literature. Shirley Samuels illustrates the relations of sexual, political, and familial rhetoric in American writing from 1790 to the 1850s. With special focus on depictions of the American Revolution and on the use of the family as a model and instrument of political forces, she examines how the historical novel formalizes the more extravagant features of the gothic novel--incest, murder, the horror of family--while incorporating a sentimental vision of the family. Samuels's analysis deals with writers like Charles Brockden Brown, Catherine Sedgwick, James Fenimore Cooper, and Mason Weems, and argues that their novels formulated a family structure that, unlike earlier models, was neither patriarchal nor a revolt against patriarchy. In emphasizing sibling rivalry and inter-generational quarrels about marriage, the novel of this period attempted to unite disparate political, national, class, and even racial positions. |
Contents
The Family the State and the Novel in the Early Republic | 3 |
Arthur Mervyn | 23 |
Alien and Infidel | 44 |
Cooper and the Domestic Revolution | 57 |
4 Monuments and Hearths | 76 |
The Making of Americans | 96 |
6 The Identity of Slavery | 113 |
Notes | 129 |
| 173 | |
| 191 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abolition abolitionists alien American Revolution animal anti-slavery appears argues Arthur Mervyn attempt battle become blood body British brother cartoons Carwin Cathy Davidson Charles Brockden Brown claims Clara colonies conflation Cooper cultural death deism democracy Democratic desire discourse domestic Dunwoodie Early American early republic effect England father female fiction figure Frances French French Revolution gender George George Forgie Hawthorne Hawthorne's Heckewelder historical novels human ideology incest Indian infidelity institutions James Fenimore Cooper John killed Lionel Lincoln literature marriage miscegenation Mohicans mother murder narrative narrator national identity Natty Bumppo natural neutral ground nineteenth-century once parents patriotism Philadelphia plague political presents profit Province House question racial reader reading relation religious repeatedly republican revolutionary Richard Slotkin romance scene seems sentimental sexual slave Slave's Friend slavery social story suggests Thomas Paine threat tion violence Washington Weems Wharton Wieland woman women