Heaven's Interpreters: Women Writers and Religious Agency in Nineteenth-Century America

Ashley Reed

Open Access Published by Cornell University Press 2022

Heaven's Interpreters

Women Writers and Religious Agency in Nineteenth-Century America

Ashley Reed
Funded by: Virginia Tech / TOME

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501751387

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Heaven's Interpreters, Ashley Reed reveals how nineteenth-century American women writers transformed the public sphere by using the imaginative power of fiction to craft new models of religious identity and agency. Women writers of the antebellum period, Reed contends, embraced theological concepts to gain access to the literary sphere, challenging the notion that theological discourse was exclusively oppressive and served to deny women their own voice.

Attending to modes of being and believing in works by Augusta Jane Evans, Harriet Jacobs, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Elizabeth Stoddard, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Susan Warner, Reed illuminates how these writers infused the secular space of fiction with religious ideas and debates, imagining new possibilities for women's individual agency and collective action.

Thanks to generous funding from Virginia Tech and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Author / Editor information

Ashley Reed is Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Tech. Follow her on X @AshleyKReed.

Reviews

Justine S. Murison, University of Illinois, author of The Politics of Anxiety in Nineteenth-Century American Literature:

Heaven's Interpreters is a vital contribution to the growing field of feminist studies of the secular. Ashley Reed challenges scholars to take seriously women's religious agency and shows how doing so allows us to analyze, and not simply reinforce, the assumptions of liberalism.

Topics

Frontmatter Open Access Download PDF	i
Contents Open Access Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Open Access Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Writing Women’s Religious Agency in Nineteenth-Century America Open Access Download PDF	1
1. “My Resolve Is the Feminine of My Father’s Oath”: Ritual Agency and Religious Language in the Early National Historical Novel Open Access Download PDF	25
2. “Unsheathe the Sword of a Strong, Unbending Will”: Sentimental Agency and the Doctrinal Work of Woman’s Fiction Open Access Download PDF	53
3. “I Have Sinned against God and Myself ”: Bearing Witness to Enslaved Women’s Agency in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Open Access Download PDF	89
4. “The Human Soul . . . Makes All Things Sacred”: Communal Agency in the Theological Romances of Harriet Beecher Stowe Open Access Download PDF	115
5. “I Have No Disbelief ”: Women’s Spiritualist Novels and Nonliberal Agencies Open Access Download PDF	150
Conclusion: Women’s Religious Agency Today Open Access Download PDF	177
Notes Open Access Download PDF	193
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	231
Index Open Access Download PDF	255

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 276
Keywords: secularism; religious fiction; historical novel; American women writers; Lydia Maria Child

eBook

Published: September 15, 2020
ISBN: 9781501751387