E.D.E.N. Southworth, Storyteller

Author:

Sellers, Mary

Graduate Program:

American Studies

Degree:

Doctor of Philosophy

Document Type:

Dissertation

Date of Defense:

June 12, 2020

Committee Members:

Simon Josef Bronner, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Simon Josef Bronner, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Rogers Haddad, Committee Member
Anthony Bak Buccitelli, Committee Member
Ann Louise Swartz, Outside Member
Anne Ayer Verplanck, Program Head/Chair

Keywords:

American Literature
American History
Nineteenth Century
Women Authors
Bestselling novels
serialized publications

Abstract:

E.D.E.N. Southworth’s writing career spanned over forty years, and her books sold in the millions. Yet this author remains in relative obscurity today. This dissertation explains the significance of Southworth’s work and makes the claim that her novels and short stories reflect the social consciousness and changing values of nineteenth-century, middle-class America. Using her personal correspondence, newspaper interviews, biographical pieces, and Southworth’s prose, a fuller picture of the author and her worldview emerges. By examining what Southworth wrote about marriage, women’s rights, health, religion, and other topics, the views of the culture at large become more solidified. Southworth wrote to please the public and to sell as much copy as she could, so she made sure to create characters and plot lines that would resonate with the public. Thus, reading her popular nineteenth-century American fiction reveals the zeitgeist of the age—a different viewpoint than that provided by a religious, scientific, political, or historical analysis. Additionally, Southworth used her stories as a way to work out personal issues and concerns. As an abandoned wife and slave owner, Southworth grappled with the implications of these issues, and the workings of her mind become manifest on the page, thus not only giving insight into the author, but also into the thought processes of a nineteenth-century American woman. Often dismissed in literary criticism as a “popular novelist,” Southworth merits serious social historical as well as cultural and literary analysis. Her works provide an accessible, entertaining entrée into the world of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and she deserves to be elevated to the status of an influential American author.