Date of Award
Fall 12-2015
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
English
Department
English
Major Professor
Dr. Anne Boyd Rioux
Second Advisor
Dr. Elizabeth Steeby
Third Advisor
Dr. Dan Doll
Abstract
Despite her immense popularity in the nineteenth century, Constance Fenimore Woolson's reputation dwindled substantially in the decades which followed. While her works have been rediscovered over the past thirty years, they are often categorized as regionalist writing or, in the case of her penultimate novel, Jupiter Lights, melodrama. What many fail to consider, however, is that Woolson very much considered herself a realist author, and may have been remembered as such were it not for the influence of William Dean Howells and his peers, whose very narrow parameters for literary realism excluded Woolson, among others. Unfortunately, those parameters are still with us today, and exclude many authors whose realities do not conform to Howells’s original scope. In this thesis, I examine the biographical and historical context for Woolson’s lesser-known works, arguing that they demonstrate a type of empathetic realism which must not be ignored by current scholars of American literature.
Recommended Citation
Hemm, Ashley N., "“In my fiction I never say anything which is not absolutely true”: Reassessing Constance Fenimore Woolson’s Literary Realism" (2015). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2083.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2083
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.