The Land Before Her

by Kolodny, Annette

• ISBN13: 9780807841112
• ISBN10: 0807841110
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1984-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

To discover how women constructed their own mythology of the West, Kolodny examines the evidence of three generations of women's writing about the frontier. She finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated. Both intellectual and cultural history, this volume continues Kolodny's study of frontier mythology begun in The Lay of the Land.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Abbreviations	p. xxi
Prologue Dispossessed of Paradise	p. 1
From Captivity to Accommodation, 1630-1833	p. 15
Captives in Paradise	p. 17
Gardens in the Wilderness	p. 35
The Lady in the Cave	p. 55
Mary Jemison and Rebecca Bryan Boone: At Home in the Woods	p. 68
From Promotion to Literature, 1833-1850	p. 91
Mary Austin Holley and Eliza Farnham: Promoting the Prairies	p. 93
Margaret Fuller: Recovering Our Mother's Garden	p. 112
The Literary Legacy of Caroline Kirkland: Emigrants' Guide to a Failed Eden	p. 131
Repossessing Eden, 1850-1860	p. 159
The Domestic Fantasy Goes West	p. 161
Alice Cary and Caroline Soule: Book Ends	p. 178
E.D.E.N. Southworth and Maria Susanna Cummins: Paradise Regained, Paradise Lost	p. 200
Epilogue A New Frontier Beckons: A Transitional Meditation	p. 227
Notes	p. 243
Bibliography	p. 273
Index	p. 283
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