Reconstructing, Reimagining: 1865–1900 287companionship, say, or through the quilts and clothes they make or the way
in which they dress themselves.
One particularly remarkable earlier story is “Circumstance” (1863). In this, an
unnamed woman returns home through “those eastern wilds of Maine in that epoch
frequently making neighbors and miles synonymous.” In the gathering dark, she
appears to see a winding-sheet and hear a melancholy voice. But the woman is
tough: she has been brought up on the frontier and “dealing with hard fact does not
engender a flimsy mind.” Besides, she is determined to get back to her husband and
child. Further on, however, she encounters “a swift shadow, like the fabulous flying-
dragon.” It turns out to be “that wild beast ... known by hunters as the Indian Devil’:
a panther, that leaps upon her and begins to gnaw at her arm. The woman cries out;
the beast is suddenly still; and the woman realizes that she can keep the beast, at
least, from harming her for the moment, by breaking the silence of the forest. So she
sings, all the songs she knows, all through the night. “Still she chanted on” is a refrain
in this strange, dreamlike tale. Eventually, as dawn comes, the woman loses her voice,
and is only saved by the timely arrival of her husband, who shoots the panther.
Returning home, she and her family then find that, in their absence, their home is a
“smoking ruin,” destroyed by Indians. There is desolation but there is also a sense of
hope. “The world was all before them,” the tale concludes, “where to choose.” Like
Alcott, Spofford recalls the description of Adam and Eve leaving Eden in the con-
cluding lines of Paradise Lost by John Milton to inscribe her emancipatory theme.
Her heroine has saved herself by finding her voice; she has tamed the beast by
rehearsing her own will to live in song. Her chant, like the dramatic performances of
Christie in Wo r k, is her art, her way of surviving and asserting herself. Thanks to that
art, she has the world before her and can begin again. And “Circumstance” itself, of
course, like the novel Wo r k, is Spofford’s art: it is the author’s way of announcing, not
only the power of female action, but the power, and necessity, of female narrative.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911) was less convinced that women would be
allowed the time for their art – at least, in her best work she was. The daughter of a
popular author, whose name she took as her own, she continued her mother’s inter-
est in religious fiction by writing The Gates Ajar (1868). This was not so much a novel
as a series of conversations by fictional characters about the beauties of heaven. It was
immensely popular, particularly with women readers, and was followed by a number
of books, the “Gates” series, exploring the same theme. But Phelps also wrote Hedged
In (1870), a novel that attacks the hypocrisy of society in its treatment of women who
transgress conventional moral standards. And this was followed by other novels that
focus on the condition of women, and, in particular, on women and work: among
them, The Silent Partner (1871), a story of New England mill girls, and Dr. Zay
(1882), an account of a successful woman physician. Of these, the most memorable
is The Story of Avis (1887). At the beginning of this novel the talented heroine, Avis
Phelps, returns home to New England after training as an artist in Europe for four
years. She is courted by Philip Ostrander, who has been wounded in the Civil War;
and, while she is aware of the risk to her career as an artist involved, she marries him.
She soon realizes her mistake. The care of her husband (who eventually becomes tooGGray_c03.indd 287ray_c 03 .indd 287 8 8/1/2011 7:54:23 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 23 AM