Unlikely Heroines Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Woman Question

The unlikely heroines analyzed in this book are fictional women, who, like their male counterparts of the era, demonstrated an urge to break with tradition, a rejection of conventional values, and a desire for adventure. The six authors who created them--Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Louisa May Alcott, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Wilkins Freeman, and Kate Chopin--at one time or another all received critical acclaim. However, their gender has prevented them, and their works, from being viewed as an integral part of the important literature of the time. The six novels discussed by Ann Shapiro have in comon a denail of the nineteenth-century ideal of "true Womanhood" in favor of greater freedom and equality for women.Shapiro, Ann R. is the author of 'Unlikely Heroines Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers and the Woman Question', published 1987 under ISBN 9780313254222 and ISBN 0313254222.