Our Sisters' Keepers : Nineteenth-Century Benevolence Literature by American Women

Essays on the roles played by women in forming American attitudes about benevolence and poverty relief. American culture has long had a conflicted relationship with assistance to the poor, Cotton Mather and John Winthrop were staunch proponents of Christian charity as fundamental to colonial American society, while illegible] harbored deep skepticism towards benevolence in favor of Emersonian self-reliance and illegible] insistence on an ascetic life. Women in the 19th century, as these essays show, approached issues of benevolence illegible] differently than their male counterparts, consistently promoting assistance to the impoverished, in both their acts and their writings. These essays address a wide range of subjects; and images of the sentimental illegible] figure in women's fiction. illegible] Harding Davis's rewriting of the industrial novel; Sarah illegible] Jewett's place in the transcendental tradition of skepticism toward charity; and her subversion of it; the genre of the poorhouse narrative; and the illegible] work and writings of Hull House founder Jane Addams. positions occupied by many women in the 19th century illegible] an empathetic sensitivity in illegible] to the plight of the poor, and their ability to act and write in advocacy of the impoverished offered a illegible] of empowerment not otherwise available to them. The result was the reformulation of the concept of the American individual.