Overview

Nineteenth-century American women's patchwork-quilt fiction sought to redefine the concept of brotherhood, established in Winthrop's city upon a hill, by providing an inclusive and matriarchal model for the communal experiment that was America. Patchwork-quilt fiction, from such domestic writers as Susan Warner to local colorists like Sarah Orne Jewett, combines realistic detail with women's metaphors like the hearth, home, kitchen, garden, and quilt, to express feminine ideas about community.

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9780820440743

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Reviews

Suzanne Shepard's book provides an excellent introduction to American women writers. Written with clarity and grace, this study assesses the unique contribution made by women writers in a wide-ranging group of novels and short stories that express domestic values. The book is original, accessible, and interesting. (Susan Strehle, Binghamton University) At the end of the millennium when so many things seem to fall apart, Suzanne Shepard's study is healing. Her reflection on women's community experience, described through gardening and quilting, enlarges our view of such nineteenth-century authors as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Susan Glaspell, and heightens our awareness of similar themes in the writings of twentieth-century authors such as Willa Cather and Eudora Welty. (Isabel Maria Fernandes Alves, Universidade de Tras-os-montes e Alto Douro, Portugal)

Author Information

The Author: Suzanne V. Shepard is Associate Professor of English at Broome Community College. She received her Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University. She has published articles on a wide variety of subjects and has contributed computer-based study questions to an introduction to literature text.

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