Ellen Glasgow: Beyond Convention

Description

For many years Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Glasgow has been regarded as a classic American regional novelist. But Glasgow is far more than a Southern writer| as Linda Wagner demonstrates in this fascinating reassessment of her work.

A Virginia lady| Glasgow began to write at a time when the highest praise for a literary woman was to be mistaken for a male writer. In her early fiction| published at the turn of the century| all attention is focused on male protagonists; the strong female characters who do appear early in these novels gradually fade into the background.

But Ellen Glasgow grew to become a woman who| born to be protected from the very life she wanted to chronicle| moved “beyond convention” to live her life on her own terms. And as her own self-image changed| the perspective of her novels became more feminine| the female characters moved to center stage| and their philosophies became central to her themes. Glasgow’s best novels| then—Barren Ground| Vein of Iron| and the romantic trilogy that includes The Sheltered Life—came late in her life| when she was no longer content to imitate fashionable male novelists.

Glasgow’s increased self-assurance as writer and woman led to a far greater awareness of craft. Her style became more highly imaged| more suggestive| as though she wished to widen the range of resources available to move her readers. She became a writer both popular and respected. Her novels appeared as selections of the Literary Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club| and one became a best seller. At the same time she was chosen as one of the few female members of the Academy of Arts and Letters| and in 1942 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel In This Our Life.