Reading the American Novel 1780 - 1865

Acknowledgments xv

1 Introduction to the American Novel: From Charles Brockden rown’s Gothic Novels to Caroline Kirkland’s Wilderness 1

2 Historical Codes in Literary Analysis: The Writing Projects of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth Stoddard, and Hannah Crafts 23

3 Women, Blood, and Contract: Land Claims in Lydia Maria Child, Catharine Sedgwick, and James Fenimore Cooper 45

4 Black Rivers, Red Letters, and White Whales: Mobility and Desire in Catharine Williams, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville 67

5 Promoting the Nation in James Fenimore Cooper and Harriet Beecher Stowe 91

6 Women’s Worlds in the Nineteenth-Century Novel: Susan B. Warner, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Fanny Fern, E. D. E. N. Southworth, Harriet Wilson, and Louisa May Alcott 119

Afterword 151

Further Reading 165

Index 171