Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: A Life, Band 1

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University of Missouri Press, 2004 - 320 Seiten
Sophia Peabody Hawthorne is known almost exclusively in her role as the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who portrayed her as the fragile, ethereal, infirm "Dove." That image, invented by Nathaniel to serve his needs and affirm his manhood, was passed on by his biographers, who accepted their subject's perception without question. In fact, the real Sophia was very different from Nathaniel's construction of her.
An independent, sensuous, daring woman, Sophia was an accomplished artist before her marriage to Nathaniel. Moreover, what she brought to their union inspired Nathaniel's imagination beyond the limits of his previously confined existence. In Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Patricia Dunlavy Valenti situates the story of Sophia's life within its own historical, philosophical, and cultural background, as well as within the context of her marriage. Valenti begins with parallel biographies that present Sophia, and then Nathaniel, at comparable periods in their lives.
Sophia was born into an expansive, somewhat chaotic home in which women provided financial as well as emotional sustenance. She was a precocious, eager student whose rigorous education, in her mother's and her sisters' schools, began her association with the children of New England's elite. Sophia aspired to become a professional, self-supporting painter, exhibiting her art and seeking criticism from established mentors. She relished an eighteen-month sojourn in Cuba. Nathaniel's reclusive family, his reluctant early education, his anonymous pursuit of a career, and his relatively circumscribed life contrast markedly with the experience of the woman who became his wife and the mother of his children. Those differences resulted in a creative abrasion that ignited his fiction during the first years of their marriage.
Volume 1 of this biography concludes with Sophia's negotiation of the Hawthornes' departure from the Old Manse and the birth of their second child. This period also coincides with the conclusion of Nathaniel's major phase of short story writing.
Sophia Peabody Hawthorne is an engrossing story of a nineteenth-century American life. It analyzes influences upon authorship and questions the boundaries of intellectual property in the domestic sphere. The book also offers fresh interpretations of Nathaniel Hawthorne's fiction, examining it through the lens of Sophia's vibrant personality and diverse interests. Students and scholars of American literature, literary theory, feminism, and cultural history will find much to enrich their understanding of this woman and this era.

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Inhalt

The Sanctuary of Sleeping Innocence
1
Chapter
11
The Wide and Healthful Atmosphere
17
Chapter 4
34
This Dismal and Squalid Chamber
42
Queen of All I Survey
52
Through a PeepHole
67
More Exposed
82
So Strong a Magnetic Attraction
147
Sophie Naughty Sophie Dove
156
A Perfect Eden
170
The Power of CounterForces
182
The Divine the LifeGiving Touch
195
A Real Living Immortal Spirit
206
More Poison in Thy Nature
216
Holiness Rents
229

A Shy but Not Quite Secluded Man
91
The Key to My Private Cabinet
100
Halloo Sir Solitary
108
The Same Piercing Indrawing Gaze
116
The Lover of Uncontained and Immortal Beauty
141
Forth Came This Sketch
243
Notes
253
Bibliography
285
Index
297
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Patricia Dunlavy Valenti is Professor of English, Theatre, and Languages at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. She is the author of To Myself a Stranger: A Biography of Rose Hawthorne Lathrop.

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