Constance Fenimore Woolson’s Subversive Politics

A pioneering introduction to the oppositional, referential techniques Woolson developed to enter contested nineteenth-century political conversations about monetary policy, post-Reconstruction legal decisions, racial justice, women’s rights, religious hypocrisy, environmental destruction, and destabilizing political developments.

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This seminal study reveals how Constance Fenimore Woolson participated in debates on nineteenth-century political topics considered the province of men. She commented on the most important issues of her time: monetary policy, post-Reconstruction legal decisions, racial justice and interracial marriage, women’s rights, religious hypocrisy, environmental destruction, destabilizing international developments, and the moral character of the nation. The innovative essays in this book introduce her techniques and the political concerns that inspired her complicated art, encouraging scholars to begin the process of rereading and reanalyzing Woolson’s oeuvre to understand the compelling allegories and satires she created. The oppositional, intertextual, and referential techniques she developed allowed her to enter contested political conversations about compelling nineteenth-century problems like few women of her century, sometimes making her work political commentary as much as fiction.