Ellen Glasgow: Beyond Convention by Linda W. Wagner (review)

Abstract

Studies in American Fiction115 the novelist there is this Janus, too. But if the 'double mental existence' Brown described to John Bernard enabled him to glimpse worlds dark and light, it failed, we shall discover, to tell him which of the two he might call home" (p. 28). Within this thesis, Axelrod argues, as the subtitle of his book suggests, that Brown manifests an "Americanness." This view ofBrown implicitly carries with it a traditional approach to American intellectual history, one that sees our major writers as wedded to their culture in such a way that the definition of one implies the definition of the other. Thus, it is conventional for theorizers of "the American mind" to look at someone, Emerson for example, and through his writings define a popular view of nature. Or conversely, through popular writings on nature to define Emerson. There is something of this in Axelrod's approach to Brown, although I clearly cannot do justice to the cogency of his argument in oversimplifying it, as space here requires. But my own disagreement with his thesis remains, primarily because I cannot accept the basic premise of Brown's "Americanness." Others, most perhaps, will not have this difficulty. More troublesome to many readers, I suspect, will be a tendency toward digression that appears from time to time. For example, in discussing "Adini," Axelrod sees the necessity of pointing to the Scottish birth of Mr. Ellen (p. 107). The relation of hard-headed Scottish philosophy to the issue under discussion is necessary, but the tour ofthe intellectual backgrounds ofScottish philosophy might be more appropriate in a footnote. In more than one case the text slips away from the main line of discourse into elaborations ofthe subject that prove distracting even if often highly interesting and valuable. None of this criticism, however, is meant to detract from the general observation that Axelrod offers a rich discussion of the issues he sees as germane to the major novels ofBrown, the primary subject ofthe book. The scholarship in this study is excellent, and the critical insights are often keen even when unnecessary quibbles with other scholars intrude into the argument. This valuable study, I expect, will become one of the basic references for future Brown scholarship. State University of New York at BinghamtonBernard Rosenthal Wagner, Linda W. Ellen Glasgow: Beyond Convention. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1982. 150 pp. Cloth: $15.95. Finding the right category for Ellen Glasgow is a central concern ofGlasgow scholarship. Is she best understood as a regionalist, as a mainstream realist, as a romancer, or as an historian ? Linda W. Wagner answers thatGlasgow is best read as a woman writer, andthe argument of Ellen Glasgow: Beyond Convention is very persuasive. Wagner maintains that Glasgow's career was shaped by the events in her life that most touched her as a woman: the death of her mother in 1893; the end of her love-affair with the mysterious Gerald B. in the early years ofthe twentieth century; the death ofher sister Cary in 1 91 1 ; thedissolution ofherengagementto Henry Anderson in theyears just followingtheFirst World War. Grounding her analysis in biography "because all artists translate personal experience into art, in one way or another" (p. 7), Wagner explains: "What is particularly interesting in Glasgow's development is that it is often herexperience with women and women's needs that prompt her best work: the deaths ofCary and her mother, for example, gave herthe impetus for Virginia" (p. 15). Similarly, "her working through that last long fascination of the engagement with Anderson, the period which she terms 'The Years ofthe Locust,' became the prewriting period of her 1925 novel, Barren Ground. The power ofDorinda Oakley's renunciation ofthe conventional female rolecamedirectlyfrom Glasgow'sown convictions"(p. 10). The beauty ofWagner's approach is that her touch is light. She keeps her book short; she does 116Reviews not crush her subject under a mass ofbiographical detail or ofpsychoanalytic interpretation. She draws sharp parallels between biography and fiction, making her connections clear and concrete, and then moves on. Therefore an especiallyclean and compact accountofa long and complicated career emerges. Wagner argues that Glasgow found hervoice as a woman writer only after years...