Passion Repressed: The Short Fiction of Grace King

Abstract

Almost as popular a chronicler of Creole life and manners in her time as George Washington Cable and as widely read among her contemporaries as Kate Chopin, Grace King has been virtually ignored for the better part of the twentieth century while those two have been subjects of a very great deal of scholarship. When she is mentioned, King is not given consideration as a contributing literary influence in the evolution of the American short story or as an original voice in American letters. David Kirby's recent study of her fiction the only book-length evaluation available perhaps inadvertently makes the point. Today, he says, writings are valuable for two principal reasons: they provide a unique angle of vision into the psychology of the American female at a time when she was ridding herself of one role and struggling to adopt a new one, and they allow the present day reader to look long and hard at a portion of the Southern experience that is not to be found in the writings of better-known authors.' Kirby's consideration is thoughtful and interesting; but it falls short, for it insists on a merely historical significance to King's short stories: hers is a fiction notable, he argues, because it affords us a unique lens for viewing the past. Merrill Maguire Skaggs treats her primarily as a self-styled corrective to George Washington Cable's excesses and argues that her characters are stereotypes, admitting finally that perhaps she is fairer to the Creoles than Cable was.2 Robert Bush says, modestly, that she once enjoyed a modest reputation.3 All three of these writers make much of her exchange with Richard Watson Gilder when the editor of The Century asked