Susanna Rowson: Sentimental Prophet of Early American Literature by Steven Epley

Abstract

Reviewed by: Susanna Rowson: Sentimental Prophet of Early American Literature by Steven Epley Elizabeth Fenton (bio) Susanna Rowson: Sentimental Prophet of Early American Literature Steven Epley Northwestern University Press, 2016. 240 pp. $99.95 cloth. $34.95 paperback. It has become somewhat common in recent years to speak of a religious turn in the study of American literature. A wide range of scholarly work produced in the past two decades reveals a revitalized interest in the complex relationships between the (ever-shifting) categories of religion and literature. At the same time, reassessments of the very methods and reading practices underpinning literary study have called into question the field's own claims to secularity. Steven Epley's Susanna Rowson: Sentimental Prophet of Early American Literature draws on this line of critical thinking and extends its reach through a meticulous assessment of Susanna Rowson's fictional oeuvre. As Epley rightly notes, Rowson is one of the most important literary figures of the early republic. She remains known primarily for her novel Charlotte Temple, an acclaimed best-seller in its own time—appearing in forty-two editions between 1791 and 1812—and an ubiquitous presence in American literature anthologies and syllabuses today. Rowson's lasting influence on American sentimentalism and her engagement with the charged gender politics of her time have been topics of interest to critics for many years. Far less attention, however, has been paid to the religious aspects of her writing. In taking Rowson seriously as a religious writer, Epley's book fills a critical gap in the study of her work [End Page 149] and initiates what I suspect will be ongoing conversations about Rowson's work in particular and the role of religion in fictions produced during this tumultuous period in US history more broadly. This book thus stands as an important contribution to the field, not only for its own specific argument, but also because it offers a model of engagement with religious issues in texts typically deemed secular. In examining Rowson's body of work, Epley draws a rather startling conclusion about her religious perspective. Though she was a lifelong Anglican and a preeminent writer of what might be termed Christian fiction, Rowson, Epley argues, "ironically owes more to the Hebrew Bible than to Christianity, particularly the latter's trope of spiritual conversion" (3). Sentimental Prophet thus provocatively suggests that "the widespread introduction of Jewish values into American culture, traditionally associated with largescale Jewish immigration between roughly 1880 and 1940, actually begins in the early republic" (3). Decentering the notions of spiritual conversion and Christian piety that so often undergird studies of religion in this context, Epley asserts that Rowson's clearest religious influence in her fictions is the Hebrew Bible. Her writing, he contends, "shows abundant evidence of a preternaturally strong dependence on Deuteronomistic covenant theology and a concomitant lack of attention to central Christian themes" (6). This line of analysis uncovers a previously unexamined religious genealogy for Rowson's work, and, in so doing, it opens the door for rethinking both the religious commitments at play in the period's other literary productions and, potentially, the vast body of sentimental writing that followed Rowson's lead in the century that followed. Sentimental Prophet is organized in chapters addressing each of Rowson's major works: her sweeping biblical paraphrase, Biblical Dialogues; Charlotte Temple; her lone historical novel, Reuben and Rachel; and Charlotte Temple's sequel, Lucy Temple. Each chapter situates its specific text in relation to a prophetic or narrative figure in the Hebrew Bible—Moses, Huldah, Hosea, Ruth, and Isaiah—to show how Rowson, "no doubt unconsciously, organized her major works along the arc of Hebrew scriptural history" (5). This is a compelling frame through which to view these texts, but the fact that there are two chapters about Charlotte Temple (taking Huldah and Hosea as their models) makes the book feel a bit unbalanced. Charlotte Temple already has received much more attention from critics than anything else in Rowson's body of work, and the framework Epley builds in this book is so compelling, that I would have preferred a chapter on a different, lesser-read work. Epley's analysis of Charlotte Temple...