The Representation and Reappraisal of St. Monica of Hippo in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing

Abstract

Abstract: Since she was commemorated as a saint in 387, Monica of Hippo has come to represent ideals of motherhood to successive generations. This article considers how three nineteenth-century women writers—Anna Jameson, Christina Rossetti, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—engage with this legacy to offer new ways of imagining the empowering social potential of faith. In my analysis, I indicate how they contribute to the Incarnation-inflected discourse of the second half of the nineteenth century and provide a helpful backdrop to understanding recent feminist appraisals of Augustine.