The Religious Vision of Mary Virginia Terhune (Marion Harland)
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“A FINE VIEW OF THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS”: THE RELIGIOUS VISION OF MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE (MARION HARLAND) AND AUGUSTA JANE EVANS WILSON Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this dissertation is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This dissertation does not include proprietary or classified information. ____________________________ Sara S. Frear Certificate of Approval: _______________________ ________________________ Ruth Crocker Anthony Gene Carey, Chair Professor Professor History History _______________________ ________________________ James Emmett Ryan George T. Flowers Associate Professor Interim Dean English Graduate School “A FINE VIEW OF THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS”: THE RELIGIOUS VISION OF MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE (MARION HARLAND) AND AUGUSTA JANE EVANS WILSON Sara S. Frear A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama August 4, 2007 “A FINE VIEW OF THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS”: THE RELIGIOUS VISION OF MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE (MARION HARLAND) AND AUGUSTA JANE EVANS WILSON Sara S. Frear Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this dissertation at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. _____________________ Signature of Author ______________________ Date of Graduation iii VITA Sara Stone Frear, daughter of George Lewis Frear, Jr., and Joann Palmer, was born on October 16, 1960, in Utica, New York. She was graduated from Hugh C. Williams Senior High School in 1978. She entered Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut in 1978 and was graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in East Asian Studies in 1982. She entered the direct-track Ph.D. program in history at Auburn University in August 2001, majoring in Early America with minors in Modern America and in American Religious History. iv DISSERTATION ABSTRACT “A FINE VIEW OF THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS”: THE RELIGIOUS VISION OF MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE (MARION HARLAND) AND AUGUSTA JANE EVANS WILSON Sara S. Frear Doctor of Philosophy, August 4, 2007 (B.A., Yale University, 1982) 361 Typed Pages Directed by Anthony Gene Carey In the past twenty-five years, there has been a growing scholarly interest in the popular domestic fiction of the nineteenth century. Cultural historians have studied this literature, largely created by women, for the insight it provides into white middle-class values of the era. One aspect of this genre that has been relatively neglected by scholars is its intensely religious nature. Women novelists generally wrote from an evangelical Christian perspective and often out of a sense of mission, hoping that their novels would instill Christian conviction as well as bring spiritual consolation to their readers. This dissertation explores the religious dimension of domestic fiction by focusing on two highly successful southern novelists, Mary Virginia Terhune (penname Marion v Harland, 1830-1922) of Richmond and Augusta Jane Evans, later Wilson (1835-1909), of Mobile. It is a popular intellectual history in that I use these two writers as a window onto the evangelical culture of the mid-nineteenth century. I argue that Terhune and Evans Wilson were representative of a larger, unified evangelical culture that in the 1850s was infused with romanticism. In keeping with this culture, both authors endorsed domestic ideology and emphasized the hidden, spiritual dimension of life. I have concentrated on the period from 1850 to 1880 so as to examine the impact of the Civil War and the Gilded Age on their thought. The war was a crisis for both Terhune and Evans Wilson, but in the end they remained rooted in the evangelical vision that had inspired them in the 1850s. Their popularity continued well into the early twentieth century, and the positive responses they received from their readers encouraged their belief in domesticity and women’s influence. This study is interdisciplinary in nature, combining narrative biography and cultural history with literary analysis. I have made extensive use of both writers’ published works, their personal papers, their family papers when available, and church records. An examination of the religious thought of Terhune and Evans Wilson as it developed in the mid-nineteenth century promises insight into areas of tension in evangelical culture that are of particular interest to modern scholars as well as to a broader readership: the prescriptive (and potentially coercive) aspects of evangelicalism, the meaning of religious experience, the question of women’s roles, the meaning of sexuality, the nature of art, the clash between Christian and secular or non-Christian values, and the quarrel between scientific ideology and belief in the supernatural. Terhune and Evans Wilson wrestled with dilemmas that still confront Americans today. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank her dissertation committee members Anthony Gene Carey, Ruth Crocker, and James Emmett Ryan, and her outside reader Bert Hitchcock, for their guidance and support as she proceeded down a long and sometimes “hidden” path toward dissertation completion. Special thanks are due to Karen Manners Smith for graciously providing me with a copy of Terhune’s hefty diary, and for her general advice and encouragement. Thanks also to Jane Turner Censer, Charles Israel, and Kenneth Noe for providing helpful perspective, not to mention useful tips. Finally, warm thanks to my family and friends, especially Dee Fowler, for helping me through various rough patches along the path. vii Style manual or journal used: The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers, 15th edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Computer software used: MS Word viii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE HEAVENLY HOME..................................................................1 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW..............................................................................7 CHAPTER II: BIOGRAPHIES .........................................................................................30 Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune: The Storyteller ....................................................30 Augusta Jane Evans Wilson: The Crusader...........................................................90 Separate Spheres: The Relationship of Terhune and Evans Wilson....................125 CHAPTER III: SHARING THE VISION: TERHUNE, EVANS WILSON, AND THE EVANGELICAL IDEAL..............................................................................131 CHAPTER IV: GRAPPLING WITH THE WORLD: TERHUNE, EVANS WILSON, AND THE EVANGELICAL CHALLENGE..................................191 CHAPTER V: THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER: THE VISION DULLS......................250 CHAPTER VI: CONCLUSION: THE VISION RECEDES...........................................322 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................341 ix INTRODUCTION: THE HEAVENLY HOME A home!---it is the bright, blessed, adorable phantom which sits highest on the sunny horizon that girdeth Life! When shall it be reached? When shall it cease to become a glittering day-dream, and become fully and fairly yours? It is not the house, though that may have its charms; nor the fields carefully tilled, and streaked with your own foot-paths;---nor the trees, though their shadow be to you like that of a great rock in a weary land;--- nor yet is it the fireside, with its sweet blaze-play;---nor the pictures which tell of loved ones, nor the cherished books,---but more far than all these--- it is the Presence. The Lares of your worship are there; the altar of your confidence there; the end of your worldly faith is there; and adorning it all, and sending your blood in passionate flow, is the ecstasy of the conviction, that there at least you are beloved; that there you are understood; that there your errors will meet ever with gentlest forgiveness; that there your troubles will be smiled away; that there you may unburden your soul, fearless of harsh, unsympathizing ears; and that there you may be entirely and joyfully---yourself! Ik. Marvel (Donald Grant Mitchell) Reveries of a Bachelor1 For many Americans in the tumultuous nineteenth century, the home took on a profoundly religious meaning. “A home” was to be a sanctuary in every sense of the word – both a holy place and a refuge from the dangers of a harsh, unpredictable world. Like all sanctuaries, it was to be a place set apart for reflection and refreshment. Like all shrines, the home also pointed beyond itself to a heavenly place, the hope of perfect 1 Ik. Marvel [Donald Grant Mitchell], Reveries of a Bachelor; or, A Book of the Heart (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1850; reprint, Philadelphia: Henry Altimus, 1895), 90-91 (page citations are to the reprint edition). Highly popular when it first appeared, this collection of meditative essays on home and family life continued to be in demand for the remainder of the century. Scribner issued reprints in 1863, 1878, 1883, 1889, and 1891. 1 happiness in a future world. It was this yearning, both temporal and transcendent, that lay at the heart of domestic ideology, the home-worship that so captured the imaginations of American women and men in the mid-1800s. Shaped by both Christianity and Romanticism, domesticity became essentially religious, an all-encompassing