The Morgesons

By Elizabeth Stoddard and Anna Todd

Book Overview

The Morgesons is a novel written by Elizabeth Stoddard in 1862. A female bildungsroman, it traces the quest of a young woman in search of self-definition and autonomy. The novel comments upon the oppression of women in mid-nineteenth-century New England and challenges the religious and social norms of the time period.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1492278017
• ISBN13: 9781492278016
• Release Date: August 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 194 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.4" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Weird but good

The Morgesons is a magnificently strange book that takes the conventions of the 19th-century coming-of-age novel & turns them inside out. It comes so close to being a deliciously cosy, quasi-gothic, read that you find yourself wondering whether you're imagining the peculiarities-- & perhaps they are only the natural consequences of transplanting this sort of novel into an American setting, where instead of sheepfolds & Anglican churchiness, barren Cape Cod coastline and cold Calvinism are the order of the day. Obsession with inheritance & the family line & that terrible 19th century question: what should a woman do? runs through the book, whose coldness occasionally gives way to flaring episodes of violence and passion.