E. N Southworth Research Paper

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The further north the narratives migrate; the level of comfort the writer has with herself seems to broaden which is exemplified in her characters. E.D.E.N Southworth is born and raised in Washington D.C. She began to write out of necessity to support herself and children after her husband deserted her in 1844. The geographical boundaries of D.C include the state of Virginia which is considered a southern state. Southworth did not adhere to the southern ideology of a code of conduct for women nor the view of the representation of the mother in a narrative yet most of Southworth's novels deal with the Southern United States during the post-American Civil War era. She is a supporter of social change and women's rights (XXI Joanne Dobson Introduction …show more content…

This friendship and her desire for social change seeped into her narrative. She falls back on the (assumed) dead mother motif to make a political statement. Southworth regarded the treatment of women and slaves in the same context. The ideology of many writers to use the absente mother is used by Southworth yet she uses a free mulatto woman (Nancy Grewell) as the replacement mother. Margaret Homans states that the myth of the absent mother drives our culture and that women writers use the “troubling myth” to further their “central projects” of the culture (Homans 2). Granny, as Nancy is known, is called to flee with the surviving Capitola yet is intercepted by the villain of the novel Gabriel Le Noir. He becomes privy to the true nature of Granny and sells her and the baby to a sea captain. Southworth ambition in writing this part of the plot is to make her readers aware of who really is in charge. The believability of a white man selling a free black woman with a white baby is not too far from the reality of the day. She exposes that slavery is about patriarchal power and that any white man can decide what constitutes a slave and holds the right to sell any human he possesses all be it (Baym

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