A House Undivided

A whole range of major American writers have focused on images of the household, of domestic virtue, and the feminine or feminised hero. This important new book examines the persistance and flexibility of such themes in the work of a tradition of classic writers from Ann Bradstreet through Jefferson and Franklin to Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Emily Dickinson. Without minimising the differences which divide these figures, Anderson shows the extent to which, in their various circumstances, they were all committed to a common enterprise - a social and cultural reconstruction based on the domestic values of the ideal private household.