Cultural orphans in America

Images of orphanhood have pervaded American fiction since the colonial period. Common in British literature, the orphan figure in American texts serves a unique cultural purpose, representing marginalized racial, ethnic, and religious groups that have been scape-goated by the dominant culture. Among these groups are Native Americans, African Americans, immigrants, and Catholics.

Applying aspects of psychoanalytic theory that pertain to identity formation, specifically Rene Girard's theory of the scapegoat, Cultural Orphans in America examines the orphan trope in early American texts and the antebellum nineteenth-century American novel as a reaction to the social upheaval and internal tensions generated by three major episodes in American history: the Great Migration, the American Revolution, and the rise of the republic.