Child brides and intruders

While the heroes of American literature are out hunting bears, fighting wars or killing whales, the heroines are back home in society. The heroines of American novels are trapped within a social context, and so their stories tell us about life as it was - and is - actually lived. Some heroines choose to conform to the standards of the dominant group; others question and confront those in power. Both types challenge society's myths.

Child brides blindly acquiesce to the demands hidden beneath the myth of endless opportunity and individualism. They take their place in the deal-making that suffuses all relationships, becoming the standard commercial product desired by their men. Sightless and subservient, they are images of arrested development and icons of American romance. As writers trace the pattern of the child bride, the monster within the darling emerges.

Innocence becomes emptiness and insatiable hunger; passivity becomes a terrible power. The pure girls of Hawthorne and James become the tainted women of Cather and Dreiser and the rapacious sweethearts of Wharton, Fitzgerald and Glasgow.

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While the child brides grow monstrous, the intruders grow up. Intruders see too much; they cannot or will not close their eyes and accept their assigned roles. They fight society without much hope of victory. Although the first intruder, Hester Prynne, is a model of power and hope, other intruders die defeated or suffocate in marriage. Some, like the independent women of Adams, Glasgow and Wharton, choose to live alone.

A few brave women, the heroines of Cather and Lewis, risk their independence in a redesigned marriage. Child Brides and Intruders explores American literary heroines from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Gail Godwin; it covers the classics and lesser-known works. Exploring two disparate types of heroine, the book produces one picture of American culture. The culture that embraces the mindless child and scorns the questioning woman is one in which economic values form - and deform - social identity.