Revitalizing Church and Culture
Revitalizing Church and Culture
The Marian Heroines of Anna Dorsey and Alexander Stewart Walsh, 1880s–1890s
This chapter examines Marian imagery in American domestic fiction focusing on one Catholic and one Baptist author. Catholic convert Anna Hanson Dorsey influenced popular Catholic conceptions of Mary through her many domestic novels, which were characterized by their Marian spirituality and hyper-pure Mary-derived heroines. It analyzes her 1887 novel, Adrift, alongside an 1888 novel by Baptist minister Alexander Stewart Walsh entitled Mary: Queen of the House of David and Mother of Jesus. Dorsey and Walsh used parallel strategies for employing Marian themes to address the late-century “Woman Question.” Employing arguments derived from maternalism, each writer suggested that an elevated and egalitarian understanding of womanhood, modelled on Mary, would lead to social reforms that would protect women from exploitation and give them an expanded sphere of action without overturning their domestic role.
Keywords: Alexander Stewart Walsh, Anna Dorsey, Catholic conversion, domestic fiction, Marian heroine, Marian spirituality, maternalism, Virgin Mary, Woman Question, womanhood
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