“That is the Substance, This the Shadow”: The Material Spectre of Female Empowerment in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Gates Ajar
This article revisits Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ Civil War-era consolation novel The Gates Ajar (1868). While many readers have pointed out that the novel’s highly unconventional vision of embodied heaven teaches its white middle-class female readership to reroute grief for their lost loved ones into...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Association Française d'Etudes Américaines
2025-07-01
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| Series: | Transatlantica |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/26075 |
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| Summary: | This article revisits Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ Civil War-era consolation novel The Gates Ajar (1868). While many readers have pointed out that the novel’s highly unconventional vision of embodied heaven teaches its white middle-class female readership to reroute grief for their lost loved ones into productive consumer desires, I proceed to delve into the radical political potential of the relationship between the two female protagonists, Mary Cabot and Winifred Forceythe. Although American women’s Civil War-era optimism about the prospect of female suffrage and greater economic autonomy is belied by the text’s formal doctrine, which enforces heteronormativity and promotes a return to the gendered division of labour, I argue that the homoaffective bond between Mary and Winifred, which is formalised through a series of socio-familial and financial arrangements, reifies, albeit partially, these much anticipated socio-political and economic freedoms. I conclude the article by following a trail of material remainders left by patriarchy’s violence, embodied by Winifred’s diseased and later dead body, which, despite the novel’s attempts to disguise it, forces itself into the reader’s view, as well as of the more subtle ghostly haunts produced by other inescapable historical forces that leave barely visible, yet undeniable marks on the text, namely the recent abolition of slavery. |
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| ISSN: | 1765-2766 |